Virtual Reality Gaming System Tests for Telepathy

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.

Odd feeling

Something tells me this isn't going to work.

Re:Odd feeling

> There is more to this world than meets eye or any other 4 senses for that matter.

Prove it. But hey, I bet you predicted that response.

It's called the Force...

There is no such thing as "ESP". It is simply the Force. All around you, the Force is. Many things that we as humans cannot explain are quite simple really. Many of us are capable of touching the Force, some moreso than others.

Re:In the land of the blind

The same argument can be made for the existence of unicorns, dragons, and pretty much anything else. "Just because I can't *prove* it doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't exist" is nothing but a lame excuse to ignore your obligation to demonstrate that it *does* exist in favor of tasking the opposition with the impossible job of proving nonexistence.

-Eric

I know what you're thinking

You're thinking that nobody will ever win that $1 million. I think I might be on to something...

Re:I know what you're thinking

It won't work. The James Randi Educational Foundation has psychics on staff who have all forseen that the prize won't be claimed.

Re:I know what you're thinking

Actually, Randi is the fraud.

I went to Florida to pass the test. My forte is precognition. I told him, "You're not going to give me the money."

I was right! He still didn't pay.

Tax payer money at work

Now let's invest some more tax money on finding UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster and inventing the perpetuum mobile!

Re:Tax payer money at work

Why exactly couldn't telepathy exist? Is there some fundamental law of nature which states that two people cannot communicate over a distance without sound or visual cues?

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.

Re:Tax payer money at work

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.

Who said telepathy has (if it is exists) no physical channel and spends no energy?

-matthew

Re:Tax payer money at work

If it existed, had a physical channel, and spent energy - we would see it. Or at least some artifacts of "it".

It's like the flatlander story and what it would be like to see a sphere. [sciencenews.org] (forget the rest, just look at that part) While we may not be able to understand what is going on (3D sphere being inserted into flatland), we most certainly see elements of SOMETHING going on (changing diameter circle appearing out of nowhere). Like the flatlander example of a changing diameter circle just appearing out of nowhere -- if telepathy really exists, then we would see some derivative of it show up in a meaningful pattern of somekind in this world.

Right now, we see none of the above when it comes to telepathy.

Re:Tax payer money at work

Telepathy doesn't need to violate any natural laws. What if a very small amount of people had a gene that makes them able to send and receive radio signals? Or better yet, how about in the future when we can have these abilities implanted with the help of technology, wouldn't that be telepathy? I guess if you want to think of telepathy in terms of "communications without a physical channel" then yeah, telepathy is impossible and this experiment is useless.

Re:Tax payer money at work

So, if the human brain works on quantum principles, and one of those principles is communication at a distance, then that tells me that telepathy is possible.

The problem is that, in these "entanglement experiments", no information is being transmitted from the first site to the second. By measuring the state of the first electron, you can instantaneously affect the state of the second electron -- but according to all of the current theories, there is no way to actually use that to communicate. (If that sounds weird ... it is. Quantum theory is rather unintuitive.)

Re:Tax payer money at work

You don't understand quantum physics.

The quantum particles in the phenomena you speak of do not communicate at a distance. Entanglement just means that a particle has a kind of "twin", but there is no information exchanged between the two locations. But telepathy implies that you are communicating over a distance. Entanglement has nothing to do with the possibility of telepathy and I am sick of people misusing and twisting concepts from quantum physics to "prove" paranormal phenomena.

Re:Tax payer money at work

So then I looked for evidence. We have a ton of anecdotes in which a mother knows when a child is in danger. However, we have zero anecdotes in which a father knows.

Here is an alternate theory. Mothers tend to spend far more time with developing children than fathers. This contributes to a Psychological association; mother and child have a special relationship. We then latch on to stories that support this theory, and reject those that contradict it.

Here is another. Moms tend to worry a lot about their children becoming ill or sustaining an injury. Dads tend to worry more about crash test ratings and how to pay for Jill's orthodontia. If Moms fret far more it is only natural that bad news will more frequently arrive during a fretting session.

These theories have the distinct advantage of fitting what we already know about the Universe, and not relying on some untestable mechanism.

