Is There Any Evidence For Any Psychic Phenomena?

[desiresjab]

Some of the items on your list I agree with you don't exist. Time Travel is one of them. There are things I consider inanely supernatural that some people who call themselves "scientists" believe in. Many Worlds would be one of them.

The word "supernatural" assumes we agree on what "natural" means. Radin's bibliography, that I linked to earlier: http://deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm, is not about the "supernatural". He would probably call it "supernormal" since that is the title of one of his books.

You don't have to read all the items in the bibliography. Pick one. I'll read it as well and we can discuss it.

That is all right. You and I do not have to play the definition game here. We both have strong understandings of what the other means by supernatural or super normal. It is best to limit the word games to take a serious look at these tough to analyze phenomena.

Putting trust in the numbers outputted is a tough one, because you also have to have some trust in the methods and corrections used to derive the values. To invent a category like Effect Size for Non Contact Therapeutic Touch, and to retain some kind of faith in the manipulated value down the line, takes a real creature of faith, not science, perhaps.

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In any case, here is the truth of it. The results are always borderline, never a smashing success that will convert throngs of skeptics once it is out. The results suggest more and better designed experiments might be a worthy enterprise for future researchers, they do not prove a thing, and only barely are strong enough to keep a discussion going.

Any alert follower is aware that these forces must be awfully weak, that is minute, in the human frame of experience. A person praying full time is not known to get results any different from the one praying only on his lunch break. That is a bet I would love to get a piece of. And I know there are plenty of deniers around who would bet on what they want to be true rather than what they suspect is true.

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I have not worked on any such studies, so I do not know the mechanics from the inside. What I suspect is one makes some awesome leaps of faith in assigning certain initial values in such a system. If a person wants to play word games in mathematics, statistics is the place to do it. The same techniques work exquisitely well when sampling products off an assembly line at random for testing. But these are not light bulbs but people and their consciousnesses in all their complexity. I would have great trouble putting faith in any statistical study of these matters. There are too many unknowns not represented in the equations. I would have to follow the study from beginning to end myself and participate in it it actively.

With any study of this complexity, fault could always be found.

The thing is, there is no study in all these links that converts anyone I can think of on the spot. If there are results that strong, I missed them. They all suggest more study might be in order or show positive results so small as to suggest that some other factor the experimenters have not considered may well be at work.

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Still--someone arguing for the results will say--the results are positive, and by the rules of the game agreed on large enough to be considered significant.

Fine, I say, for light bulbs.

[YesNo]

What people find credible, I believe, is based on something called social mood as defined by socionomics. All positions are “borderline” to someone until that someone under the influence of social mood gets that aha feeling and chooses to believe or disbelieve in them. It doesn’t matter if it is Uri Geller’s remote viewing or time travel or belief in the existence of deterministic laws of nature or the existence of social mood itself.

As a species we have hundred of millions, if not billions, of years left to get all this right. We might as well enjoy that part of the journey, called “now”, that we are given.

[YesNo]

My daughter showed me a video of a time traveler yesterday which I will share below. I recall that time travel is supposedly justified by Einstein's general relativity, but I don't know how. I found, with a quick search, this article which said it had something to do with "wormholes": http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=131 That doesn't help much. I figure if Einstein's theory leads logically to time travel it should be replaced by a theory that is more rational.

Here's the video which also makes me question if there is any evidence for whatever the latest food fad is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA

[desiresjab]

What does Randi have to say about Edgar Cayce?

[Danik 2016]

My daughter showed me a video of a time traveler yesterday which I will share below. I recall that time travel is supposedly justified by Einstein's general relativity, but I don't know how. I found, with a quick search, this article which said it had something to do with "wormholes": http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=131 That doesn't help much. I figure if Einstein's theory leads logically to time travel it should be replaced by a theory that is more rational.

Here's the video which also makes me question if there is any evidence for whatever the latest food fad is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA

I´m not following your discussion but I enjoyed the video. I thought the husband would collar the time traveler out of the house to be able to eat in peace.

[YesNo]

I was puzzled by what the husband was doing at the end when he left. Perhaps he needed to get out of the way so the time traveler could have some breakfast? He did have that stereotypical male bored look throughout which I thought was humorous.

[YesNo]

One topic on the list, unlike time travel, that I think has some validity is "kirilian photography": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography As a photographic technique there can be nothing wrong with it. However, it starts becoming questionable when one associates it with “auras”. Seeing auras is not difficult. The following video shows you how to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYlb_XtNP7c



I’ve even taken a spoon and held it against a light colored wall and saw its aura. Even non-animate objects have an aura.

I don’t think auras are supernatural, nor are they even supernormal. We don't normally see them because we aren't looking for them.

[Danik 2016]

I was puzzled by what the husband was doing at the end when he left. Perhaps he needed to get out of the way so the time traveler could have some breakfast? He did have that stereotypical male bored look throughout which I thought was humorous.

Me too. But I didn´t understand the end so well.