I'm experiencing a Sinus Malfunction at the moment, so instead of writing something clever about my having taken over the Corrigendopedia, I began watching these videos I was going to post last month.
One thing led to another, and I've finally finished the post!
So, comedian/magician/skeptic duo, Penn and Teller are at The Amazing Meeting 3 with James 'The Amazing' Randi! (Hey, an exclamation point. Could I be excited?"
` Penn says that their skeptic show Bullshit "really springs from the heart and the energy from Randi, and we're just the vessels that carry it on".
Right. That must be the reason why they have proceeded to play a hilarious little trick on him. Randi is stumped in front of the world at last!
Poor Randi.
So, now we move onto the Q & A: Penn relates the story of pitching the idea of Bullshit, with unfortunate timing after the terrorist attacks, telling those who are in charge to remember that when the psychic-charlatan John Edward was "pissing and dancing" on the graves of the 9/11 attack victims to cash in on people's grief, the world will be needing a show like Bullshit.
` They received several phone calls when John Edward indeed made this claim.
Here is even something I've always wondered about; why do they use the word 'Bullshit'? Because it sounds like an insult rather than a rational argument.
` "Who among us," Penn says, "can go to court to prove that you're not an asshole?"
From the small world of Shotime viewers at least, most of the letters were overwhelmingly positive, often starting with; 'I'm an atheist, thanks for not insulting my intelligence'.
` Wow! A percentage of the population really loved them! A new minority demographic, perhaps somewhat like when TV producers realized there were more than just white people?
Also, Teller talks about his experience recording (yes, recording) his part in The Simpsons. Yes, it really was him. But he really does love being thought of as silent!
Also mentioned is the fact that lot of Penn and Teller's crew seem to be doing penance for working on supernatural shows. Now when they interview the same people they had before, the footage is edited a bit differently!
The fourth video is missing! But, the fifth video is partly about why doing a Scientology episode might not be a good idea.
` Also, we are informed, some of the episodes are silly and mostly for fun because it helps them make money to do higher-quality episodes.
Penn explains his belief that it is the liberal religious people who set the framework for the nuts to be able to take religion literally. He is also troubled that the word 'fundamentalist' makes it okay to make fun of religious people and southern culture.
What is religion? A Unitarian Universalist in the audience speaks up and proceeds to discuss the 'sloppification' of the word religion. Penn makes some clarifications.
Does Penn prefer to preach to the choir? No. He explains it this way: "I believe that your job in the world is to tell the truth as you see it and if you start thinking that you can manipulate other people and speak to them in their terms, that always gets close to condescension, to me."
Teller notes that he has seen so many people who had become fans of the dignified skeptical movement after being introduced to it by him and Penn!
Penn may not have any superstitious belief, but surely he has political beliefs? Indeed.... "I believe that people are basically good, I believe the idea of personal property... how I make my political beliefs is very hard to lay out. ... My chances of being wrong about politics are so much higher than my chance being wrong about religion, and I was probably wrong about that, and I was wrong about secondhand smoke...."
And that's just a snippetto of that.
Ahhhh... it has come time for me to hit the hay. I must say, that was so much nicer than continuing to fry my brain.
` Actually, I would have done all this hours ago, but Lou Ryan was using this computer to watch a movie, so I went to make some tea, but there was no sugar, so I drove to the store to buy some... you get the idea.
Now it's time for bed! Good night, everyone! Hopefully my home-made sinus remedy works. If not, I may have to deal with a lovely blue nasal discharge for some time....
Showing posts with label Those Darn Psychics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Those Darn Psychics. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Friday, December 26, 2008
More, more, more James Randi! (New blog material being less important at the moment...)
Have you ever thought that TV psychics looked impressive? Randi breaks it down and shows that; "What they do is not differentiatible - is that a good word? - from what the magicians do."
` This is an appearance of his on The View, and it's a review of 'TV psychics' that have appeared earlier on the show.
Of note: (In case you're too lazy to watch.)
First a clip is shown of James van Praagh, who asks a woman (not telling her but asking) about someone having had eye trouble (anyone living or dead).
` She identifies herself as this person, "yes, I have eye trouble."
` He asks if there was some kind of "surgery or a procedure, having to do with something" (not even eyes) and she answers, "Yes, I had eye surgery when I was three years old," thus linking his two suggestions.
` Only after confirming this fact does he say, "Thank you, because he's telling me that." Well, if the 'spirit' really was telling him that, then why did he have to ask first?
Then we look at Char (not to be confused with Cher), who is asking a woman if she was connected to an A or a William or Willy or an M, deceased? Living? That could be anyone now!
` The woman says "Yes", a co-worker friend", thus taking the subject to 'work'.
` So Char asks; "Are they making some changes at your work?" Which leads to some confusion.
Then they take a look at Sidney Friedman. Randi says, "You can go into any magic shop and ask for that trick. It sells for $29.95... it's a standard trick." However, Starr already knows the trick and tells all!
` And of course, there's Uri Geller again, this time with a compass. James Randi brings his own compass along!
And now, learn how to turn off your own pulse at will! That and more at 6 and 11 on News 4 South Florida!
Now, on Discover Magazine, learn how to make a pencil move without touching it - and more!
Randi says; "I, frankly would look forward to some results that would be... significantly positive, and I'd have a new discovery on my hands." So, he does a double-blind experiment.
` Neither he nor the supposed psychic know if the vial contained distilled water or Stevia. Dr. Lowe got 8 out of 20, which is "what we would expect from chance alone."
After a short preamble on The Arsenio Hall Show, Randi talks about how he investigates and makes the important distinction between investigating and debunking, plus the newly-upgraded $100,000.00 Challenge.
It seems odd now that these things can be new to anybody, though I'd forgotten about the salt shaker trick.
Sick of James Randi yet? Too bad. Because you know those comedians, Penn & Teller? They followed in his footsteps, and... well, I promise I'll get back to writing things after that one.
Promise!
` This is an appearance of his on The View, and it's a review of 'TV psychics' that have appeared earlier on the show.
Of note: (In case you're too lazy to watch.)
First a clip is shown of James van Praagh, who asks a woman (not telling her but asking) about someone having had eye trouble (anyone living or dead).
` She identifies herself as this person, "yes, I have eye trouble."
` He asks if there was some kind of "surgery or a procedure, having to do with something" (not even eyes) and she answers, "Yes, I had eye surgery when I was three years old," thus linking his two suggestions.
` Only after confirming this fact does he say, "Thank you, because he's telling me that." Well, if the 'spirit' really was telling him that, then why did he have to ask first?
Then we look at Char (not to be confused with Cher), who is asking a woman if she was connected to an A or a William or Willy or an M, deceased? Living? That could be anyone now!
` The woman says "Yes", a co-worker friend", thus taking the subject to 'work'.
` So Char asks; "Are they making some changes at your work?" Which leads to some confusion.
Then they take a look at Sidney Friedman. Randi says, "You can go into any magic shop and ask for that trick. It sells for $29.95... it's a standard trick." However, Starr already knows the trick and tells all!
` And of course, there's Uri Geller again, this time with a compass. James Randi brings his own compass along!
And now, learn how to turn off your own pulse at will! That and more at 6 and 11 on News 4 South Florida!
Now, on Discover Magazine, learn how to make a pencil move without touching it - and more!
Randi says; "I, frankly would look forward to some results that would be... significantly positive, and I'd have a new discovery on my hands." So, he does a double-blind experiment.
` Neither he nor the supposed psychic know if the vial contained distilled water or Stevia. Dr. Lowe got 8 out of 20, which is "what we would expect from chance alone."
After a short preamble on The Arsenio Hall Show, Randi talks about how he investigates and makes the important distinction between investigating and debunking, plus the newly-upgraded $100,000.00 Challenge.
It seems odd now that these things can be new to anybody, though I'd forgotten about the salt shaker trick.
Sick of James Randi yet? Too bad. Because you know those comedians, Penn & Teller? They followed in his footsteps, and... well, I promise I'll get back to writing things after that one.
Promise!
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Oh yeah! James Randi Exposes Himself - and other scintillating videos!
I told you I'd be back with more James Randi videos. (If only because I don't have the time to write new posts.)
On this episode of Inside Edition, we find that a fraudster whose reputation was supposed to have been ruined (by James Randi) has made yet millions more dollars.
` This fraudster is none other than Peter Popoff, a man who used a wireless radio earpiece to convince people that he could hear the voice of God (recorded by James Randi) and therefore possessed the powers of God.
` One of his victims, 'Cathy Roe', speaks out about how she feels she was stupid and brainwashed for sending him 45 hundred dollars - after which she didn't have enough to buy food.
` So, how is Popoff getting even more money than ever? Just send away for Popoff's miracle water and salt packet, sprinkle the salt on a check for 27 dollars, send it in, drink the water, and send Popoff another check.
` On his infomercial, Popoff explains; "You see, it's not the water that releases the power, it's your obedience to the instructions of the prophet of God." An interview for the program, however, is out of the question, as Matt Mahar found!
But not only has Randi exposed Popoff, several times, he's also exposed himself! In this clip, we are introduced to 'Joseph Arnott', on an ancient television show called That's My Line with Bob Barker. And, since Uri Geller was in vogue at the time, what do you think he was claiming to be able to do?
` "Did you believe he used his psychic powers?" Bob asks the audience, and he gets an applause. "How many of you do not believe it?" More cheers erupt, and then one woman is essentially forced to spit out the fact that she believes Joseph must be a fake.
` To which he replies; "I would say, Bob, that the lady is of great perception, because I am a fake!"
` Flaunt it, Randi, flaunt it!!
The next Randi video is not as far back in the day, from 1986, close to home on Seattle's KOMO TV. (We also have both a KING and a KONG. Woohoo!)
` Randi talks about what he does and once again, bends a spoon.
And now onto the disputed phenomenon of psychic surgery - complete with a film for all to see. Randi explains that that was not even an impressive example, as blood does not stain the body as the brownish substance in the film does.
` Instead, he says, that must be the commonly-used betel nut juice. He also says that real blood can also be used - tests from stained clothing turn up chicken blood, occasionally pig blood.
This whole thing becomes more interesting when the audience members get involved - the film was actually of one of them!
Another audience member says she can provide documentation that psychic surgery cured her liver and pancreatic cancer, and yet she refuses to actually do so.