What you have done is wrapped typical superstitious gobbledy-gook in Scientific language. Using the phrase "Quantum entanglement" in place of "psychic link" does not make it any more Scientific.

The fact is that people have been desperately trying to demonstrate the sort of connection you are talking about for generations without result. You have just given an elaborate explanation of the mechanism for an effect that doesn't seem to exist.

Our world is a beautiful and awe-inspiring place. It doesn't need to be spiced with superstition and self-deception.

-Peter

PS: My sisters are twins. They often claim to have Psychic powers for the purpose of fucking with people.

Re:Tax payer money at work

PS: My sisters are twins. They often claim to have Psychic powers for the purpose of fucking with people

How does one go about meeting your sisters?

Re:Tax payer money at work

The first said that the human brain works not only on chemical, electrical, and biological principles, but that it also takes advantage of quantum effects.

This is false. Long-range (ie. more than molecular-scale) quantum effects are important only in systems with very low dissipation. The brain is not such an environment on scales larger than a single molecule or so. There is no evidence that any non-trivial quantum effects are important in the brain, and a great deal of evidence that they are not. The speculation that they are is primarily due to Roger Penrose, who is a brilliant mathematician and wrote a book called The Emperor's New Mind on the subject.

The second article said we had isolated one quantum effect in the lab, that being entanglement. Through a process, two electrons become "entangled", and when separated experimentally up to 10 km, when the spin on one is changed, the spin on the other is changed immediately--with no speed-of-light delay.

This is false. Neither electron can be said to have a spin that might be changed prior to measurement. But when the spins are measured along the same axis they have the same value (and the joint probability distribution follows the equivalent law for the case when the spins are measured along different axes.) It is simply a mistake to subscribe to the classical notion that both electrons "really have" a spin-value "before" measurement (before in what frame of reference?) and that one of the spin values changes "when" (in what frame of reference?) the other one changes.

Remember: the order of measurement is arbitrary. No one can say which member of an entangled pair was measured "first", and asking the question (in the absense of some operational procedure that provides an unambigous answer) is like asking "How high is up?"

The quantum world is not capable of supporting the weight of classical ontologies, and if you try to view the quantum world through a classical lense you'll wind up far astray. I strongly recommend Heisenberg's "The Physical Principles of Quantum Mechanics" as a reasonably accessible explication of the fundamental problems--of all the founders of modern QM Heisenberg had the most useful combination of deep insight and clear exposition regarding the meaning of the new physics. Bohr may have seen more deeply, but he wrote so opaquely that no one can tell, and Einstein wrote clearly but didn't see so deeply. Heisenberg understood how weird it all was, and was very good at drawing the boundaries that it is a mistake to try to cross, because nothing definable within a classical ontology lies beyond them.

Re:Tax payer money at work

Is there some fundamental law of nature which states that two people cannot communicate over a distance without sound or visual cues? Obviously, you'd have to identify a mechanism for the communications.

It's because the mainstream scientific community can't think of any obvious mechanism that would work at a distance given our current understanding of physics, plus the lack of hard empirical evidence, that causes most reasonable people to think there is a very low probably of ESP claims being true.

We haven't been able to find focussed point-to-point radio transmitters in our brains, and the generalized EM "chatter" given off by our brains seems so weak compared to the threshhold voltages required to make neurons fire (esp. taking into account distance) that it seems highly unlikely that any kind of EM effect would be responsible for such an effect.

There aren't too many other options in our current understanding of physical "law" that could account for a significant ESP effect, so if it can be empirically determined that there _is_ such an effect, discovering its cause would probably cause mainstream science to react like it had collectively gone on a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster bender...

Re:Tax payer money at work

Real scientists don't deny that anything is possible. They will investigate the existance of something, find nothing, and say that it probably doesn't exist. Is there life on Mars? Possibly. Is there intelligent life on Mars? Probably not. Is there intelligent life on Mars who travel to Earth and abduct drunk farmers? Highly unlikely. But impossible? No. The only people to say that something absolutely isn't true are Polititians, the Media, and ignorant people. Any "scientist" who tells you that telepathy/God/intelligent martians/intelligent polititions don't exist is either being paid to believe that (in one way or another) or isn't a very good scientist.

