RE: Causation, Mind, and Psionics
September 12, 2013 at 5:59 am
(This post was last modified: September 12, 2013 at 6:06 am by bennyboy.)
For the record, I once for kicks did a "psychic" experiment with a friend. It was simple-- we sat on opposite sides of his bedroom, not looking at each other. I would try to visualize a number from 1-100 and "send" it to him. He would then try to match my number.
At the first number, I was very disappointed to find that he got the wrong number. When we tried the second number, he guessed the first. When we did the third number, he guessed the second. We did this for 6 consecutive 1-100 numbers in a row-- with him in every case guessing the previous number, rather than the current one.
Now, this wasn't very scientific for many reasons. First of all, I didn't write it down-- so only I know for sure that he guessed all the numbers I was thinking; he can only choose to believe that I'm not BSing him.
Also, we had very many shared interests, as we were close friends: known birthdays, locker combinations, etc. We also had a shared interest in programming, so the numbers could have been from some project we had shared at some point. But even giving all of this, I thought that result was pretty amazing. It gave me the goosebumps.
Okay, /anecdote. But it was enough to make me wonder, for sure.
At the first number, I was very disappointed to find that he got the wrong number. When we tried the second number, he guessed the first. When we did the third number, he guessed the second. We did this for 6 consecutive 1-100 numbers in a row-- with him in every case guessing the previous number, rather than the current one.
Now, this wasn't very scientific for many reasons. First of all, I didn't write it down-- so only I know for sure that he guessed all the numbers I was thinking; he can only choose to believe that I'm not BSing him.
Also, we had very many shared interests, as we were close friends: known birthdays, locker combinations, etc. We also had a shared interest in programming, so the numbers could have been from some project we had shared at some point. But even giving all of this, I thought that result was pretty amazing. It gave me the goosebumps.
Okay, /anecdote. But it was enough to make me wonder, for sure.
(September 11, 2013 at 3:17 pm)genkaus Wrote: But, even if it were established as telepathy, your argument that "no purely materialistic theory can account for these results" would still be incorrect.First of all, I agree. It does not follow that telepathy, if proven, proves dualism. Although I can think of one case in which it might-- that the subjects are separated far enough in space that their "communication" (i.e. slight skewing of guessed objects or whatever) would break the c barrier. But even that has issues with a kind of entanglement: How could you run an experiment in which the two subjects are not somehow brought into a physical relationship first?
