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Comment by marcus_holmes | Hacker News Reader

Because we should only research orthodox, approved subjects, and not go where the data leads us?

You're seriously suggesting that his mathematics should be studied less seriously because he has a friend who studies telepathy?

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Well, it's not just a friend, it's something he supports.

There's something to be said for Bayesian updating, and in this case I'm willing to say that people who have the right of it scientifically are less likely to support telepathy.

I haven't read any previous studies of telepathy, so I have no informed opinion on it. Which seems to be a minority position: the majority position seems to be to assume that not only is telepathy "not real" but also anyone studying it is clearly a "not real" scientist.

Is there any data to support your theory that people who are willing to study telepathy are less mathematically able than those who are not?

Because it seems to me that people who are willing to rule out an entire area of study for social reasons are less able scientists than those who are willing to go where the data leads regardless of reputational consequences.

This EM drive is a case in point. Studies seem to suggest there is a real thing happening here, but scientists are not willing to study it because of the reputational risk. Which is clearly bad science.

You keep saying "go where the data leads" but the data is leading in circles so far. What data would lead you to study telepathy? There's data then there's wishful thinking.

I am sorry, but nerve system is electric. It emits electromagnetic signals. Nerve system is also perfect receiver for these signals. If you will train your body to emit/recognize these signals, you will be able to communicate telepathically. Your "hardware" (bioware?) allows you to do that. Some sharks are using that skill to locate fish.

Not sure if troll or serious.

Go ahead and try that and get back to us.

And it's been done[1], successfully — but the signals need to be amplified before the receiving brain can detect them. Parapsychology research was answering a pressing need in the 1950s, and so it was pursued and funded. Now that we have ubiquitous resilient encrypted wireless broadband communication on the worldwide scale, and we're pretty sure the enemy forces cannot submit our soldiers using the power of concentration, the need is much less pressing. Recent advances in brain activity imaging with fMRI and the impetus to create computer-brain interfaces will lead to any advances in telepathy that can be had, and maybe discover new questions to study.

Out of all the futures that seemed possible at the beginning of the Cold War, ours is no less strange and awesome than one where telepathy were a mundane experience. Being skeptical about telepathy in the style of the great Sci Fi works of the latter half of the 20th century reflects the understanding that some ideas become reality, and some just peter out.

[1] http://www.kurzweilai.net/first-brain-to-brain-telepathy-com...

Body can be trained to improve strength of signal and make it directional.

I tried to train myself to improve strength of my look few years ago by training, and girls describe their feeling at that period as "burning skin". When I looking at them with concentration, they able to feel that at distance of up to hundred of meters. I also saw video with similar experiment recently, but I cannot find it right now.

So, IMHO, telepathy is possible physically at some short distance, but requires years of training of participants. Someone need to train himself to be strong signal emitter, which can be confirmed by measurement of body EM radiation at frequency interval of 1.3-30Hz. Then somebody else need to learn how to hear that weak EM signal, like blinds do.

If what you're saying were true (even requiring decades of training), it would herald a revolution in our understanding of human physiology. Let's see you reproduce these experiments in a lab with a skeptical researcher.

Where I can get funding to research short-range telepathy and other mumbo-yumbo science? :-) I was very skeptical myself just few years ago.

I had similar feeling ("burning skin") only two times in my whole life, so, IMHO, it is very rare. However, woman told me that it is no so rare, and staring of some "hungry" mans is similar. IMHO, it is sort of "I love you", but for silent animals.

> Where I can get funding to research short-range telepathy

DARPA[0].

This kind of research really has been done to death, and much of the groundbreaking research has been declassified by now. For example the CIA mind control research[1].

[0] http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2015-01-19 [1] http://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/cia-mkultra-col...

Tell us more?

It's like hearing. I can hear, but I cannot explain - how. My English vocabulary is not enough to describe it in details (I am from Ukraine, I learned English as adult).

Before that, I used some techniques to better control my body and feelings for years, so I was able to notice subtle differences and gradations of my feelings. I also know (poorly) body language (because I am amateur ballroom dancer), so I can notice subtle changes in behavior of others.

I feel warmth at my face when I do that, like warmth after warmup, and not like warmth when I self-heat a part of my body by concentrating at it.

It is much easier to stare at somebody, if I have feelings to her/him (e.g. when I like or dislike her/him).

It works without eye contact: from target back or when target is sleeping.

Targets always know direction from which I stared at them.

