[extropy-chat] Re: Damien grants psi evidence

Brett Paatsch bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au
Fri Dec 17 22:55:52 UTC 2004


Damien Broderick wrote:

> At 07:06 AM 12/18/2004 +1100, Brett wrote:
>
>>Yet the size of the effects reported (small), and the nature of the
>>way in which they were reported, (with apparently good scientific
>>method and a seemingly very capable understanding of statistics)
>>didn't offer me reason enough to need to push further immediately.
>
> Utts observes that the small but fairly robust effect sizes are slightly 
> larger than those relating daily doses of aspirin to mitigation of heart 
> attack risk; this latter finding is regarded as well-established by the 
> medical profession, ...

Yes, a small robust effect can still be very useful if it holds true over
the long term AND has some real practical application like aspirin in
mitigating the risk of heart disease. I accept that.

Utts report didn't convince me though, (nor in fairness does it try to
as it is not about that), that the effect detected is likely to be as useful
as aspirin.

And perhaps it could be, perhaps there are real applications for even
a 20% better than chance "remote viewing" service that was well
characterised and on-sold on a strictly pay for results basis. If it
could be used in casinos for instance it might be edge enough to
beat the house edge on a roulette wheel. Or the transaction costs
on futures markets.

It was interesting (and perhaps unfortunate that) the test that
could have had greatest commercial utility, the one involving
detecting five bit streams of zeros and ones, did not achieve
statistical significance.

The effect doesn't do anything that matters enough, reliably enough
that I can see. It hasn't been well enough characterised. This is quite
a separate objection to one that would be that the effect isn't real at
all. And it seems to be the critical way that it differs from the aspirin
example.

> ...and a double-blind test of the aspirin effect was shut down early 
> because it would have been unethical to deny patients the benefit
> of the drug.

 > Of course it's also obvious that psi effects *must* usually be small,
> since we don't see paranormal effects most of time. Experiments are
> designed to concentrate or elicit these effects, making them visible to
> an extent not found in ordinary daily life.

And if psi effects in the real world happen to manifest only under
stress, then ethical testing procedures may preclude finding them
by generating the same stressors in the scientific testing environment.

>>I would still suspect, as Damien seems to, that most that are in that
>> area are cranks and fools.
>
> That's not quite what I said. The many, many `psychic' pests in the 
> marketplace who prey on the gullible and vulnerable are probably liars and 
> frauds (although if psi is indeed a human capacity, even they
> might sometimes gain some extra prowess via that route).

Fair enough.

> ... contemporary psi work is very well-designed. Even if `screening'
> runs are conducted less rigorously (self-testing and reporting, for
> example, to locate `high-scorers', some of whom will have scored
> well sheerly by chance, others by trickery), the subsequent tests in
> the lab are done with extreme care and many safeguards against fraud
> or, say, accidental leakage of  target information.

I agree with Bill's comments on "cold reading" and Hyman's that there
seems to be a potential opportunity to improve the test protocols by
ensuring that the judges subjectivity is better accounted for. The judge
should be scoring not just matches as the judge sees them but actual
matches that are objectively the same matches that the viewer makes.

Take the judges subjectivity about what is a match out of the equation
and I'd allow pretty much any screening of the potential subjects they
like as long as the screening process is completely separate from the
testing process.

This objection is so trifling though, that I imagine some protocols perhaps
carried out after 1995, would already have accomodated it.

This area of inquiry may have merit in teaching the design and critique
of good scientific tests even if the psi phenonoma investigated is not
ultimately real.

Brett Paatsch
 





More information about the extropy-chat mailing list