Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

This is a very interesting review of some of the most challenging published literature on the reliability of psychological science. The author's point is correct that parapsychology (ESP and the like) basically has no prior plausibility. Yet a researcher who has the chops to do reliable research, Daryl J. Bem, has conducted "experiments" that appear to show that some human experimental subjects can see into the future. As the article says, "Bem definitely picked up a signal. The only question is whether it’s a signal of psi, or a signal of poor experimental technique." Please read this submission from beginning to end and follow the links to see more of the background.

I had the opportunity to discuss the original Bem paper on psi in the journal club I regularly participate in. The conclusion is plainly wrong, but the error in procedure is subtle and it took a while for response papers to come out about his initial finding. (And everyone agrees that Bem is a smart man, so the subtle errors are all the more dismaying.) If Bem can't design experiments carefully, who can?

AFTER EDIT TO RESPOND TO QUESTIONS IN ANOTHER SUBTHREAD HERE:

Another participant is asking why parapsychology has poor prior plausibility. Parapsychology is a rather recent discipline, always with sloppy experimental practices,[1] and meanwhile the disciplines of physics and medicine are much older. The study of how information is transmitted by electromagnetic radiation and how the human body perceives sensations is incompatible with supposed abilities like ESP, and completely incompatible with seeing into the future in the manner described by Bem. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A million dollars says that psychic claims are bogus,[2] and so far no one has won a million dollars by proving that proposition wrong.

[1] http://www.skepdic.com/projectalpha.html

[2] http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

To your point on poor plausibility, I'd add that people have been trying to prove and develop their psychic powers for millennia. If you look at other common human traits, you can see that we're pretty good at exploiting our natural capacities. E.g., how the various martial arts traditions have taken modest raw capacity and learned how to develop it to an amazing degree. Ditto science, art, engineering, music, poetry, and literature.

The failure of all of the various paranormal traditions to develop anything demonstrable despite a lot of effort suggests that there is little or nothing there.

> The study of how information is transmitted by electromagnetic radiation and how the human body perceives sensations is incompatible with supposed abilities like ESP, and completely incompatible with seeing into the future in the manner described by Bem

You're not stating this strongly enough. It's not just the "study", i.e., the theory of how information is transmitted, and it's not just EM. Physicists have experimented for decades looking for any kind of interaction other than the four known forces (strong, EM, weak, gravity) at every distance and energy scale. They have found none. So the statement that ESP, precognition, etc. are incompatible with the known laws of physics is not just a statement about our theories; it's a statement about the experimental facts. If there were any real interactions that could mediate these kinds of abilities, we would already have found them. Sean Carroll explains it here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/02/18/...

And yet entanglement causes changes to occur instantaneously over unlimited distances. What's worse, there are many readings of it where one's own consciousness impacts that change.

These things occur, that is a given. How or why is left to interpretations like the Many Worlds interpretation, the Transactional interpretation, the Bohm interpretation, Quantum Information, etc. The point is these interpretations are more of the philosophical ramblings of scientists saying "It's the way I think it is because X and Y and Z."

Psi is an interesting topic. I think the likelihood of it existing is small, but if you'd asked anybody in 1900 what the likelihood of quantum physics existing was in the form it has ultimately been found, you would have been laughed out of the room without an answer (even though even Newton had at least some reservations about whether light was a particle or a wave).

> And yet entanglement causes changes to occur instantaneously over unlimited distances

That is an interpretation; specifically, it's the Copenhagen Interpretation. The other interpretations you mention all say different things about what is "really happening" with entanglement. The only other one I'm aware of that would describe it similarly to "changes occurring instantaneously over unlimited distances" is the Bohm interpretation, but AFAIK that interpretation only works for non-relativistic QM; there is no relativistic version of it, which means it can't be right as it stands.

In any case, one thing all the interpretations agree on is that entangment cannot be used to transmit information instantaneously over unlimited distances. So entanglement can't produce the sorts of phenomena that are claimed to occur in psi. So the experimental facts are still just as I described them.

> if you'd asked anybody in 1900 what the likelihood of quantum physics existing was in the form it has ultimately been found, you would have been laughed out of the room without an answer

That's because nobody had actually done the experiments we've done now. We have quantum physics because experiments forced us to it, not because theorists thought it was a cool idea--i.e., because experiments ruled out the "classical" view of the world that everybody had before quantum physics. So it seems perfectly reasonable to me to rule out psi based on experimental data that rule out the existence of any interactions that could cause it.

For the record, my comment was not meant to imply that entanglement is the source of psi; it is rather clear that it is not (regardless of how many pseudo-scientific books on Amazon say otherwise). My point is that the world became much more weird than we would have given credit for a century ago or so ago, to the point that we still don't fully understand it (even if we can use it to make predictions to a remarkable level of accuracy), after all, to cover it today, we have to manufacture new universes every time a person makes a decision to make the data fit (obviously, I'm reaching into hyperbole to make a point, but only because I put the person in the middle).

