Path: killer!cuae2!ihnp4!spdcc!m2c!ulowell!rwhite From: rwhite@nu3b2.UUCP (Robert C. White Jr.) Newsgroups: misc.psi Subject: Re: The Nature of Reality Summary: .... And the problem is!?! .... Keywords: repeatable science Message-ID: <1553@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> Date: 23 Jul 87 16:13:40 GMT References: <1518@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> <1501@bellcore.bellcore.com> <1546@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> Sender: nntp@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu Reply-To: rwhite@nu3b2.UUCP Organization: National University, San Diego Lines: 54 Approved: rickheit@ulowell.UUCP [] A centroid issue in all the science vs. psience is the repeatability problem, at least we all seem to think so. I am a great fan of science and beleive in it's scope and reach, however, (-: and oddly there always seemes to be a however :-) the scientific method is as totaliltarian as the belief sets it was intended to supplant. Sci vs. Psi can be reduced to a simple issue: In science EVERYONE should be able to repeat EVERY result with exactly the same results. If ten people get the same results, but the eleventh can not, and it can be shown that the eleventh did NOT make any mistakes, the finding is left in "question" until such time as the "missing variable" can be accounted for. Psi is exclusionary. The ultimate impartiality of the scientific method is absent. While all the "practitioners" of this[these] skill[s] claim that just about everyone has an equal potental to perform, many never can or will. Just like the equalities [racial, ethnic, sexual, moral, etc ad infinitum], no matter how you legislate, study, and propagandize, the "do" and the "not do" of it all rests squarely on the head of the individual who is doing the "do" and "not do". As with the equalities, their absence or abuse reviles the excluded and those others who work towards these ends. The problem is that there will always be those who can not "do" and unlike the socal truths these abilities SIMPLY CAN'T BE legislated or harrassed into a "fair" state. The distributions are, by nature, somewhat random and hard to quantify. It is this violation of everyones sense of what is fair and just that rallies the opponents of the "reality" of psi. "If you can't make me able to do it, or at least do it on command so that I can take an absolute measurement of it's potential [danger?] I will not cede it's existance." This is a relatively effective method of blocking the phenomena [or perception thereof] from general acceptance. It is odd, an somewhat axiomiatic, that the conties that do not practice and demand the social equalities recognize [somewhat] the validity of the psi event. [i.e. the phenomia is studied in Russia and some similar circumstances. This is not necessarily an insult, the Russian studies could just be a bit of featherbedding by some professionals.] I just thought I would point out the "social reality" that is part of the foundation of the scientific method. I like and appricate science in general but I find the "I have seen sufficient proof and I am now a true believer, so you can discount my findings as biased" attitude a little trying sometimes. Robert. Disclaimer: My mind is so fragmented by random excursions into a wilderness of abstractions and incipient ideas that the practical purposes of the moment are often submerged in my consciousness and I don't know what I'm doing. [my employers certainly have no idea] Path: killer!cuae2!ihnp4!spdcc!m2c!ulowell!Elisabeth From: sunybcs!ugcuddih@rutgers.edu (Elisabeth Cuddihy) Newsgroups: misc.psi Subject: Re: Pre-cog Keywords: de ja vous, pre-cog Message-ID: <1558@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> Date: 24 Jul 87 05:33:34 GMT References: <1521@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> Sender: nntp@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu Reply-To: Elisabeth Cuddihy Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science Lines: 17 Approved: rickheit@ulowell.UUCP [] Pre-cog happens to me at the most unnoticable times in easily forgotten ways -- a good and reccuring example: often when I am really in the mood to phone some one but I don't really want to pay the cost of AT&T's long distance rates, I will often get a call from that very person within a few minutes. It seems as if i know they are thinking of calling me and looking around for my phone number and during that time I interperet my anticipation (pre-cog) of the call as me wanting to talk to that person. As for deja vous (sp?!?!), I have to keep checking my watch (giving time, day, and date) all the time just to make sure that I am HERE NOW when suddenly things resemble some timeless (timeless == I just can't place the time) THERE THEN. Elisabeth Cuddihy --- SUNY @ Buffalo Computer Science undergraduate Internet: ugcuddih@cs.Buffalo.EDU Bitnet: ugcuddih@sunybcs.BITNET Path: killer!cuae2!ihnp4!ptsfa!