[extropy-chat] Re: Damien grants psi evidence

[Damien Broderick]

At 09:55 AM 12/18/2004 +1100, Brett wrote:

>I agree with Bill's comments on "cold reading" ... 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

This makes zero sense to me. Here's a rudimentary version of RV (or try 
this equally rudimentary version for a few weeks, as suggested previously 
on this list: http://moebius.psy.ed.ac.uk/~fiona/GambIntro.html ):

A randomizer machine draws out four possible targets without telling anyone 
which they are: a fluffy brown dog playing near a grassy knoll; a gorgeous 
photo of the Millau Bridge 
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/4095037.stm ), a plate of bacon and 
eggs, and a yacht surging on the high seas. One of these becomes the actual 
test target; nobody yet knows which. The RVer does his or her stuff, 
filling up pages of subjective responses. The judges look at the viewer's 
report: several drawings of a witch's hat, of a church steeple, of a man 
leaning over a rail vomiting. None of these matches any of the pictures. 
The test is obviously a failure.

But wait, here's where the judges come in. They know that the mind 
elaborates partial information by `best guesses', which are somewhat 
mutable; perception is always a construct; we home in on a piece of trash 
that looks like a scurrying cat in twilight.

So the judges muse. Hmm, the puking guy might have eaten the eggs, or might 
associate dogs with dog shit. The bridge, from some direction, could look 
like a witch's hat. But then both the hat and the steeple structurally 
resemble the view of the yacht more than they do the bridge piers, and the 
barfer is perhaps an association to a rough sea trip. So the judges rank 
the options 1. yacht, 2. bridge, 3. eggs, 4. dog. Their majority vote 
selects yacht. They go on their way, and are never heard from again. 
Perhaps the RVer is also shown the possible targets, and selects one as 
closest to the blurry psi perception. The target is disclosed to the 
experimenter who has also been blinded, and to the RVer. (Or sometimes 
*only* to the experimenter.)

Gee, it's the yacht. We'll take that to be a hit.

How does fishing come in? What cold reading? Of whom?

Finally: a small effect can always be amplified, in principle, by 
redundancy and repetition. This was the approach I tested more than a 
decade ago using entries to Lotto. Three quarters of a billion guesses, in 
fact, made by millions of punters during a number of consecutive draws. 
Scaled `when winning/when not winning' analysis of the ranking of each 
option. Too bad, so sad, no blazingly obvious psi effect. A small anomaly 
was found even so, but not one I'd predicted, so no cigar. Did this prove 
to me that psi doesn't exist? No, but it suggested that using a vast 
unscreened population of guessers, even one as madly motivated a Lotto 
punters, was not a suitable approach.

Damien Broderick