[Jon Cleland Host]

 

Thanks, Michael! 

 

A lot of the stuff that Ursula and I thought was unhelpful had to do with making claims that go beyond the evidence, and with the use of reductionism as a reason to reject science.  Regarding reductionism, it’s important to be aware of the difference between methodological reductionism and ontological (or philosophical) reductionism.

 

Methodological reductionism (MR) is simply the use of a reductionist approach as a first line of investigating a problem. In other words, to say “*if* this thing were the sum of its parts, *how* could I test what those parts are and how they work?”   Most science uses methodological reductionism because it is helpful in finding experiments to better understand the subject being studied.  We all use it every day, or else we would not be able to function in our daily lives.  We all agree that it is useful, and has helped give the astounding success of science.

 

Philosophical reductionism  (PR) is the belief that things really are simply the sum of their parts.  That’s what Duane, and myself, and many others, disagree with.  We are on the same page there – we all agree that it is not valid to claim that everything is simply the sum of it’s smallest parts (atoms, quarks, etc.).

 

Where I’ve perceived a mismatch is when someone cites the fact that science uses methodological reductionism as proof that scientists are actually philosophical reductionists, and uses that to either reject science or to oppose science.  For instance, such an argument could go MR -> PR -> “scientists are unfairly biased against x idea” -> “x idea is actually true” .

 

If one is to object to reductionism, or accuse this or that person of being a reductionist, it could go a long way toward having a fruitful discussion to be clear about whether that “reductionism” is MR or PR.  

 

Equinox (Jon Cleland Host) 

 

 

 

[Jon Cleland Host]

Duane, that document makes many of the same failures to distinguish methodological naturalism from epistomological naturalism, referring to unproven stories as evidence, and false claims that many of us here have pointed out earlier in this thread. Further, it seems to suggest that having a list of Ph.D. signatories at the end shows that it is correct. That’s, of course, another tactic of pseudoscience. In this case, 8 scientists is a pretty small number, compared to the over 8 *million* scientists alive today. It’s less than the equally irrelevant lists of creationist scientists. This link here has about 200 https://answersingenesis.org/creation-scientists/modern/ . Project Steve shows why these lists, whether 8 or hundreds, are irrelevant. http://ncse.com/taking-action/project-steve

[Jon Cleland Host]

 

Jim-

 

       The ease at which quotes can be picked to give a false impression was also pointed out much earlier in this discussion.  I’ll look back and see if I find it.  

 

Thanks, Ursula, for re -posting that timely and relevant point about matter.

 

About the Gaia hypothesis – a friend recently blogged about this very point – that there are several different ideas that are commonly referred to as the Gaia hypothesis, and that they  range from solidly supported ideas to woo.  His very useful summary can be found here:  http://humanisticpaganism.com/2015/09/03/gaia-is-dead-long-live-gaia-by-bart-everson/

 

Best to all-  Jon

 

[Jon Cleland Host]

 

 

Ed-

 

   Thanks for all that, and for the interesting and productive conversation.  

You are indeed a builder of bridges.

I look forward to seeing what the future holds.

Best-

 

             -Jon

 

[Jon Cleland Host]

 

Ed-

Thanks for the clear and helpful response.  You wrote:

 

Thanks for replying, Jon. You’ve raised some questions that I can address.    ….. ….. I am only trying to justify the research topic itself. You are dismissing it as frivolous.

 

I’m not quite dismissing it as frivolous, but as an area that seems to have less promise than many other areas.  Granted,  that’s pretty close to frivolous – but I’m not saying that there can be nothing there, or that I know there is nothing there, or that the research has absolutely zero value.  Thanks for sticking with this to the point where we understand each other’s positions.  By the way, you’ve convinced me that your position is reasonable, even if I don’t share it.  That’s very different from my view of people who support pseudoscience.

 

Just to clarify, I am not trying to “prove” anything or justify beliefs or conclusions about anomalous mental phenomena –   ……So just to be clear, I am not making any claims. 

 

This too, is a big reason why you’ve convinced me to see your position as reasonable.

 

You say you need a “test for reasonableness”: ….To better explain my “test for reasonableness,” I subscribe to the following methodology which is not limited to the “either-or” choices you have given above:

 

 

Well, it’s hard to criticize a list as being too restrictive “either-or” when that list contains an option “other”.  That being said, isn’t your answer #3:  “Use some standard”, which is what you describe below?

 

 
1. Use personal experiences as inspiration for possible research topics, understanding that personal experiences are subject to bias and misinterpretation. ……
2. Review public literature for reports of similar experiences by others – is this an isolated phenomenon (12 alien babies) or a common one (seeing ghosts)? I realized that my anomalous experience was in fact very, very common. I reject “alien baby” outliers and stick with the highly robust reported phenomena that span across cultural, religious or philosophical boundaries.

