observations, anecdotal evidence and common beliefs are fine reasons to build and test hypotheses.

pulling them out of thin air is not. That was my point.

your explanation of the pattern is also just a story. Could easily be explained by materialism of science. Doesn't change the fact that 55% of them believe it's possible or already proven. Not only this, but the numbers have increased over time. wanna explain that?

if it weren't so well maintained, id say its a rock formation.

but it's so well maintained!

Wishful thinking explains it better and comports far better with what we know about the universe (and our species).

And until we see a solid experiment demonstrating psi (an experiment with goalposts that don't move during the game, among other things), the same is true of it.

I agree the meaning of the pattern isn't proved. It's a guess — and not one I'm trying to publish, nor one I'm suggesting should form the basis for other people's research efforts.

Observations are reasons to test hypotheses. Pity Bem didn't do that in a rigorous manner.

Common beliefs are emphatically not a reason to bother testing anything.

Re your edit:
iirc about 50% of hard scientists believe in god, for which there is not a single shred of credible evidence that isn't explained far better inside our current understanding of the universe. To me, this demonstrates quite dramatically that the fact that educated people believe something (particularly something outside their field of study) not only does not mean it is true, it doesn't even prove that there is any sensible reason to believe it.

wishful thinking doesn't explain why the caravan arrived with the specific descriptions weeks later. It also doesn't explain why he was so willing to stick his neck out and make that prediction. There also was nothing wishful about it, people didn't believe him at the time.

also, what we know about the universe says we don't know ****.

care to explain, in as much detail as possible, why bem did a poor job, and show me how those result in the reliability of the data to be lowered significantly enough that we can no longer make conclusions based on the data. No hand-waving arguments please.

I also thinking that accepting the null-hypothesis that god doesn't exist is borderline idiotic. Your argument is absed on that assumption and I refuse to give it credit as a valid one because of that. Also saying there is no sensible reason to believe in it is ridiculous. What you mean to say is that you don't know of a sensible reason to believe in it. completely different, bringing us back to the issue of science and scientism.


analogies are a stupid way to argue. I gave hard data, logical arguments all public domain, and avoided using my own experience to make my case. So do me the courtesy of at least referring to those when making your case.

I do not care to go into detail because I think others have done an adequate job of that. Roughly, he did a poor job (assuming arguendo that he wanted to conduct a rigorous test, which I frankly doubt but I'll pretend) by conducting experiments without unambiguously stating testing parameters (including null hypotheses) before commencing and by changing methodologies during his tests, and by conducting multiple variations on the experiment rather than simply doing a maximum (given his resources) number of trials of whatever he thought his single best experiment was.

no, no one did. not even close


and you hand-wave again.

Look more into it here: http://www.godandscience.org/

What do you think now?

I think this is a site trying to refute a non-argument to begin with. Who cares if christianity or islam are right or contradictory. Says nothing about the existence of a god. I find it funny that you accept this BS as proof yet you consider evidence for psi to be flawed

I think most religions are BS. They provide no testable hypotheses and consistently contradict themselves. that's enough to make me not belive in them. It doesn't make me believe that god doesn't exist. Atheism is just as much of a religion.

but this doesn't entirely apply to Buddhism imo

You were doing so well until the part about atheism — but we're already off into RGT territory as it is.

You're right about testable hypotheses; at least some psi claims are testable, so in that sense they're pretty far ahead of religion.

Not it isn't. At all. It is the only rational position.

Not the point of this thread or forum, but you're wrong. and no, I don't want to discuss it or listen to your arguments.

annoying, isn't it

Nope not at all. Have at it. I am enjoying the lols.

lol away

how about this one? Interested to hear the critiques for this. (The Journal of Statistics Education is a double-blind peer-reviewed[1] scientific journal established in 1993, wiki)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/47665473/G...cel-and-Nelson

is this the 4+ z-score TC was asking for? as you see, it's easy to do with non-living systems.


emphasis on operational. This is mindblowing stuff. And the idea behind the design is absolutely ingenious. It's really a shame people dismiss these as non-existent without even reading them

This got me thinking about a tangential issue: Why are pixels effectively rectilinear? Do any imaging systems array receptors hexagonally, and/or do any displays use hexagonal pixels? Symmetrical hexagons have a clear theoretical advantage; I'm guessing that in the past there were practical reasons for horizontal/vertical displays but I wonder whether whatever the reasons are still control, or whether it's just design inertia at work.

looks like a walmart

They aren't always, but it does make the math easier, and display/sensor engineering easier.

Remember CRTs? Most of them use round phospor dots, for one example. And they're arranged in the efficient way you speak of, like hexagons would be, not in a straight grid.

For other examples see here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel

Is it really rectilinear? Looks like arrow-shaped to me

I agree it's BS. The difference between us is that I count ESP as very likely BS too, and probably rightfully so. Probably you are eager to accept things without good proof a bit too lightly for a scientific mind. But if you know that, it's OK. A scientific mind is about believing in proven things. All other things are hypotheses to be tested. And the proven things have also to be tested again at times. And they have to stand up for the test. You shouldn't talk with such confidence about ESP, because it isn't proven enough. If you want to be scientific, I mean. And we mainly try to be that in this forum.

Can you see the possibility you are wrong about that ESP exists? Are you willing to look at that possibility seriously?

ESP is testable. religion isn't. period

you have the right to consider whatever you want BS. not arguing with that

desperad0oo7: Could you also give an answer to this question? Please.

I skimmed thread, but this wouldn't be the first time very smart, qualified people made very subtle statistical mistakes. The first example I know of that was extremely important was Cowles-Jones, a paper that stood as ground breaking for 23 years until one of the authors realized a crucial mistake that is very subtle.

The cliff notes of the article is that the authors thought they found stocks were slightly more likely to increase over a given time step than to decrease, or something to that effect. Their statistics seems really solid, except for the fact that they made a subtle sampling mistake which caused the bias.

The point is that when you see slightly correlations in statistics, even honest, smart, experienced people can make very subtle mistakes that are hard to see.

I think the possibility that what we're seeing is not ESP is a possibility but it's a small one. I think the possibility that that nothing is going on and it's just chance is less than 1 in a million. The possibility that it's an physical artifact from the system is a minute one as well. Another possiblity is that Bem is psychic and non of the people he tested are. we can reject that possibility and any other accusations with upcoming metanalysis of confirmatory studies. Odds are though, we're looking at psi. The sooner you accept that as a distinct possibility the less hurt you'll be when it's proven. This study is an obvious beginning to an end for denialism. psi should have been accepted as a fact a long time ago.