Can people really influence the physical world with thought alone?

[xssve]

They found that pigeons use the magnetic poles to navigate with. They all know where to go, but the alpha leader hes control of flight movement. Connections through electro-magnetic pulses are picked up by each bird and co-joined with the others. Fish schools move in a unified pattern for defensive manouevers. They don't use the Earth's magnetic field for guidence, but use a unified signal to move in unison, to stay together as one.

People pick up signals in much the same way, hence the feeling we're being watched. Because it doesn't happen with as great a frequency of occurence as we'd like for confirmation, I stated earlier the concept of like and un-like poles attracting. What you might be sending out are the right magnetic frequency waves that I'm tuned into. It's that same feeling of looking at someone and for no apparent reason, you get bad "vibes" from them.

There is a connection between all things physically, that being carbon, but we all have a connection meta-physically as well. We have to believe 100% with absolutely no doubts in it's existence for the human mind to accomplish constant connection, instead of random occurances happening and then passing it off as weird.

Logic tells us to only believe what is proven and everything else is ear-marked for instant negation for the sub-conscious. If we keep telling ourselves we can't do something, we won't be able to do it. This is true of our daily lives and the confidence we build doing things. I did it, so it's real. Understanding the reality of what you've done is never brought to focus, as we take everything for granted that it's there and that's that.

I've used similar arguments to counter the scientific bias against astrology: the moon affects tides, and it's been established that it also affects tree ring growth.

This doesn't prove that astrology is sound science, but it does prove that heavenly bodies have a demonstrable effect on Terrestrial, organic lifeforms.

IMO, it's unscientific to dismiss something just because it's complicated and difficult to study.

In the end, it' s doubtful anyone will ever prove "Astrology" one way or another, and even if they did, it's as likely to be as full of silly archaic constructs as any other primitive science, but I see no reason why one should avoid asking the question.

Other than everybody thinks you've gone soft.

 

[xssve]

And, since gravity and magnetism are among the last two example of common forces whose effects are undeniable, but have yet to be explained to anyone's satisfaction in terms of particle theory, it leaves a certain amount of room for hypothetical quantum interaction.

 

[past_perfect]

Told you he was well-known

I suspected it could be him you were talking about - it's an interesting body of data he has accumulated, I haven't really made up my mind as to the validity of his theories yet. But it'd be intriguing to hear your take "from the inside" on why you consider his work a failure?

 

[Verdad]

I've used similar arguments to counter the scientific bias against astrology: the moon affects tides, and it's been established that it also affects tree ring growth.

This doesn't prove that astrology is sound science, but it does prove that heavenly bodies have a demonstrable effect on Terrestrial, organic lifeforms.

IMO, it's unscientific to dismiss something just because it's complicated and difficult to study.

In the end, it' s doubtful anyone will ever prove "Astrology" one way or another, and even if they did, it's as likely to be as full of silly archaic constructs as any other primitive science, but I see no reason why one should avoid asking the question.

Other than everybody thinks you've gone soft.

Astrology, as I understand it, doesn't rely on causality. The planets aren't supposed to be influencing you, no more than your clock showing 7 am influences the sun coming up in the morning. The idea is rather synchronicity. Everything being tied to one giant clock.

I'm not a believer in astrology but studying the symbols can be a pretty amazing exercise in its own right, and this idea is much more elegant than the idea of influence that usually gets debunked.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

About the only way planets have for influencing you is via their gravity force; Carl Sagan said that the MD who delivers you has more gravitational influence on you than any planet does.

 

[Recidiva]

Many of the experiments that are set up to test things are done as if you can set up some sort of "control" experiment that's reproducible and it doesn't work that way. Circumstances have to be specific to an individual.

If watched some episodes of "America's Psychic Challenge" and a few things struck me. It was fun to watch, but here's an example. Jeff Baker. His test was to find a person in a large expanse of land and his only clue was he was given the kid's shirt. He took off at a run. Check it out if it's too long, timer 2:20.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar7hSf_zpBc

He didn't win the overall challenge because he was an empath and couldn't do psychometry or clairvoyance and was totally lost for most of it. But something here is where you get something on camera where you see how it might work.

Now I've met folks like this guy and I'm a bit like this guy. So I have no problem believing it. And really the only way to dismiss it is to assume he cheated.

For me there's no reason to "explain" how I wake up out of a dead sleep and know there's a phone call coming, a bad one, a few seconds before it does.