 

But unreasonable things that you (I think) already reject are also very common.  For instance, I mentioned that 20% of people think that space aliens live among us disguised as humans.  There is widespread belief in the gambler’s fallacy (that a die which has not rolled a 6 in a while is “due” to come up 6 – more likely than 1 in 6) and many others.  It seems to me that #2 may give more credit (based on something being common) than “commonness” deserves.  At least some reason why some common things are rejected and other seen as “reasons to continue looking” seems to be needed here.  Oh, I do agree that cutting across those boundaries is useful (it eliminates my #5).  Your #2 above eliminates my #2.   : )

 

 

3. Review scientific publications for existing hypotheses, experimental data, etc. …… Consider as many possible interpretations as possible and assess the thoroughness of past research. ……

 

This seems very important.  It is an essential mechanism because it keeps you from wasting time on the many things that are clearly false, which would otherwise prevent  you from making any progress anywhere.  Your post #4601 shows that you do apply this to various areas, and this, like things mentioned earlier, is something that helped convince me to take your points seriously.  

 

4. Hypothesize an underlying cause for the mental phenomena. …….

 

Yep.  Also very important.

5. Seek other phenomena that might also result from that same hypothetical underlying cause. As I investigated unrelated phenomena that might also result from anomalous information transfer what I found was astounding. Millions of people over millennia have reported a very wide range of phenomena, ALL of which might be explained by anomalous information transfer.

 

Makes sense.  Of course, remember your step #3.  For instance, if one hypothesized that there was a deity of Hunger who caused hunger in humans, and since I’ve experienced hunger, that’s evidence for the deity of hunger, then I look and find that millions of other animals also experienced this hunger over millenia, then it takes the “consider all interpretations” of step three to help me decide if that confirms that the deity of hunger is real. 

6. Develop better measurement techniques for assessing the phenomena. I am currently in this phase.

 

Yes, essential.  Without measurement there is no way to test a hypothesis.  The story from Dr. Robert Wood comes to mind:  http://larrytanner.blogspot.com/2010/09/chuckle-of-day-metaphysics.html  (you need to have a laboratory to have any credibility)

 

7. Perform experiments to test the working hypothesis.
8. Assess the data and proceed accordingly (improve experiment, adjust hypothesis or abandon hypothesis).

 

Yep, cool.  Abandoning a hypothesis goes against our human nature, like a guy who asks for directions in front of his wife.  Adjustments often work and/or are appropriate – but there is only so far one should go.

 

I am positing a possible explanation for phenomena that I have both experienced firsthand, and that has been reported by many, many others under the guise of many religious, philosophical and cultural framings. And my interest involves new detection modalities that exploit advanced signal processing algorithms.

 

Fair enough.  I think we are all eager to see how it turns out.  Just like abandoning a hypothesis, for those who didn’t support the hypothesis from the start (like me), it’s human nature to be slow to support it when positive data comes back.  I recognize that too.

 

Here is your list:
1.     Dismiss all personal experiences as irrelevant for getting information.
2.     Reject everyone else’s experiences, while promoting one’s own as the only valid experiences.
3.     Use some standard of comparison and logic to get the most reliable information from everyone’s experiences.
4.     Accept all experiences of everyone as real and true.
5.      Accept only those experiences which support a certain ideology, and reject all other experiences.
6.   Other.

 
While there may be “tens of millions of dollars of attention” being paid to this space now, that would be a fairly recent development (assuming it is true, which I doubt). By and large, the space is not receiving the gravity of support from the scientific community that it would take to crack it open.

 

I was referring to the SRI work that Duane was part of.  That was tens of millions just by itself, not to mention all the other research before and since.  For instance, the work you mentioned earlier trying to replicate, I think, Sheldrake’s work was around 100 whole studies – that’s huge.  And the work of Cleve Backster was also attempted to be replicated many times (without success).   These are some of the reasons why it doesn’t seem neglected to me – so again here you and I have simply different estimates.  

 

As far as “what it would take to crack it open”, that may vary by the phenomenon.  For your stuff, perhaps a lot is needed.  For stuff like Cleve Backster’s, a few plants and off the shelf electronics makes it very easy to replicate – and hence it was attempted many times.  

 

With all due respect, Jon, sometimes your arguments have the tone of a crusader.

 

Thanks for honestly and kindly pointing that out.  I apologize.  

 

I appreciate healthy skepticism and intellectual debate. However, suggesting that I pursue another career without the slightest inquiry into my specific research topic indicates to me that you find this entire line of research ideologically distasteful. 

 

It’s not ideological so much as I’m not sure why your work is different from what appears to me to be similar stuff (like the SRI work, Cleve Backster, Sheldrake, Geller, etc.).  Your support for some of those cases that appear to be demonstrably pseudoscience didn’t help  – though posts like #4601 did help.

 
I would invite you to consider that, even if anomalous information transfer is not at work in the brain, experimental research into informational processes in brain tissue is likely to provide interesting data. Given what we know about the “spooky” world of nonlocal quantum information processes, shouldn’t we be looking for how these effects might be supporting consciousness in the brain? That’s all I’m suggesting here. 

