Finally got to reading something on this. According to what I read, the study nest0r posted about was perfomed well, in the sense that it used a large sample and had a significant p-value, i.e. was statistically significant according to the main (social-scientific) standard. The latter is the important point. If anything, this article 'demonstrating' precognition shows that the present day standard of p=0.05 research (the p value gives the chance that you would have measured what you measured supposing your null-hypothesis is true, e.g. by chance) is lacking. An alternative would be Bayesian statistics, which compares the chances of your alternative hypothesis and your null-hypothesis. Apparently, a large study was performed on older publications, and Bayesian statistics would have dismissed many more of those as insignificant. Another idea would be to impose a stricter limit on the p-value, e.g. 0.01 (1 in 100).

In the end scientists will always have to remember that a small chance of something happening by chance does not mean it necessarily happened because of your alternative hypothesis. Myriads of experiments and researches are conducted nowadays so necessarily many false-positives turn up.

You clearly work for the Money Masters and want to cover up this evidence that you have ESPers working as secret agents.

KanjiDevourer Wrote:Finally got to reading something on this. According to what I read, the study nest0r posted about was perfomed well, in the sense that it used a large sample and had a significant p-value, i.e. was statistically significant according to the main (social-scientific) standard. The latter is the important point. If anything, this article 'demonstrating' precognition shows that the present day standard of p=0.05 research (the p value gives the chance that you would have measured what you measured supposing your null-hypothesis is true, e.g. by chance) is lacking. An alternative would be Bayesian statistics, which compares the chances of your alternative hypothesis and your null-hypothesis. Apparently, a large study was performed on older publications, and Bayesian statistics would have dismissed many more of those as insignificant. Another idea would be to impose a stricter limit on the p-value, e.g. 0.01 (1 in 100).

In the end scientists will always have to remember that a small chance of something happening by chance does not mean it necessarily happened because of your alternative hypothesis. Myriads of experiments and researches are conducted nowadays so necessarily many false-positives turn up.

I don't know much about Bayesian statistics but I just wanted to say that even though there's a fair deal of psychology researchers who focus way too much on the p-value, most researchers with a clue keep in mind that the p-value by itself doesn't say much by itself, especially when it's only one study. Instead one should pay attention to the effect size at the same time and remember that there might be things like experimenter bias etc. affecting the results...

And now that I came to this thread again I actually looked at the original article and this is... Why was this published? This is just bad. The first experiment pretty much goes "oh we found a difference with women but not with men so we changed some things and did it again and LOOK now it's significant for both groups!". I particularly liked the part about how they prepared their participants -

(after the participants have been given the instructions for the experiment)
"The participant then signed a consent form and was seated in front of the computer. After responding to two individual-difference items (discussed below), the participant was given a 3-minute relaxation period during which the screen displayed a slowly moving Hubble photograph of the starry sky while peaceful new-age music played through stereo speakers. The 36 trials began immediately after the relaxation period. "

Hubble photograph AND new-age music - what the hell is new-age music anyway - oh yeah they are definitely experts at psi phenomena, they know their stuff. Also why would there be psi specificity for erotic material wait I don't even want to know. I didn't torture myself with reading the whole article so I googled for some criticism and what's on this page sounds about right
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Feeling_the...and_Affect

Oh and their discussion at the beginning of the study discusses some earlier meta-analyses but fails to mention how, especially for the old studies of psi phenomena, many of the studies included in these meta-analyses should have been weeded out for making exactly the kind of mistakes committed in Bem's own study.

Edit: from
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19...ished.html

"The paper, due to appear in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology before the end of the year, is the culmination of eight years' work by Daryl Bem of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "I purposely waited until I thought there was a critical mass that wasn't a statistical fluke," he says."
Oh... oh man. This paragraph is depressing in so many ways.

There is nothing supernatural about ESP. It is no more extraordinary than any other skill developed over time. It is learned through practicing awareness. The more you pay attention to small details, the better you are at predicting the future. It is similar to the way Sherlock Holmes seems to solve mysteries that no one else can. He notices small, seemingly insignificant mundane trivia from daily life, 24/7. The same is true for sincere fortune tellers, not the kind from the U.S. who advertise 1-900 numbers for profit.