Could psi be an exhibition of some other weirdness, something in the realm of the indecipherable thing we call consciousness or some other effect we have yet to find? I think the odds are very long against it, but they are probably greater than zero. We live in a universe that may be a 3D hologram above a 2D reality; that leaves lots of room for things we don't understand. I'm not ready to concede that we know everything (but while a handful of current psi researchers are interesting, I'm fully on the skeptical side).

> Could psi be an exhibition of some other weirdness, something in the realm of the indecipherable thing we call consciousness or some other effect we have yet to find?

No, because, once again, if there were any such weirdness that could transmit information through non-sensory channels, or allow people to influence matter with their minds, etc., etc., we would already have seen it in the experiments we have run. Saying magic words like "consciousness" does not change that.

Yes, we don't know everything, so we can't rule out everything that isn't covered by our current knowledge; but in the areas of physics we do know, we have a very good understanding of the boundaries of our knowledge, which means we have a very good understanding of what is ruled out by what we already know. The Carroll article I linked to goes into all this.

There are plenty of reasons the $1M might have not found a psychic new owner yet.

(1) Randi is condescending and downright nasty to people who identify as psychics. $1M might not be worth being in his presence, let alone scrutinized by him.

(2) Randi has a lot invested in being right, so the tests could be downright rigged

(3) Many psychics propose all humans radiate quasi-electromagnetic energy, and their power comes from consciously directing it. Randi could therefore be unintentionally interfering.

(4) The test could be inadequate to describe the psychic phenomenon. For example, the psychic could be skilled at generating a particularly strong placebo effect, which would get written off regardless.

(5) The results might dismissed because they would invalidate too many existing theories, all of which have been constructed on the assumption that psi does not exist. A frequently accepted circular argument.

I'm not saying any of these explanations are true, but I am saying that no one knows either way.

I will note for onlookers that your critique of the James Randi Challenge for persons who claim to have paranormal abilities is largely responded to in the FAQ[1] on the website for the challenge, which I invite you and all interested readers here to read. Certainly, if you personally know someone who has paranormal abilities, you should encourage the person to gain the one million dollars and then tell the world about it.

[1] http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/component/content/articl...

That's a long FAQ, which argument has been answered by which FAQ entry? Be specific.

2, 3, and 4 have all been dismissed by the explanation of the tests offered to me in the past, particularly in pointing out that the person being tested has a great deal of influence on both the specific claim being tested and the way in which is is tested. The tests happen on a basis of consensus between the two as to what would be a reasonable test, rather than the testers simply dictating.

1 denies the history of psychics taking the test and speaking about it in relatively friendly terms, and 5 denies the history of major scientific upsets caused by evidence backed theories which contradicted the established school of thought.

Fair enough for 1-4.

As for 5, it's just plain hard to get solid results when studying humans, which seems to leave plenty of room for outright ignoring evidence.

FAQ 1.4: "we ask the applicant to design the test".

FAQ questions to Randi: "The hardest part has always been to get the claimant to state clearly what he or she thinks they can do, under what conditions, and with what accuracy. Most are very vague about these aspects, and very few have any notion of how a proper test should be conducted. We at JREF sometimes take months getting those matters settled"

FAQ 5.2: "All tests are videotaped and stored. You will be asked to state, on camera, that the protocol is fair prior to the test. You will be asked to state it again afterward. If you do not feel that the protocol is fair beforehand, you are not obligated to continue the test."

The videotaping particularly, and videotaping compating against a mutually agreed specific plan that the applicant designed, leaves little room for outright ignoring what happened.

> leaves little room for outright ignoring what happened

I'm not saying Randi is ignoring evidence. The scientific community is ignoring evidence in parapsychological papers that conform to current standards of scientific scrutiny. There are legitimate causes to examine scientific methodology, but doing so specifically to be able to ignore parapsychological evidence just speaks "bias" to me.

But I am saying that absence of proof is not proof of absence. Randi could well be selectively attracting poor psychics. Lady Gaga didn't go on American Idol.

Just one point:

> (3) Many psychics propose all humans radiate quasi-electromagnetic energy, and their power comes from consciously directing it. Randi could therefore be unintentionally interfering.

If they really believe that's the case, then they should make a different million dollar claim: that they can remotely detect Randi's presence or absence in the monitoring room by observing whether or not their psychic powers are currently working. It's very easy to imagine a test protocol for that.

Of course, one can invent an even more elaborate effect that would explain why that test also wouldn't work, and then I can design a test for this new idea, ad infinitum.

I can't speak of psychic energy as it's not well-defined but if anyone is interested in some interesting science on radiation emitted by humans, here are two good studies:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1767800

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23865304

(1) has to be one of the weakest arguments for psychic phenomena I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot.

I'd say it's good enough as an argument for not outright dismissing psychic phenomena.

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