Seldom Posted February 17, 2012 (edited) http://www.psycholog...ychic-phenomena the article which ^ refers to is attached, published in what is arguably the most prestigious social psychology journal around. for objectivity here's another PhD arguing against it, but as you'll see if you read it he doesn't even try to explain it away http://www.psycholog...in-precognition FeelingFuture.pdf FeelingFuture.pdf FeelingFuture.pdf Edited February 17, 2012 by bulls on parade 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dionysus Posted February 18, 2012 my mind has blown by this, quantum physics is awesome Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Distracted Posted February 18, 2012 Cool article. The example I read about last year or the year before involved people being shown a random lot of 20 words for 30 seconds and then told to write as many down as they could remember, then half the population was given the list for another 2 minutes. The study found the people that were given the list to memorize after they had already written down their answers scored better on average than those who didn't. I never got to see the actual write up for the study, those word memory games can be a bit tricky, ie people remember words they associate with emotions better than filler words. *****all numbers are a vague guess from memory but the results are right Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ballzac Posted February 18, 2012 my mind has blown by this, quantum physics is awesome I feel the need to point out that no physics professor I have ever met believes in precognition of any sort. That doesn't necessarily mean that every physicist would rule out the possibility of information being transmitted backwards in time, but I don't think any expert in quantum mechanics would take seriously the use of quantum mechanical principles as support for hypotheses about psi phenomena. I can't help taking issue with much of the article. Firstly, the statement that the studies "will soon be published in one of the most prestigious psychology journals" is kind of vague. Does that mean it has been accepted for publication? It could just as easily mean that it's simply been submitted. That doesn't mean that Dr Bem's colleagues have reviewed his work and found it rigorous enough for publication. The article is over a year old and I can't find a published study on this topic in the stated journal, so presumably it was not published. The assertion that "Einstein believed that the mere act of observing something here could affect something there, a phenomenon he called "spooky action at a distance."" is irrelevant, because "spooky action at a distance" is about the instantaneous action of one event on another. It has nothing to do with something in the present affecting an event in the past. In addition to this, the actual quote was taken way out of context, showing that the author has little, if any, education in physics. I feel that this further reduces the amount to which we should take seriously the connections between the psi studies being discussed, and quantum physics. In reality, Einstein was very hesitant to accept the idea of entanglement and related phenomena, and used the term "spooky action at a distance" derisively in his description of these phenomena. The physical evidence was already solid at that time, but his contention was that there must be attributes to these particles that we currently cannot measure, known as "hidden variables", that determine the causality for these particles. It was later proven by Bell that no conceivable hidden variable theory is consistent with observations. It is common to invoke the name of Einstein to give an idea more apparent credibility, regardless of the appropriateness in the given context, and any work that does so reeks of bad science to me. What I found most interesting is the mention of an experiment (the delayed choice quantum eraser) which I had not previously known about. It looks very interesting, and I will read the original paper when I have the time, but I can hazard a guess and say that the same issue that occurs with entanglement in general will crop up. That is, even though one event can cause another event to occur instantaneously over great distances, this effect cannot be used to transmit information. Assuming that the same rules apply in the case of the aforementioned experiment, we would find that events in the past can be caused by events in the future, but that information cannot be transmitted backwards in time. This would rule out the use of this phenomenon as a basis for developing a theory of precognition. Ultimately, regardless of the lack of a theoretical foundation for these effects, and regardless of the poor science in the linked article, strong evidence in the form of sound experimental results that can be repeated by numerous independent researchers would prove these effects to be real. Until then, I remain skeptical. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Seldom Posted February 18, 2012 it was published last year, the correct APA reference is Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the Future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 407-425. agreed Ballzac, both psychology today articles draw unwarranted parallels between quantum mechanics and precognition. The pertinent point, and you can check this in the study attached, is that the small section which addresses the question of physics ends by saying "As Radin acknowledges in the paragraph quoted above, quantum entanglement does not yet provide an explanatory model of psi. More generally, quantum theories of psi currently serve more as metaphors than models, and some psi researchers with backgrounds in physics are even more skeptical: “I don’t think quantum mechanics will have anything to do with the final understanding of psi” (Edwin May, quoted in Broderick, 2007, p. 257)." - i.e. emphasizing the inadequacy of theoretical physics to explain psi phenomena rather than advancing some dubious line of reason about quantum entanglement providing some kind of support for the hypothesis. Bem's primary purpose was to conduct empirical psychology, which he has done in strict accordance with clinical research protocol. As you would know Ballzac the discovery of theoretically unaccountable anomalies is how theory progresses.The incompatibility of this phenomena with current theory is not evidence of it's falsity. Granted it's difficult to find studies replicating the effect, but it was published last year, and as skeptic Joachim Krueger notes in the second article in the op that the 9 experiments in Feeling the Future "took apparently 20 years and extensive pilot testing to put together this package of studies." the truth is out there... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ballzac Posted February 18, 2012 it was published last year, the correct APA reference is Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the Future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 407-425. Ah, cheers. I was searching under "Bem, D". Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