But experience enough stuff like that and there's no question of fraud or cheating, there's just a question of "why" - which I don't know.

I do know that most of the tests are entirely bogus and have nothing to do with any of the things that trigger insight.

In this "America's Psychic Challenge" series they also had a test where the psychics were supposed to match dogs to their owners. Seriously, what the fuck? I could see other people with talents saying "Um, it doesn't work that way." Which is what I would have said. But then there's always some dumbass trying to puppy whisper and making a crayon-scribbled moron of themselves. Those folks to me, scream fraud. And they're largely responsible for the overall sense of "omnipotence" of these abilities. They're fallible, they're frail and they're not the ironclad guarantee. They can however make a huge difference in a crisis.

It indicates a total lack of understanding how or why it works, and to use some sort of "scientific" setup that has zero to do with what might trigger something in an individual. I'm not clairvoyant. Hand me the hair brush of a murder victim and I'm going to brush my hair with it, while it might make someone else faint. How would you "test" me? "Here, we're going to torture your brother on the other side of the country, can you tell when we start?"

This stuff is unique to the individual, there is no "standard test" and science will fail to test "groups" when what's involved are individual and specific talents that belie any sense of "control" group.

 

[Liar]

One common and well documented example: how is it people seem to know when somebody is watching them?

Because somebody is always watching...

<cue creepy music>

 

[Pure]

reply to EP

Dogmatic pronouncements cannot address the issue under discussion

EP: The Placebo Effect is psuedo[sic]-science:

The single article referred to is one of hundreds in the area. In any case, its content and conclusion make no assertions as to 'pseudoscience' on either side of the issue.

[EP quoting material from http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/...ct/344/21/1594]

//"As compared with no treatment, placebo had no significant effect on binary outcomes, regardless of whether these outcomes were subjective or objective. For the trials with continuous outcomes, placebo had a beneficial effect, but the effect decreased with increasing sample size, indicating a possible bias related to the effects of small trials."//

pure: The Actual Conclusion, which is weaker, is as follows.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/344/21/1594

NEJM :Conclusions We found little evidence in general that placebos had powerful clinical effects. Although placebos had no significant effects on objective or binary outcomes, they had possible small benefits in studies with continuous subjective outcomes and for the treatment of pain. Outside the setting of clinical trials, there is no justification for the use of placebos.

clearly, had the authors thought that researchers of a different position were merely doing pseudoscience, they would not have said, 'possible small effects'.

===

pure: such a conclusion is at least phrased in a scientific, rather than dogmatic manner.


a fair minded approach might note that the issue is under investigation, and there are
respectable doctors and researchers on the other side--see below..

Representing the 'other side' of the placebo debate are the following, among hundreds. Although the second article, involving spinal cord imaging, is an "objective" finding; it's not simply the person saying "i feel less pain."

The Neurology website of the American Academy of Neurology,
has a page on the placebo effect,

The placebo effect
Joseph H. Friedman, MD and Richard Dubinsky, MD
http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/full/71/9/e25


HOW DO PLACEBOS WORK?


How placebos work is still a mystery. It is important to understand that not all placebo effects are good. Just as some patients improve with the power of positive thinking, some get worse and drop out of research studies because of the side effects caused by the placebo. In a recent, well-publicized and fascinating study of Parkinson disease (PD), it was discovered that the patients who improved with placebo had changes in their brain that were identical to the changes caused by the actual medication (called levodopa).1 Levodopa causes an increase in brain dopamine, and the placebo should not. However, the patients who got better with placebo had a similar increase in dopamine, identical to what happened in those who were given the drug.
----
among the articles cited, this one is of particular interest:


de la Fuente-Fernandez R, Ruth TJ, Sossi V, et al. Expectation and dopamine release: mechanism of the placebo effect in Parkinson's disease. Science 2001;293:1164–1166.


Science 10 August 2001:
Vol. 293. no. 5532, pp. 1164 - 1166
DOI: 10.1126/science.1060937
Reports

Expectation and Dopamine Release: Mechanism of the Placebo Effect in Parkinson's Disease

Raúl de la Fuente-Fernández,1 Thomas J. Ruth,2 Vesna Sossi,2 Michael Schulzer,1 Donald B. Calne,1 A. Jon Stoessl1*

The power of placebos has long been recognized for improving numerous medical conditions such as Parkinson's disease (PD). Little is known, however, about the mechanism underlying the placebo effect. Using the ability of endogenous dopamine to compete for [11C]raclopride binding as measured by positron emission tomography, we provide in vivo evidence for substantial release of endogenous dopamine in the striatum of PD patients in response to placebo. Our findings indicate that the placebo effect in PD is powerful and is mediated through activation of the damaged nigrostriatal dopamine system.