` Randi says; "I'm willing to be shown, but everyone says 'No' or 'I can't get it' or 'I've forgotten the name of the doctor' or whatever - why wouldn't you give us that documentation?"
` Yes, why wouldn't she? Find out!
Well, there's more to this show, but this appears to be all that is on YouTube. Next time, however, I will have different and probably much better video selections. Just for you. Because these posts don't require days of writing - though these do require that I spend hours reviewing the videos!
On this episode of Inside Edition, we find that a fraudster whose reputation was supposed to have been ruined (by James Randi) has made yet millions more dollars.
` This fraudster is none other than Peter Popoff, a man who used a wireless radio earpiece to convince people that he could hear the voice of God (recorded by James Randi) and therefore possessed the powers of God.
` One of his victims, 'Cathy Roe', speaks out about how she feels she was stupid and brainwashed for sending him 45 hundred dollars - after which she didn't have enough to buy food.
` So, how is Popoff getting even more money than ever? Just send away for Popoff's miracle water and salt packet, sprinkle the salt on a check for 27 dollars, send it in, drink the water, and send Popoff another check.
` On his infomercial, Popoff explains; "You see, it's not the water that releases the power, it's your obedience to the instructions of the prophet of God." An interview for the program, however, is out of the question, as Matt Mahar found!
But not only has Randi exposed Popoff, several times, he's also exposed himself! In this clip, we are introduced to 'Joseph Arnott', on an ancient television show called That's My Line with Bob Barker. And, since Uri Geller was in vogue at the time, what do you think he was claiming to be able to do?
` "Did you believe he used his psychic powers?" Bob asks the audience, and he gets an applause. "How many of you do not believe it?" More cheers erupt, and then one woman is essentially forced to spit out the fact that she believes Joseph must be a fake.
` To which he replies; "I would say, Bob, that the lady is of great perception, because I am a fake!"
` Flaunt it, Randi, flaunt it!!
The next Randi video is not as far back in the day, from 1986, close to home on Seattle's KOMO TV. (We also have both a KING and a KONG. Woohoo!)
` Randi talks about what he does and once again, bends a spoon.
And now onto the disputed phenomenon of psychic surgery - complete with a film for all to see. Randi explains that that was not even an impressive example, as blood does not stain the body as the brownish substance in the film does.
` Instead, he says, that must be the commonly-used betel nut juice. He also says that real blood can also be used - tests from stained clothing turn up chicken blood, occasionally pig blood.
This whole thing becomes more interesting when the audience members get involved - the film was actually of one of them!
Another audience member says she can provide documentation that psychic surgery cured her liver and pancreatic cancer, and yet she refuses to actually do so.
` Randi says; "I'm willing to be shown, but everyone says 'No' or 'I can't get it' or 'I've forgotten the name of the doctor' or whatever - why wouldn't you give us that documentation?"
` Yes, why wouldn't she? Find out!
Well, there's more to this show, but this appears to be all that is on YouTube. Next time, however, I will have different and probably much better video selections. Just for you. Because these posts don't require days of writing - though these do require that I spend hours reviewing the videos!
Thursday, December 18, 2008
I have plenty of posts in draft from over the years... here's one about a hero of mine!
This post was originally from last July, according to the previous date. The reason I didn't publish it is obvious - it largely consists of videos.
` But hey, can't a post be about videos? Videos of one of my favoritest people in the whole world?
Who might that be, you ask? He's a magician, famous for publicizing the fact that the tricks magicians do in the name of entertainment are often performed as demonstrations of psychic abilities and such things.
` No, not Houdini - though that's a good guess. I'm talking about James Randi - sometimes called The Amazing Randi.
` I was delighted to learn that many video segments of Randi's television appearances are available on YouTube, and I thought I'd bring these to your attention. They're fun, too!
Where to start? Well, how about this one from NBC Dateline, called 'The Magical Mystery Tour'.
` As the narration goes: "From the first time he first saw the great magician Harry Blackstone, Randi was hooked. And chained, and cuffed and bottled! ... [A]t some point, The Amazing Randi decided that dangling over Niagra Falls was not a profession with long-term prospects."
In this vid, James has a few things to say on people claiming to use real magic to do stage magic tricks, and demonstrates one of them!
` There are also clips of his exposure of Peter Popoff - the self-proclaimed faith healer who, Randi discovered, was getting his information through an earpiece!
In the next section, Randi demonstrates how bending spoons the 'psychic' way is really bending spoons the hard way.
` Also, this researcher from the Rhine Institute is just... well... not very informative. In answering why playing by Randi's 'rules' isn't acceptable to him, he says, "Because he advertises himself as a charlatan, and he knows nothing about science."
` Wow. Snappy comeback.
` In fact, Randi does understand scientific methodology, partly because science is about how to avoid being fooled, which, if you've been paying attention, you'll know is his main focus.
` Also, the fact that he does (good naturedly) tell people that he's a charlatan (referring to his performance of illusions) is a wonderful thing - if he claimed that his tricks were real magic , would you have any respect for him?
` Or, even worse, would you believe that his tricks were really psychic powers?
In the third and final part, I found myself feeling amused by the fortune tellers caught on Dateline's hidden camera. Can you possibly give out responses that are any more vague?
` "In a way it's good, and in a way it's not." "You can be the life of the party, or you can be the one who sits in the back." "In a way you're comfortable with it, and in a way you're not comfortable with it." "You have boring days and you have good days."
` Observe how a cold reader asks questions:
` "And you're also going to get a car." (= Q. "Do you have a car?")
` "I have a car."
` "Another one." (= Q. "Is it old enough that you want a new one?")
` "Mine's brand new."
` "Another one." (= "Then it's a brand new car.")
` "Another new car?"
` A tarot card reader says; "Beware the obstacles and stumbling blocks that are around you now." Wow, that's some really sage advice there. Also, she offers up a real bargain; clearing up 'negativity' with a package that costs $300!
` Then, Randi gets some college students to agree that one horoscope fits them all - actually, bits and pieces of other real horoscopes combined into one. Not all of them agree, however, that horoscopes don't tell you anything useful about yourself.
` Well, are you willing to help others? Do you have a strong need for others to like you? Are health circumstances important to you? That same horoscope may describe you as well!
Moving on, we get to Larry King, who brings up the subject of Charles Berlitz and the Bermuda Triangle to his guest, James Randi (of course).
` Randi replies that of the 105 cases of supposed disappearances of craft in the Bermuda Triangle discussed by Berlitz, only 30 of them can be pinpointed by latitude and longitude, and each of these are scattered across the Pacific, Mediterranean, etc. while only two of them actually occurred in the Bermuda triangle.
` He explained that he isn't really a 'debunker', instead; "If something doesn't seem to be logical... I look into it."
` He tells of a man he tested, and discovered that he had the genuine ability to tell, 20 times out of 20 trials, what was on an LP record, just by looking at it carefully.
` That's not a psychic power, however, that's a skill that almost no one bothers to develop. Well, why would they? It probably takes years.
` However, something which can be learned in 15 minutes, is the spoon bending trick, "It's such a corny trick I didn't even bother to put it into my book. It's that bad... it's especially not very popular with mothers."
` I know he's right. Ever wonder why they call me Spoony?
` But Uri Geller, he says, was only tested on his terms. Whenever he failed, he said that his powers weren't working right at the time, which is a common way to get out of performing when you aren't ready.
` Will Larry King buy swampland in Florida? He drops his watch when he sees that the time has 'mysteriously' changed. "How did you do that?" he asks.
` "Very well, I mean, with a certain dedication."
Were the people at Dateline right about how he did the watch trick? This time Randi explains how it's done, and after he does it, he points out that when he looks at the watch and says, "'not yet', and that's called, Larry, 'lying'."
` And the trick with the number grid and the coins? Now that's priceless! I don't remember seeing it last July.
` Like all of those who enter the James Randi Challenge, an astrologer he was talking about had to agree that it was a perfectly fair test. This Astrological Association member said that he had assigned people to the correct astrological sign many times before, but curiously, he couldn't even do it once for Randi.
` Also interesting in this vid is one of the callers-in, who admitted that after ten years of cheating people through psychic fraud such as "tarot card readings, runestone readings, past life readings, astrology and biorhythms, it's all fake." He said it's kind of like being a "professional rassler" and describes just how easy it is to do:
` In tarot cards, if a picture of a woman comes up, you can say; "'Oh, there's a woman in your life, now this woman has caused some problems, do you know who I'm talking about?' And the people start giving you all the answers that you want 'em to."
Whoever this alleged psychic fraudster of ten years is, I don't know. Is he or is he not? What he says is accurate, from all the material I've read about this. I wonder if he's ever called Randi? Should I bother actually trying to find that out? How empty is my stomach right now?
Hey, I think I'm going to go off for a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I'll be back with more Randi vids later, but that doesn't mean you have to stop watching; all of these should be linked to other videos, if you have nothing better to do for the next few hours....
` But hey, can't a post be about videos? Videos of one of my favoritest people in the whole world?
Who might that be, you ask? He's a magician, famous for publicizing the fact that the tricks magicians do in the name of entertainment are often performed as demonstrations of psychic abilities and such things.
` No, not Houdini - though that's a good guess. I'm talking about James Randi - sometimes called The Amazing Randi.
` I was delighted to learn that many video segments of Randi's television appearances are available on YouTube, and I thought I'd bring these to your attention. They're fun, too!
Where to start? Well, how about this one from NBC Dateline, called 'The Magical Mystery Tour'.
` As the narration goes: "From the first time he first saw the great magician Harry Blackstone, Randi was hooked. And chained, and cuffed and bottled! ... [A]t some point, The Amazing Randi decided that dangling over Niagra Falls was not a profession with long-term prospects."
In this vid, James has a few things to say on people claiming to use real magic to do stage magic tricks, and demonstrates one of them!
` There are also clips of his exposure of Peter Popoff - the self-proclaimed faith healer who, Randi discovered, was getting his information through an earpiece!
In the next section, Randi demonstrates how bending spoons the 'psychic' way is really bending spoons the hard way.
` Also, this researcher from the Rhine Institute is just... well... not very informative. In answering why playing by Randi's 'rules' isn't acceptable to him, he says, "Because he advertises himself as a charlatan, and he knows nothing about science."
` Wow. Snappy comeback.
` In fact, Randi does understand scientific methodology, partly because science is about how to avoid being fooled, which, if you've been paying attention, you'll know is his main focus.