 

Fair enough.  Let’s see what the data say.  On a related note – I’m not sure quantum stuff is needed – it may be classically describable, which would be a better place to start, since quantum stuff is so often hijacked by pseudoscience today (and even made into whole movies, like “what the bleep”).

 

Best –

      -Jon

 

[Jon Cleland Host]

 

Ed

you wrote:

Jon – To me, your arguments seem to come from a need to fit everything into a particular worldview – one that assures us that there is “nothing out of the ordinary.”

 

No, quite the opposite.  I’d love to find out about things that are unknown or not explained – in fact, I’m sure that such things exist.  My need is fairness/reasonableness.  In other words, to accept or investigate possibilities as openly as possible – avoid the human tendency to dismiss other worldviews without reason, and accept only that support my prejudices.  Specifically, I can’t accept all interpretations of experiences (because they contradict each other), so I have to find a way to choose which to look into – and that way can’t be just by gut prejudices, but must be based on fairly applied criteria if I’m to keep it as unbiased as possible.  This goes back to the list I gave in post #4511 – did you read that?  Which of those 1-6 approaches, do you think we should use?

 

And I am sure you see my arguments as the opposite – that I am trying to make something out of nothing. 

 

Yes, it does seem that way (sorry!).  The bigger question is that if such is done to support things like ghosts, then why do you not also accept, say, St. Paul’s revelations, or the many experiences supporting the reality of Mormonism?   Why favor some views, if not due to one’s personal prejudices?

 

I appreciate you sharing your personal (“mystical”) experience. …. To me, however, such experiences could be the result of anomalous (nonlocal) information being sensed by some area of the brain. Experiences such as this are quite common, albeit irreproducible of course, and therefore connote be subject to replication.  

 

Perhaps they are.  I’m sure you agree that ALL need not be picking up real information.  For instance, the experience of Brigit Nelson – is it picking up the real situation of alien babies?  If not, then how could we reject her claim unless we have some criteria to apply to experiences?  I have criteria that I use.  Do you?  If so, then what are they?  If not, then how can you reject Paul and Brigit?
  

Here’s my thoughts on your experience. ….

 

Thanks.  I may have been picking up real information – but I also may have been just experiencing something my mind was doing on its own.  Which brings us back again to the criteria we use to determine which way to see this.  

 
 Are out-of-body experiences real? Are all apparitions just delusions? How would we even begin to validate one interpretation versus another?

 

Indeed, how?  For many of them, the experiences do suggest objective tests.  For instance, one could put a piece of paper with a 4 digit, random number on it onto a flat plate attached a couple inches below the ceiling of an operating room.  An out of body experience by someone on the operating table might thus allow the person to see the number, and report it after wards.   Do we agree that such would be a good way to determine if the OOBE was one of consciousness leaving the body, vs one that may have been simply “in someone’s head”.    Do we agree that this would be an example of a way to attempt to validate one interpretation over another?

 

 

 I believe it is possible to turn the scientific method inwards to study phenomenological states. However this sort of work is still in it’s infancy (at least in Western science) with very few conventions or even consensus regarding the validity of such a practice.  

 

Just as in any other area of science, it’s not a subjective thing – if objective statistical tests can be applied, then it could be scientifically valid.  If not, then it’s hard to see how it could be valid.

 
Neuroscientists are recruiting Buddhist monks, for instance, to study neural correlates of subjective states since the monks are trained to sustain these unique states of consciousness (including “cosmic consciousness” or mystical states).

 

Yes, I recently read about the objectively verifiable data here regarding meditation in Scientific American.  It’s pretty cool!

 
Many come out of these “unity experiences” feeling that the universe is indeed “alive” or infused with consciousness or intelligence and everything is interconnected. The experiences can seem hyper-real, ….In any case, I think these  experiences are worthy of study and will teach us a lot about ourselves. 

 

Yes, that’s certainly what it felt like to me.  These experiences are also seen with temporal lobe epilepsy – an active area of research now.  It seems to me that a good way to investigate whether or not these put us in touch with a greater reality is to see if they can provide information that can be verified in another way.  Right?

 

Out-of-body experiences including NDE’s, telepathy, precognition, “cosmic consciousness” experiences of meditators, etc. etc.  

 

But again, how to determine which interpretation?  We again can’t just gullibly accept all of them as interpreted, because we’ve seen time and again that they are contradictory (and often admitted later to be completely fabricated, such as in the case of Malarkey, etc.).  When looked at with the requirement of validation, they rarely show anything.  

 

Polls have shown that 18% of Americans claim to have seen a ghost, and 45% of us believe in ghosts:

 Irrelevant.  A poll in 1500 in Europe would have shown that over 80% were certain that demons are real, that they fear Jesus Christ, and that they regularly inhabit people.  Even today, polls show that 20% of the world’s population literally believe that space aliens have disguised themselves as humans and live among us.  

