Large Hardon Collider

[Shiroikage]

No.

[Kaylia]

Sure you guys wouldn't rather have me ramble about gravity, or time, or posting random pictures of stars, or "quoting wiki to hide a lack of understanding" instead of this?

Not that I often agree with you, but if it can make you feel better, yes.

[Kryssan]

http://images.bluegartr.com/forum/cu...tar39759_3.gif

No.

I'm getting mixed messages.

[Psion]

Here's some articles from a quick search. There's also citations to other articles and studies as well on them too, so I suppose if anyone is particularly vigilant you can search through all those as well:

http://dbem.ws/ganzfeld.html

http://www.parapsych.org/faq_file1.html

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o...ield_guide.htm

http://m0134.fmg.uva.nl/publications/1996/tucson2.pdf

http://twm.co.nz/radin2.htm

This one appears to be more skeptical, but still concludes that it's worth looking into:
http://www.mceagle.com/remote-viewin...air/hyman.html

Also, because I hate you all for making me search the internet for this and being not lazy, here's a site that did a bunch of linking for me. (Though not having clicked and read all of them, there might be a few dud links and shaky reports)

http://www.psionicsonline.net/research-articles
(click the link buttons, not the actual titles)

Also, a couple of the more well known places that study this are the Rhine Research Center, and PEAR.

I trust this should be enough sources to at least give you an introduction? :s

[Max™]

Not that I often agree with you, but if it can make you feel better, yes.

lol

Well shucks... thanks, but really, I'll be fine.

Hell, I'm quite thoroughly amused with the entire situation... still a bit baffled that NO ONE else apparently sees the difference between "just another universe in a black hole theory" and "an exact solution of the EFE's that describes something like that", though.


Maybe one of these days I'll figure it out, or find the right wiki link to pretend I did.


As for the subject of psychic shit, you wanna feel like you are in tune with everything?

Good news, using the tried and tested methods of "hooking magnets up to your soundcard and making a ridiculous looking hat out of them" you too can use the actual electromagnetic force to influence various aspects of your brain!

http://www.shaktitechnology.com/winshakti/index.htm

http://www.shaktitechnology.com/winshakti/4_coil.jpg

Seriously, it's apparently pretty cool shit, I kinda wanna try it out.

[Kaylia]

Here's some articles from a quick search. There's also citations to other articles and studies as well on them too, so I suppose if anyone is particularly vigilant you can search through all those as well:

http://dbem.ws/ganzfeld.html

http://www.parapsych.org/faq_file1.html

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o...ield_guide.htm

http://m0134.fmg.uva.nl/publications/1996/tucson2.pdf

http://twm.co.nz/radin2.htm

This one appears to be more skeptical, but still concludes that it's worth looking into:
http://www.mceagle.com/remote-viewin...air/hyman.html

Also, because I hate you all for making me search the internet for this and being not lazy, here's a site that did a bunch of linking for me. (Though not having clicked and read all of them, there might be a few dud links and shaky reports)

http://www.psionicsonline.net/research-articles
(click the link buttons, not the actual titles)

Also, a couple of the more well known places that study this are the Rhine Research Center, and PEAR.

I trust this should be enough sources to at least give you an introduction? :s

First link is down

Second link....might as well link me to google directly. Where is the study you're talking about, all I found was something followed by "it's hard to show it".

Also,the website founder wiki's entries entry made me laugh

It was not until he had completed his own first major psi experiment and spent four years trying unsuccessfully to get it published in a journal of physics (before finding a sympathetic editor in the Journal of Experimental Psychology)

Third link....I skimmed through it. The guy is basically trying to make an argument that scientific methods doesn't apply to the study of magic. Fine....go waste your time if you want, but I like to keep my reality in check.


Fourth link. An article finally...

However a closer look at the empirical data reveals that the putative information channel
involved has to be of an extremely strange nature allowing for e.g. the apparent 'reversal
of time' which of course breaks down the whole reasoning in terms of cause-effect
sequences.

The combined z-score (Stouffer-z) was 5.3. The probability
therefore that these data are due to chance is smaller than 1 in 10000).

Okay. So the guy picked 20 articles with positive conclusion, and combined the statistics to obtain his conclusion? Why didn't he consider the hundred of experiments that goes against his point? You can't make statistics from the data you picked selected...that's simply fucking retarded.


5th link. Interview with no actual data...didn't bother checking who the guy was, because he is obviously a nutjob (yeah yeah, I'm biased against it, but fuck that, writting these shit almost make me want to go study).