` Also, the fact that he does (good naturedly) tell people that he's a charlatan (referring to his performance of illusions) is a wonderful thing - if he claimed that his tricks were real magic , would you have any respect for him?
` Or, even worse, would you believe that his tricks were really psychic powers?
In the third and final part, I found myself feeling amused by the fortune tellers caught on Dateline's hidden camera. Can you possibly give out responses that are any more vague?
` "In a way it's good, and in a way it's not." "You can be the life of the party, or you can be the one who sits in the back." "In a way you're comfortable with it, and in a way you're not comfortable with it." "You have boring days and you have good days."
` Observe how a cold reader asks questions:
` "And you're also going to get a car." (= Q. "Do you have a car?")
` "I have a car."
` "Another one." (= Q. "Is it old enough that you want a new one?")
` "Mine's brand new."
` "Another one." (= "Then it's a brand new car.")
` "Another new car?"
` A tarot card reader says; "Beware the obstacles and stumbling blocks that are around you now." Wow, that's some really sage advice there. Also, she offers up a real bargain; clearing up 'negativity' with a package that costs $300!
` Then, Randi gets some college students to agree that one horoscope fits them all - actually, bits and pieces of other real horoscopes combined into one. Not all of them agree, however, that horoscopes don't tell you anything useful about yourself.
` Well, are you willing to help others? Do you have a strong need for others to like you? Are health circumstances important to you? That same horoscope may describe you as well!
Moving on, we get to Larry King, who brings up the subject of Charles Berlitz and the Bermuda Triangle to his guest, James Randi (of course).
` Randi replies that of the 105 cases of supposed disappearances of craft in the Bermuda Triangle discussed by Berlitz, only 30 of them can be pinpointed by latitude and longitude, and each of these are scattered across the Pacific, Mediterranean, etc. while only two of them actually occurred in the Bermuda triangle.
` He explained that he isn't really a 'debunker', instead; "If something doesn't seem to be logical... I look into it."
` He tells of a man he tested, and discovered that he had the genuine ability to tell, 20 times out of 20 trials, what was on an LP record, just by looking at it carefully.
` That's not a psychic power, however, that's a skill that almost no one bothers to develop. Well, why would they? It probably takes years.
` However, something which can be learned in 15 minutes, is the spoon bending trick, "It's such a corny trick I didn't even bother to put it into my book. It's that bad... it's especially not very popular with mothers."
` I know he's right. Ever wonder why they call me Spoony?
` But Uri Geller, he says, was only tested on his terms. Whenever he failed, he said that his powers weren't working right at the time, which is a common way to get out of performing when you aren't ready.
` Will Larry King buy swampland in Florida? He drops his watch when he sees that the time has 'mysteriously' changed. "How did you do that?" he asks.
` "Very well, I mean, with a certain dedication."
Were the people at Dateline right about how he did the watch trick? This time Randi explains how it's done, and after he does it, he points out that when he looks at the watch and says, "'not yet', and that's called, Larry, 'lying'."
` And the trick with the number grid and the coins? Now that's priceless! I don't remember seeing it last July.
` Like all of those who enter the James Randi Challenge, an astrologer he was talking about had to agree that it was a perfectly fair test. This Astrological Association member said that he had assigned people to the correct astrological sign many times before, but curiously, he couldn't even do it once for Randi.
` Also interesting in this vid is one of the callers-in, who admitted that after ten years of cheating people through psychic fraud such as "tarot card readings, runestone readings, past life readings, astrology and biorhythms, it's all fake." He said it's kind of like being a "professional rassler" and describes just how easy it is to do:
` In tarot cards, if a picture of a woman comes up, you can say; "'Oh, there's a woman in your life, now this woman has caused some problems, do you know who I'm talking about?' And the people start giving you all the answers that you want 'em to."
Whoever this alleged psychic fraudster of ten years is, I don't know. Is he or is he not? What he says is accurate, from all the material I've read about this. I wonder if he's ever called Randi? Should I bother actually trying to find that out? How empty is my stomach right now?
Hey, I think I'm going to go off for a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I'll be back with more Randi vids later, but that doesn't mean you have to stop watching; all of these should be linked to other videos, if you have nothing better to do for the next few hours....
Friday, June 15, 2007
Mentalists are honest, psychics are mental
` Really, I think this HastyPostTM ties somewhat into my last one....
` What can I say? Mentalists are really something. First of all, look at Max Maven here. How does he do it? And how does he know what that guy is looking at? Looks like Cold Reading, though it could also well be Hot Reading. He's good in any case....
` He's not the only one, of course....
` So, what is a mentalist, precisely? Someone who pretends to be able to read people's minds. They use the same techniques as so-called psychics. But unlike psychics, the mentalist will tell you that you're being deceived. This is why Jamy Ian Swiss calls himself the Honest Liar.
` 'The Honest Liar has challenged psychics and exposed con men on national television shows like CBS 48 Hours, PBS Nova, and many more' brags his website.
` Here's a promo video for the man. I have to say I was somewhat impressed.
` Besides freaking people out on his stage shows, he also does a very valuable educational lecture which is advertised thusly:
` Swiss also does a magic/lecture called Magical Metaphors, which is about business strategies. The video, which is password-protected, well... I 'psychically' guessed the password! It was in fact the first word that came to mind. I don't want to tell you, lest it be changed on my account, but let's just say the website 'put it into my head'. (But please don't give me any 'the website is telepathic' bull....)
` To prove that I saw the video, I'll write a description of parts of it: After the list of shows and contributions he's made, there is a quote by Confucius - "What I hear, I forget, what I see, I remember, what I do, I know." It's also on the backdrop behind Swiss.
` Jamy says that the magician doesn't so much fool your eye, he fools your mind. And now, one of the audience members is doing the trick (the magic domino), not just seeing it. That's how you learn things effectively, it's true!
` How did he get the coin from the outside of the jar? "Instant matter transfer! Now you're talking! I want a piece of that patent!" But then he reveals the secret! (I won't tell.) Let's just say, "If you have to think outside the box, sometimes you have to think inside the jar."
` He then demonstrates with the Magic Square (which is vaguely like Sudoku) that there are 24 ways to make 51 - and more than one way to solve a problem. How the hell does he do that, anyway?!?!
` Needless to say, I must leave - as is characteristic of HastyPostsTM - so that's all I have to say on this particular subject. However, if you're not tired of videos already and you want to watch something that is considerably more action-packed, try checking out the trailer for this movie I was in! Rockstar superhero Lou Ryan kicks ass - literally!
` But be assured I will be back, as this is my week off from school!
` What can I say? Mentalists are really something. First of all, look at Max Maven here. How does he do it? And how does he know what that guy is looking at? Looks like Cold Reading, though it could also well be Hot Reading. He's good in any case....
` He's not the only one, of course....
He will read your thoughts. Predict the future. Cheat at cards. Detect falsehoods. Control the outcome of events. Convince you beyond a doubt that he has supernatural powers. But all the while, speaking from in-depth firsthand knowledge, he will tell you that he is NOT doing these things -- he is merely creating a terrifyingly convincing illusion.` So says the website of Jamy Ian Swiss, mentalist extraordinaire.
` So, what is a mentalist, precisely? Someone who pretends to be able to read people's minds. They use the same techniques as so-called psychics. But unlike psychics, the mentalist will tell you that you're being deceived. This is why Jamy Ian Swiss calls himself the Honest Liar.
` 'The Honest Liar has challenged psychics and exposed con men on national television shows like CBS 48 Hours, PBS Nova, and many more' brags his website.
` Here's a promo video for the man. I have to say I was somewhat impressed.
` Besides freaking people out on his stage shows, he also does a very valuable educational lecture which is advertised thusly:
In his lecture/demonstration on The Illusion of Psychic Powers, Jamy Ian Swiss reviews some of the history of parapsychology; addresses the difference in ethical constructs between those who use magic to entertain and those who claim to have paranormal powers; describes the basic principles of conjuring techniques and psychology as used by both magicians and self-styled "psychics;" and demonstrates how the latter use these techniques to deceive the public and scientific community alike.` Sounds tempting, especially considering that if I went I might be able to squeeze some secrets out of him. That is, after I got him to the lab and put him in a head-vise. Those things are strangely useful on living subjects.
` By combining his unique expertise in deception with compelling presentations of apparent mind-reading and other psychic phenomena, he dramatically challenges such academic preconceptions as the suggestion that mere innate intelligence and/or formal education can serve as adequate protection against fraud; illustrates how and why scientists have so often become the defenseless targets of fakery; and demonstrates why the conjuror's specialized expertise in deception is the only adequate defense against such charlatanism.
` Swiss also does a magic/lecture called Magical Metaphors, which is about business strategies. The video, which is password-protected, well... I 'psychically' guessed the password! It was in fact the first word that came to mind. I don't want to tell you, lest it be changed on my account, but let's just say the website 'put it into my head'. (But please don't give me any 'the website is telepathic' bull....)
` To prove that I saw the video, I'll write a description of parts of it: After the list of shows and contributions he's made, there is a quote by Confucius - "What I hear, I forget, what I see, I remember, what I do, I know." It's also on the backdrop behind Swiss.
` Jamy says that the magician doesn't so much fool your eye, he fools your mind. And now, one of the audience members is doing the trick (the magic domino), not just seeing it. That's how you learn things effectively, it's true!
` How did he get the coin from the outside of the jar? "Instant matter transfer! Now you're talking! I want a piece of that patent!" But then he reveals the secret! (I won't tell.) Let's just say, "If you have to think outside the box, sometimes you have to think inside the jar."
` He then demonstrates with the Magic Square (which is vaguely like Sudoku) that there are 24 ways to make 51 - and more than one way to solve a problem. How the hell does he do that, anyway?!?!
` Needless to say, I must leave - as is characteristic of HastyPostsTM - so that's all I have to say on this particular subject. However, if you're not tired of videos already and you want to watch something that is considerably more action-packed, try checking out the trailer for this movie I was in! Rockstar superhero Lou Ryan kicks ass - literally!
` But be assured I will be back, as this is my week off from school!
Monday, June 11, 2007
How can one reject skepticism while embracing science?
` Here's the post some people have been waiting (over two weeks) for!