 

So, as scientists, shall we sweep this under the rug? Casually dismiss it as delusion?

 

Of course not.  Instead, we need to apply criteria to all these- right?  We don’t want to just accept those that fit our personal prejudices, and reject the others – that’s not reasonable.

 

I feel that inhibiting legitimate research into these fields is actually inhibiting the progress of science. 

Do you disagree?

 

I do disagree.  As we’ve seen, these fields are receiving tens of millions of dollars of attention, and literally hundreds of attempts to replicate them.  If anything, it seems to me, just from the numbers, that  they are receiving more attention and research money than the evidence has supported, not less.

 

The scientific “party line” is that the universe is “dead” and all matter/spacetime is governed by well-known deterministic (or random quantum) physical laws that do not allow for any sort of underlying bias, intelligence, or anomalous informational influences.

 

This has not been my experience at all.  The scientists I know are among the most open minded and especially curious people I’ve ever met.  They include people with all kinds of religious and non-religious beliefs (the most common religious beliefs in the scientists I know are Christian beliefs) I’ve never heard this “partly line” said or taught in scientific circles – not the schools I’ve been in, nor in the labs I’ve been in.  What I have heard is that any claim needs to be supported by evidence – because otherwise we’d have to accept all claims, which are contradictory.  

I have, at least dozens of times, heard others accuse scientists of having that “partly line” you give above.  And nearly all of those times, it has been in the context of an argument where someone is promoting pseudoscience, and using the above as a strawman to explain why their pseudoscience is being rejected.   Most often, this is by creationists, as they are the most prevalent pseudoscience here in America.  

 

A lot of us scientists do wonder – even out loud – about the possibility of influences and intelligence in the Universe.  The simple fact that we ask for evidence for claims of it only shows that we know we can’t blindly accept the claims of everyone who says that they’ve found that intelligence (often in this or that religion, sometimes not).  

 

Best-

 

Jon

 

 

 

 

 

[Jon Cleland Host]

<p> </p><p>Duane wrote:</p>

<p>This conversation feels tediously contentious</p>

<p> </p><p>Please let me know if I ever insult someone, miss a question asked of me, or am otherwise impolite.  At the same time, I hope we can get away from things like stating a view is “cartoonish” even after a rich description like the experience in the stone circle is given (did you read it?), and I hope, as in any polite conversation, we can answer questions asked us.  I asked you about Paul’s personal experience, and more importantly about your views of the approaches (1-6) to personal experience (post 4511).  Would you like me to cut and paste those again?</p><p> </p>

 

<p>You are basing your conclusions about the SRI research on very incomplete information. I am sitting here with the original SRI reports and original data sheets and what is found online (in the public record) is missing a great deal of information (I cannot tell you why  …..  If we were to gather together, in person, and I could lay out — on paper — the actual results of these years of experiments,…..  they were not conducted under double-blind conditions but rather were of an open, exploratory nature (which I’m sure you would completely dismiss). </p>

<p> </p><p>Duane, if someone presented unpublished data with no other support to you, would you not be correct in asking for actual, peer-reviewed and replicated data?  Because if unpublished, unverified data is acceptable, then we have to accept all kinds of contradictory data, such as the “Heaven is for real” information, and so on.  If we did that, would we really be surprised when everyone else dismissed our work as gullible and unreliable?</p><p> </p>

 

<p>Are you saying you have never heard of scientists doing secret research “cooking the books” for public consumption? Where have you been living?</p>

<p> </p><p>

While I’ve only published a dozen or so peer-reviewed papers (one in Nature), Ursula has many, many more.  The upshot is that peer review has often shown me errors I made, which I could fix, and is why published results are often reliable and reproducible.  In the scientific process, finding something unexpected is a golden ticket to fame, fortune, and best of all, tenure.  Scientists everywhere are desperately looking for new and unexpected results that are real (because they’ll have to stand up to confirmation).  In that real world environment, suggesting that researchers would conspire to hide results that show a real effect is like suggesting that some homeless people would conspire to hide a winning lottery ticket.   Do you think homeless people would conspire to hide a winning lottery ticket?</p><p> </p><p>

 

 I also cannot I tell you why this would be one of their longest running research programs if nothing of value was emerging)   ……..  Russell Targ, one of the two key researchers that I worked with during these three years</p><p> </p><p>

 

Reading the history of this work, it looks like you answered your own question.  Russel Targ and others continued to promise rigorous results without delivering them.  Since then, Russel Targ has published and profited from book after book on this stuff, even though his methods clearly suffer from confirmation bias and other well known ways that will give incorrect results.  Russel Targ’s methods are detailed in this book:  http://www.amazon.com/How-Know-What-Isnt-Fallibility/dp/0029117062  </p><p> </p><p>

 

I understand how powerful an experience can be (such as the stone circle experience).  At the same time, I try to treat everyone’s experience as a useful starting point in looking for information, and try to treat all experiences the same – not treating my own as better or more worthy than anyone else’s.  Do we agree that no one person’s experiences are worth more than than anyone else’s?</p><p> </p><p>Best – </p><p> </p><p>           -Jon</p><p>

 </p><p>P. S.  Davidson – nice video!</p><p> </p><p> </p>

[Jon Cleland Host]

Hi Duane – 
 
You wrote:

My experiences come from these years of laboratory experiments (for example, many with strip chart printouts — not fabricated memories) to show the results.
 
