There is nothing in the known laws of nature that supports psychic phenomena, as I'm aware of. And no solid proof of it happening.

So: you have no scientific theory that supports psychic phenomena and you don't have any experimental proof either. Why then believe in it? The experiment designed should have to be very very convincing. When I think about it: even if I could get the medium to levitate after my death, people could say I have nothing to do with it, it was just a coincidence or who knows what!

There is actually. you're just not researching it and making blinds assumptions.


Anyway, lack of laws that support a theory/phenomenon means nothing.

Especially so when Einstein himself thought ESP warrants further scientific investigation.



so? can you prove me wrong? it's called a hypothesis genius and you can go with the null hypothesis if that strikes your fancy, or lack of fantasy if you may. A negative result is not going to mean anything anyway, just like in many science experiments.

You are assuming there is life after death.

Or existence, to narrow it down. Cogito ergo sum beyond the grave . This thread needs that assumption, even if it (probably) is wrong.

Akileos, I just noticed you edited out the snarky part of your comment. I would edit mine out but it's too late.

Snark has its place, but I thought this time it undermined my position.

Now, I am not a scientist, but it is my understanding that, in order to conduct an experiment that will test whether a medium can talk to spirits, the existence of such spirits must be independently established.

Negative results mean something.

no

We're not trying to debunk the medium. We're trying to set up the conditions that would facilitate a communication IF we existed one way or another after death and IF the medium was able to communicate.

Failure to prove anything could be because there is nothing after death, the medium sucks, no one is a medium, the experiment is not designed well or that on that day it just didn't work. You can make absolutely nothing out of a negative result. What you are looking for is a positive hit.


As I said, these type of experiments are all over science.

anyway, whoever moved this thread clearly is close minded and has no clue because this is clearly is a science thread.

They do. If you test something, and it doesn't go as you expected, you have learned something. It's a piece in the jigsaw. Evidence mounts up. Negative results should be published more.

When not one of all the psychic test made in history have given convincing results, it's starting to tell something. Not the absolute truth, but something. Please don't say anymore itt that negative results don't tell anything at all.

not always plaaynde. In biology for instance, coimmunopercipitations mean nothing if you don't get a positive result because it could be that the proteins are not interacting, sure, but it also could be that they are interacting but your experimental conditions failed to preserve that interaction. you learn absolutely nothing which is why these type of experiments have to be designed and carried out very carefully.

not all negative results are created equal. see my above edit.


again playnndee, many, many many psychic tests have given extremely convincing results but again, you are not researching it. You're just assuming they haven't because you assume that if they did you'd hear about it. The sad thing is, that is not really the case. In bio you get great results, you publish. in paraspsychology you get great results your integrity comes into question. The sad thing is that many of the ad hominem arguments made against parascyhology research could easily be aplied to 95% of the biology papers in nature every year but they aren't because it would be ******ed to make them. but parapsychologists are fair game.

fwiw, there was a paper by targ and puthoff in nature somewhere around 1978 that should set you off nicely if you want to learn. but if you do want to learn of these you have to make the distinction between debunking and skepticism.

You at least learn how possibly not to design the experiment in the future. That's something. You narrow the subject down, even if failing. I would say that negative results more often than not tell you something. They are parts of the scientific process.

again, they may or may not. as I said, you aren't always sure that it's the experimental design. But I agree you do learn SOMETHING from negative results but that is mainly not about your question of interest and you probably should have thought about it before you started your experiment. Basically, if you start an experiment of this nature (where negative is meaningless) and then after you get a negative result you decide to modify it and repeat then it means that you have not thought it through the first time around. you haven't necessarily learned anything new. You just obtained more reason to think about the experiment now that it has failed.

There are of course experiments with proper controls in which a negative result is absolutely meaningful. AFAIK an experiment like the one ITT is not going to be like that though.

To come forward in the main question: do you have any suggestion how to do the experiment?

I don't have a suggestion, I have a primer though. I just didn't want to provide thoughts on how to design that experiment because I didn't want to influence anyone.

google hodini's after death experiment to get an idea of what a possible design might look like. The problem with his design (he got a positive result) is that he didn't control for things such as clairvoyance, precognition and telepathy. i.e. the medium could have learned the answer by seeing it in the envelope through clairvoyance, he could also have gotten it through precognition of the moment in the future where they looked into the envelope.


Fwiw, there is not doubt in my mind that psi exists. however, mediumship is a whole different area for me and I am very skeptical, hence the thread.