1 Neurodegenerative Disorders Centre,
2 TRIUMF, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 2B5.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jstoessl@interchange.ubc.ca
====

The New Scientist website
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17993-placebo-effect-caught-in-the-act-in-spinal-nerves.html

contains the following report of the study of Eippert, et al.

Reports

Placebo effect caught in the act in spinal nerves
14:41 16 October 2009 by Ewen Callaway

The placebo effect is not only real; its ability to deaden pain has been pinpointed to cells in the spinal cord. That raises hopes for new ways of treating conditions such as chronic pain.
The researchers who made the discovery scanned the spinal cords of volunteers while applying painful heat to one arm. Then they rubbed a cream onto the arm and told the volunteers that it contained a painkiller – but in fact it had no active ingredient. Even so, the cream made spinal-cord neural activity linked to pain vanish.

"This type of mechanism has been envisioned for over 40 years for placebo analgesia," says Donald Price, a neuroscientist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who was not involved in the new study. "This study provides the most direct test of this mechanism to date."

Indeed, the biggest obstacle to establishing the spinal cord's role in placebo pain relief was measuring its activity with fMRI scanning, says Falk Eippert, a neuroscientist at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany, who led the study.

Squeezing a scan
FMRI scanning has long been used to image the brain, but the part of the spinal cord that Eippert's team was interested in – the dorsal horn – is minuscule in comparison, and so is harder to image. It also swims around in cerebrospinal fluid, further complicating real-time measurement.
The team's first breakthrough was to squeeze an fMRI signal out of the spinal cord. Then they quickly adapted the technique to study placebo pain relief.
This meant telling 13 volunteers a white lie. They were told that the researchers were testing how effective a painkilling cream was, with an inactive cream as a control on the trial.

In fact, neither cream contained anaesthetic. However, when Eippert's team applied the alleged painkilling cream for the first time, they turned down the intensity of painful heat stimulation to 40 per cent of each volunteer's pain threshold – 46 °C on average. When the team tested the alleged control cream, they kept the temperature set at 80 per cent of the pain threshold – an average of 47 °C.

Because of this "fixing" of the temperatures, the volunteers would think, "'OK, this really seems to work, and it will work when I take it the next time,'" Eippert explains.
Feeling the heat
Later, with an fMRI scanner on, the researchers rubbed "control" and "painkiller" creams onto two different spots on each volunteer's left forearm and applied the same level of heat to each spot, 15 times.

The fake "painkiller" cream worked: volunteers said they experienced 26 per cent less pain on the "painkiller"-treated patch of their arm, compared with the "control"-treated area.

Meanwhile, the fMRI scanner witnessed the placebo effect. When skin treated with the "control" cream was heated, an area of the dorsal horn located on the left side of volunteers' lower necks lit up, suggesting increased neural activity there in response to pain. However, this signal disappeared in the "painkiller" trials.

Eippert's team didn't discover what caused this shift. He speculates that higher brain areas involved in buying into the bogus treatment trigger the release of endogenous opioids – chemicals our brain produces that work like opiates and may temper spinal cord activity.
Now that researchers know the neural hallmark of placebo pain relief, they could use it to develop treatments, cognitive or chemical, that take better advantage of belief, Eippert says.

===
The Eippert article in question [abstract] is at the American Academy of Science website,


http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/326/5951/404

Science 16 October 2009:
Vol. 326. no. 5951, p. 404
DOI: 10.1126/science.1180142


Direct Evidence for Spinal Cord Involvement in Placebo Analgesia
Falk Eippert,1,* Jürgen Finsterbusch,1 Ulrike Bingel,2 Christian Büchel1

===

a fair minded approach to the issues under discussion requires attention to a range of evidence, not simply 'cherry picking.

 

[Pure]

where are the dualists?

is witch hunting for them, relevant to the discussion?

ep makes the bizarre suggestion that those who claim a placebo effect [or the poster, reporting it, second hand] are Cartesian dualists, and that this is of relevance to the truth of placebo-effect claims.

EP //If the Placebo Effect existed it would still not be an influence on the physical world via thought alone since mind-body dualism is well past its prime. //

the original question was:
Can people really influence the physical world with thought alone?