` I've noticed that some people are all for science, but they abhor skepticism. (Myself as a teenager, for example.) But this is quite an impossible thing to do:
` First of all, skepticism is the underlying mechanism of science, and in fact it is the reason that science makes any progress at all. (Otherwise, it wouldn't be science, it would be speculation.) In other words, the process of skepticism is part and parcel of the scientific method.
` However, some people don't understand that, and would rather that science do away with skepticism.
` Now, I've written about the definition of science and skepticism several times in my blogging ventures, in several different ways. Surely it wouldn't kill me to do a recap:
` A skeptic holds that nothing can be entirely certain. There are only different amounts of certainty from near-zero to almost surely. The reason is because one mind is but one small vantage point - and hundreds are considerably better but not perfect - we can always be wrong about things.
` Therefore, when something is discovered, you can't rely on one person; other people need to be able to verify that discovery by 'discovering' it separately themselves. Consensus allows facts to be observed more objectively, and the need for objectivity is the reason for all that arguing done by scientists.
` When one scientist discovers some kind of pattern or phenomenon, there is always a chance that this was wrong; other scientists are needed to pick apart the ways in which it was discovered, to see if there are any other explanations. This is basically the same both for experiments and new hypotheses, no matter how established the subject.
` Quite often some kind of result or idea is questionable due to the fact that it could be explained in another way; indeed most new data and hypotheses are discredited this way and many observations are found to be accounted for by something other than what is proposted. And so, this is a very valuable process which helps to keep scientists from making mistakes - any scientist trying to introduce something new must dedicate a lot of work. If it turns out to be verified by others, it will eventually be accepted.
` If it weren't for the extensive protocols and methods to keep science as objective as possible, it would be a dogmatic belief system rather than a dynamic, ever-changing world of facts and ideas. (In other words, scientific ideas are sometimes rejected when a more accurate explanation is found.)
` This is why, when new territory is being explored, 'I don't know' is often the best answer. (Not very dogmatic, is it?) To reduce the reasons for 'I don't know', much careful experimental design is needed.` When I was young, however, I didn't understand the significance of these things. I thought that 'skeptics' were just people who were closed-minded and were slowing down scientific progress by ignoring very real research about, say, the reality of psychic powers.
` In short, I used to see these things the way Rupert Sheldrake does in this article. He says:
` According to two comparison experiments by Colwell, Schroder and Sladen in 2000, the reason this occurred is that the Sheldrake's experiments were inadvertently designed to cue people into following patterns. (In other words, his rate of chance was not 50-50 like it would need to be for this experiment to be valid.)
` Here's what they did: Seven men and five women (all whom believed in the staring effect) were led into a room by themselves where they sat with a one-way mirror to their backs. Meanwhile, someone else was behind the mirror, staring at them, or not, according to the 'staring'-'not staring' sequences that Sheldrake used and encourages others to use.
` The participant was given a button to press, in order to indicate whether or not they felt like they were being stared at. For the first 60 trials, they were given no feedback as to how accurate their responses were, though for the latter 180 trials, they were shown the words 'correct' or 'false', depending on their outcome.
` In the no-feedback trials, everything went as predicted - the average guess fell almost exactly on the mean chance expectation. However, in the trials with feedback, they were a little more accurate.
` Why? What they found was that Sheldrake's sequences were not random and that with feedback, people can (if subconsciously) catch onto the pattern. (This is a very basic ability that is observed all the time in animals.) Indeed, people are known to learn the probabilities of events and use that information to adapt to a situation without even realizing it!
` This is further supported by the fact that the first sixty trials had no significance whatsoever (29.92 with the expected chance being at 30), while the next sixty had a slight improvement (30.92), the next sixty had a .002 statistical significance (33.08) and the last sixty was more accurate (34.67) at .001 statistical significance.
` Indeed, Sheldrake's sequences were far from random - the participants actually had a .39 chance of repetition instead of a 50-50 chance. For example, when all the 'trios' (three trials in a row) were compared, it was found that there was a lot more alternation than there is in random sequences.
` So, in other words there was a lot of 'stare, no stare, stare' (SNS) and 'no stare, stare, no stare' (NSN). In a random sequence, they would be found in the same quantities as the trios SSN, NNS, SSS and NNN.
` In fact, these 'trios' had about a .001 deviation from randomness. (This is just as statistically significant as the result of the last 60 trials!) What does that tell you? The simplest explanation is that the people learned to switch their guesses more to 'not staring' after they had just been told the previous trial was 'staring' (whether they guessed it correctly or not), and vice-versa.
` Of course, a believer in Sheldrake could easily say that the real (and least simple) reason for this effect in improvement is simply due to increases in sensitivity to the staring effect. Fair enough. So, then the researchers then took some random sequences, analyzed them to make sure they were really random, and then tried those out on the participants.
` In this experiment, all of the trials included feedback, to maximize chances of learning a pattern. But with no pattern to learn, the subjects were unable to do better than chance!
` So, there we go. With a pattern to go on, people can guess better than 50-50 chance. But with either no feedback or feedback with no pattern, there is no statistical significance at all. Tell me, how is that unscientific or unreasonable?
` More on the scientific method
` Knowing about the way the world works allows us to make what we make - aircraft, computers, chemicals, etc. - because the principles they operate on are 'out there', not in the mind. Conclusive evidence comes from the fact that anyone could manipulate the world in the same ways under the same circumstances, regardless of their belief in whether it would work or not.
` This next part builds on what I've said earlier:
` It's brutal, I know.
` So, getting one's facts straight is crucial for a scientist. Otherwise, how could they do their jobs? And yet, some people have the view that science could be devoid of skepticism as opposed to being driven by it.
` That seems to be because these anti-skeptic people believe skepticism to be nothing more than confining, cynical naysaying - which is how most people naively misuse the word - and therefore don't know how to tell one apart from the other.
` Therefore, when they hear that someone is skeptical of something they personally hold to be true, they think "what a close-minded fool" instead of "hm, maybe there's something more to this" (which is what skeptics generally do).
` And so, they believe what they believe about what science is, and are easily taken in by pseudoscience. ("Oh, an idea is being repressed! That's not fair!" Well, hey, science doesn't care about what an individual believes, only what the individual can demonstrate.)
` ...And what is pseudoscience? I believe I've written a great deal about the subject in the blogosphere, but for a short answer I have collected various web definitions:
` A few more tiny details
` An important point I probably need to make explicitly is that the first thing a skeptic knows is that they do not know. Who cares what the skeptic may believe? So, the scientific method is called for to hopefully remove the influence of personal bias.
` Now, because scientific knowledge is tentative, you cannot prove anything once and for all with the scientific method - the only way to figure out what makes the most sense is to try disproving it. Does that sound confusing?
` This is why an example of a scientific claim would have to be; 'there is no such thing as psychic powers'; it can be disproven if psychic powers are discovered! So there, the 'knowledge' can change! On the other hand, if you say 'there is such thing as psychic powers, please prove me wrong!' you cannot falsify it because you cannot prove anything doesn't exist. (Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 'Tis the skeptical way.)
` What I'm saying that in declaring 'prove it doesn't exist', the 'knowledge' cannot change! It is forever fixed. It is dogma.
` Like I said, disproving something means that some particular thing has been shown to be wrong. Therefore we know it isn't right, so it's back to the drawing board. However, failure to disprove something lends credence to it - it is like proving a grain of truth. Repeatedly attempting to disprove something in many different ways and still failing to do so is almost as good as proving that thing.
` This is why the scientific method has the bottom line; try not to come to a conclusion until you can be certain about it. Since this is usually very difficult (or impossible), you have to make due with fairly conclusive evidence.
` Take the fact there isn't any 'proof' at all that smoking causes cancer, but the evidence for this theory is fairly compelling:
` Correlational studies showing that people who smoke are more likely to have lung cancer than other people, and experiments that show cigarette smoke can give animals cancer is conclusive enough. It isn't a 'smoking gun' (no pun intended), because we can't do human studies that force people to smoke until they get cancer.
` Therefore, after all this research has been conducted, it is a skeptical position to conclude that smoking must cause cancer in humans, even though there is no proof.
` Some responses to a Fortean
` Back when I started writing this article (April of last year), I found this random article in the Talking Dog which bashes a very highly distorted representation of what skepticism is.
` ...It's also full of paragraphs that make me feel as if I am from another planet. Take this, for example:
` But we don't know what species it is, and it would be foolhardy to make an assumption and declare it as truth! So, because marine biologists wouldn't know exactly where to place these sightings among what is already known about manta rays, how could they possibly be expected to say anything about it?
` To further illustrate, I moved onto another page on the same website called unusual mammals, and all that was odd about them was their markings. That's perfectly unremarkable as such mutations happen all the time.
` For example, it highlights the brown and white panda. Now, I've seen a wild brown and white panda on television before. Because it is displayed as a cryptid on this site, does that mean scientists don't believe it exists? No; it is a normal panda bear with a mutation that dilutes its pigment. In fact, much was made of the death of the brown and white captive panda, Dan Dan.
` Despite this, do you think typical descriptions of pandas are going to include brown and white? Most of the ones I've seen 'cling to the one body pattern dogma' of pandas being black and white. Therefore, is it any surprise that, since striped manta rays have apparently not even been studied, and we have no idea what species a striped manta ray may belong to, that nobody is going to say "this species of manta ray can also be striped"?
` Of course not; that would be highly speculative and thus unscientific to present as fact. Someone would need to catch and study at least one ray before we can say just what species they belong to. Am I missing something?
` I sure as hell feel like it. Seriously....
` It is similar to Archaeoastronomy, which is the study of ancient cultures' beliefs about the skies, and is almost as old as archaeology. Why would that stuff be considered unscientific to begin with? Perhaps relatively unimportant and difficult to verify, but it is still an interesting topic (and yes, though it is loaded with speculation, the speculation is not meant to be taken as fact).
` Of course, this post also blatantly derides skepticism for rejecting tests that supposedly demonstrate psychic abilities.
` The difference between Forteans and skeptics is that Forteans don't believe that knowledge is attainable. Skeptics have a slightly different perspective; that knowledge can be attained. Though scientific theories are tentative and subject to change, Fort himself seemed to miss the fact that scientists considered that some theories are more certain than others - it's not an all-or-nothing thing.
` Thus, well-proven theories and ones that are far from even being 'on the map' apparently share equal footing in Fort's philosophy. I don't think that makes any sense.
