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Virtual Reality Gaming System Tests for Telepathy
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Jul 17, 2006 07:22 PM
from the grumbling-from-the-cynic's-corner dept.
from the grumbling-from-the-cynic's-corner dept.
Big Ben writes "UK scientists have built a virtual computer world designed to test telepathic ability. Approximately 100 participants will take part in the group gaming experiment at the University of Manchester which aims to test whether telepathy exists between individuals using the system. The project will also look at how telepathic abilities may vary depending on the relationships which exist between participants." Note: for their sakes, I hope they succeed in proving anything paranormal's going on — if they can reproduce such a result, it could earn them the $1 million prize long offered by the James Randi Educational Foundation.
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Backslash: Virtual Worlds and ESP 310 comments
Yesterday's post about an experiment using virtual worlds in an attempt to investigate the possibility of telepathic ability elicited nearly 400 comments from readers who had points to raise about experimental design, skepticism and credulity, and quantum mechanics. Read on for the Backslash summary of the discussion.
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Odd feeling (Score:5, Funny)
I know what you're thinking (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I know what you're thinking (Score:5, Funny)
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Try the ESP Game (Score:5, Informative)
Hoping they win the Randi prize?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Telepathy Vs. Intelligent Design (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are people outraged over Intelligent Design but not this kind of stuff?
Re:Telepathy Vs. Intelligent Design (Score:5, Insightful)
Such an experiment does not - even in theory - exist for ID.
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Re:Telepathy Vs. Intelligent Design (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you can actually test for telepathy. You can't test for ID.
-matthew
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Paranormal research also at respected institutions (Score:5, Interesting)
VENKMAN BURN IN HELL (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, gaming? Okay, what I said above probably won't be an issue.
Don't discount the possibility of outright fraud. (Score:5, Insightful)
To test and debug the system, have they hired a couple of good magicians skilled at "mentalist" acts, with a promise to pay them well for their time if they can successfully cheat?
Or, like most scientists, are they just protecting against unconscious cheating by honest, good-faith participants?
I find it disappointing that TFA doesn't really discuss the possibility of conscious, clever cheating... or implies that it's impossible because, well, gee, the system is so high-tech.
People have smuggled transmitters and receivers into casinos, where the management is probably far more savvy, cynical, and experienced at detecting cheating... and financially motivated to do so... than these scientists.
I predict that this will have the same outcome as all other parapsychology experiments: a very slightly better-than-chance statistical outcome, and endless ambiguity and debate about whether the statistics were done in a valid way.
Re:Do you think telepathy exists? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course! Attachments are evil and lead to viruses on your computers.
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Re:Science Fiction (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Randi is viewed as a fraud by 'people who can'. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there's also the slight difference that he has facts on his side. None of these so-called "people who can" have ever been able to demonstrate their alleged abilities under controlled conditions. Until they can do that, they're nothing more than "people who lie to others", or at best, "people who lie to themselves".
I see. It's a pity that there's no evidence that these experiences actually took place in reality, not just in the participants' imaginations, don't you think? Because if there were evidence, someone would be a million dollars richer.
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Re:Randi is viewed as a fraud by 'people who can'. (Score:5, Insightful)
About 4 years ago, I went to a local music venue for the weekly talk show hosted by musicians and some pathetic psychic was there claiming "quantum physics proves crystals can heal you". Every other claim she made was punctuated with a bunch of keywords about quantum mechanics (esp. strange action at a distance and observability).
I finally got the mic and asked her opinion of Schrodinger's dissent and if she could respond to one of the founder's main gripes, and she had never even heard of Schrodinger. I asked how she could possibly quote QM every other sentence and never had heard of it's primary founder. She brushed it off with some analogy about knowing how to hit a baseball without understanding all that complicated math.
Don't fall for people who pick a hole in scientific understanding and try to defend pseudoscientific babble while hiding behind things they don't understand.
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Re:Tax payer money at work (Score:5, Informative)
Two hundred years ago such questions would have made sense. Today we know there isn't any mechanism for that. We may not know everything there is to know about the human body, but we do know more than we did two centuries ago [wikipedia.org].
The fundamental law of nature that will not allow any communications without a physical channel is the theory of information [wikipedia.org]. If you could store or send information without passing through a physical medium and without spending energy doing it, the second law of thermodynamics would be violated, time would not be unidirectional.
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Re:Tax payer money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
Who said telepathy has (if it is exists) no physical channel and spends no energy?