 

The reports on this work had access to all the data.  Those reports concluded that nothing substantial was found.

 
 you so completely diminish and dismiss first-hand experience, turning it into a cartoon caricature that I don’t recognize

 

 
Diminish?  Dismiss?  Quite the opposite!  You can see from the link I posted that I hold personal experience in very high esteem.  Personal experience is truly wonderful – an essential and glorious part of being human!  Personal experiences are also rich in information.

 

There are several different approaches one could take regarding personal experience and information.   Here is a summary of the ones I could think of.

 

1.     Dismiss all personal experiences as irrelevant for getting information.

2.     Reject everyone else’s experiences, while promoting one’s own as the only valid experiences.

3.     Use some standard of comparison and logic to get the most reliable information from everyone’s experiences.

4.     Accept all experiences of everyone as real and true.

5.      Accept only those experiences which support a certain ideology, and reject all other experiences.

6.   Other.

 
OK, so, let’s look at those.  #1 is, in my opinion, a terrible waste and could miss important information.

#2 seems pretty narcissistic, and worse, likely wrong – since it’s unlikely that one is so much better than everyone else in our planet’s 8 billion people that only one’s own experiences have value.

#3 but what standard?  I’ll come back to this one.

#4 This one is literally impossible.  Because the personal experiences of 8 billion people (heck, often just 8 people) are contradictory, accepting some of them means that others have to be rejected.  For instance, many people’s personal experiences tell them that their religion is right, and all other religions are evil.  Or that people are inherently good, while others say that people are inherently evil, etc.  

#5  This one is very tempting for all of us humans, and I think it is unavoidable that all of us will do this to some extent.  I hope to do what I can to minimize my own use of #5.  I’m reminded of how easy we do that by my own history – I spent much of my life taking this approach to personal experiences.  Specifically:  “Those personal experiences that support Roman Catholicism, such as those of the Pope, are right, and all others are delusions caused by Satan.”

That leaves #3:  To use some standard to understand, compare, and get as much information as possible from personal experiences.  This includes logic, such as “which personal experiences are logically compatible with other personal experiences?”, comparison to other evidence: “is this personal experience supported by reproducible, objective evidence?”, and so on.  This is the approach I try to take.
 
Duane, do you also favor method #3?  

Do you agree that #2 and #5 should be avoided?  If you don’t agree, then why not?

Thanks-

-Jon
 
P.S.    The article is interesting – it has a lot of stuff I agree with , but also a lot of unsupported speculation.   It interweaves these so that it’s not simple (without a long examination of the article) to show which is which.
 
 
 
 
 
 

[Jon Cleland Host]

  Ed-        Thanks for the response, and sorry about my slow reply (busy, as always).  You wrote:  
 

While I still do not see the “diminishing effect” over time that you mentioned,

 
In the post that I referenced, I mentioned the strong effect claimed for “information transfer” in the 1800s and 1900s in ways such as clairvoyance, ESP, etc.  Compared to those, Bem’s claimed effects are much smaller, with others in the later 1900s claiming intermediate effects, like Uri Geller.  One might claim that those were different somehow – but without explaining how this “new” clairvoyance works, that claim won’t have any basis.  

If I did not have so many personal firsthand experiences with this phenomena I’d probably be more in your camp.

 
 
Maybe, maybe not.  However, I can say that if *I* had more personal firsthand experiences, I would probably *not* be in your camp.  Why not?  Because personal firsthand experiences are not a reliable way to know what is real, as explained in my reply to Duane, above (post 4432).  Heck, come to think of it, I *have* had extremely powerful firsthand experiences that one could take as proof of psychic phenomena, such as this one, where I heard the voices of thousands of long dead people and briefly controlled the weather psychically: http://humanisticpaganism.com/2015/06/03/starstuff-contemplating-hearing-our-ancestors-by-jon-cleland-host/ .  Yet, that same experience can be interpreted in ways consistent with known science – and so I don’t claim that it proves anything.  

As you point out, reproducibility can be a HUGE problem in PSI research. But it is not a sign that there is not a genuine effect.  