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.

Re:Tax payer money at work

Why exactly couldn't telepathy exist?

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. . ." is not a theory. A theory is model that is concordence with data.

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

Re:Tax payer money at work

I'm always been surprised at the kind of reaction anything labeled "paranormal" gets from rational people. Why exactly couldn't telepathy exist?

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?

Re:Tax payer money at work

We have looked, and looked, and looked and come up empty handed EVERY TIME.

Ahh, but thats what THEY want you to believe. These are not the telepaths you are looking for... *waves hand*

In all seriousness, and snake oil salesmen aside, I don't know why so many people feel personally threatened by the possible existence of "powers". Well okay, maybe its the extraordinary quantity of snake oil salesmen out there, I can see that. For myself, I don't want to believe (those posters with a picture of flying saucers, "I want to believe", are the height of ignorance- if there are flying saucers we are pw3nd six ways from Sunday- now thats scary), but I remain clinically open to the idea of telepathy, or numerous other extra-sensory abilities. The line from Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" has always resonated with me...

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

The fact of the matter is that we as a race and species are in our infancy, having just crawled down from the trees an eyeblink ago in terms of the age of just about anything. Our technological prowess is counterpointed by our social retardation, the surging fight or flight chemicals that serve almost no purpose in a modern world, but influence everyone up to and including our elected leadership. We know very very little about the universe, having just barely chipped off enough knowledge to make some of us reasonably comfortable for the time being.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot of peculiar occurences that we cannot simply brush under the carpet. Things like near death experiences (before I get dogpiled, yes I know there are more merchants of dubiousity in that than anything else, but I have learned a lot about it, and there do seem to be some genuine cases of patients noting conversations after brain death occurs), concurrence, where two unrelated individuals have the same ideas at the same time, even the simple mystery of dreams or music, to name but a few. And don't leap in with links flailing telling me someone solved what dreams are, because they haven't.

The urge to confine humans to being just meat machines is almost as dangerous as the urge to praise the sky wizard of your choice; it reduces people to little more than automatons in the eyes of rational men, and it is my firm belief that we are far more than the sum of our parts. Not that I have any particular evidence for that. Yet.

Lets not forget, as one poster above pointed out, just a short time ago, radio was believed to travel over the lumineferous ether.

As for the Randi foundation, I have zero confidence in their ability to make an unbiased report on anything they might find. Why? Because if they do find real, actual psychic powers, thats a million they owe. And I don't know about anyone else here, but if I can avoid forking over a million, I will, and thats not even considering the knock-on effects. Some people have pointed out to me that they would get super rich from the merchandising or something. Sorry, try again, the psychic gets super rich. They get to cease existing. Just because you find someone with some sort of powers doesn't mean they owe you anything more than a receipt for a cool million. Oh yes, and you are out of a job.

Re:Tax payer money at work

As for the Randi foundation, I have zero confidence in their ability to make an unbiased report on anything they might find. Why? Because if they do find real, actual psychic powers, thats a million they owe. And I don't know about anyone else here, but if I can avoid forking over a million, I will,

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.

Re:Tax payer money at work

Yes, and that leaves no wiggle room at all for JREF.

Exactly the point. And nobody has made it past the preliminary challenge where the million dollars is NOT in jeopardy.

So find someone who was presented a proper challenge (meaning they've proposed a test protocol, they've made a positive statement of measurable paranormal phenomena, testing the phenomena would not hurt anybody, etc.) and hasn't been recorded. You've made several statements in opposition to JREF's prize, support one.

And there are many examples on non-ludicrous claims. They only highlight the outrageous ones. Check the jref forums. All challenges, even those sent in handwritten and requiring transcription, are there.

Re:Tax payer money at work

They money is in a trust already, he doesn't have access to it so the payment of the funds is not a problem. Also, as others have pointed out, find a case where he shot someone down who was legit. What I mean is show where someone proposed conditions that were testable, repeatable, and didn't have a way to cheat, but Randi said "no". The conditions he enforces are such as to make the experiments empiricly valid. They have to be setup such that chance is eliminated, that there isn't any possibility of the participants cheating or influencing the results, and such that it can be repeated by other researchers. In other words, thigns you need to do a real scientific experiment.