It MIGHT be true that Jack is a Cartesian, and that he meant
Can thoughts, floating in Cartesian space with no physical accompaniments, affect the physical realm.

the more charitable reading, and that of all posters but EP, is that Jack was referring to actual thoughts, in actual people, who of course have brains, brains which are active. this is the assumption of all researchers in the area of mental/physical or 'mind/body' interactions.

So the answer 'yes' (or no, for that matter) has no relation to cartesian dualism, but makes the charitable assumption that actual thoughts of actual people are involved

in any case, scientific findings are not affected, or undermined, by the philosophy of the scientist. scientific findings are only called into question by other scientific findings

 

[Epmd607]

Many of the experiments that are set up to test things are done as if you can set up some sort of "control" experiment that's reproducible and it doesn't work that way. Circumstances have to be specific to an individual.

If watched some episodes of "America's Psychic Challenge" and a few things struck me. It was fun to watch, but here's an example. Jeff Baker. His test was to find a person in a large expanse of land and his only clue was he was given the kid's shirt. He took off at a run. Check it out if it's too long, timer 2:20.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar7hSf_zpBc

He didn't win the overall challenge because he was an empath and couldn't do psychometry or clairvoyance and was totally lost for most of it. But something here is where you get something on camera where you see how it might work.

Now I've met folks like this guy and I'm a bit like this guy. So I have no problem believing it. And really the only way to dismiss it is to assume he cheated.

For me there's no reason to "explain" how I wake up out of a dead sleep and know there's a phone call coming, a bad one, a few seconds before it does.

But experience enough stuff like that and there's no question of fraud or cheating, there's just a question of "why" - which I don't know.

I do know that most of the tests are entirely bogus and have nothing to do with any of the things that trigger insight.

In this "America's Psychic Challenge" series they also had a test where the psychics were supposed to match dogs to their owners. Seriously, what the fuck? I could see other people with talents saying "Um, it doesn't work that way." Which is what I would have said. But then there's always some dumbass trying to puppy whisper and making a crayon-scribbled moron of themselves. Those folks to me, scream fraud. And they're largely responsible for the overall sense of "omnipotence" of these abilities. They're fallible, they're frail and they're not the ironclad guarantee. They can however make a huge difference in a crisis.

It indicates a total lack of understanding how or why it works, and to use some sort of "scientific" setup that has zero to do with what might trigger something in an individual. I'm not clairvoyant. Hand me the hair brush of a murder victim and I'm going to brush my hair with it, while it might make someone else faint. How would you "test" me? "Here, we're going to torture your brother on the other side of the country, can you tell when we start?"

This stuff is unique to the individual, there is no "standard test" and science will fail to test "groups" when what's involved are individual and specific talents that belie any sense of "control" group.

I haven't seen the show, and I don't have to assume he cheated. A show like "America's Psychic Challenge" has to eventually show 'psychic' results or the show will get canceled. If you have a show about hunting ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, and have no ghosts, UFOs or Bigfoot 'evidence' to show, you have to make them up, whether unwittingly or by pure deception. Statistics is also pretty rough when you are dealing with probability theory within small groups.

Michael Shermer the super skeptic is in this video where Vedic Astrology apparently beats skepticism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N1d...340082017&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=8

...Just means his sample size is too small, or something simpler, every reading was absolutely generic.

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html This is James Randi's Million Dollar Challenge for psychics, clairvoyants, homeopaths -- pretty much any paranormal ability you believe you have can be tested for. You don't need a group of people if you believe you have an ability and can show you have an ability. But the proof of the ability is on you, you have to know what triggers your ability so an experiment can be done. A paranormal ability at the individual level still has to be repeatable for scientific analysis to deal with it.

 

[Epmd607]

ready to hear and think? think, deciding to lift your arm. lift your arm. there.

^^^ Dualism

"Interactionism is the view that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, causally interact with physical states. This is a position which is very appealing to common-sense intuitions, notwithstanding the fact that it is very difficult to establish its validity or correctness by way of logical argumentation or empirical proof. It seems to appeal to common-sense because we are surrounded by such everyday occurrences as a child's touching a hot stove (physical event) which causes him to feel pain (mental event) and then yell and scream (physical event) which causes his parents to experience a sensation of fear and protectiveness (mental event) and so on."

"Can People Really Influence the Physical World with Thought Alone?"

No. "Thought Alone" is a nonsensical statement when applied to "influen[cing] the physical world[.]"