6th link

This document, for over two years, was hosted on the University of Oregon web server. In Autumn of 1998 it was no longer available through that source. This paper is part of a group of papers, all related to the same very public and very controversial report.

Enough said.


7th link
every link are giving me 404

[Psion]

Hit the link buttons, not the actual topic sentences on those. The website got moved to a new server apparently, so gotta hit the actual links and not the titles which link to the old site.

First link is working for me, second link is just a general FAQ. Third link I don't blame you for skimming, as I did the same. Fourth you're dead wrong on, because some of the 26 studies in there DID have negative z-scores, and that 5.31 is the combined total of all of them, negative scores included.Fifth link just shows that you aren't in the right frame of mind to have an unbiased conclusion, since you're dismissing everyone who doesn't fit your view as a nutjob. Sixth link I would consider that they listed the fact of the original source being down as a good thing. And seventh link, click the "link" buttons to the right of the articles, not the articles themselves, like i just said.

[Kaylia]

Most of the link to article that actually work (because 3/4 of the pdf can't be downloaded) have shit for content. Beside, it's impossible to say how easy it is to publish something in these magasize. Considering the topic, I'm willing to bet they would accept anything, as long you have a phd or title. They are not a credible source of information no matter what you think.

More importantly, could I reproduce the result? The answer is no. None of these experiments can be reproduced, and would lead to the same result. I can guarantee you this.

Fourth you're dead wrong on, because some of the 26 studies in there DID have negative z-scores, and that 5.31 is the combined total of all of them, negative scores included.Fifth link just shows that you aren't in the right frame of mind to have an unbiased conclusion, since you're dismissing everyone who doesn't fit your view as a nutjob.

Okay. First of all, tell me how many sane people would release a negative study on the topic? People either try to prove that the average is 0, or that it's high.

Secondly, people who actually waste their time on such experiments are almost always biased.

Thirdly, tell me why Schmidt show up 10 times on the 26 entires, and his results are always extremely high? Is he better than other at finding magic? No, his paper are fucking terrible, and he is bullshitting you. Without Schmidt results, you would probably fall around 1, which doesnt meant much since these experiments where most likely done with a bias in the first place.

you're dismissing everyone who doesn't fit your view as a nutjob.

I'm dismissing anyone who make up results that can't be repeated by other after.

[Kaylia]

Also, if you could prove paranormal events using simple experiments, don't you think sciences would have realized this before?

Don't you think that if there was a 1 in 10000 that these data were due to chance, mankind would have realized this by now (99.99% is pretty damn high, and should be easy to prove). The whole thing is ridiculous.

[Max™]

http://i752.photobucket.com/albums/x...beapsychic.jpg

http://www.rocknrolltheosophy.smarte...uk/btobjbg.gif


http://ask.metafilter.com/54855/Is-t...omenon-or-what

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_O9Qiwqew

Lots of questions asking if it is real, but so far I've found zero actual evidence you can point to that supports this idea.

People producing results that are no more accurate than guessing is not evidence... sorry dude.


...perhaps I should get a psychic to help me look for this proof!

[Psion]

Most of the link to article that actually work (because 3/4 of the pdf can't be downloaded) have shit for content. Beside, it's impossible to say how easy it is to publish something in these magasize. Considering the topic, I'm willing to bet they would accept anything, as long you have a phd or title. They are not a credible source of information no matter what you think.

More importantly, could I reproduce the result? The answer is no. None of these experiments can be reproduced, and would lead to the same result. I can guarantee you this.


Okay. First of all, tell me how many sane people would release a negative study on the topic? People either try to prove that the average is 0, or that it's high.

Secondly, people who actually waste their time on such experiments are almost always biased.

Thirdly, tell me why Schmidt show up 10 times on the 26 entires, and his results are always extremely high? Is he better than other at finding magic? No, his paper are fucking terrible, and he is bullshitting you. Without Schmidt results, you would probably fall around 1, which doesnt meant much since these experiments where most likely done with a bias in the first place.



I'm dismissing anyone who make up results that can't be repeated by other after.