Thus far, any time psychic powers of any kind are tested under proper scientific conditions, it is found to be nothing but random chance. This has been studied for a while too, 50 years or so, with no evidence. Thus you are in a hard position to claim they havne't done their job.

Re:Tax payer money at work

I'm always been surprised at the kind of reaction anything labeled "paranormal" gets from rational people. Why exactly couldn't invisible pink unicorns exist? Is there some fundamental law of nature which states that invisible pink unicorns cannot exist? Obviously, you'd have to identify a mechanism for invisible pink unicorns. If invisible pink unicorns exist, it isn't magic.

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.

-

Virtual Testing

For a study of this nature, it seems like this kind of testing could help remove the possibility of unintentional cues from the tester that could result in statistically significant false positive results. Of course, I think it's more likely to disprove the existence of telepathy than to reveal evidence of psychic phenomena.

Try the ESP Game

The ESP Game (http://www.espgame.org) has been on the web for a couple years now. It pairs you up with a random partner, and your goal is to type the same words as your partner in response to a series of pictures. It's a rather fun game that has convinced some users that they really do have ESP. (The real purpose of the ESP Game is not to discover users' latent psychic abilities, but to utilize human processing power to label images on the Web.)

Hoping they win the Randi prize?!?!

I'd rather not have a paranormal outcome. It is likely that if telepathy is possible, it is not paranormal; rather, certain theories and hypotheses previously thought true would need a little tweaking. If telepathy were possible, and explainable in scientific terms, that would be cool.

Telepathy Vs. Intelligent Design

Can someone tell me why this isn't as outragious as spending tax money to research "intelligent design"? I mean, there is no real scientific theory that describes how telepathy would work, and virtually all scientific evidence says that telepathy doesn't exist. Telepathy is pretty much to fortune telling what Intelligent Design is to creationism - turning superstition into pseudo-science to make it palatable to the modern audience. I realize that England doesn't have the same strict legal seperation between religion and state as other countries, but even if research into the mystical and supernatural isn't strictly illegal it is certainly a questionable use of taxpayer money, no?

Why are people outraged over Intelligent Design but not this kind of stuff?

Re:Telepathy Vs. Intelligent Design

Because it's possible to devise an experiment that could provide scientific evidence in its favor.

Such an experiment does not - even in theory - exist for ID.

Re:Telepathy Vs. Intelligent Design

Why are people outraged over Intelligent Design but not this kind of stuff?

Because you can actually test for telepathy. You can't test for ID.

-matthew

Paranormal research also at respected institutions

Research into this stuff isn't just for cooks and crazies -- even Princeton has a small lab the goal of which is to experimentally gather a "better understanding of the role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality". It's called the "Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research" (PEAR) lab, and its web page can be found at http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/ [princeton.edu] -- Martin

VENKMAN BURN IN HELL

If all of the people who are found to be "telepathic" are hot girls, I'm gonna have to call bullshit on this one.

Wait, gaming? Okay, what I said above probably won't be an issue.

Don't discount the possibility of outright fraud.

Are they planning to strip-search the participants for hidden transmitters and receivers?

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.

This is easy

Just go to console and type:

sv_cheats 1

enable telepathy

duh!

Hot chicks prove there is no telepathy

I've never been slapped walking down the street, sitting in a meeting, etc., etc.

Invariably if I'm in a public place, there will be someone I find attractive and I will think "hey now". I've never had someone come up and slap me for thinking rude thoughts, so at the very least, women I find attractive, as a rule, do not have telepathy.

Telepathy and natural selection

Instead of thinking about telepathy from a present perspective, as in "we have/use it now", consider it from an evolutionary standpoint.

Prehistoric humans with even a little telepathy would have enormous survival advantage. You'd be able to tell whether a predator was hiding behind the next rock, or whether it's an animal you're hunting for food. Or nothing, in which case you go off and hunt somewhere else.