 
Then how could we ever know to stop chasing a phenomena that isn’t real?  Imagine a proposed phenomenon that, for the sake of discussion, is simply not real.  Someone claims to show data that it’s real.  So we try to replicate it – but it doesn’t show up.  So we do so again – nothing.  Someone else claims their data shows it to be real – then someone else points out flaws in their experiment.  Tests in another country fail to replicate it – but that doesn’t count against it because “reproducibility is a huge problem” in this area, which it’s proponents say is because of (whatever).  If taken seriously, it means that the said phenomenon is unfalsifiable, and hence we can never just drop it and move on to m0re fruitful areas of research.  That’s why unfalsifiable claims are not allowed in science.  That’s why the fact that reproducibility is a huge problem in this area is indeed a sign (admittedly, not proof) that it’s not genuine- because if it wasn’t genuine, then reproducibility would be a huge problem in this area.
 

There is precious little funding in PSI

 
We’ve discussed before that this does’t seem to be the case.  Many experiments (in the triple digits!) were run to try to replicate Bem’s work, and the stargate stuff Duane was involved with employed many people for over a decade, spending over 20 million dollars – not to mention many other examples (for instance, the USSR undoubtedly knew about our work and likely had their own program).  
 

Perhaps when I’m retired I’ll set up a lab…

 
Perhaps. But will you spend over 20 million dollars, employ a whole staff of people, and conduct the research year after year?  If not, then why would you expect to find something when someone has already done that and found nothing substantial?     If you would spend over 20 million dollars and employ a whole staff of people,  then it leads to the next natural question – of what impact 20 million would have instead in, say, promoting our awesome story of the Universe, or in raising public awareness of climate change, or providing a team to bring fun science experiments to girls and minorities in Junior high to encourage a more diverse scientific community, or, or……..
Best-
     -Jon    

[Jon Cleland Host]

Hi Duane-

 

  You wrote:

I could send along statistics to you (perhaps next week)

 

I’d be happy to look at them, but think about this from the view of anyone else for a second.  The data could well show the 65% accuracy claimed in the early SRI data (after all, those data exist as well).  What would that mean?

 

To answer that, think of how this goes.   I have sometimes found wildly unexpected data myself in the lab (I’m an active scientist, after all).  Those times were exciting, and the next step is to replicate the experiment and confirm them.  In the times that they’ve been replicated, I announced the find, and others did similar work, confirming the find.  In those cases, it was the replication and verification process that made the data credible.  

 We already know that your data won’t fall into that first category, because attempts to replicate the initial 65% accuracy rate eventually found no effect in the SRI work.  For me, sometimes, the subsequent experiments failed to replicate the initial find.  In those cases, I’ve sometimes found out why, sometimes not.  Often, it was my mistake, such as writing a number down incorrectly, like writing 1.883 as 18.83 – sometimes I even remembered writing it correctly (1.883), but simply was remembering wrong.  In those cases, it was the replication and verification process that caught the mistake.  

 

So if you data is anomalous, we already know from the SRI research (which tried and failed to replicate it) that it’s most likely a case of the second type – a mistake, constructed memory, or such.  Wouldn’t any rational outside person – such as myself here on an internet chat board – have to reach that conclusion?  Wouldn’t you reach that conclusion as well, if our positions were reversed right here, right now?

 

I can say with great confidence that, from first-hand experience,

 

But that’s just it, isn’t it?  That this rests on first hand experience.  If we were going to believe things based on first hand experience, then we’d have to believe that the mormon gold plates are real (proven the testimony of 9 witnesses of their first hand experience), and that Paul was teleported to the 3rd heaven (as he states in 2Cor 12:2), that prayer to Allah can allow one to pull crystals from one’s eyes, and so on.  

 

My dad and his boyhood friend compared notes about their recollections of the time in 1951 when they captured a raccoon and kept it in their underground fort, and they found that they had both fabricated memories – from first hand experience – of things that never happened.  This has been shown over and over in controlled studies – that our memories are not like video recorders, but rather are constructed and reconstructed by our own later conclusions and desires.  That’s why replication and peer review are the gold standards of science, while first hand experience and deeply held conviction are the gold standards of religion and pseudoscience.

Best-

 

            -Jon

 

 

[Jon Cleland Host]

 
Ed wrote:

however your claim that “that the closer these possible effects are looked at, the smaller and more elusive they become” is not substantiated in the citations I gave (as far as I can see). 

  Yes, it is substantiated.  If you look at the table on page 17 of the Bem “90” pdf, you can see that even with hundreds to thousands of experiments, the P value is usually around 0.002 (ranging from 0.000012 to 0.003).  I run t-tests often, and p values like that are not extreme.  Specifically, getting a p value in that range with that huge a number of data points means that the data average is very close to chance (such as getting 50.05% instead of 50%).   That compare to the huge effect sizes I mentioned earlier in post #4322 on May 29.  
As to the merits of Bem’s “90” pdf, some of the reasons it is not considered valid by the scientific community are outlined here: https://thewinnower.com/papers/why-a-meta-analysis-of-90-precognition-studies-does-not-provide-convincing-evidence-of-a-true-effect , among others.  