One of the hypotheses to build is how fast the contact to the dead person could be made. Maybe a couple of hours from the person being brain dead and forward? If one is religious, possible time elapsed before being "awakened" can complicate things. The medium may be dead for long when that happens. Is communication both from heaven and hell possible? What about the purgatory? If the soul goes into a cow, what then?

lol. ok, I don't believe in any of that even though it maybe true. (heaven, hell purgatory)

anyway, there is evidence that psi is not subject to time the way other things we do are. I also hope that we are not subject to time once we're dead, that would suck.

But that is a concern but I think in this experiment, such concerns that fall beyond the realm of our knowledge or control are in fact the reason why a negative result is meaningless so we don't have to worry about these issues when we're designing the experiment. Just focus on waht can be controlled.

If I had to choose a time though I think the best way is to ask the medium himself how long after death he thinks he can communicate. It is best to provide the medium with all he needs as long as it doesn't compromise the integrity of the experiment. Leave as little excuses as possible and avoid making them feel uncomfortable since that may influence their medium ability if it existed and as an objective skeptic your role is to provide all the suitable conditions to demonstrate that skill under controlled conditions, not to debunk it.

This is amazing. It's like daveT and splendour had a kid and fed it nothing but paint chips growing up.

ohh no TomCowley is opposing an idea that requires an open mind!! who would have thought.

you sir lack creativity and imagination. you must have a very interesting life. I am already very jealous.


Honestly, you are the epitome of the mediocre mind

Just be happy you are getting polite resistance and the vatican didn't send a team of thugs to harrass you.

I made it clear that I am not interested in proving/disproving psi. Just the design you would use if you were to test it. You don't have to believe in something to objectively test it. as a matter of fact, it's better if you didn't as long as you are objective.


also

[ ] polite resistance

I'm thinking in terms of having some random code seen by the person in the experiment, on his/her deathbed, not saying anything at all to anybody before the actual death. That code could be put into a vault, with all the security measures. Then the medium would make contact with that person after his/her death, and get the code, and its correctness could be verified by opening the vault.

The good thing with this solution is that the dead person only has to have the ability to communicate with the medium, not to look into vaults and envelopes by him-/herself. The downside is, that if the code is transferred telepathicly from the dying person to the medium, this experiment will not prove contact after death. Can anybody find a solution? This type of analysis of course is well suited for this thread, you can see it as a theoretical problem and don't have to believe in anything of this. I don't. But I would like to find out, as op, IF you can design an experiment under the premises given by op, that proves contact after death, if the result is positive.

well I think having a code lying around in a vault might be a flaw in design since the medium MIGHT be able to "see" it. so if we're trying to prove mediumship as opposed to other ESP phenomena we have to take care of that.

Another consideration is that the medium must not be shown the answer once the experiment is over to make sure he isn't looking into the future.

I can think of maybe a pool of mediums and maybe randomly select a few.

Another possibility is maybe establishing the secret code randomly after death but that's where I got stuck and decided to make the thread

how about having a code which only the dead person knows how to decipher with a key. The medium's sole responsibility is to obtain that key then someone else use it to crack the code and the resulting message should be something that, from the dead person's point of view, enough to prove that the message is from him and that the key was correct.

I also think that the mediums should be recruited and told about the experiment only after death occurs


The biggest problem I can think of now is what sort of key would be possible to communicate from beyond. perhaps something like a multiple choice ? the good thing about that is that we can quantify the probability of a hit due to random chance only

You could have the code in electronic form, and the dying could scramble it by pressing a button immediately after memorizing the code. It would be unreadable inside the vault even if the medium could look through walls. After the contact session, with the medium writing up the code according to the dead person's instructions, the code could be descrambled and compared.

But this problem might not be possible to solve. If telepathy exists, the medium could theoretically read the experiment person's mind at all times as an open book. Maybe we should think about the possibility to have the dead person to have some original idea AFTER the death, and proveably communicate that to the medium. But how could you do an identity verification?

yes, accessing the subject's mind through time right before he dies could be a problem.


hmmm

maybe keep the medium blind to the nature of the experiment?

how about, one medium sends a message after death, another retrieves it at a later date. neither of them knows about the other or the nature of the work. The problem with this is that now TWO medium communications have to occur, reducing the odds of a positive hit, if indeed mediumship was possible.

Dude, no one can do anything supernatural. If they can, its because they are either on tv, or you are being tricked.