Why? Because having a thought of moving an arm and actually moving an arm are two distinct thoughts. One involves the brain thinking, the second involves the brain/body unit thinking in accord to actually move that arm. As I've explained before, saying that there is a thought in the mind and because of that thought in the mind an arm moves on the body, you have the heart of Cartesian Dualism. The body is the thing that thinks and moves the arm, the brain/mind is the body is the arm is the leg. Thoughts unattributed to physical influence are different than what a body does when an arm is moved.

When a person feels mental stress they feel body stress, showing the mind/brain and body are one unit. Body pain and fatigue can be attributed to the stress of a divorce, or the death of a favorite pet. Ideas aren't things in heads, they occur in the brain-body-environment.

Infants flail their arms and legs, they have no muscle control and even if they had intellect it wouldn't matter, the muscle has to train, just like Jerry Garcia had to learn to play guitar again when he stopped for health reasons in the early 90s. His brain tried to tell his fingers how to play but the muscle memory was gone. Anyway, baby brains and muscles have to train together like Rocky and Apollo to be able to pick up that bottle and throw it at mom. The partnership doesn't cease when a baby can intellectualize the movement of an arm and decide whether they're going to throw the bottle or not. When they throw the bottle the brain/body throws the bottle. Ideas are never non-physical to begin with, but that's a different argument that Dr. M spoke about, but it doesn't matter because throwing itself is the idea which is thought by the brain and muscle and all the other moving parts.

 

[JackLuis]

I don't think I'm a Cartesian, but reading the definitions on the net, doesn't help much. They throw around a lot of shit I don't understand, actually.

Perhaps the goat died of boredom?

Back in '96 I had a stroke and found myself in bed, my eyes didn't line up and made binocular vision almost impossible. My balance was off and I had to use a cane to walk. Being Self-unemployed at the time meant that I had very little medical assistance. My Ophthalmologist gave me a Fresnel lens to make my eyes line up well enough I could use both eyes. I went to a Neurologist and he said after examining me, briefly, "Well you are either going to get better or Die, can't say which, or when." He also said he could send me out for an MRI but it wouldn't make any real difference.

SO for about six months I focused on the image of my brain as a damaged hard disk and tried to do what I could to to rewrite on undamaged portions what had been written on the lost parts of my brain. Soon I was able to get my eyes back together, my balance came back and my life became normal again.

Was my thought of internal healing a contributing factor? I like to think so but can't be sure. Possible my mind made some difference in my recovery?

"Not only is the Universe stranger than we imagine it to be,
It is stranger than we can imagine it to be."

I don't remember who said that, but I think it is true.

 

[Pure]

ep off in the bushes

[deleted. pointless to discuss 'interactionism']

 

[Recidiva]

I don't think I'm a Cartesian, but reading the definitions on the net, doesn't help much. They throw around a lot of shit I don't understand, actually.

Perhaps the goat died of boredom?

Back in '96 I had a stroke and found myself in bed, my eyes didn't line up and made binocular vision almost impossible. My balance was off and I had to use a cane to walk. Being Self-unemployed at the time meant that I had very little medical assistance. My Ophthalmologist gave me a Fresnel lens to make my eyes line up well enough I could use both eyes. I went to a Neurologist and he said after examining me, briefly, "Well you are either going to get better or Die, can't say which, or when." He also said he could send me out for an MRI but it wouldn't make any real difference.

SO for about six months I focused on the image of my brain as a damaged hard disk and tried to do what I could to to rewrite on undamaged portions what had been written on the lost parts of my brain. Soon I was able to get my eyes back together, my balance came back and my life became normal again.

Was my thought of internal healing a contributing factor? I like to think so but can't be sure. Possible my mind made some difference in my recovery?

"Not only is the Universe stranger than we imagine it to be,
It is stranger than we can imagine it to be."

I don't remember who said that, but I think it is true.

And that's the most powerful way I think the mind has of making change in the physical universe.

There are those who die because they give up or the way forward is too hard. There are those who live through the most horrific circumstances and manage to navigate broken dreams and broken situations and not break themselves.

To a certain extent you have to have stubbornness or faith or a plan to carry you through, and for that you need a mind.

I don't try to levitate pencils with it, for that I have hands. But I do try to focus on what it is that is the most efficient, most beneficial path, and if it's hard as hell, well, so be it.

 

[Epmd607]

And that's the most powerful way I think the mind has of making change in the physical universe.