In that case, natural selection would at the same time pressure animals, both predators and prey, to evolve to a form where they could block the effect so that their adversary (human or other) would have no idea where they were hiding.

Even if we can't tell where animals are hiding, even a little telepathy between humans could be used in group hunting and teaching offspring, or summoning help in a dire emergency. Even a brief feeling which influences your actions based on information from another human would confer enormous advantage.

Some people have reported that they have gotten "feelings" that some loved one is in trouble, but frankly there is an overwhemingly enormous number of dire incidents throughout human history, each one of which would select for having the telepathic trait. Something as simple as children having the ability to alert their parents that they are in trouble would still confer enormous survival advantage.

From an evolutionary perspective, telepathy is a strong survival trait. Since we don't see it in the gene pool, it's unlikely that it's even possible.

Circumstantial I know, but it's hard to prove that something doesn't exist...

A prediction

Here's my prediction of what will happen.

This experiment is very poorly controlled (who's to say that two people aren't also on the phone to one another, for example), and some startlingly accurate correlations will occur. These will be debunked as the players come under scrutiny and the communication channels between players are detected.

However, after these have been removed, some correlations between players will still remain, below the level of staistical significance. Rather than being dismissed as insignificant, the woo-woo crowd will seize on these random correlations as "proof of need of more research".

This prediction is not the result of clairvoyance, rather it is an educated guess based on previous observations of this kind of setup.

Re:Do you think telepathy exists?

If you were told that the only way you could have an ability such as telapthy would be to eliminate your attachments and improve your moral quality (given a moral standard of course), would you set out in achieving it?

        Of course! Attachments are evil and lead to viruses on your computers.

Re:Science Fiction

Even if this experiment doesn't pan out, there are other viable challengers to The Amazing Randi. Behold, the Power of the Vagina [mcsweeneys.net]!

"Unpractical?"

Randi's "silly excuses" are simply science in action. Extraordinary cliams require extraordinary proof, although in this case, I think what he asks adds up to simply ordinary scientific methods. In order to prove that you have paranormal powers, you have to show that what you are doing is not being done by other means. Randi's challenge simply says that the parameters of the test assure that. For example, claims that a person can turn the page of a book by telekinetic powers never work if the book is inside of a clear plastic box. Strangely, the person who claims these powers will claim that this is unfair. If you need more details, check out the rules [randi.org].

When you get down to the nut cutting with Occam's Razor, the paranormal claims always fade out. They always reappear with the same claims and no evidence. The credulous will always be with us. The good news is that many of them like to play cards for money.

Re:Randi is viewed as a fraud by 'people who can'.

... a fraud with an agenda. He's no different that a bible-thumping jesus freak, except he beats the "materialist" drum.

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".

But as one "super-psychic" points out, even scientists now say that matter-as-we-know-it only makes up between 4 and 7% of the universe. The rest is labeled as "dark matter" and "dark energy". They don't know what exactly it is, but that plain matter is inadequate to explain the measurements taken by cosmologists. ... [some "super psychic"] pointed out that "dark energy" interpenetrates everything, and is the carrier medium for experiences previously labeled "extra-sensory".

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.

Re:Randi is viewed as a fraud by 'people who can'.

The U.S. government financed development of 'remote viewing' for over 20 years. It's said that the spooks hated the program, but because they got results, right from the start, they allowed it to continue until the soviet union broke apart.

Actually, they didn't get results:

In one particular study on remote viewing, the "psychics" scored above the result expected from chance by getting the right answer approximately 33% of the time when there were four choices, which Science News characterized as "a moderate increase over chance." But the judgment of success was determined by the project's director, who rated the similarity of each response to the target display and to other randomly chosen pictures. Hyman argued that these studies offer no insight as to why the scoring is above chance--it's just assumed that it must be psychic ability. He also noted that the accuracy ratings should have been done by independent judges--not the project director--and that none of the studies have yet undergone peer review. In other words, there were severe methodological flaws in those studies that did seem to show a hint of something. Indeed, a former CIA technical director who monitored these programs said on Nightline that he wasn't aware of any significant results from the "psychics."

