Monday 7 December 2009

Call me a cynic...

So I've been doing some reading and watching youtube...

There are quite a number of people out there who really believe they can move physical objects with their minds (the proper term for this 'power', I learn, is psychokinesis - also known as telekinesis). I’ve seen videos of self-proclaimed psychokineticists moving all kinds of stuff, from sunglasses and cds, to paper windmills balanced on a pin.

My first reaction was to sigh, to roll my eyes, to look around for someone to share the joke with. Empty living room. Baby gurgling in his cot. Which reminds me. When baby's older brother was about a a year and a half, he started acting strangely. We'd find him staring at things intently with furrowed brow, whispering, sometimes one podgy finger held aloft. He'd do it to his toys, food, the dog, me... Lean in worried parent: "go, go, go" strange child was urging. Or: "come, come, come" (the full extent of his vocabulary). After a full minute of this, he'd grab the toy/dog/parent and throw it angrily shouting "go" or "come" or whatever order had been ignored. Some months later, I found out (I read it somewhere, but can't find the reference) that it is quite normal for very young children to try to influence their external environment with their minds. (As I write this, I realise this is actually pretty damn interesting. I'll try to do some research and come back to it.)

Anyhow. Back to the adult psychos. Do they really believe they can move stuff with their minds? I want to laugh out, but hang on. I claim to be a skeptic, not a miserable cynic. Shouldn't my question be rephrased to read: can these people really move stuff with their mind??

Well, there is certainly a significant amount of scientific empirical evidence out there that suggests that psychokinetic (PK) events really may happen. A major source of PK data is the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab (now Institute of Consciousness Research and Learning or ICRL). Researchers at this lab have been collating data since the 1970's involving experiments in which subjects attempt to influence the output of a random event generator (REG) (which is essentially a sophisticated alternative to throwing dice). The millions of data points generated using this approach indicate that there is a small (I mean small) but statistically significant deviation from chance (in other words, something is making the REG output slightly not random).

Despite the wealth of empirical evidence produced by PEAR and other institutes (e.g. Duke University, Rhine Research Centre etc), the mainstream scientific community rejects PK as the explanation for the observed deviation from chance - their criticisms are almost always targeted at the statistics. And therein lies the problem: the PK effect observed in these experiments is so small, so tiny, that we need complex stats to find it. And there’s always someone who knows their stats better than you.

If the effect could be increased sufficiently, it would become much harder to dispute the evidence on statistical grounds – in fact, we would no longer be wasting our time trying to verify whether PK actually exists, and instead we’d be trying to figure out how it happens, and how we can make it work for us.

Enter the spoon-benders and their brethren on youtube.

If they can really move and bend matter with their minds, what the hell are they doing on youtube?? Why aren't they knocking on the doors of the many research institutes and university departments worldwide that are investigating these issues?? Why haven’t academic PK researchers ‘discovered’ these many talented people and stopped farting about with REGs? Why aren't these people on the news, speaking at conferences, standing on boxes in the street, championing a new scientific paradigm? Or at least, why haven’t they flung themselves into the entertainment circuit, like old Uri Geller, and started making some serious dosh??

3 comments:

  1. The thing is all those people definitely believe (and want to believe) that they move things with their minds - just like the toddlers...
    Aref

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  2. Just questioning your last questions...
    Why would they be on the news, at conferences, or even proclaiming anything to the hard-headed academic scientific lot? If what you ask is why not, I ask "Why why not?"

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  3. In response to the comment on March 8th - surely it would be of general interest to open up these possibilities - if indeed they exist - to the rest of the world? To your question I ask: "Why why why not?"

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