-matthew
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Re:Tax payer money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Tax payer money at work (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Tax payer money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
I am, at least nominally, a physicist.
You wouldn't catch me saying any such thing as "telepathy can't exist."
However, you first need to demonstrate that it does exist if you expect me to do work on that basis. If and when that happens I will not posit any "paranormal" event, but rather that there is a quite normal mechanism at work. Then it will be my job to find it, because, at the moment, there is no valid theory of such a mechanism ("Well, maybe it could be. .
Which brings us back to the need to show me it exists, particularly since everything I have ever seen so far indicates that the world works just spiffily in accordance with the rules of chance.
KFG
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Re:Tax payer money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
While there may be some out there shouting paranormal things couldn't possibly exist, most of us are just pissed. Pissed that for every genuinely deluded person who believed they had witnessed a paranormal event, there are 20 others out there looking at using it to scam people out of money.
We have looked, and looked, and looked and come up empty handed EVERY TIME. The vast majority of the people who have said they had special powers were LIARS. The rest were just wrong. Nobody has ever passed muster. There are people out there doing genuine harm to others under the veil of paranormal abilities.
For example EVERY instance of "psychic surgery" (where someone performs surgery with just their hands, leaving behind no scar or wound) has been a scam for money.
James Randi has a web site with a forum that documents applicants for the $1 Million Challenge. Go follow those threads and watch how people weasel out of taking the test. Like the most recent guy who said he had a computer program that could produce accurate horoscopes for people. So accurate that their wives would confirm that the horoscope was indeed that of their husband. The JREF people said "fine, we'll give you 8 people, produce 8 horoscopes, we'll give the 8 to the wives and ask the wives to tell us which of the 8 is her husband." Apparently that was a ridiculous requirement to him. I don't see why. If the horoscopes are specific to the person, and not just general feel-good crap, why would someone's spouse be unable to determine which was for his/her partner?
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Re:Tax payer money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
Before addressing anything else in your post, I wanted to address this because this is by far the most often used excuse for arguing against the JREF's million dollar prize. They have this one nicely covered:
Both sides must agree before the test is administered what will constitute a positive result.
If what you say is true, then please find several examples of JREF making the challenge impossible to complete with a positive result assuming the person under test has the ability as they claim. JREF publicly posts all the properly presented challenge applications.
This argument that they will somehow weasel out of it after the fact is nonsense. I know that is not the specific charge you made, but it sure seemed implicit to me. It does not work that way. Before you take the challenge all the ground rules are laid out including what must happen for you to get the million. There can be no alteration after both sides have agreed.
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Re:Tax payer money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
Telepathy, invisible pink unicorns, elves, Zeus, telekenesis, Narnia, rain dances, flying potions, the Tooth Fairy, I'm always surprised at the reaction of rational people when they think that these things do not exist.
I mean, just because there is absolutely no reason to think that they *do* exist is not a reason to think that they don't. I really don't get rational people. They are so screwed up like that. Thank god I'm not a rational person.
-
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Re:Tax payer money at work (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple hundred years ago people thought that you could change lead into gold with chemicals and herbs. Then people began to realize that you couldn't change lead into gold with chemicals and herbs. People soon picked up on this and called alchemists idiots and kooks, and rightly so. Is it possible to change lead into gold? Absolutely, you have to rearrange the nucleous and electrons, but it's possible, just not feasible. We routinely make new elements out of other elements.
So, yeah, a couple hundred years ago people tought that telepathy was possible, then people began to believe that it wasn't. Does this mean it's impossible? Just because we don't know how it might work doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Perhaps it uses some kind of vibration in the fabric of space-time, perhaps it uses tiny particles that permiate everything.
Saying that there is no doubt that it doesn't exist is stupid, and would only show your ignorance.
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Re:I think it happens but is currently unprovable (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many times to be coincidence has things like this happened. But trying to force it never has produced any results...
That statement implies that you've done the statistics. Let's see them. How many times have you guys not thought the same thing at the same time vs. how many times have you thought about the same thing? Keep in mind that because you are in the same family, some of the things you think about will inevitably be related. I mean if you're thinking about your mother, it's pretty reasonable to think your daughter might also think about her grandmother at some point during the day.
There is a wealth of literature on what is likely going on. You are only noting the times it happens, rarely or never the times it doesn't. So when you "think back on it" the hits greatly outnumber the misses in your memory when in reality the hits are just coincidences amidst a sea of misses.
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