There are those who die because they give up or the way forward is too hard. There are those who live through the most horrific circumstances and manage to navigate broken dreams and broken situations and not break themselves.

To a certain extent you have to have stubbornness or faith or a plan to carry you through, and for that you need a mind.

I don't try to levitate pencils with it, for that I have hands. But I do try to focus on what it is that is the most efficient, most beneficial path, and if it's hard as hell, well, so be it.

A mind/brain/body is a brilliant thing. Human beings can change their health, lifestyle, addiction based on sheer willpower.

 

[Epmd607]

[deleted. pointless to discuss 'interactionism']

Yeah I know, right? You said you weren't going to respond to me anyway, you just didn't have the willpower on those last couple posts. We can work on why your initial statement to the OP was wrong, at a snail's pace if you want. You don't have to defend it to the death. I would be pretty embarrassed if I were one of your teachers and I received that answer to such a very fantastic question. I'd give your paper a D--- (but only if you wrote your name right.)

Speaking of sexism, it's kind of sexist that you don't let Verdad ever debate the serious issues. You leave that to Pure, the manly intellectual and all your rambling cut and paste responses(which usually don't hit on any main points being made) I'd be mad at you if I were Verdad. Having her respond about my penis quality instead of the issues. Pure imagines, "This is how a female on a message board would respond to an argument over her head. Yes, she would talk about penis size in a very cutting and biting fashion and everyone will say, 'You go girl!'. Meanwhile I can appear and save Verdad's chastity, defending 18th century philosophy to the death."

I'm interested in educating you in philosophy. I'm sure most people haven't responded to the dualism point because they're not as familiar. However, I'm not sure you're even that familiar with 18th century dualism. Philosophy gets pretty interesting after the First World War, Freud goes crazy, the Analytics basically fall of the face of the Earth, Foucault appears! you love Foucault. We can go chapter by chapter in the Archaeology of Knowledge as an off-topic adventure.

How I responded to your first post wasn't snarky or rude. Your response to my response was uncalled for and you have to be re-educated. I'm sorry that you went to a crappy state U in the middle of nowhere North America, I can't change that; although, I might be able to alleviate your suffering like Jesus, and exorcise your poorly formed style of argumentation.

 

[Boota]

I've had dozens... hundreds, really... of experiences that can't be explained by the science I embrace. I'm a skeptic who knows something is out there and I would love to be able to find proof, or at least a reasonable explanation, as to the nature of these things. I've moved an object without physically touching it on one occasion, I've seen spirits my whole life, had very detailed premonitions that have come true (and none that haven't as of yet), and get feelings that have helped me immensely in real life situations. I'm an agnostic/Atheist and totally bound to science, but some things are just beyond the range of science. For a while yet.

 

[Recidiva]

I've had dozens... hundreds, really... of experiences that can't be explained by the science I embrace. I'm a skeptic who knows something is out there and I would love to be able to find proof, or at least a reasonable explanation, as to the nature of these things. I've moved an object without physically touching it on one occasion, I've seen spirits my whole life, had very detailed premonitions that have come true (and none that haven't as of yet), and get feelings that have helped me immensely in real life situations. I'm an agnostic/Atheist and totally bound to science, but some things are just beyond the range of science. For a while yet.

That's a bit of the boat I'm in. There's just stuff I can't explain but I feel no need to deny or minimize it's existence to make the data seem cleaner. That in itself is...unscientific.

I can't devise any method of proof, but I also don't toss out all anomalous data just because it doesn't seem to fit any model.

The world's just a more interesting place than I can explain, and that's cool with me. I prefer that to thinking I having it all figured out and being proven so very wrong on a regular basis.

 

[Epmd607]

That's a bit of the boat I'm in. There's just stuff I can't explain but I feel no need to deny or minimize it's existence to make the data seem cleaner. That in itself is...unscientific.

I can't devise any method of proof, but I also don't toss out all anomalous data just because it doesn't seem to fit any model.

The world's just a more interesting place than I can explain, and that's cool with me. I prefer that to thinking I having it all figured out and being proven so very wrong on a regular basis.

It doesn't have to fall into the world of scientific evidence to be of value to the world. People accept religion and that doesn't fall into the realm of scientific schemes and schemata. If it's of value to you and doesn't affect anyone else, what's the point of proving it to other people?

