The best damn Paranormal Science FAQ you'll ever read!!!
Presented by The Sage, copyright 1999
==================THE FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS======================
1. What is paranormal science all about?
2. Where did the idea of paranormal phenomena first originate from?
3. Doesn't quantum mechanics imply the existence of paranormal
phenomenon?
4. What about the experimental results of people or organizations like
Rhine, PEAR, or PEER?
5. Why would people choose to believe in paranormal phenomenon, if it
really doesn't work?
=========================AND THE ANSWERS==============================
-------------------Answer to question number one----------------------
The term "paranormal science" does not accurately describe what paranormal
science is all about because the paranormal science is only a label and not an
objectively factual description of what it really is. There are alot of things
that people concatenate the word "science" to just so it sounds like it actually
could be a respectable science, but a rose by any other name is still a rose.
If you take the time to look at all the links on the internet regarding
paranormal science in the search engines, you will notice that all anyone has to
offer in favor of the study of paranormal phenomenon are explanations. One
mechanically repeatable experiment is worth 10,000 of the best sounding
explanations. This highlights the fact that explanations are not evidence, they
are storytelling. For example, I can pretend in the existence of invisible pink
elephants and can use that belief to perfectly explain how the world was created
or how stars go supernova, but it wouldn't have a thing to do with reality now,
would it? Likewise, explanations of paranormal phenomenon are just another
modern day retelling of the "Emperor's New Clothes".
You cannot study something that you cannot demonstrate with anything other than
mere words. I can claim to be able to powerlift 1500 pounds, and I can
scientifically explain how it is possible for someone with the right
characteristics to do that, but it is a completely different matter to
DEMONSTRATE that I can actually do it. Offering explanations instead of evidence
is putting the cart before the horse! It isn't very scientific and the conflict
of interest factor is overwhelming when one takes a pet hypothesis and tries to
find ways to explain it instead of taking the logical and scientific approach of
looking at the actual available evidence and seeing the evidence for what it
really is instead of what one wishes it were.
-------------------Answer to question number two----------------------
Psychologists are all very aware of the fact that the mind deceives us. We are
especially prone to distorting the details of cause or sequence. The unconscious
ignores time and it remembers things in terms of narratives and emotional
content and not sequence or logic. Rarely do people ever tell a completely
straight story -- any psychology textbook will tell you that. It is in people's
nature to confabulate, misperceive, and acquire false memories -- in fact the
longer the elapsed time between an event and the time it actually gets
documented, the taller the tale becomes. The problem with many people is that
they want to incorporate their feelings alongside the facts because many people
would rather see reality for what they wish it were instead of what it actually
is. Is it any wonder then, that something like 50% of all Americans believe that
the earth is approximately 6000 years old merely because a contradictory and
contrived mythical storybook called "The Bible" says so?
What this all indicates is that ESP experiences don't happen, they only appear
to happen. Take the example of psychic healings and faith healings. Both are
placebo effects, and hence the reason why they cannot cure most people,
especially people with physically real defects such as deformed limbs, third
degree burns, etc. Interestingly, when such healings fail, the failure is always
blamed on the client for lacking faith, instead of blaming the practitioner as
one would logically do if a ordinary everyday medical doctor failed to treat a
patient.
Where did the fairytale of the existence of ESP originate from, if it were not
from prior observation or a logical extension of already existing facts (ie --
deduction)? The answer can only be, "From someone's imagination". I can imagine
anything I want to imagine but that doesn't make it possible, it makes it
irrelevant. I mean if there has never been a single verifiable occurrence of
this mythical ESP ability being demonstrated, then what logical and common sense
reason do people have for thinking that it could have or must physically exist
at all? They have none because all the characteristics of ESP perfectly fit the
definition for make believe and not physical reality. If you choose to consider
the possibility that ESP exists, then you must also choose to consider the
possibility that all science fiction writers are actually modern day historians.
------------------Answer to question number three---------------------
At this point in time, there is no difference between Alchemy and Quantum
Mechanics. Many modern day sciences started off as fringe sciences (alchemy led
us to the modern day science of chemistry, for example), all of which utilized
wild-ass speculations and the unconscious projections of fantasy whenever and
wherever possible. That is why psychologists like Carl Jung were so interested
in bleeding edge research in physics, not because of what it "proved" in
relation between matter and spirit, but what it exposed about the psychology of
humans through their projections when faced with the currently unknown and
unexplainable.
Certainly, if you follow the logic of quantum mechanics, you can find it easy to
accept the belief that things affect one another on a cosmic scale in ways that
we are yet incapable of explaining but "incapable of explaining" does not mean
it can never be explained, it is only a matter of time before there will be an
explanation. What quantum mechanics illustrates for us is that when a particular
subject is sufficiently beyond comprehension of an individual, they will tend to
think of that subject in terms of being mystical and magical. A little
understanding can go along way towards eliminating superstitious thinking like
that.