Keep in mind that there are not many parapsychology institutes in the entire world, and even fewer that are well funded. Schmidt is probably one of the better funded, and therefore able to access more volunteers for study. And you are again making blanket statements without providing evidence to back up your claims. Also, keep in mind that psychic phenomena are based on the mind. Since creative individuals such as artists and musicians show better results, it may be that he has better access to such individuals, or is targeting them specifically. Also, the way an institute handles its subjects is another important consideration. If a subject feels unwelcome and uncomfortable, they will have a harder time reaching the mental state that appears conductive to psi, or they might feel that being psychic is a "bad thing". On the other hand, making subjects feel welcome and making psi abilities seem natural might enhance results. This isn't some cut and dry chemical reaction we're talking about here, but people who are extremely varied in their beliefs and abilities.

And whats this about unrepeatable results? There's a standardized procedure for ganzfeld (now autoganzfeld) experiments, which can be done by anyone with the proper equipment.

And again you accuse them of "wasting their time" with experiments, even though said experiments overall keep achieving significant results. Last I checked, if something keeps achieving results, it is not a waste of time to investigate further. And parapsychology is one of the strictest fields you can get when it comes to possible errors and fraud, with checks against selective reporting (recorded by computers, encrypted against fraud, recorded, etc), bias given to the correct target (selected by computers at random, experimenter does not know which target is correct one), sound proof and copper lined walls to prevent audio and electromagnetic communication... there's tons of different safeguards against possible errors, and even skeptics these days admit that there appears to be no flaws within the most recent studies, which still achieve significant results. (video clips appear to have much better success rate than still pictures, probably due to more information contained.)

You keep criticizing this field, yet I am finding very little compelling evidence to back up your claims. This isn't a study to disprove god, but instead a falsifiable experiment that should be getting chance results yet keeps getting well above chance. This does not necessarily prove psi exists, but for each possible flaw that's pointed out and corrected by skeptics, and still significant results, the possibility that it is something other than psi keeps getting narrower and narrower.

I realize that this is an extremely difficult possibility to accept, as it goes against all common sense... but so do things such as quantum mechanics. Hell, at one point the thought that the earth revolved around the sun was considered ridiculous.

[Max™]

Quantum Mechanics has FUCKING GOBSMACKINGLY HUGE COLLECTIONS OF EVIDENCE PROVING THAT SHIT WORKS THAT WAY...

You can adapt your common sense to include that the behavior of subatomic particles is a bit different than the behavior of billiard balls being launched into a hookers gaping ass.

Wait, what?

Nevermind, anyway... it seems a lot of this psychic shit is trying to get away from the idea of the mechanistic brain, that neurons firing and chemical signals is all there is to awareness. They want there to be something more there, something to confirm that rather common sensation that you (the individual in question) matter, and are special somehow, if just because you're you, and not someone else.


Now, I could find lots of ways to suggest that there is more going on there then just neuron firing, if photosynthesis involves quantum effects, I'd be pretty surprised to find something like awareness doesn't make use of the same toolbox.


That doesn't mean I in any way would EVER say there is anything psychic or extra that makes my sense of self what it is... because I noticed that there is this big fucking thing that keeps happening all over the place.

THE UNIVERSE IS CONSISTENT INTERNALLY...

Put another way, you can define a thing called reality, and it is hard to show that we don't all operate within it... you can define what the parts of reality are, and how they work... and bad news dude, there's no loose ends laying around for psychic powers.

There's no extra laws that affect reality but aren't part of reality, because those are what you call "imaginary"... except that might offend a mathematician, so let's just call them "not in existence" and leave it there?

[Kaylia]

triple post

[Kaylia]

double post

[Kaylia]

In a typical ganzfeld experiment, a "receiver" is left in a room relaxing in a comfortable chair with halved ping-pong balls over the eyes, having a red light shone on them. The receiver also wears a set of headphones through which white or pink noise (static) is played. The receiver is in this state of mild sensory deprivation for half an hour. During this time a "sender" observes a randomly chosen target and tries to mentally send this information to the receiver. The receiver speaks out loud during the thirty minutes, describing what he or she can see. This is recorded by the experimenter (who is blind to the target) either by recording onto tape or by taking notes, and is used to help the receiver during the judging procedure.

In the judging procedure, the receiver is taken out of the ganzfeld state and given a set of possible targets, from which they must decide which one most resembled the images they witnessed. Most commonly there are three decoys along with a copy of the target itself, giving an expected overall hit rate of 25% over several dozens of trials.[10]

Lol. Why not use 20 targets? You could prove your points so much faster this way.

Nearly every experiment you check is surrounded to controversy, use shitty statistics like the one you posted earlier, doesnt show result and follow highly debatable methods. You can say it's a blanket statement as much as you want, but you would know what I meant if you were actually used to read scientifics papers.