 

[Liar]

Why? Because having a thought of moving an arm and actually moving an arm are two distinct thoughts. One involves the brain thinking, the second involves the brain/body unit thinking in accord to actually move that arm. As I've explained before, saying that there is a thought in the mind and because of that thought in the mind an arm moves on the body, you have the heart of Cartesian Dualism. The body is the thing that thinks and moves the arm, the brain/mind is the body is the arm is the leg. Thoughts unattributed to physical influence are different than what a body does when an arm is moved.

My point exactly.

How does a computer move a robotic arm? Same thing. The computer's "toughts" have energy, and the right tiny burst of energy at the right place triggers a relay that in turn connects conductors of larger energy streams, that feeds power into the robotic arm's engines.

That's why there is no dualism. Because thoughts are energy and energy is mass. Thinking hard burns calories, fer chrissake. And energy and mass affects other energy and mass, through energy actuators, gears, levers and pulleys. That's how stuff that moves work. We're nothing but robots. Really, really awesome robots, but still.

 

[Liar]

That's a bit of the boat I'm in. There's just stuff I can't explain but I feel no need to deny or minimize it's existence to make the data seem cleaner. That in itself is...unscientific.

I can't devise any method of proof, but I also don't toss out all anomalous data just because it doesn't seem to fit any model.

The world's just a more interesting place than I can explain, and that's cool with me. I prefer that to thinking I having it all figured out and being proven so very wrong on a regular basis.

Denying the existance of stuff one can't explain is of course not scientific. If something is, it is. And an observation in itself is something that is.

The sensible approach is to figure out what it is. That means not ruling out possibilities.

But it also means not jumping to conclusions.

That's what I see time and again, in both believers and skeptics. The skeptic excludes the possibility of the fantastic, and the believer excludes the possibility of "hey, maybe I didn't see that ghost, maye I just had a brain fart". It's Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich all over again.

 

[jacks4u]

Anecdotal evidence and more questions

I haven't read the full thread, such long-winded posts seem to be the exception rather than the rule here in AH.

Our society has strong anecdotal evidence of mind-body interaction with such sayings as 'Worried sick' and the like.

But if we can 'make ourselves sick' as the idiom suggests, can we also 'make ourselves well'? I would argue that yes, Virginia we can in deed heal ourselves' in a limited way - Can't think about a broken bone being mended, and Tada! It's mended. But other things - Concentrated thought may heal damaged nerves over time, marshal defenses against a particular pathogen, virus or bacterium. This is not saying 'My mind killed the H1N1 virus that wanted to kick my ass' but rather 'My mind gave a pep talk to the Immune system and it did it's job better'

I know some here are going to chafe at the previous paragraph - 'where's my evidence?' My apologies, I have none other than personal experience.

But I'll end with another question - If we can make ourselves sick and heal ourselves, whats stopping us from never getting sick at all?


Jacks

 

[Recidiva]

Denying the existance of stuff one can't explain is of course not scientific. If something is, it is. And an observation in itself is something that is.

The sensible approach is to figure out what it is. That means not ruling out possibilities.

But it also means not jumping to conclusions.

That's what I see time and again, in both believers and skeptics. The skeptic excludes the possibility of the fantastic, and the believer excludes the possibility of "hey, maybe I didn't see that ghost, maye I just had a brain fart". It's Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich all over again.

This is true. There's no way to convince a skeptic that something is real and not faked. There's no way to convince a true believer that there's another explanation. I think both approaches are subject to coming to incorrect conclusions.

I haven't come to any conclusion, I just haven't tossed out or included data I don't think are relevant.

 

[Recidiva]

I haven't read the full thread, such long-winded posts seem to be the exception rather than the rule here in AH.

Our society has strong anecdotal evidence of mind-body interaction with such sayings as 'Worried sick' and the like.

But if we can 'make ourselves sick' as the idiom suggests, can we also 'make ourselves well'? I would argue that yes, Virginia we can in deed heal ourselves' in a limited way - Can't think about a broken bone being mended, and Tada! It's mended. But other things - Concentrated thought may heal damaged nerves over time, marshal defenses against a particular pathogen, virus or bacterium. This is not saying 'My mind killed the H1N1 virus that wanted to kick my ass' but rather 'My mind gave a pep talk to the Immune system and it did it's job better'

I know some here are going to chafe at the previous paragraph - 'where's my evidence?' My apologies, I have none other than personal experience.

But I'll end with another question - If we can make ourselves sick and heal ourselves, whats stopping us from never getting sick at all?