` After all, principles of physics and biology, etc, can be used to manipulate the world. If they were not true, how could they be used? Can we use psychics to, say, solve mysteries? Their failure to do so has resulted in their rejection from the government and police forces.
` And so, skeptics currently have their probability bar down low on the scale. My psychology textbook says to keep an open mind about ESP because one day something might prove them to be true. The same applies to the reverse; it is just as open-minded to maintain that psychic phenomena may not exist.
` Indeed, ESP believers tend to be among the many who do not have an open mind. My psychology textbook (Understanding Psychology, Fourth Edition) explains some of the obstacles to critical thinking such as:
` Look at it this way: I used to think that psychic phenomena were real (including my own alleged powers), until I was open-minded enough to realize that they can be more simply explained by other things. It just didn't seem like it to me because I was 'locked in' my perception and didn't know any other way to interpret things.
` So, being a skeptic is about not being afraid to change one's mind. If I, being a skeptic, did nothing but argue against things, then why would I have responded the way I did to this comment about my post on facilitated communication?
Hey, no hard feelings, but you're just wrong about autism, FC and the science! I replied in nauseating detail at my blog, here.
best regards,
jim [acujames]
S E E Quine said...
` As my computer has been down for several days now, I'm finally using a school computer to check up on (a little of) my email, and I'm finding a lot of flack about this post.
` For example:
Until you have made the effort to communicate with people with autism using facilitated communication, you have done nothing more than slam the door shut in the faces of people who can thinking critically far better than you will ever be able to........I know, because I've been there and I've had those conversations and I know that they are real.
I expect that you will mature in time and realize how foolish you have been.
` Normally, I would say, "Lady, stop using your emotions!"
` But then I read acujames' blog post about some such patients who used facilitated communication to learn how to type, etc.
` Indeed, since I wrote this post, I have found bits of evidence like this saying that perhaps [or rather, occasionally] there is something to it after all.
` But then, if that is so, why does the American Psychological Association describe it as "a controversial and unproved communicative procedure with no scientifically demonstrated support for its efficacy" because "Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that facilitated communication is not a scientifically valid technique for individuals with autism or mental retardation"?
` I don't think that uncommunicative patients are necessarily mentally retarded, so it would be no surprise that it could be proven that they weren't.
` What seems to be going on is that FC really does work with some individuals, while this is not the case for the vast majority. It is just hard to tell, and facilitators are usually very shocked to find that their own thoughts were being communicated instead of the patient's.
` My suggestion; test each case, one by one. If a facilitator cannot help a patient communicate something only the patient knows, there is good reason to be suspect.
acujames said...
S E E Quine, my hat's off to you on your open-mindedness about looking at evidence. I completely agree with your caveats stated in the preceding reply. Any responsible person would as well, imo. Undoubtedly some folks out there are approaching FC pseudoscientifically (and giving it a bad name), but fortunately the FC people at Syracuse advocate a set of "best practices" that take into account the issues raised by the research.
On the APA statement (archive version here; currently inaccessible at APA's site), I think there are several factors. The most obvious one is that the statement was published in 1994, prior to the publication of the controlled studies showing instances of valid FC (e.g. this one). Additionally, some FC supporters (e.g. Wade Hitzing) suggest that the APA statement may have reflected a behaviorist bias that tended to discount autistic intelligence. The latter topic has been the subject of recent research (e.g. Goldberg Edelson and Dawson et. al.) and seems ripe for the sort of revolution that has transpired in the past with regard to the abilities of the deaf-blind, people with cerebral palsy, and others. Finally, it should be said that controlling the variables involved in the communication of autistic people is no easy task (cf. the amusing term "physics envy"), and there is debate on all sides regarding the design of controlled studies on FC.
As a scientist, not to mention a pragmatist who knows that some people still dismiss FC outright, I do my best to (a) encourage my son's independent communication and (b) validate that his FC-ing is real. There are various ways I've approached verifying his FC objectively, and that's a subject for a whole nuther blog post. I've generally heeded the "best practices" linked above, and as well as the approach described in this fascinating case study (pdf file).
Again, kudos to you for blending skepticism with an open mind.
(And sorry I got so link-happy in my reply; I cross-posted the above at my blog, just to keep them at hand. Cheers!)
S E E Quine said...
S E E Quine, my hat's off to you on your open-mindedness about looking at evidence....
` Well, of course; that's the way skeptics are supposed to be! Thanks for the links - although for some reason they're not loading for me. (I don't know why; I think it's my computer or something.)
...Again, kudos to you for blending skepticism with an open mind.
` Why would anyone think skepticism and open-mindedness are contradictory? In a way, skepticism is the most open-minded you can be (without, of course, your brains falling out!).
acujames said...
` Why would anyone think skepticism and open-mindedness are contradictory? In a way, skepticism is the most open-minded you can be (without, of course, your brains falling out!).
.... it must just be the skeptics I've met that have been close-minded ignorant buffoons. That and egotistic Psychologists with a self assumed power trip (as they can "supposedly" assess others intelligence). get a freakin life. Drop the superiority complex - and shrivel up in the corner you belong in. The world must be pretty sad in black in white.
` Indeed, labeling yourself a 'skeptic' is hazardous because most people just don't understand what it means (plus, there are many dogmatic charlatans). My point in this dialogue was that FC is a widespread practice, yet it almost always turns out to be an illusion.
` Therefore, it's not very productive nor efficient to go around spreading it over the four corners of the world without question! It will be a massive undertaking if people are to straighten it out.
` Anyway, I think I've made some kind of point. Off to the laundromat!
` I've noticed that some people are all for science, but they abhor skepticism. (Myself as a teenager, for example.) But this is quite an impossible thing to do:
` First of all, skepticism is the underlying mechanism of science, and in fact it is the reason that science makes any progress at all. (Otherwise, it wouldn't be science, it would be speculation.) In other words, the process of skepticism is part and parcel of the scientific method.
` However, some people don't understand that, and would rather that science do away with skepticism.
` Now, I've written about the definition of science and skepticism several times in my blogging ventures, in several different ways. Surely it wouldn't kill me to do a recap:
` A skeptic holds that nothing can be entirely certain. There are only different amounts of certainty from near-zero to almost surely. The reason is because one mind is but one small vantage point - and hundreds are considerably better but not perfect - we can always be wrong about things.
` Therefore, when something is discovered, you can't rely on one person; other people need to be able to verify that discovery by 'discovering' it separately themselves. Consensus allows facts to be observed more objectively, and the need for objectivity is the reason for all that arguing done by scientists.
` When one scientist discovers some kind of pattern or phenomenon, there is always a chance that this was wrong; other scientists are needed to pick apart the ways in which it was discovered, to see if there are any other explanations. This is basically the same both for experiments and new hypotheses, no matter how established the subject.
` Quite often some kind of result or idea is questionable due to the fact that it could be explained in another way; indeed most new data and hypotheses are discredited this way and many observations are found to be accounted for by something other than what is proposted. And so, this is a very valuable process which helps to keep scientists from making mistakes - any scientist trying to introduce something new must dedicate a lot of work. If it turns out to be verified by others, it will eventually be accepted.
` If it weren't for the extensive protocols and methods to keep science as objective as possible, it would be a dogmatic belief system rather than a dynamic, ever-changing world of facts and ideas. (In other words, scientific ideas are sometimes rejected when a more accurate explanation is found.)
` This is why, when new territory is being explored, 'I don't know' is often the best answer. (Not very dogmatic, is it?) To reduce the reasons for 'I don't know', much careful experimental design is needed.` When I was young, however, I didn't understand the significance of these things. I thought that 'skeptics' were just people who were closed-minded and were slowing down scientific progress by ignoring very real research about, say, the reality of psychic powers.
Parapsychology has been under a kind of taboo for decades. I think this is because psychic phenomena became classified as superstition by Enlightenment rationalists, who wanted to move beyond superstition and religion, to a new era of science and reason. Unfortunately this hope has hardened into dogma and ironically, people who defend these taboos become very unscientific and very unreasonable.` Okay, for reasons of simplicity let's examine Sheldrake's 'psychic staring' experiments, in which people simply guessed whether or not they were being stared at from behind. His experiments showed that indeed, these people were correct more than 50% of the time. But why? Enter the scientific process.
` According to two comparison experiments by Colwell, Schroder and Sladen in 2000, the reason this occurred is that the Sheldrake's experiments were inadvertently designed to cue people into following patterns. (In other words, his rate of chance was not 50-50 like it would need to be for this experiment to be valid.)
` Here's what they did: Seven men and five women (all whom believed in the staring effect) were led into a room by themselves where they sat with a one-way mirror to their backs. Meanwhile, someone else was behind the mirror, staring at them, or not, according to the 'staring'-'not staring' sequences that Sheldrake used and encourages others to use.
` The participant was given a button to press, in order to indicate whether or not they felt like they were being stared at. For the first 60 trials, they were given no feedback as to how accurate their responses were, though for the latter 180 trials, they were shown the words 'correct' or 'false', depending on their outcome.
` In the no-feedback trials, everything went as predicted - the average guess fell almost exactly on the mean chance expectation. However, in the trials with feedback, they were a little more accurate.
` Why? What they found was that Sheldrake's sequences were not random and that with feedback, people can (if subconsciously) catch onto the pattern. (This is a very basic ability that is observed all the time in animals.) Indeed, people are known to learn the probabilities of events and use that information to adapt to a situation without even realizing it!
` This is further supported by the fact that the first sixty trials had no significance whatsoever (29.92 with the expected chance being at 30), while the next sixty had a slight improvement (30.92), the next sixty had a .002 statistical significance (33.08) and the last sixty was more accurate (34.67) at .001 statistical significance.
` Indeed, Sheldrake's sequences were far from random - the participants actually had a .39 chance of repetition instead of a 50-50 chance. For example, when all the 'trios' (three trials in a row) were compared, it was found that there was a lot more alternation than there is in random sequences.
` So, in other words there was a lot of 'stare, no stare, stare' (SNS) and 'no stare, stare, no stare' (NSN). In a random sequence, they would be found in the same quantities as the trios SSN, NNS, SSS and NNN.
` In fact, these 'trios' had about a .001 deviation from randomness. (This is just as statistically significant as the result of the last 60 trials!) What does that tell you? The simplest explanation is that the people learned to switch their guesses more to 'not staring' after they had just been told the previous trial was 'staring' (whether they guessed it correctly or not), and vice-versa.
