monkey controls robot with thoughts!!!

this is hilarious - not sure why they chose to use a monkey rather than a human, but still, pretty cool stuff...not really PK, but hey...

http://singularityhub.com/2009/01/15/monkeys-thoughts-used-to-control-walking-robot-halfway-across-the-world/

its "just" the placebo effect...

I'd always considered myself the robust type, immmune to all those flus and colds and throat infections that felled everyone around me. Then I had kids. It's been one cold after another, and it's not me I worry about. I can take it. I can also pretty much take any medication the doctor throws my way. But what's a 3-month old to do?

I took him in with a minor cough some weeks back; the doctor said they couldn't give him anything, too young and all that. We have to wait and see if it develops. Which it did. Into bronquitis. "What about prevention?" I yelled at the doctor, as my son wheezed and choked on his snot. "Now the poor bugger is on cortisone! Surely this can't be right?!" And he says to me: "Well, if you want prevention, you can try homeopathy. It doesn't have any scientific basis, but there is a significant placebo effect."

I didn't know whether to pull his or my hair out. "Who is it a placebo to?" I cried, my neck veins about to pop. "Because the baby doesn't know shit!" At which point the doctor decided he was extremely busy, and politely booted us out. But he had got me thinking...

At home, between screams from the little one, I started reading up about the placebo effect. The placebo effect has been well-researched (see UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute for research on placebo effect) although its existence - as the existence of virtually anything - is disputed by some placebo skeptics skeptics.

According to the UCLA NPI "Between 30 - 60% of patients with illnesses ranging from arthritis to depression report a substantial improvement in their symptoms after receiving a placebo." They also note that it is not clear that placebos (usually inert sugar pills) actually cure illnesses, but rather improve symptoms and reduce pain. A 2005 study by the UCLA NPI research team (in the context of antidepressant medication) found that placebos had an effect on brain activity (specifically the prefrontal area, "implicated in planning complex cognitive behaviors, personality expression, decision making and moderating correct social behavior" (source: wikipedia)). This was the first study to identify a link between brain function and placebo effects, thus shushing the skeptics with their claims that placebo effects found in studies are mostly due to methodological flaws, experimenter effects etc etc...

The secret of placebos lies in the power of expectation and belief. The more you believe the pill/medical intervention will work, the more likely it will relieve your symptoms - and the larger the effect. And the opposite is also true - the lower your expectation, the less likely there will be an effect. Even more interesting, if you believe the medical intervention will have a negative effect, the more likely this will be the case (known as a 'nocebo' effect)!

So we return to the theme of expectation and belief - brought up in previous posts in the context of psi activity.

If I believe something will be good for me - I get better. Well not really. As I mentioned earlier, placebos haven't actually been found to cure illnesses, but rather, relieve symptoms. So let me rephrase that: if I believe something wll be good for me, I'll feel better.

Nothing too wow-wee about that. I was hoping for some evidence of the paranormal. Instead, all this reading has led me to one conclusion: the placebo effect is not mysterious or magical or paranormal. Its downright normal. As Descartes put it: 'I think therefore I am'. So gullibility can be a good thing!

Now I have to convince the baby that these little sugar pills are going to make him feel better.

Oh drat.

Bring on the energy healers...

training my psychokinetic powers...

The Psychic Science website has quite an arsenal of rudimentary ESP tests, games and 'training 'devices (if indeed you can train for something as yet unpoven).

I've been 'training' for a few days now in order to develop my psychokinetic abilities (e.g. making dials turn left or right with my mind), and have the aching muscles (over my eyes and skewering my skull diagonally like a spit-roasted pig) to prove it. Despite the pain, my z-statistics remain sufferingly poor. Maybe I should stick with saturday crosswords and paper airplanes, things I'm actually good at...

In my frustration, I reach out to the various sources of info and 'techniques' for developing PK, and turns out I've been doing it all wrong! Apparently, the harder you try, the less likely it is to work (or something to that oxymoronic effect)!

I sigh. This has something of the Buddhist one-hand clapping logic about it (none). How am I supposed to develop something without effort? I read more in order to understand. Numerous informal accounts of macro-PK activity (briefly, macro-PK refers to instances where a person mentally moves objects such as chairs and clocks, or bends spoons, etc, whereas micro-PK refers to the generation of a non-random distribution of outcomes, such as when a person tried to make dice land on a six more than 1/6 times) suggest that it is not so much that PK events happen without effort, but rather, that they often occur when the person stops trying.

This anecdotal evidence is further supported by study by Pamela R. Heath (2000), which used a phenomenological approach (i.e. study of subjective experiences (Psychology)) to identify experiential factors that correlate with PK activity. The study examined the experiences of eight individuals who had had a PK experience. Fifteen factors were identified (e.g. altered state of consciousness, investment, openness to the experience) that correlated with PK experiences, including what is termed: 'release of effort/ attention'. Thus, according to this study, PK events tend to occur once the subject has stopped concentrating or trying to achieve an effect. So in fact, effort is required (one of the key factors identified in this study), but the PK event only happens upon release of that effort.

