Psychics in my mom's side of the family.

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If I recall there have been a few physics (of various talents) that science has been completely unable to refute. I'll do a bit of research and get some names later.

Through your research, you are likely to discover that those claims of being scientifically irrefutable are being made by the psychics themselves, and mainly through their own rationalization of excuses as to why their alleged abilities do not operate under scientific scrutiny.

Failure to refute is NOT corroboration.

There is no evidence from a carefully constructed experiment supporting the existence of telepathy or telekinesis.

ruveyn

At the risk of earning a reprimand for spamming this thread, I will repeat what I posted earlier:

a. There is no valid empirical evidence to support any claim for psychic ability.

b. Absence of evidence, while not evidence of absence, is sufficient cause for reasonable doubt.

: : It is reasonable to doubt any claim for psychic ability.

That may be so, we shall see.


I must say, I certainly hope non of the sceptics here are Christians... that would be amazingly hypocritical and amusing.

"Christian" and "Skeptic" do not often go hand-in-hand.

So how does one measure psychic ability? Or is it expected to be proven through something that does not exist?

Moreover, if it is impossible to prove that some people haven't had psychic abilities, what did they have? Some kind of technology completely unknown to science that they somehow managed to sneak in without the examiners ever knowing?

Telekinesis: Accelerate a standard mass for a standard period of time and then measure its velocity. Telekinetic force could then be measured by the standard formula: "F = m x a".

Telepathy: Control subject stares at a randomly-chosen object, which is out of the test subject's field of vision. Test subject then reports what the control subject is staring at. The control subject is not allowed to communicate in any way (other than telepathically) with the test subject.

Precognition: The test subject predicts the outcome of each of 100 iterations of the following test: A device is set to launch a coin into the air in such a way that the coin "flips" several times before landing. Then the correct predictions are totaled, and the deviation from random chance is presented as the score.

Telescience: Try to determine "What is in the box?" (link)


No. Absence of evidence, while not evidence of absence, is sufficient cause for reasonable doubt.


Likely a delusion, a desire for attention, or the belief that they could somehow fool a panel of stage magicians, con artists, forensic specialists, and scientists.

Precognition doesn't even work that way so OF COURSE no ones going to pass the test. unless the coin will potentially hurt someone they love. and it's always a few days to a few months before something happends. Then of course there's the OPPOSITE of precognition, where you can tell something in the past. Most who have those two see things not too far in the future/past but then there are some that do. Of course they're not going to figure out something as unimportant as a coin toss.

He has a point. Looking through my various books on the topic and internet research, I reach the conclusion that is one of those things that can neither be completely confirmed or denied. Reasonable doubt is quite reasonable to have in this case, and you can't fault him for it.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard the lame excuse that "The ability of ________ does not work that way", I'd be a millionaire by now. If I compiled all of the different descriptions as to how precognition (or any other alleged psychic ability) does not work, it would soon become obvious that there is no way that precognition (or any other alleged psychic ability) could work - anything with that many restrictions would be impossible.


"The pre-cognated event must affect someone's physical or emotional well-being, and must not occur in the immediate future" is about as lame an excuse as any I've heard.


This is called "remembering". Con artists often study the pasts of their victims before making their post-cognitive claims. Then again, anyone with a moderate grasp of actuarial tables can easily make a dozen statements regarding someone's past and get a few of them right. The victim's own confirmation bias will cause the victim to disregard any misses and focus solely on the "hits".


Oh ... now the event has to be important!



What's the matter; isn't winning a million US dollars important enough to see the future outcome of one hundred randomized coin tosses?

I think Fnord may have hijacked this thread. For myself I remain neutral on the question. All one can really say for certain is that we all have one weird observer effect. If you look at an unstable particle, it will not decay (see the Quantum Zeno Effect).

Last edited by 91 on 22 Jan 2012, 7:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I, personally, have had several detailed, vivid precognitive dreams. And I'm no hippie-dippie new age airhead, so please don't pigeonhole me as one.

Or you are just plain mistaken and have not thought it through thoroughly.

No controlled scientific experiment has revealed "psychic" phenomena. For starters the energy output of the human brain is to puny to transmit messages over a distance or move stuff. That is why we have muscles and organs of speech.

ruveyn

No, I had dreams that depicted and played out a very particular series of events that seemed meaningless and cobbled together at the time. Weeks or months later, those series of events would begin to play out in everyday life, and I would recall my dreams and know exactly what was going to happen next. For instance, "Now this person standing next to me at this party is going to start talking about ________, make _________ joke, pick me up on his shoulders and spin me around, then we are going home together."

Have you kept score of all the "dreams" that did not work out? If not, you are afflicted with Observer Bias. You are remembering the hits, but not the misses. Sorry. You lose.

ruveyn