` Of course, a believer in Sheldrake could easily say that the real (and least simple) reason for this effect in improvement is simply due to increases in sensitivity to the staring effect. Fair enough. So, then the researchers then took some random sequences, analyzed them to make sure they were really random, and then tried those out on the participants.
` In this experiment, all of the trials included feedback, to maximize chances of learning a pattern. But with no pattern to learn, the subjects were unable to do better than chance!
` So, there we go. With a pattern to go on, people can guess better than 50-50 chance. But with either no feedback or feedback with no pattern, there is no statistical significance at all. Tell me, how is that unscientific or unreasonable?
` More on the scientific method
` I was just reading the beginning of a book by Adam Zeman called Consciousness: a user's guide. I really like his artful description of science after he contrasts perspectives of subjective experiences in the mind and objective experiences in the brain:
Scientific description involves a meticulous effort to eliminate subjectivity, to achieve a reproducible, 'impersonal' description of the world, and account on which all disinterested observers can agree.` So, basically, 2+2=4. Gravity draws things to one another and its intensity depends on the amount of mass involved, and therefore black holes would be really destructive. Humans can figure these things out, and so could any intelligent life form, because these things can be observed.
The effort to achieve this leads away from the ordinary language of experience, into a technical vocabulary which is usually inaccessible to outsiders. This obscurity is justified by one astounding property of successful science: in making reliable predictions it provides control over the world. This kind of knowledge, in Francis Bacon's phrase, 'is power'.` If you understand gravity, you can use it to make spacecraft that can escape earth's gravity, navigate the solar system without deviating from the intended direction, and even 'slingshot' around Jupiter!
` Knowing about the way the world works allows us to make what we make - aircraft, computers, chemicals, etc. - because the principles they operate on are 'out there', not in the mind. Conclusive evidence comes from the fact that anyone could manipulate the world in the same ways under the same circumstances, regardless of their belief in whether it would work or not.
` This next part builds on what I've said earlier:
...First-person accounts evoke a single point of view, while scientific accounts abstract features of the world common to all points of view. First-person accounts matter to us because we are interested in each other's thoughts and feelings; scientific accounts matter because we need to master our physical surroundings.` As I said, scientists try to avoid dogma, so they are constantly having to change their views. All they need is a good reason. Despite the fact that the scientific method, with its philosophy of 'better to be doubtful than convinced and mistaken' is the best way of discovery, it is not perfect.
` ...There are two good reasons, though, for trying to hold it in check.
` In the first place scientific knowledge is always provisional: it is uncertain which beliefs will stand and which will fall during the constant process of revision. As the Oxford physician Sir William Osler warned a group of newly qualified doctors at the turn of the century: 'Gentlemen, I must tell you that half of what you have been taught is wrong, and we don't know which half.'
...We will never quite arrive at a 'view from nowhere'. It is just as true of the highly disciplined form of description achieved by science as of the first-person account that if there were no subject there would be nothing to report.` But hey, actively reducing the errors of perception is certainly much better than not trying to. And yet, humbleness is still key. As a psychology student I am cautioned not to generalize anecdotes into a larger pattern, and to not be afraid to say "I don't know." That is skepticism.
` As a journalism student, I am encouraged to back up (falsify/verify) sources - failure to do so results in some pretty embarrassing mistakes. For example, one reporter from the Detroit Free Press wrote an obituary for a Dr. Rogers Fair. When Fair himself later called the newspaper, it was obvious that a huge mistake had been made.
` It turns out, Fair said, that the sole source of information for the obituary was from a woman who was obsessed with him, that is, vandalizing his property and threatening to plant bombs because she couldn't have him. Her report of his death was merely another one of her shenanigans.
` This is what happens when you get all your information from one source without checking to verify it. The reporter could have called the morgue, funeral home, other family members, but did not. And so, mistakes can be that simple.
` In science, you have to check with other scientists to make sure your methods are sound. If they aren't, or if your ideas don't make any sense when you consider all the facts, they will demand why you think your data should matter.` It turns out, Fair said, that the sole source of information for the obituary was from a woman who was obsessed with him, that is, vandalizing his property and threatening to plant bombs because she couldn't have him. Her report of his death was merely another one of her shenanigans.
` This is what happens when you get all your information from one source without checking to verify it. The reporter could have called the morgue, funeral home, other family members, but did not. And so, mistakes can be that simple.
` It's brutal, I know.
` So, getting one's facts straight is crucial for a scientist. Otherwise, how could they do their jobs? And yet, some people have the view that science could be devoid of skepticism as opposed to being driven by it.
` That seems to be because these anti-skeptic people believe skepticism to be nothing more than confining, cynical naysaying - which is how most people naively misuse the word - and therefore don't know how to tell one apart from the other.
` Therefore, when they hear that someone is skeptical of something they personally hold to be true, they think "what a close-minded fool" instead of "hm, maybe there's something more to this" (which is what skeptics generally do).
` And so, they believe what they believe about what science is, and are easily taken in by pseudoscience. ("Oh, an idea is being repressed! That's not fair!" Well, hey, science doesn't care about what an individual believes, only what the individual can demonstrate.)
` ...And what is pseudoscience? I believe I've written a great deal about the subject in the blogosphere, but for a short answer I have collected various web definitions:
Research that has the appearance of science but does not follow the scientific method, usually lacking peer review and repetition of observations by independent researchers.` Hopefully, the significance of this definition is clear by now. Also, I could add that many pseudoscientific experiments tend to have built-in flaws which fail to isolate that which is being studied, and when these flaws are corrected for by anyone trying to replicate the experiment, the result is often quite different. (As with Sheldrake and other psychical researchers.)
` Another definition of pseudoscience:
Scientifically testable ideas that are taken on faith, even if tested and shown to be false.` Denial is not just a river in Egypt! What else is pseudoscience?
A set of ideas based upon theories put forth as scientific whether they are or not; based upon an authorative text rather than observation or empirical investigation.` What exists still exists, even if someone or some book says it doesn't. Yet another definition:
A set or system of beliefs claiming to be "scientific" without the benefit of the scientific method used to make further inquiries that might suggest that the belief system is wrong in any particular way.` Pretending to be curious while instead afraid to try to falsify a claim (because falsifying is how science is done) is not science, no matter what you call it.
` In fact, when a scientist tests out some hypothesis or another, usually it fails very quickly because the human mind is very tiny and cannot usually come up with the right prediction for the results of some observation or test.
` But when the hypothesis is tested again and again and it does not fail, that means the data support it! If the hypothesis still does not fail and only blossoms into something more complex and explanatory for a phenomenon, it becomes a theory.
` So, in other words, pseudoscience is about trying (intentionally or not) to make the world look like how you want it to look like. Science is about not being afraid of what the world does look like.
` As if I need to further clarify what I say (and sometimes I do!), I thought I'd add another beautiful rendition of the scientific process, this one from the Science of Gender and Science (emphases mine):
` But when the hypothesis is tested again and again and it does not fail, that means the data support it! If the hypothesis still does not fail and only blossoms into something more complex and explanatory for a phenomenon, it becomes a theory.
` So, in other words, pseudoscience is about trying (intentionally or not) to make the world look like how you want it to look like. Science is about not being afraid of what the world does look like.
` As if I need to further clarify what I say (and sometimes I do!), I thought I'd add another beautiful rendition of the scientific process, this one from the Science of Gender and Science (emphases mine):
Scientists debate continually, and reality is the check. They may have egos as large as those possessed by the iconic figures of the academic humanities, but they handle their hubris in a very different way. They can be moved by arguments,` Does that not drive the concept home? Is that not a summary of what I've been writing on and on about?
because they work in an empirical world of facts, a world based on reality. There are no fixed, unalterable positions. They are both the creators and
the critics of their shared enterprise. Ideas come from them and they also criticize one another's ideas.
Through the process of creativity and criticism and debates, they decide which ideas get weeded out and which become part of the consensus that leads to the next level of discovery.
` A few more tiny details
` An important point I probably need to make explicitly is that the first thing a skeptic knows is that they do not know. Who cares what the skeptic may believe? So, the scientific method is called for to hopefully remove the influence of personal bias.
` Now, because scientific knowledge is tentative, you cannot prove anything once and for all with the scientific method - the only way to figure out what makes the most sense is to try disproving it. Does that sound confusing?
` This is why an example of a scientific claim would have to be; 'there is no such thing as psychic powers'; it can be disproven if psychic powers are discovered! So there, the 'knowledge' can change! On the other hand, if you say 'there is such thing as psychic powers, please prove me wrong!' you cannot falsify it because you cannot prove anything doesn't exist. (Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 'Tis the skeptical way.)
` What I'm saying that in declaring 'prove it doesn't exist', the 'knowledge' cannot change! It is forever fixed. It is dogma.
` Like I said, disproving something means that some particular thing has been shown to be wrong. Therefore we know it isn't right, so it's back to the drawing board. However, failure to disprove something lends credence to it - it is like proving a grain of truth. Repeatedly attempting to disprove something in many different ways and still failing to do so is almost as good as proving that thing.
` This is why the scientific method has the bottom line; try not to come to a conclusion until you can be certain about it. Since this is usually very difficult (or impossible), you have to make due with fairly conclusive evidence.
` Take the fact there isn't any 'proof' at all that smoking causes cancer, but the evidence for this theory is fairly compelling:
` Correlational studies showing that people who smoke are more likely to have lung cancer than other people, and experiments that show cigarette smoke can give animals cancer is conclusive enough. It isn't a 'smoking gun' (no pun intended), because we can't do human studies that force people to smoke until they get cancer.
` Therefore, after all this research has been conducted, it is a skeptical position to conclude that smoking must cause cancer in humans, even though there is no proof.
` Some responses to a Fortean
` Back when I started writing this article (April of last year), I found this random article in the Talking Dog which bashes a very highly distorted representation of what skepticism is.
` ...It's also full of paragraphs that make me feel as if I am from another planet. Take this, for example:
...You know, like EM fields, which were considered impossible until quite recently. But to be completely fair, they were only considered perinormal, rather than paranormal. The difference being: scientists deny them both, but are more adamant in their denial of paranormal phenomena.` First of all, EM (electromagnetic) fields were discovered in the 1800s! We use them for everything from radios to cell phones. They are in fact everywhere and can be measured in any building and many places outdoors. I'm guessing something else was meant, but I'm not quite sure in what way.