Of course, these findings, although interesting, are barely conclusive given that the study is based on eight individuals. However, reading this has reminded me of something I came across last week when I was writing about the thought-controlled wheelchair (posted 1st January) - according to Andrzej Cichocki, the project leader at the RIKEN research centre (which has produced the wheelchair in collaboration with Toyota), the wheelchair is piloted best if you don't try too hard. Again, the 'trying too hard' theme.

Could it be that trying hard isn't the problem, but trying hard with the wrong set of tools? Am I failing to move that stubborn dial in the right direction because I'm trying to hammer when I should be twisting? Or banging when I should be plucking? Or....alright, you get the picture: we're trying to swat mosquitoes with canon-balls.

So which is the right tool? What exactly is happening when there is a release of effort or concentration? What brain waves (or other magnetic/electrical force) are you emitting when you're not trying too hard? What mechansim comes into play at those times when you're slacking? Should I find the right tool, will it allow me to move mountains whilst staring into space, a mild hangover numbing my skull? Will lying in bed all day become not just acceptable, but obligatory? Are the lazy going to inherit the earth?

playing psi games..

I've spent the past two hours staring at moving balls, orange butterflies, and pictures of injured cartoons in an attempt to tap into my psychokinetic potential. I'm referring to the many psi games that are available online.

The "Ball-drop psychokinetic test" is the first of the games I tried. It's a simple game, albeit badly explained (best approach is to play it once, in order to figure it out). Basically, as the name implies, the game involves a ball that drops through a series of pegs off which it bounces until it lands either to the left or to the right of a white bar. The aim is to try and send the ball either left or right with your mind (the ball's trajectory is set to be completely random, so basically you're trying to make it slightly non-random). I chose to focus on sending the ball to the right. I played the game three times. At the end of each round, I was given a z-statistic and its corresponding interpretation, which described how succesfully I moved the ball in a particular direction with my mind.

In the first round (50 balls), 28 of the balls went to the right, 22 to the left. I thought, wehey! The distribution should have been 25 to the left, 25 to the right!This is a deviation from chance surely! Wryly, the program reported that my PK influence was 'poor'. I guess 50 balls isn't very much statistically speaking. My third round produced similar results.

The second round however was far more interesting: this time I shifted 15 out of 20 balls to the left! This was most certainly a significant deviation from chance! The program agreed that my PK influence had been 'fair'. Of course, I'd actually been trying to shift the ball to the right... does this count as evidence of PK power? Can I still consider myself a budding psycho?

A quick search of the literature reveals that this result, whereby the outcome is opposite to the conscious intent, is termed 'PK-missing'. There has been very little empirical research in this area. However, there has been quite a lot of experimental research into the more generic 'psi-missing' (of which PK-missing is one type) in extrasensory perception (ESP) studies. One of the more well-known experimental studies in ESP, by Gertrude Schmeidler (1952), found that people who were cynical about the existence of ESP (termed "goats"), tended to score below chance level on ESP card-guessing games. Thus, according to this finding (replicated quite succesfully in subsequent experiments) goats tend to 'psi-missing'. She also found that subjects who reported believing in ESP ("sheep") faired above chance in the experiments. This effect is termed the sheep-goat effect. What these findings suggest is that belief and attitude are very important influences on the outcome of ESP experiments. A positive outlook towards the possibility of ESP yields positive results - a negative outlook, negative results. Interesting...

Looking back at my experience of the ball-drop game - can I remember whether I was feeling particularly cynical during the second round of ball-dropping? I really don't know. I think I was feeling cynical throughout...

I take my new findings and apply them to another online psi-game (The Garden, from the Psi-arcade, Institute of Noetic Sciences). This game is better designed (i.e. looks better and more interesting) than the ball-drop game. It is designed 'to test your intuitive abilities', through a series of challenges that take place in a garden. I skip straight to the PK part of the game, in which I have to 'help' an orange butterfly reach a tree with my mind. This time I decide to jot down my feelings and thoughts at the beginning and end of each go.

Overall, my results are unimpressive. Out of 25 attemtps, the butterfly makes it to the tree 13 times. However, look at the results in detail and the picture becomes much more interesting: for the first 14 attempts, during which I made a point of focusing on the butterfly itself, which I tried to 'push' mentally to the tree, it only made it to the tree a total of 4 times. That's 4 out of 14 attempts. This game does not report your z-statistics, and no interpretation is given of your results...but to me, this looks like another case of psi-missing. Friggin amazing, I hear you yawn. But wait: in the next 11 attempts, I make a point of focusing solely on the tree and not on the butterfly flapping around, and the results are worth at least a raised eyebrow: the butterfly makes it 9 times! That's 9/11 success rate. Now I don't need any statistical analysis to know that that result is significant.

Reading back over my notes, I can see that during the first half of the game (when I focused on the butterfly), I started off hopeful, but quite quickly became impatient and cynical as my mental 'pushing' failed to produce results. During the second half, I ignored the butterfly as it flapped around the screen and stared at the tree and told myself "that's the best place to be".

The results, in my opinion, are mildly interesting, but a million light years from even getting an audience with conclusiveness. I'll keep playing the games and repeating the procedures and see if I keep getting similar results...