An interesting note in this regard is that "psychics" interviewed by CIA evaluators said the program worked well as long as it was run by those "who accepted the phenomenon." Sorry, guys, but objective scientific results shouldn't depend on who's running a study! (The Straight Dope [straightdope.com])

The only form of "remote viewing" that has been shown to work involves a video camera, a monitor, and a cable or wireless link connecting them.

[quoting:] Why do they not stand up and be counted? For the most part, they are afraid of being taken apart in the press, afraid of being ridiculed for doing their duty in an area of threat analysis which was completely justified.

What a load of bullshit. It'd only take one person who actually has these magical powers, and is willing to demonstrate them, to legitimize the whole thing. If there were visible proof that even a single person is psychic, claims of psychic abilities would be taken far more seriously. The first person to stand up and prove his magical powers would be a hero, vindicating everyone else who has been ridiculed for making such claims. But so far, everyone who has attempted to prove them has failed, and most people who make the claims make no attempt to prove them at all ("it doesn't work when nonbelievers are around", "I'm not in this for fame or money or contributing to human understanding", etc.).

[quoting:] I now direct your attention to "successful remote viewing," and ask you to wonder if it can exist. Begin by considering psychics who successfully help the police.

Again, there is no such thing. The success rate of so-called psychics solving crimes is no better than educated guessing.

Re:Randi is viewed as a fraud by 'people who can'.

Are you for real?

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.

Re:Randi is viewed as a fraud by 'people who can'.

Allison Dubois (inspiration for NBC's Medium) was tested by Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona

Oh?
Among other things, Dubois told Schwartz "the deceased was telling me that I must share the following - I don't walk alone," a seemingly innocuous piece of information, but critical to him.
"My friend had been confined to a wheelchair in her last years - there is no way Allison could have known that," he said.

Gosh! That's incredible! Or... not. How about the other example:

According to a summary of the reading done by Schwartz, she told him the deceased person was a man of great stature, extremely handsome, had beautiful women around him, was known to politicians and other well-known people, and was cremated - all accurate, according to Chopra's evaluation.
But she also told him his father was connected to the U.S. oil and steel industry, and there was a small dark terrier dog in his life - not true, Chopra said. Her accuracy score - 77 percent, according to Chopra's scoring, Schwartz said.

Maybe she meant me. I'm tall, handsome, have a beautiful fiance, and I'm known to politicians and other well-known people. Haven't been cremated yet, though.
See? This is goofy - all of the things she got right would apply to just about anyone... "great stature" could mean tall, important, etc. Everyone knows a "well-known" person. Also, the specifics - oil and steel, the terrier - were wrong.

The scoring is also questionable... If I guess that you're "handsome, have great stature, have beautiful women around you, and are a member of the royal family of Greece", did I just score 75 percent? 'Cause if so, I'm psychic too. I'll even say that despite having never met you, I know you're male. Now I'm at 80 percent, beating out Schwartz.

Re:Randi is viewed as a fraud by 'people who can'.

... a fraud

Really? Randi's made claims for which he has absolutely no evidence what-so-ever? People have demonstrated categorically that what he claims is false? Wow, there must be a WEALTH of information to support that assertion - I mean, he's THE public skeptic, so surely if he's been discredited you'll be able to provide a link or 3?

My favorite part of your post is:

He's a very smart man. "I only work with scientists" (he's now retired). He'd prepared some notes, and held up his copies of Scientific American and other mainstream sources...

Nothing like a little rented credibility! I can hold up a copy of a magazine and read from notes, too. It doesn't say a thing about my intelligence, nor about the veracity of what I'm saying. If my audience, however, is easily fooled by simple props, it might say something about their intelligence, however...

Re:I think it happens but is currently unprovable

How can it exist but be unprovable? If you and your family have a super-natural connection, or at least one that is not currently explained by science, it can be tested.

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.

Re:I think it happens but is currently unprovable

Yes obviously this is mind reading and not some subtle body language that the dog picks up. Why adhere to the principle of Occams razor? It takes all the fun out of making shit up. .

Re:need an icon for crank science

Funny that you should say that about the Einstein icon. Einstein wrote the preface for Upton Sinclair's Mental Radio [amazon.com] which was a book about remote viewing/telepathy.