` And as far as 'perinormal' phenomena go, these are those phenomena which have not clearly been demonstrated to be real, though one can claim some evidence for their existence. With further skeptical/scientific investigation, some perinormal phenomena have been demonstrated to be real, especially various bizarre medical conditions.
` Paranormal phenomena are those things which have not shown themselves to scientific inquiry. While they may be tempting to believe in, a scientist or skeptic must not profess that something is real unless there is some degree of certainty (like, more than perinormal phenomena). Got it?
` Paranormal phenomena are those things which have not shown themselves to scientific inquiry. While they may be tempting to believe in, a scientist or skeptic must not profess that something is real unless there is some degree of certainty (like, more than perinormal phenomena). Got it?
` This paragraph also confuses me:
Mainstream Zoology insists that manta rays have only one type of body marking. Dr. Karl Shuker on the other hand has photographic and first hand written documentation dating back to 1934 to suggest otherwise. Yet over 70 years later, they still cling to the one body pattern dogma. Why? I mean, what does it matter if they have white stripes, patches or blotches?` I figured that something kind of weird must be going on. So, I took to surfing the internet, came across a site called World of the Exotic and found this entry.
Striped Manta Rays` Why on earth would this be considered impossible by scientists, as Talking Dog is apparently implying? So (assuming these are real sightings), perhaps people have been seeing some kind of rare manta ray or a mutation of an existing species. Perfectly plausible. This kind of thing happens all the time.
The Atlantic giant manta ray (Manta birostris) is the largest known ray in the world. American naturalist William Beebe saw a striped manta ray off Tower Island, in the Galapagos Islands, Ecaudor, however, even to this day, cannot be identified. Beebe included his sighting in Galapagos:World's End (1924). He was on the ship Noma (Apr. 27, 1923) and he spied a manta with a ten-foot (3 m) "fin-span" collide with Noma.
[It was] of somewhat the usual manta or devil-fish shape, except that the wings not noticeably concave behind, and the lateral angles were not acute. The cephalic horn-like structures were conspicuous and more straight then in-curved. In general the back was dark brown, faintly mottled, while the most conspicuous character was a pair of of broad, pure white bands extending halfway down the back from each side of the head. The wing tips also shaded abruptly into pure white.
In 1976 a photograph was taken of one around New Caledonia shows it fits the description above. On December 28, 1989 Sharks: Hunters of the Seas, a German television programme, caught one on film off Cabo San Lucas, at Mexico's Baja California's southern tip.
` But we don't know what species it is, and it would be foolhardy to make an assumption and declare it as truth! So, because marine biologists wouldn't know exactly where to place these sightings among what is already known about manta rays, how could they possibly be expected to say anything about it?
` To further illustrate, I moved onto another page on the same website called unusual mammals, and all that was odd about them was their markings. That's perfectly unremarkable as such mutations happen all the time.
` For example, it highlights the brown and white panda. Now, I've seen a wild brown and white panda on television before. Because it is displayed as a cryptid on this site, does that mean scientists don't believe it exists? No; it is a normal panda bear with a mutation that dilutes its pigment. In fact, much was made of the death of the brown and white captive panda, Dan Dan.
` Despite this, do you think typical descriptions of pandas are going to include brown and white? Most of the ones I've seen 'cling to the one body pattern dogma' of pandas being black and white. Therefore, is it any surprise that, since striped manta rays have apparently not even been studied, and we have no idea what species a striped manta ray may belong to, that nobody is going to say "this species of manta ray can also be striped"?
` Of course not; that would be highly speculative and thus unscientific to present as fact. Someone would need to catch and study at least one ray before we can say just what species they belong to. Am I missing something?
` I sure as hell feel like it. Seriously....
Another fringe notion that has crossed over into the mainstream is in the field of archeology. The idea of Archeoastology was once relegated to the peyote-eating hippies of the 1960’s. But over the last 30 years this field has gained academic respectability through patient and honest scientific inquiry.` Huh? What's the Dog Talking about? My guess is Archaeoastrology, which is the study of ancient cultures' astrology beliefs (example).
` It is similar to Archaeoastronomy, which is the study of ancient cultures' beliefs about the skies, and is almost as old as archaeology. Why would that stuff be considered unscientific to begin with? Perhaps relatively unimportant and difficult to verify, but it is still an interesting topic (and yes, though it is loaded with speculation, the speculation is not meant to be taken as fact).
` Of course, this post also blatantly derides skepticism for rejecting tests that supposedly demonstrate psychic abilities.
` ...And if any kind of leak-proof 'psychic test' was designed, that is, one that actually gets rid of the chances for cueing, one that uses double-blinding, one that randomizes correctly, uses relevant statistical procedures and is judged by someone with no bias, that alone would get me excited.
` I'm insinuating, of course, that this is usually not the case. But discouragingly enough, when such a test does arise, it does not demonstrate psychic abilities. At the most, it demonstrates how easily the human mind could be fooled.
` In other words, it's not the results of the tests that mainstream scientists have a problem with; it's the incredible sloppiness of what psi believers try to pass off as a scientific (= carefully controlled) experiment.
` As for Morris, he wound up being more careful than Puthoff and Targ after much criticism of his experimental designs, though his results were still never conclusive. Spurious evidence still isn't really any better than no evidence at all.
` Pure and simple pseudoscience. If I had the book with me, oh the posts I could write! But I don't.
` For example, if a picture of a U.S. president was used, then 'Washington D.C.' would count as an answer. The same answer would also hit a variety of other pictures, such as government buildings. That's no good!
` In other words, the experiment was like this: "Let's see how close these people can guess from a certain selection of related pictures. Hmmm... now how can we make this fit the answer? They're all close enough in subject matter, so it ought to be easy."
` You see how self-defeating that is? Anyone could get enough 'hits', without even trying! Sorry guys, you need to be a little more careful than that!
` In conclusion, what does the Talking Dog say about skepticism?
` Really, if anything, science needs more skepticism. After all, if a scientific concept goes unscrutinized for a while, and people start to suspect it may be wrong, then what breaks up the 'wall of dogma'? Skepticism!
` 2: The quote seems to be a bit 'off'. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche said in 1890; "Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical. ... There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value.
` This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? ... One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived."
` He also said; "Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those 'truths' we once believed," in (1879, Truth Will Have No Other Gods Alongside It)
` So, if Nietzsche was against skepticism, why would he say that skepticism is a strong sedative? As far as I can tell, he was warning against excessive doubtfulness. After all, this constant battering that scientists go through usually delays the 'real deal' from being realized (the benefit is that the 'chaff' is gotten rid of). They want to know for sure, you know? Truth is more important than wishes.
` Usually, this is no big deal - eventually, any errors are resolved and life goes on. On the other hand, take the hypothesis that washing one's hands wards off disease. Because there was not enough evidence to support this idea for a while, lots of hospital patients died. But, the idea eventually took hold when it was finally conclusively demonstrated. So, it did get through because it was seen to be true.
` Science is a brutal process, yes, and scientists are often influenced by culture, yes; therein lies the importance of the constant arguments from different points of view. Each proponent has his own bias, but the righteous are eventually revealed by reality, not by popularity. So, if something goes against one's preconceived notions, they can't prove it wrong on that basis.
` Because of that, pro-psychic researchers should be able to prove that such abilities exist if they are real. They just haven't. This is why the awaiting skeptics are so amused by their methodological screw-ups - it's an established pattern.
` Will they ever break that pattern? Will they ever make any progress? That's what those who aren't 'of the faith' of psychic phenomena are waiting for.
` I'm insinuating, of course, that this is usually not the case. But discouragingly enough, when such a test does arise, it does not demonstrate psychic abilities. At the most, it demonstrates how easily the human mind could be fooled.
` In other words, it's not the results of the tests that mainstream scientists have a problem with; it's the incredible sloppiness of what psi believers try to pass off as a scientific (= carefully controlled) experiment.
Let’s turn to parapsychology and your claim that no scientific evidence has been found supporting it: At the Koestler Foundation in Edinburg at British University, under Chair Bob Morris between 1993 and 2003, six of 9 major experimental studies produced statistically significant results. Targ’s work on Remote Viewing in California also produced consistent statistically significant results. And like the Sanford Research Institute noted further down, BU had stage magicians helping them guard against possible trickery.` Okay... kudos to the idea of having magicians being present, but experimenters like Targ (and Puthoff) were physicists, not psychologists. They didn't know how to test for mental occurrences properly. As a result, their tests were so badly constructed that they have become famous for being one of many 'classic' examples of how counterproductive one's research can be if one does not know how to conduct it!
` As for Morris, he wound up being more careful than Puthoff and Targ after much criticism of his experimental designs, though his results were still never conclusive. Spurious evidence still isn't really any better than no evidence at all.
When asked if he personally believed in telepathy, Morris replied that he was just a researcher. Adding that there was accumulating evidence that it does occur.` Well, tons of people (in any field) are just researchers and they're usually wrong about things! That's why it's so exciting when they actually seem to be on the right track! Sometimes, they are still wrong and can easily delude themselves. That's life.
This has been suggested by a number of studies and authors. Like Dean Radin who wrote The Conscious Universe.` Oh yeah, I remember when I believed in that book. But then I learned a little about physics and quantum mechanics and realized that the book and similar ones was talking about something entirely different; a very specific interpretation of selected facts taken out of context, mixed with misinterpretations of what the scientists they quote actually have found and what they think about it, with some flawed experiments, etc. That kind of thing.
` Pure and simple pseudoscience. If I had the book with me, oh the posts I could write! But I don't.
[Radin] says that scientific evidence for telepathy has been accruing for decades. Radin notes that a meta-analysis of all ganzfeld telepathy experiments up to 1997 reveal a probability of a MILLION BILLION to 1. That’s somewhat less that Bush’s contribution to the national debt, but I’m sure you can’t argue that it is insignificant.` There's a very simple explanation for that (it would make Ockham proud): In this research, what did and did not constitute a 'hit' was not specified first (unlike real scientific research)! Even more significantly, the pictures being used were not random - they usually had a Western theme.
` For example, if a picture of a U.S. president was used, then 'Washington D.C.' would count as an answer. The same answer would also hit a variety of other pictures, such as government buildings. That's no good!
` In other words, the experiment was like this: "Let's see how close these people can guess from a certain selection of related pictures. Hmmm... now how can we make this fit the answer? They're all close enough in subject matter, so it ought to be easy."