Jacks

It's possible for attitude and lifestyle and otherwise to affect how ill you get. Take stress making you sleepless. It's the stress that leads to sleeplessness, but the lack of sleep itself, a physical process, that causes an illness.

So again, choices that change your course emotionally can lead to changing your physical situations.

But "a positive attitude" in my experience can also lead to complacency and unwillingness to be responsible for or confront what a disease really entails. It's really not necessarily a good tool unless used wisely.

You need an attitude that's directed toward solving problems and overcoming difficulties, as well as an understanding of what's actually going wrong, physical or endocrine or viral or bacterial process, and then some sort of plan to handle it.

If you're lucky enough to have the perfect physique that never gets ill, I would say that has much more to do with genetics than attitude.

If positive attitudes affected illness so much, we wouldn't have doctors at all, we'd only need the candy stripers.

Morale is awesome in giving someone the will to combat or endure illness, but it doesn't cure the disease itself. It's a gas that keeps someone with a chance at recovery going, but someone with a busted motor isn't going to benefit no matter how much gas they have in the tank.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Many of the experiments that are set up to test things are done as if you can set up some sort of "control" experiment that's reproducible and it doesn't work that way. Circumstances have to be specific to an individual.

If watched some episodes of "America's Psychic Challenge" and a few things struck me. It was fun to watch, but here's an example. Jeff Baker. His test was to find a person in a large expanse of land and his only clue was he was given the kid's shirt. He took off at a run. Check it out if it's too long, timer 2:20.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar7hSf_zpBc

He didn't win the overall challenge because he was an empath and couldn't do psychometry or clairvoyance and was totally lost for most of it. But something here is where you get something on camera where you see how it might work.

Now I've met folks like this guy and I'm a bit like this guy. So I have no problem believing it. And really the only way to dismiss it is to assume he cheated.

For me there's no reason to "explain" how I wake up out of a dead sleep and know there's a phone call coming, a bad one, a few seconds before it does.

But experience enough stuff like that and there's no question of fraud or cheating, there's just a question of "why" - which I don't know.

I do know that most of the tests are entirely bogus and have nothing to do with any of the things that trigger insight.

In this "America's Psychic Challenge" series they also had a test where the psychics were supposed to match dogs to their owners. Seriously, what the fuck? I could see other people with talents saying "Um, it doesn't work that way." Which is what I would have said. But then there's always some dumbass trying to puppy whisper and making a crayon-scribbled moron of themselves. Those folks to me, scream fraud. And they're largely responsible for the overall sense of "omnipotence" of these abilities. They're fallible, they're frail and they're not the ironclad guarantee. They can however make a huge difference in a crisis.

It indicates a total lack of understanding how or why it works, and to use some sort of "scientific" setup that has zero to do with what might trigger something in an individual. I'm not clairvoyant. Hand me the hair brush of a murder victim and I'm going to brush my hair with it, while it might make someone else faint. How would you "test" me? "Here, we're going to torture your brother on the other side of the country, can you tell when we start?"

This stuff is unique to the individual, there is no "standard test" and science will fail to test "groups" when what's involved are individual and specific talents that belie any sense of "control" group.

Well, here's the thing: the test of science is reproducability. If an experiment can't be reproduced, than obviously some critical variables are not understood and therefore the process isn't understood.

The problem with unreproducible psi experiments is: if they can't be reproduced, or if the psychic himself doesn't know when he's able to reproduce the correct conditions for psi to work, then what good it is psi at all? How does he know his prediction will be accurate (conditions are right) or inaccurate (conditions are wrong) if he himself doesn't know what the necessary conditions are? He can't, and so it's all just a guessing game.

But you're probably going to say something like: "Well, I can tell when the information I'm getting through psi is accurate or not. I know when I wake up in the middle of the night knowing the phone's going to ring, it's really going to ring."

Fine, then. That's a testable situation. The way I'd test you would be to monitor your sleep for a couple months and record all the times you wake up expecting a phone call, and recording how many times you were right. That's scientific, and it even would allow you to assign a confidence level to your predictions: "I'm kind of certain someone will call", "I'm dead certain someone will call", "I just got up to go to the bathroom."

The problem is, they have done experiments like this, allowing the psychic to only pick those cases in which his confidence of being right was high, and still the results are no better than random.

In other words, not even the psychic himself knows when the conditions are right.

If you have a tool and not even the user knows whether it's going to work or not, you don't have a very useful tool. The success of the whole operation in that case becomes a matter of happenstance, which means it's a matter of chance, which means it's entirely random.