Your approach is akin to a common “pseudo skeptic” practice of debunking based not on careful research and examination of the claim, but based on media reports, appeals to “common sense,” or other forms of second-hand knowledge.  

Media reports?  No.  And I’m not out to debunk anything just for the sake of debunking.  I’m trying to make educated decisions about what is likely real so as to best allocate my limited time for the benefit of future generations.   There are two main resources I draw upon.  First, my own limited statistical and other skills.  I apply these where I can.  Secondly, and just as importantly, I do take the views of experts into consideration.  That’s because they are experts and know this stuff better than either of us.  That’s a form of “second hand” knowledge that is as good or better than first-hand knowledge, right?  
 
As before – it doesn’t look like we can agree on this, so I’d prefer to focus on where we can spend our efforts more productively.
Best – Jon
 
*********************************
Duane wrote:

You have stated several times that “the closer these possible effects are looked at, the smaller and more elusive they become – a hallmark of something that isn’t real.” This was not my direct, personal experience of psi experiments over a three year period…

 
Looking into the SRI stuff, it has quite an interesting history.  It’s really cool  to know you, Duane – one of the people who was actually involved in it.  It looks like initially they claimed a 65% accuracy rate, but that as the program was looked at more closely, the “experiments” often relied on subjective feelings and were otherwise not valid.  It looks like the SRI, goverment funded program went on for many years (two decades?), with thousands of trials, and ended up being unable to clearly show even a small affect above chance that wasn’t due to known problems (like the information getting to the subjects).   http://fas.org/irp/program/collect/stargate.htm 

http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/SAICcrit.pdf

That looks like anther example of the shrinking effect problem noted above.  From a 65% accuracy rate to much less than 1%.  The SRI history suggests that the clairvoyance, ESP, and similar psychic phenomena – even when renamed or with “quantum” added – don’t suffer from a dearth of funding and attention.  After all, the SRI stuff went on for about two decades, with a budget over 20 million dollars.   (even more when we include inflation) – and even with all that, didn’t make it clear that these psychic ideas were real.   
 
There could well be exciting, unknown things out there.  If we are to find them, we’ll need to know when to look in a new place – when to conclude a hypothesis is not supported by evidence.  To do that, we’ll need to rely on reproducibility and other standard scientific methods that have already resulted in our huge gains in knowledge in the past three centuries.

 

We are all very talented people.  We are some of the few who see the well established scientific details of  our grand history.  That’s why I think that efforts in areas that are unproven (at best) aren’t the best use of our time.  
 
Best-
 
  -Jon
 

[Jon Cleland Host]

 

 

Duane, you wrote:

I accept that these are your views but you will certainly find sharp disagreement from skilled biologists working with these organisms. Professor Brian Leander of the Laboratory of Marine Organismal Diversity & Evolution at the University of British Columbia concludes this article with the following:

But how Erythropsidinium analyses what it ‘sees’ remains a mystery. “How is the image processed by a single cell?” asks Leander. “It’s very difficult to wrap your mind around.”

 ….. I’m in agreement with Prof. Leander that this is indeed mysterious and “difficult to wrap your mind around.” 

Thanks for checking with him.  It sounds like he sees nothing mysterious or beyond mechanical.  We did earlier have a biologist, Dr. Goodenough, explain this as well. Thanks again Ursula for helping us with your knowledge of these creatures.

Best-

 

                  -Jon

 

 

[Jon Cleland Host]

 
Duane, you wrote:

The article describes a single celled organism without any neural structure that is “pointing its ocelloid in different directions.”

Sure.  My wind chime out my window points in different directions.  It’s not hard at all to have a mechanism that points in different directions.  Then, a simple light sensitive spot on it will be pointed in different directions, and a mechanical apparatus attached to that can cause the cell to have a response.  There is no need for consciousness in any of this, and none shown by the article. 
 

It is  looking for its prey, not simply passively and mechanically responding to its environment, and it is doing this without any nerves or brain. There is choiceful or deliberate action….

Completely unsupported speculation.  
The article shows nothing that requires anything beyond simple mechanical systems.

If your airplane analogy came with 1) a craft that had no wiring inside (or neural network) and 3) no autopilot mechanism (or brain) and 3) was still making active searches and responding to what it “sees” without any wiring or autopilot device, then it would have corresponding connection and relevance. It does not. So I don’t see any connection between your example and this single celled plankton.

Simply false.  As has been pointed out, by a biologist who understands this, there are molecular mechanisms which play all the roles of wires and switches.  There is no mystery in that cell – it works by well understood mechanical devices, just like the plane.  Do you understand that the motions and responses are the direct result of understood molecular machines?  That’s why it’s a useful analogy.

 
Lastly, I respectfully but profoundly disagree with your quick dismissal of my question of “who programmed the autopilot” on your plane, saying “who cares?” and it’s not “relevant.” You are dismissing the “hard problem” of consciousness and attributing behavior to simple chemistry. This appears to be reductionist and mechanistic thinking so as to avoid dealing with the presence of consciousness.
 