When effect is strong, it is easy notice it: it feels like something happens at skin ("burning") but without pain of any kind, i.e. nerve system sends strong signals about something ephemeral, but nothing happens in reality. When effect is weak, it feels like warmth, so it is easy to mismatch it with self-heating with concentration. So, to test effect properly, you must not say to targets that you testing them, otherwise they will concentrate at their body and will feel warmth.

IMHO, it is kind of "i like you/i dislike you" sign language used by animals and then forgotten by humans.

I had similar feeling myself, but two times only:

- in train, from girl: after about hour of staring at her (experimenting) I got exact same response. :-)

- from soldier, when we talked about how to free Crimea of Russian soldiers. :-)

It is all.

I stopped doing that because it was hard to stop looking without staring. Random people started to like me for no reason, remember me and my name for years, etc. I unlike that.

PS. I saw a film where I was able to track at which girl operator/director is looking when filming, because of girl reactions, so I am 100% sure that I am not alone. :-)

You trained your telepathy by staring at girls? And then asked them how they experienced it?

I'm not convinced that this is a valid experimental procedure...

It is not a telepathy, it is something else. But yes, I trained myself by staring at girls from their back and noticing how they react, and what I feel, when they react.

This is not a valid experimental procedure, of course. I saw video with experiment which was done properly, but I cannot find it.

I have a good news for you, if you are not sitting on millions already, here's an easy way:

http://web.randi.org/the-million-dollar-challenge.html

Wow, did you even bother to follow that link?

To be fair, that link did work for a good many years.

I didn't know that Randi had retired and that the prize had been withdrawn. Very sad. It's the end of an era.

Thanks, actually no. I've linked it many times before, assumed it's still the same.

I wasn't suggesting that the data leads to telepathy. It may, it may not. I don't know. I haven't studied it. But dismissing anyone that studies it as a crank, and by implication anyone that supports them in that study as also a crank, is bad for all of us.

I'm less concerned about telepathy per se than with "science as politics". The social sciences are seeing some serious problems because there are things that scientists cannot say or talk about because of their political implications. Climate science is hampered by the problem of having to be constantly aware of the political ramifications of their research: are they "helping the deniers" if they publish a result?

If we start bringing this bullshit into hard science then we'll break that too. This is maths and physics. There's the hypothesis, there's the experiment. Do the experiment and validate the hypothesis. If the experiment isn't working, devise a better one. If the new theory leads to predictions then test those predictions. It's all objective, it can be tested, and those tests can be reproduced.

It's like free speech. I may not like the things you say, but I will absolutely support your right to say them. If you find telepathy interesting enough to study, then that's awesome. If you think you've got a result, and I'm interested enough, then I'll look at your methods and your data and work out if I agree with you or not. But dismissing you as a crank just because you're studying it is anti-scientific.

And just like free speech is being threatened by politics and there are now things that people must not say, science is becoming threatened and there are things that must not be published. This is bad imho.

If you're interested, then go ahead and read about the history of telepathy research so you can have a (more) informed opinion about it. Numerous well-performed and controlled experiments have not find any evidence for it, and in this case, absence of evidence is reasonably strong evidence of absence. Since there are so many other interesting (real) things in the universe to study, I conclude that people who continue to study it are doing so for reasons unrelated to the merits. It doesn't make someone "not a real scientist", but I sure would look askance at their critical thinking skills.

> This EM drive is a case in point. Studies seem to suggest there is a real thing happening here ...

That's not what I see. Every time the experiment is done with more precision and less noise, the effect diminishes again to near the limits of experimental error. That's exactly what you would see if the force was due to thermal (or other electromagnetic) effects rather than novel engineering principles. Nothing wrong with studying it, though. But I'd be willing to bet real money it all comes to nothing.

Edit:

> Is there any data to support your theory that people who are willing to study telepathy are less mathematically able than those who are not?

No, of course there is no such data. And mathematical ability is only tangentially related to critical thinking in the real world.

> Because we should only research orthodox, approved subjects, and not go where the data leads us?

Data is crappy at the moment, but I agree, it's at least interesting in the case of the EmDrive that people are measuring something.

-- Actually yes, if somebody follows crank science my trust factor goes down (the Mariana trench). But that's me, if you see no problem with it, just study his paper. He also a big opponent of dark matter. But hey, I'm just a programmer, what do I know about theoretical physics.

Read this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EmDrive/comments/3hjmtv/my_conversa...

The guy who challenges him is a PHD student who happen to be usually on the right side of theories although sometimes being too hard headed.

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