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!husc6!spdcc!m2c!ulowell!Fred From: mcvax!tcom.stc.co.uk!th@seismo.css.gov (Fred Flintstone) Newsgroups: misc.psi Subject: deja vu Message-ID: <1569@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> Date: 27 Jul 87 22:34:50 GMT Sender: nntp@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu Reply-To: mcvax!tcom.stc.co.uk!th@seismo.css.gov Organization: STC Telecoms, London N11 1HB. Lines: 13 Approved: rickheit@ulowell.UUCP [] The deja vu's I've read here all seem to last over a minute. I only get a very strong feeling that I've been there before or I've seen it in a dream. When I try to remember the dream and predict what happens next, nothing happens. They only seem to last 10-15 seconds. What can I do? It is so frustrating !!!! Tony H. Path: killer!pollux!infotel!ut-ngp!ut-sally!husc6!spdcc!m2c!ulowell!MacLeod From: harvard!ames!drivax!macleod@wanginst (MacLeod) Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage,misc.psi Subject: Telepath explains all - film at 11 Message-ID: <1571@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> Date: 29 Jul 87 17:40:06 GMT Sender: nntp@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu Reply-To: macleod@drivax.UUCP (MacLeod) Organization: Digital Research, Monterey, CA Lines: 71 Approved: rickheit@ulowell.UUCP Xref: killer talk.religion.newage:704 misc.psi:70 [] David Kirsten writes: >So, to those of you who have asked me to deliver > physcial proof of the existance of psychic phenomena, all I can >truly say is, that if you want it, you'll have to be the one to create it. >If you are supposedly really looking for proof, and yet not finding any, >then you don't REALLY want to find it. If you REALLY want to find it, >just head on down to the Berkeley Psychic Institute in Berkeley, CA, >and enroll in their classes, or ask for a psychic reading. When you're >prepared to believe, you will receive. The traditional "scientific" attitude >of: "Show me proof, then I'll believe" will only ever confirm what you >already believe, or hold within the realm of possibility and probability. >If you were TRULY scientific, you would approach ALL of life with the >attitude: "I'm prepared to believe that anything is possible", and >"I realize that the only limits are my own beliefs". I am going to come out of the closet here and wreck the remnants of my reputation by identifiying myself as a telepath and speaking out about it. Unfortunately, my experience of telepathy is pretty mundane and has nothing to do with David's postulates as stated above. For as far back as I can remember I have experienced several forms of telepathic phenomena. In all of these cases, the most important fact is that for a good part of my life, and even today, occaisionally, I >never noticed< that I was literally hearing or seeing people's thoughts. In >my< experience, I do not "hear" somebody's thoughts as if I picked up a telephone and perceived the tinny sound of another voice. Rather, I have a thought - seemingly, as I think it, like any other - but if I look back at it I will notice that it has a slightly different "signature" than one of my thoughts. It will be outside the cause-and-effect thoughtflow that burbles along in Western man so effusively. Sometimes it is so jarring that it's immediately obvious, but that is rare. And sometimes I will see a visual image from another, such as the time I asked a friend what she did on her vacation, and immediately saw her waterskiing on Lake Mead, as she proceeded to tell me about waterskiiing on Lake Mead. This phenomena is much more pronounced if I have a great deal of affinity for another. I have a friend, a powerful telepath, with whom I can >reliably< send and receive visual images, and I often detect it when she is thinking about me. On another occaision, I worked with another technical writer who knew far less about the software we were documenting, and who asked me periodic questions. I would be lost in thought, and he would say, "Mike?" and I would hear him frame the question in his own mind, and I would answer it as if I had heard him speak. And I had - in my own mind. What was amazing was that this continued for several weeks, on and off, before he realized that I was answering questions before he asked them. I was absorbed in my work and oblivious to the whole thing. Usually, when I'm explaing all this to others, they say at this point, "But I do that too..I know when my wife wants me to call her before I get home, or what my girlfriend is going to say while she's watching the news..." This is my point exactly. Telepathy is everywhere. What is not everywhere is wierd, off-the-wall psionic abilities that science