The efforts that some "scientists" make to find room for the operation of a
supernatural divinity or magic or metaphysics are as futile to me as the crudest
attempt of a witch doctor to make it rain by sprinkling water on the ground. All
ESP is pure delusion based on misdirected emotion, and inaccurate and illogical
thinking. ESP isn't a matter of physics but of chemistry. People high on
chemicals like drugs can see or hear things too, but that doesn't make them
physically real things, they still remain what they always were: hallucinations.
The current laws of physics AND psychology are adequate to sufficiently explain
all paranormal phenomenon and in fact, Jung himself adequately explained much
parapsychological phenomena in his research article, "On the Psychology and
Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena".
I see nothing mystical or magical about quantum mechanics. What is truly
mystical or magical is when someone tries to imply that what supposedly happens
on a scale as small as 1e-14 meters is going to have a huge effect on something
200,000,000,000,000 times larger, instead of the other way around. Scientists
like Roger Penrose and Jack Sarfetti have their own pet quantum mechanical
theories which can "explain" (...there's that word again...) consciousness and
maybe also PSI but what these people fail to see is the obvious point that the
quantum mechanical effects of one tiny electron is hardly going to have any
noticeable effect on something containing trillions and trillions of electrons
-- especially when you consider the fact that the indeterminateness of one or
two electrons is something that only occurs in laboratories under artificial
conditions and not under ordinary or natural conditions.
------------------Answer to question number four----------------------
Carl Jung states that, "Great credit is due to JB Rhine for having established a
reliable basis for work in the vast field of these phenomena by his experiments
in extrasensory perception, or ESP. He used a pack of 25 cards divided into 5
groups of 5, each with its special sign (star, square, circle, cross, two wavy
lines). The experiment was carried out as follows. In each series of experiments
the pack is laid out 800 times, in such a way that the subject cannot see the
cards. He is then asked to guess the cards as they are turned up. The
probability of a correct answer is 1 in 5. The result, computed from very high
figures, showed an average of 6.5 hits. The probability of a chance deviation of
1.5 amounts to only 1 in 250,000. Some individuals scored more than twice the
probable number of hits. On one occasion all 25 cards were guessed correctly,
which gives a probability of 1 in 298,023,223,876,953,125. The spatial distance
between experimenter and subject was increased from a few yards to about 4,000
miles, with no effect on the result" (On Synchronicity, by Carl Jung, Portable
Jung, pg 509).
Now note the following facts:
Why is it that the only evidence that we supposedly have for ESP is just a bunch
of numbers on a piece of paper? Why can't anyone actually demonstrate something
for us? Statistics is not proof, it's a way to indicate a trend. If you want to
determine a new value for a constant, you resort to statistics to narrow down
the margin of error. If you want to know what the weather may be like tomorrow,
you resort to statistics. If you want to determine typical behavioral reactions
of humans to certain stimuli, you conduct a statistical experiment. But all of
the above examples are still prone to unpredictability, and in order to be
valid, must be confirmed by independent researchers. What many fail to
understand is that the weather is something that happens everyday and is easily
observable despite its statistical unpredictability, but on the other hand, ESP
is not easily observable and is so unpredictable that so far that no one can
even predict if it will happen at all. In the sciences, statistics is not
considered as proof but as confirmation. Hard facts are much more useful to
science in this regard. Furthermore, the only thing that can be expected from
statistics is deviations from the calculated average. Nothing unusual there.
The reasoning of people like Rhine is like saying that if someone wins the
lottery, that person won because of ESP and not by chance, as if it were
impossible for someone to guess the correct numbers by pure chance alone. But
what about the thousands of tickets that person must have bought in previous
attempts, before happening across the winning number? Only if everytime a
particular person plays the lottery they win, then one could say something
out-of-the-ordinary was happening. What's important here is the previous trend
and not whether the person got the winning number. Likewise one person guessing
all 25 cards in Rhine's experiment is not impossible and should be expected to
occur on occasion.
If ESP exists, it should NOT occur at random times among random individuals
within a group but it should be consistently repeatable for any one particular
individual. So why is it that ESP can only assert itself when people are in a
group and not individually? It is individual odds that are the most important
thing to note in ESP research, yet no researcher ever provides individual
results.
Case in point, if PEAR or PEER research has proof of ESP, why can't they provide
individual evidence as proof ESP? Why does it always have to be a nameless,
faceless crowd, where ESP never occurs consistently for any one individual, but
instead can only be barely gleaned from extensive data, and even then the bias
is extremely small? Maybe it is because one of the nice things about using
statistics instead of evidence is that it is easy to fool yourself or lie with
statistics; As Benjamin Disraeli said, "There are lies, damned lies, and
statistics". Afterall, it is possible by sheer coincidence for a person to go
through their entire life and guess every lotto number correctly. It wouldn't be
ESP, it would be the law of averages. Trying to prove ESP by washing down the
data by submerging individual results in a sea of people is stupid. It proves
nothing.