[ファブリス]

There are a lot of compelling stories of police asking services of "clairvoyants" when all else has failed, which has led them to burried victims or other clues.

Not to mention numerous accounts of people who "felt" something when a relative died in an accident or hospital miles away, and then found out moments/hours/days later that the relative died at that very moment.

I don't find it too hard to believe that some people may have a gift for perceiving more information than is given by their immediate surrounding, because I like the holographic paradigm. Plus, there is still so much to discover about the brain.

I think it's ludicrous at this point of our knowledge of the nature of reality, consciousness and the brain, to make definitive statements on the possibility of ESP.

Interview with Daryl Bem:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert...-daryl-bem

ファブリス Wrote:Not to mention numerous accounts of people who "felt" something when a relative died in an accident or hospital miles away, and then found out moments/hours/days later that the relative died at that very moment.

This kind of thing always reminds me of this section of Richard Feynman's "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", which is kind of a collection of stories he told his friend about his life, while being recorded. His wife was sick with tuberculosis while he was at Los Alamos working on the Manhattan Project, and he rushed to her hospital in Albuquerque when he heard how sick she was.

"Arlene died a few hours after I got there. A nurse came in to fill out
the death certificate, and went out again. I spent a little more time with
my wife. Then I looked at the clock I had given her seven years before, when
she had first become sick with tuberculosis. It was something which in those
days was very nice: a digital clock whose numbers would change by turning
around mechanically. The clock was very delicate and often stopped for one
reason or another--I had to repair it from time to time--but I kept it
going for all those years. Now, it had stopped once more--at 9:22, the
time on the death certificate!
I remembered the time I was in my fraternity house at MIT when the idea
came into my head completely out of the blue that my grandmother was dead.
Right after that there was a telephone call, just like that. It was for Pete
Bernays--my grandmother wasn't dead. So I remembered that, in case
somebody told me a story that ended the other way. I figured that such
things can sometimes happen by luck--after all, my grandmother was very
old--although people might think they happened by some sort of
supernatural phenomenon.
Arlene had kept this clock by her bedside all the time she was sick,
and now it stopped the moment she died. I can understand how a person who
half believes in the possibility of such things, and who hasn't got a
doubting mind--especially in a circumstance like that--doesn't
immediately try to figure out what happened, but instead explains that no
one touched the clock, and there was no possibility of explanation by normal
phenomena. The clock simply stopped. It would become a dramatic example of
these fantastic phenomena.
I saw that the light in the room was low, and then I remembered that
the nurse had picked up the clock and turned it toward the light to see the
face better. That could easily have stopped it."

The problem with stories like you mentioned is that people suddenly feel weird from time to time. Whether they just lose a lot of energy all of a sudden for no reason, or suddenly find themselves sweating a lot despite not having exercised, or just feel down suddenly. After the fact, maybe they find out that some bad news in their life happened right at the moment, and they make a connection. The problem is that they fail to note all the times when it happens and ends up being nothing special (Feynman here is a notable exception). There are bound to be coincidences like that often.

Not trying to be antagonistic or anything, I realize that you're not making such a strong statement. I just don't think that those accounts should be taken as anything more than coincidence.

Anyone lost now that you found out your astrological sign was wrong? I was a Taurus, but now am an Aries. Guess I have to stop being loyal yet stubborn now.

Many years ago, the daughter of one of my mom's friends woke up in the middle of the night because of a nightmare. She dreamt that her grandmothers house was on fire. The next day, they found out that the house had indeed burnt down. No one died, thankfully. This is the kind of thing that makes it really easy to believe in supernatural phenomena. However, I think we all need to be more like Dr. Feynman and reject convenient prima fascia explanations.. A few years after the house burned down, I was reading something about the sensation of deja vu. Apparently, people have so many dreams every night that sooner or later we're bound to dream something that may actually happen. And as unlikely as it may seem, occasionally someone will have a dream that corresponds to an event that is in the process of occurring.