fiction novels have conditioned us to pine for. The truth is that telepathy is common, natural, useful, and pleasant; it is also a threshold phenomena, and if you are taught to ignore your feelings, intuitions, "odd thoughts", hunches, and so on, you will throw the signal - real telepathy - out with the noise (random junk). Of course, in our civilization we are taught to toss out all that, and to that extent, I agree with David. If you believe that heavy metal music is not music but just noise and you hear it you won't detect music in it. If things are going badly in my life this faculty shuts down immediately. I have gone for months without beging aware of picking up any thoughts from my environment. And I can't reproduce results on demand, like a trained seal, or I'd march into laboratories and announce that their classic subject had arrived (although Ingo Swann can and does manipulate EM fields at a distance). >I< know what I see and hear. Path: killer!cuae2!ihnp4!ptsfa!ames!ll-xn!husc6!bu-cs!m2c!ulowell!Bruce From: steinmetz!barnett@vdsvax (Bruce G Barnett) Newsgroups: misc.psi Subject: Current Doings in Parapsychology Message-ID: <1573@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> Date: 30 Jul 87 18:16:20 GMT Sender: nntp@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu Reply-To: Bruce G Barnett Organization: Wizards, Inc. Lines: 104 Approved: rickheit@ulowell.UUCP [] I attended a rather specialized convention, and one of the speakers was George Hansen of the Psychophysical Research Laboratory He gave a talk on the `Current doings in Parapsychology'. I thought the readers of misc.psi would be interested in some of my notes. Please excuse the errors. This is all second hand knowledge, and I am not current in the field. If you have any corrections or additions, I would like to have them. Current labs doing research are: PRL ( Parapsychological Research Lab), PEAR (Princeton Anomaly Research) SRI International, FRRM ( Foundation for the Research of the Mind), (Formerly the Rhine Institute) The Mind Science Foundation, SURT (Science and Research Foundation). The basic divisions of Parapsychological are, in George's view: ESP Forced Choice ( 1 of n) Free Choice (e.g Remote Viewing, etc.) PK Macro (PK) Micro ( Only noticeable with statistical analysis) (Usually using random number generators) Most of the results are in the `micro' category, where the results are better than chance. Example of good ESP is 71 out of 3000 right, when it should be 17. Some people can produce good results in a repeatable nature. They often use a special board with random numbers generated with radioactive decay. These boards are plugged into an Apple II, and generate TRUE random numbers. They also analyze the numbers to make sure they are random before they use them. They use computer games as a way of measuring ESP. Anyone who can improve their chances of winning is psychic. They have determined that certain states are bad for ESP. Anxiety and nervousness worsen people's ability. The personality profile of people who do well in tests are extroverts, people who have had psychic experiences, people who meditate, or take self-development courses. People who use feeling instead of thinking. The two people who have theories on ESP (based on Quantum Mechanics) are Evan Harris Walker and Helmutt Schmitt. The researchers have learned a lot in the last few years on detecting cheats. First of all, all questions on how the tests will be done are specified in advance. The number of trials, the questions, etc. They also start measuring the psychics with very loose procedures, in order to gain the confidence, relax, etc. the psychic. Then they tighten the controls and see if the effect is still present. Good books to read are `ESP: the new technology' by Dan Cohen, and another book by Susan Blackwood - a discouraged former researcher. Another good Pro-ESP book is `Foundation of Parapsychology: Exploring the Boundaries of the Human Condition' edited by Hoyt L. Edge, Robert L. Morris, John Palmer and Joseph H. Rush ($22.50). Good journals are Parapsychological Review. Parapsychology Foundation Inc, 228 East 71st St. New York, NY 10021 $9 for 6 issues Journal of Parapsychology Parapsychological Press Foundation for the Research of the Nature of Man College Station Durham, NC 27708 $20 for 4 issues Journal of the American Society for Psychological Research American Society for Psychical Research, Inc. 5 West 73rd St. New York, NY 10023 $20 for 4 issues The most impressive results have been (according to George) the Gansfield experiments. Notable researchers in the field are: Robert Jahn (Princeton U) Ian Stevens (Reincarnation) Karliss Ossis (Hauntings) Bill Roll (Poltergeist) Dr. Harvelick (Dowsing) -- Bruce G. Barnett barnett@ge-crd.ARPA, barnett@steinmetz.UUCP, uunet!steinmetz!barnett