[ExI] Sigh

[Damien Broderick]

On 7/2/2010 3:03 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> ### Enough to move the existence-meter from ??% to ??% ?

I was already convince psi is real (but usually, like Goering's balls, 
rather small) so I didn't change anything in particular--I was looking 
for a way to *use* psi, but it turns out the stochastic jitter is too 
great for any simple application based on gaming populations. Linear 
regression helped a bit, but not enough to clear away the noise of 
shifting biases. (Example: it is demonstrable that the vote for any 
given number changes in immediately subsequent draws--because many 
punters are superstitious. Of course one can then ask "Does it change in 
the predicted direction *more* when a given number is a winner twice in 
row than when it's not?" and the overall mean answer is yes.)

> BTW, I am sure there are employees at lotteries who can and did look
> at much more data than you can access .... men with great statistical
> expertise .... in hundreds of independent organizations ...

This seems very likely, but I was astonished at how little the guys at 
Tattslotto cared about the kinds of small effects I anticipated. They 
just couldn't be bothered following it up (or so they said). Like JKC, 
they were "realists" who knew what's what, so that psi BULLSHIT just 
wasn't worth considering.

> and no
> published reports on psi from them .... what could this imply?

As far as I know, here haven't been any or many reports from the Sony 
ESPER psi lab either; they announced as it was shut down in 1998 
(following Masaru Ibuka's death) that yes, they had found such effects, 
but they weren't large enough to impact their company's program. One 
might expect them to admit it if the thing was a washout, but maybe that 
would imply public disrespect for their sainted co-founder. Realpolitik 
is a real fucker when you're going after the mysterious...

Then again, perhaps it's all gone deepest black (as I expect) and is 
attended by disinformation projects, as is known to have happened with 
many sightings of highly classified aircraft and spy balloons. 
Realpolitik is a real fucker...

Damien Broderick