It sounds like I may have been unclear.  I dismissed it because in either case, the mechanisms that make it work are understood.  If you like, I can continue it instead of dismissing it, hopefully making it clear why it’s irrelevant.

So, who designed the self driving car?  A human being.  A human being can construct mechanical systems that work together to provide action in response to stimulus.  In the case of the cell in the article, natural selection designed it.  A natural selection can construct mechanical systems that work together to provide action in response to stimulus.  In both the cases of the self driving car and the cell, understood mechanical system cause one motion to happen after an outside stimulus triggers them.  Just like a mousetrap.  The outside stimulus presses on the catch, and the trap springs.  The ability of the mousetrap to “consider” springing, and “make a conscious choice” to snap doesn’t make it conscious.  
 
Best-
 
                 -Jon
 
 

[Jon Cleland Host]

  Great to see Michael join us!   Duane, you wrote:

*****My key point was simply that consciousness does not require complex neural networks or a brain.  ******

But your example didn’t show this in any way.  Your example showed a cell that does something in response to it’s environment – the exact same thing a plane on autopilot does – changing it’s response when the environment changes.  You have not shown any reason to think that this cell is conscious which doesn’t also apply to a plane on autopilot, a self-driving car, or a mousetrap.  The only difference is that you, personally, do not understand all the gears in the cell, while you do for the mousetrap.  Do you consider a mousetrap conscious because it can respond to it’s environment?

  *****If “consciousness” is the capacity to be aware of one’s surroundings, then the behavior of this single-celled organism satisfies that definition.  *****

 
Does anyone have any reason to think that this cell is aware of it’s surroundings?  A self-driving car is obviously aware of it’s surroundings, right, because it can drive?  I would say no in both cases.  

Regarding the plane on autopilot, who programmed the auto-pilot?  In turn, are you saying the single celled organism is running on automatic? If so, where did the automatic program come from?   

  Who cares?  I don’t see how that’s relevant.  Is the fact that a mousetrap is made by a conscious human make the mousetrap conscious?  Is the fact that my conscious child makes a pile of blocks make the pile of blocks conscious?   I think this comes down to basic process of logic, where one’s conclusions need to follow from the data.   Thanks-                          -Jon  

[Jon Cleland Host]

  Sorry for not checking back sooner.   Ed wrote:

Great to see the conversation continuing…

Thanks for the great contribution to the discussion.   Your last post is very helpful.    

Philosophically then, the universe IS alive because WE are alive and we are inseparable from the universe.

  Yes.  In that way, I agree.      

So in this spirit, my suggestion (as pointed to by Jon) is to honor methodological reductionists (MR’s) for their good work – AND – to honor philosophical non-reductionists (PNR’s) for their “big view” observations and speculations which may one day prove to be scientific fact (that is, everything is integrally interconnected and therefore “alive”). So how do we honor both?

  : )  

The challenge, it seems to me, is one of language. PNR’s want to take control of the word “living” and use it to describe everything. MR’s say no, that word is reserved for a very specific phenomena (biological life) that is well differentiated. 

Yes, I agree.  

Duane, is there another word that would suitably describe the non-biological yet highly interconnected and interdependent matter of the universe without co-opting a scientific term with a much more narrow definition? Jon, is there some sort of qualifier that Duane could use in front of the word “living” that would differentiate the use of this word from the implication of biological life?

  : ).     Yes, let’s try this.  I agree with pretty much all of your post, and didn’t quote each part so as to save space.

 

*********************************

Doubly Alive or Double Aliveness–   I like this.  It suggests two different ways of defining “alive”, which is what we are doing.

Trans-biological aliveness– I like this too.  It is very clear that we are not talking about aliveness in terms of strict biology.  

Deep Aliveness – This may be OK, but I think I prefer either of the other two, because “Deep” is often used to describe extended views of things that don’t include anything controversial.  For instance, Deep Time, or Deep Ancestry, or Deep space – all are things that the strictest scientist full agrees with as real.

Perhaps “Doubly Alive” is best because it is both clear and accurate as well as being shorter than “trans biological aliveness”?

********************************************************   Duane wrote:

Ed–   Thanks for your discerning and insightful posting! I’m excited by the possibility that, after more than 400 postings, our learning community may be discovering important common ground. I am comfortable with the summary paragraph that you wrote, Ed, and I’m wondering if this offers common ground for Jon and Mike (and others) as well.    

  Incredibly, perhaps so.  : )  

“Considering all of these arguments, here is my conclusion at this time which is the best “common ground” that I can muster. We must allow science the categories of “living organism” and “non living matter” for them to do their work. However there is also room for the “big philosophical view” of an interconnected universe where living and non-living matter (in the scientific sense) are inseparable and part of larger phenomena that we are only starting to understand.” 

  Sounds good to me!   Deep thanks!                 -Jon      

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