Let me illustrate this point with a perfect example: Go to a casino sometime and
visit the bingo parlor. Note how many people come forward each hour to claim
their winnings -- the number of winning individuals per hour is quite high (ie
-- "proof of ESP"), but pick out a lone individual and note how many times that
individual comes forward to claim their winnings -- it is very low (Oops! ESP
theory doesn't look too good now!). So what these ESP researchers are really
doing is reporting the high number of "winners" each hour but not listing the
individual results which is much lower. The drawing line is that paranormal
phenomenon have to consistently (not randomly or intermittently) display an
ability or it isn't called an "ability" but an "inability". No NFL quarterback
can be said to have an "ability" if it were only random or intermittent and no
person can be said to have a psychic ability since it has only been displayed
randomly and intermittently amongst a group and not for any one particular
individual.
Then there is the mystical and magical use of the word "significant", ie -- the
results of every paranormal experiment are always "significant". Who decided
what is significant or not and how did they objectively determine it was
significant? Was it the person conducting the research or an independent and
objective observer? The reality is, "significant" is another word for
"interesting". It was statistically interesting that one person guessed all 25
cards one time in Rhine's experiment, but since the subject couldn't repeat his
performance more than once, it statistically proved nothing.
------------------Answer to question number five----------------------
The question is not whether parapsychological abilities work, the question is,
"For whom does it work?". The answer is obvious, for it works for the
blind-faith believer. The autosuggestive magic of the paranormal serves to
extend the person's will..."You may have grand delusions, for example, of being
'psychic' -- of exercising special magic powers of telepathy, psychometry,
clairvoyance, clairaudience and clairsentience, and so of being 'somebody
special'. Yet only when you have abandoned your delusions of 'specialness' are
they likely to work at all reliably. Only when you have acquired a total inner
conviction of oneness with the world around you will the comprehensive forms of
awareness to which ESP belongs start to operate. Yet by then you will no longer
be the slightest bit interested in proving your 'specialness' by demonstrating
extra-sensory powers. You may be attracted to the idea of acquiring the power to
heal others. It all sounds highly admirable. And yet the very fact that you
think of them as 'others' reveals what you are really about. The real object of
the exercise is to 'do good', to be of value, to inflate yourself in the eyes of
yourself and those around you. Your object, in other words, is division, not
unity, fragmentation, not healing or wholeness. Once you attain the level of
consciousness at which you, the patient and the whole of the universe are one,
and the healing takes place of its own accord. The desire to heal others can
only be a diversion. Look to your own wholeness, to your identity with all that
is, and there is no disease to cure. Wholeness, you could say, is catching."
(Beyond All Belief, Peter Lemesurier).
The internet is filled with huge rewards for any actual demonstration of psychic
abilities, such as the one by Randi, yet not one of the paranormal "scientific"
organizations anyone can think of has ever come forward to claim the reward. Why
not? As I've pointed out before in these newsgroups, anything your psychic can
do, Randi can do better.
You have to realize that the only reason I have concluded that ESP is pure
delusion, etc is because of actually viewing the actual available evidence. My
conclusions are not voluntary, they are logically and scientifically mandatory.
===========================REFERENCES=================================
[1] "The tendancy to confuse imagination with memory is called
confabulation. Women workers sometimes confabulate wild stories
about their employers making ungentlemanly advances to them. Many
workers confabulate alibis to explain their failure to follow
orders" (Practical Business Psychology, Laird and Laird, pg 87).
[2] "Just being exposed to a story about a fictitious childhood
experience can alter people's memories to the point that half of
them believe the incident probably occurred even though they
previously said it didn't..." (http://www.washington.edu/
newsroom/news/1999archive/06-99archive/k060199d.html).
[3] "Memory can be treacherous, not only because forgetting is so easy
but because the mind can mistake imagined scenes for reality"
(Creating False Memories, Elizabeth F Loftus, Sept 1997 issue of
Sci American).
[4] "All that I experience is psychic. Even physical pain is a psychic
image which I experience; me sense-impressions...My own psyche
even transforms and falsifies reality, and it does this to such a
degree that I must resort to artificial means to determine what
things are like apart from myself" (Collected Works of Carl
Jung, Vol 8, para 680).
[5] http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980905/zombie.html
[6] "...I know of three more cases where certain objects were seen in
the clearest detail (in two of them by two persons, and in the
third by one person) and could afterwards be proved to be
non-existent. Two of these cases happened under my direct
observation...people who are entirely compos mentis and in full
possession of their senses can somethings see things that do not
exist...For as a rule we do not verify things we have seen with
our own eyes, and so we never get to know that actually they did
not exist" (Collected Works of Carl Jung, Vol 10, para 597).
[7] "Doctors and patients ascribe healing powers to many treatments
that have no direct physiological influence on a malady. This
placebo effect, in which the very act of undergoing treatment aids
recovery, has generally been disparaged by medicine..." (The
Placebo Effect, Walter A Brown, Jan 1998 issue of Sci American).
[8] "...without realizing it, scientists the world over have been
unconsciously validating the reality of Star Trek © with their
experiments, instead of validating actual reality."
(http://www.psn.net/~xyz/Physics6.htm)
The Sage
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My Home Page : http://members.cox.net/the.sage
A mind is a terrible thing to waste...especially on creationists.
Just say no to organized superstitions, blind faith beliefs, and
ancient books with inaccurate science, blatant contradictions,
and false prophecies
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