Also, you talk about funding...doing this experiment can be done in your room for 5$ if you have 2 laptop. Why arent people doing it more often?

The stats they claim are interesting, but if there is no follow up, it means something was wrong with them in the first place. It's been like 15 years since the last ganzfeld experiments...

The reaction of sceptics since the publication of Honorton's results has been mixed. Ray Hyman, the most consistent critic of previous ganzfeld work, says he is reserving judgement until there is an independent replication of the results: "Given the strong claims that are being made here, I would like to see these results being replicated by others

Nicholas Humphrey of Cambridge University, a psychologist currently working on a four year study of parapsychology, is more robust in his criticisms: "I think the experiments are interesting and somewhat better done than others before them, but they certainly are not foolproof or conclusive. There are enough questions about the way they were done that nobody need take them seriously until there are replications."

[Psion]

Well, thank you for your input max, though I'm not really convinced there's nothing left of reality to say that psi does not exist, considering there's not a unified theory of everything yet. And keep in mind that while there's a lot of naysayers in the field, there's also world renowned skeptics that have examined the data and said that there's something going on that is still there even after any methodical errors are taken account for. But considering its 4 AM here and I want sleep, I'm not going to spend the time searching for it tonight. Good night, oh unbelievers! (f';.;')f

(and before you say I'm a believer myself, I do not believe nor disbelieve in psi. However, there does appear to be enough experiments to show that there's something worth looking into, but considering there's so much criticism (from skeptics who aren't statisticians) and due to lack of funding and support (or even criticism) within the scientific community for psi phenomena, it's a pain in the butt to get a halfway clear picture of whats going on here. Still, there's a lot left to be explained by science, so there seems like there's room for psi. (just remember, Newtonian physics were once thought to be the end all be all for science, before those nagging little questions that led to general relativity, and then that nagging weird problem at the subatomic level that wound up being quantum mechanics, and we still don't know whether string theory or supersymmetry or another theory is the end all be all explanation of reality, and I doubt that once we figure which wins that we will finally have our theory of everything.

Oh well, even if psi turns out not to exist, I guess I'll have to be the one to invent it then. Now, how does one alter the rules of physics or combine them in such a way for psi to be possible... hmmm.

[Kaylia]

Theoretical physics will always face questions with no answer, you aren't telling me anything new. That's why I don't mind people who have faith since we will never know everything. However, this unknown is by no mean an excuse to pretend everything can exists. A claim still need to be backed up with solid evidence, which is not the case here.

Like I said before, our brain is made off atoms, and while we don't understand quantum mechanics perfectly, to influence the electro-chemical reactions in someone's else brain, you will need a relatively strong force, and this energy/force should be observable. The claim you're defending implies an even more complex invisible structure made of "unknown" elements inside our brain. What could it be, and why can't it be observed in the nature? If psi-matter is in our brain, it has to be everywhere...so why is it only active inside our brain, and doesn't intereact with let's say, a mass of protein?

If it's exclusive to the brain, at which point the baby in the mother's womb develop his "psi"?

The whole thing make no sense from the perspective of sciences.

from skeptics who aren't statisticians

There is even more criticism from skeptics who are statisticians...which is the issue here.

and due to lack of funding and support

You said in your last post that anyone could easily do the experiment, which is true. Are you saying that out of the 8 billions people on earth, no one is willing to spend 500 hours of his time to prove that magic exists?
It doesn't lack funding, it lacks truth.

[Mizango]

Holy cow, where did that come from? @@ At any rate Kaylia pretty much has this under wraps and I agree with him wholeheartedly on the links that were posted lol.

I mean...who..what?

[Cochise]

Keep in mind that there are not many parapsychology institutes in the entire world, and even fewer that are well funded.

http://kingsheepblog.files.wordpress...e_at_goats.jpg

This field of study(any form of magical mental gymnastics) has been the best funded with NASA type money for decades and has resulted in nil.

If there was anything to it, not one shred of documentation would have been declassified.

[Eliseos]

What the hell happened to this thread in the past few hours?

And why do we have to disprove that this psi crap isn't real? I'm pretty sure the burden of proof is on you to provide irrefutable (hey, that's the key word here) evidence that it exists, not some stat like "60% of Americans think they had a paranormal event". Most off those people say that because they know someone else who saw something, and when you ask that person they say they heard it from someone else.