` You see how self-defeating that is? Anyone could get enough 'hits', without even trying! Sorry guys, you need to be a little more careful than that!
` In conclusion, what does the Talking Dog say about skepticism?
In my opinion skeptics are much too dogmatic.` ...And yet the point of skepticism is to go out of your way to protect yourself from dogma.
` Really, if anything, science needs more skepticism. After all, if a scientific concept goes unscrutinized for a while, and people start to suspect it may be wrong, then what breaks up the 'wall of dogma'? Skepticism!
As Nietzsche suggested: 'There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism.' Skeptics work very, very hard to prove somebody wrong, instead of keeping an open mind about what the person may have discovered that potentially has some merit.` 1: Wrong: Skepticism is deliberately about having an open mind! That's why they try to prove themselves wrong. Failing to do so means that there may well be onto something.
` 2: The quote seems to be a bit 'off'. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche said in 1890; "Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical. ... There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value.
` This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? ... One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived."
` He also said; "Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those 'truths' we once believed," in (1879, Truth Will Have No Other Gods Alongside It)
` So, if Nietzsche was against skepticism, why would he say that skepticism is a strong sedative? As far as I can tell, he was warning against excessive doubtfulness. After all, this constant battering that scientists go through usually delays the 'real deal' from being realized (the benefit is that the 'chaff' is gotten rid of). They want to know for sure, you know? Truth is more important than wishes.
` Usually, this is no big deal - eventually, any errors are resolved and life goes on. On the other hand, take the hypothesis that washing one's hands wards off disease. Because there was not enough evidence to support this idea for a while, lots of hospital patients died. But, the idea eventually took hold when it was finally conclusively demonstrated. So, it did get through because it was seen to be true.
` Science is a brutal process, yes, and scientists are often influenced by culture, yes; therein lies the importance of the constant arguments from different points of view. Each proponent has his own bias, but the righteous are eventually revealed by reality, not by popularity. So, if something goes against one's preconceived notions, they can't prove it wrong on that basis.
` Because of that, pro-psychic researchers should be able to prove that such abilities exist if they are real. They just haven't. This is why the awaiting skeptics are so amused by their methodological screw-ups - it's an established pattern.
` Will they ever break that pattern? Will they ever make any progress? That's what those who aren't 'of the faith' of psychic phenomena are waiting for.
However, as I hope I have proved, I don’t just accept everything with an absolutely open mind and at face value. I am a Fortean. Like a skeptic, but with an actual ability to think critically and the self-awareness that I don’t and can’t know absolutely everything.` I'm not sure that's quite accurate: A Fortean is someone who as a rule suspends judgment (like a skeptic) accepts ideas as if they are not necessarily true (like a skeptic) and still tends to question existing ideas (like a skeptic).
` The difference between Forteans and skeptics is that Forteans don't believe that knowledge is attainable. Skeptics have a slightly different perspective; that knowledge can be attained. Though scientific theories are tentative and subject to change, Fort himself seemed to miss the fact that scientists considered that some theories are more certain than others - it's not an all-or-nothing thing.
` Thus, well-proven theories and ones that are far from even being 'on the map' apparently share equal footing in Fort's philosophy. I don't think that makes any sense.
` After all, principles of physics and biology, etc, can be used to manipulate the world. If they were not true, how could they be used? Can we use psychics to, say, solve mysteries? Their failure to do so has resulted in their rejection from the government and police forces.
` And so, skeptics currently have their probability bar down low on the scale. My psychology textbook says to keep an open mind about ESP because one day something might prove them to be true. The same applies to the reverse; it is just as open-minded to maintain that psychic phenomena may not exist.
` Indeed, ESP believers tend to be among the many who do not have an open mind. My psychology textbook (Understanding Psychology, Fourth Edition) explains some of the obstacles to critical thinking such as:
Obstacle 1: The Belief-Bias Effect` Yeah, I used to do stuff like that. Thing is, I thought that belief in psychic phenomena was the most open-minded thing to do. But that doesn't make any sense: As I've said, this belief cannot change in response to scientific experiments that repeatedly demonstrate otherwise. It does not rest on reality but rather subjectivity. So, it is dogma. Very un-Fortean-like when you think about it!
The belief-bias effect occurs when people accept only the evidence that conforms to their belief, rejecting or ignoring any evidence that does not. For example, in a classic study conducted by Warren Jones and Dan Russel (1980), ESP believers and ESP disbelievers watched two attempts at telepathic communication. In each attempt a "receiver" tried to indicate what card the "sender" was holding.
` In reality, both attempts were rigged. One attempt was designed to appear to be a successful demonstration of telepathy, with a significant number of accurate responses. The other attempt was designed to convincingly demonstrate failure. In this case, the number of accurate guesses was no more than chance and could be produced by simple random guessing.
` Following the demonstration, the participants were asked what they believed had taken place. Both believers and disbelievers indicated that ESP has occurred in the successful attempt. But only the believers said that ESP had also taken place in the clearly unsuccessful attempt. In other words, the ESP believers ignored or discounted the evidence in the failed attempt. This is the essence of the belief-bias effect.
...Simply dismissing an idea as impossible shuts out the consideration of evidence for new and potentially promising ideas or phenomena. At one time, for example, scientists thought it impossible that rocks could fall from the sky (Hines, 2003).` If this is what scientists are taught, to have an open mind and think critically (skepticism), then where's the dogma?
` On the other hand, the obstacles described here underscore the importance of choosing ways to gather and think about evidence that will help us avoid unwarranted beliefs and self-deception.
` Look at it this way: I used to think that psychic phenomena were real (including my own alleged powers), until I was open-minded enough to realize that they can be more simply explained by other things. It just didn't seem like it to me because I was 'locked in' my perception and didn't know any other way to interpret things.
` So, being a skeptic is about not being afraid to change one's mind. If I, being a skeptic, did nothing but argue against things, then why would I have responded the way I did to this comment about my post on facilitated communication?
Hey, no hard feelings, but you're just wrong about autism, FC and the science! I replied in nauseating detail at my blog, here.
best regards,
jim [acujames]
S E E Quine said...
` As my computer has been down for several days now, I'm finally using a school computer to check up on (a little of) my email, and I'm finding a lot of flack about this post.
` For example:
Until you have made the effort to communicate with people with autism using facilitated communication, you have done nothing more than slam the door shut in the faces of people who can thinking critically far better than you will ever be able to........I know, because I've been there and I've had those conversations and I know that they are real.
I expect that you will mature in time and realize how foolish you have been.
` Normally, I would say, "Lady, stop using your emotions!"
` But then I read acujames' blog post about some such patients who used facilitated communication to learn how to type, etc.
` Indeed, since I wrote this post, I have found bits of evidence like this saying that perhaps [or rather, occasionally] there is something to it after all.
` But then, if that is so, why does the American Psychological Association describe it as "a controversial and unproved communicative procedure with no scientifically demonstrated support for its efficacy" because "Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that facilitated communication is not a scientifically valid technique for individuals with autism or mental retardation"?
` I don't think that uncommunicative patients are necessarily mentally retarded, so it would be no surprise that it could be proven that they weren't.
` What seems to be going on is that FC really does work with some individuals, while this is not the case for the vast majority. It is just hard to tell, and facilitators are usually very shocked to find that their own thoughts were being communicated instead of the patient's.
` My suggestion; test each case, one by one. If a facilitator cannot help a patient communicate something only the patient knows, there is good reason to be suspect.
acujames said...
S E E Quine, my hat's off to you on your open-mindedness about looking at evidence. I completely agree with your caveats stated in the preceding reply. Any responsible person would as well, imo. Undoubtedly some folks out there are approaching FC pseudoscientifically (and giving it a bad name), but fortunately the FC people at Syracuse advocate a set of "best practices" that take into account the issues raised by the research.
On the APA statement (archive version here; currently inaccessible at APA's site), I think there are several factors. The most obvious one is that the statement was published in 1994, prior to the publication of the controlled studies showing instances of valid FC (e.g. this one). Additionally, some FC supporters (e.g. Wade Hitzing) suggest that the APA statement may have reflected a behaviorist bias that tended to discount autistic intelligence. The latter topic has been the subject of recent research (e.g. Goldberg Edelson and Dawson et. al.) and seems ripe for the sort of revolution that has transpired in the past with regard to the abilities of the deaf-blind, people with cerebral palsy, and others. Finally, it should be said that controlling the variables involved in the communication of autistic people is no easy task (cf. the amusing term "physics envy"), and there is debate on all sides regarding the design of controlled studies on FC.
As a scientist, not to mention a pragmatist who knows that some people still dismiss FC outright, I do my best to (a) encourage my son's independent communication and (b) validate that his FC-ing is real. There are various ways I've approached verifying his FC objectively, and that's a subject for a whole nuther blog post. I've generally heeded the "best practices" linked above, and as well as the approach described in this fascinating case study (pdf file).
Again, kudos to you for blending skepticism with an open mind.
(And sorry I got so link-happy in my reply; I cross-posted the above at my blog, just to keep them at hand. Cheers!)
S E E Quine said...
S E E Quine, my hat's off to you on your open-mindedness about looking at evidence....
` Well, of course; that's the way skeptics are supposed to be! Thanks for the links - although for some reason they're not loading for me. (I don't know why; I think it's my computer or something.)
...Again, kudos to you for blending skepticism with an open mind.
` Why would anyone think skepticism and open-mindedness are contradictory? In a way, skepticism is the most open-minded you can be (without, of course, your brains falling out!).
acujames said...
` Why would anyone think skepticism and open-mindedness are contradictory? In a way, skepticism is the most open-minded you can be (without, of course, your brains falling out!).
.... it must just be the skeptics I've met that have been close-minded ignorant buffoons. That and egotistic Psychologists with a self assumed power trip (as they can "supposedly" assess others intelligence). get a freakin life. Drop the superiority complex - and shrivel up in the corner you belong in. The world must be pretty sad in black in white.
` Indeed, labeling yourself a 'skeptic' is hazardous because most people just don't understand what it means (plus, there are many dogmatic charlatans). My point in this dialogue was that FC is a widespread practice, yet it almost always turns out to be an illusion.
` Therefore, it's not very productive nor efficient to go around spreading it over the four corners of the world without question! It will be a massive undertaking if people are to straighten it out.
` Anyway, I think I've made some kind of point. Off to the laundromat!
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