From: miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Re: Statistics (was Re: crash...)
Organization: Teknekron Communications Inc.
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 03:19:36 GMT

In article <philip.721441691@labtam> philip@labtam.labtam.oz.au (Philip Stephens) writes:
>>When we have a hard question, and not enough evidence to support a definitive
>>answer, we can use statistics to point us in the right direction.  In fact,
>>once we have enough evidence on precognative dreams, statistical methods can
>>indicate to us whether our results are really evidence of precognition or
>>whether they are due only to random coincidence.
>
>  This method is fine, except that it can fall down if precognition is not
>repeatable on demand (due to too many factors getting in the way).  In that
>case, you'll never get results that rise above the statistical norm for
>coincidental events.
>  So what's the problem, you ask?  Well, what if we can never get a handle on
>all of the factors involved in precognition?  What if there is no way to figure
>out how to make it repeatable, and yet the phenomena stills exists and can be
>activated under the right conditions?  How long will it take for scientists to
>grudgingly admit that it does exist, even though it cannot be proven in the
>standard way?

It will take forever, if what you say is true, and if what you are asking
is for scientists to accept it scientifically.  Scientists will not, in
general, accept that which is not subject to the scientific method.  There
is no way forward on the subject, for them, so why should they bother? 

This doesn't mean that there aren't SOME scientists who accept it personally,
because they have personally experienced something that seems too real to
dismiss.

>  This seems to be a basic problem related to many areas of pursuit (such as
>lucid dreaming, other forms of ESP, and what have you).  They are very
>difficult to reproduce--possibility impossible to reproduce 100% of the
>time--so these areas are not given the attention they deserve.

Lucidity is not ESP!

First, Lucidity is not difficult to reproduce -- LaBerge's work at Stanford is
proof of that.  The real difficulty he ran into was that the intuition of his
fellow scientists didn't support the notion of full consciousness in
dreaming, because it wasn't in the personal experience of most of them.
Once one *does* accept the possibility it becomes much easier to attempt
lucidity, and to repeat it after the attempt, if not 100% of the time, then
at least frequently enough for experimental purposes.  Thus, lucidity can be
studied scientifically -- and has been.

Not so with ESP, as far as I've been able to tell from reading.
Intuitively, everyone can grasp what precognition means, but few, if
any, seem to be able to actually do it.  So putting these two "areas of
pursuit" in the same class is, to me, bad categorization on two
counts:  intuitive obviousness, and reproducibility.

But let's look at something else: OOBE.  This *is* intuitively obvious, and
according to OOBEr's, highly reproducible.  Everybody is familiar with the
idea of the "soul leaving the body", since this is a common religious theme.
And there are whole cults (e.g., Eckankar) revolving around a kind of
consensus OOBE reality that adepts can visit frequently.  An ideal area
for scientific verification.

LaBerge has done some fairly extensive OOBE experiments.  He had people "leave
their bodies" and go look at things hidden away at specified destinations,
and return to report on what they'd seen.  Despite getting statistically
valid amounts of sample data, there was no significant correlation of the
reports: everybody saw different things.  Many of the test subjects believed
implicitly in OOBE, and many of these people *still* do.  None are so blind as
those who will not see -- or see that they CAN'T see, I guess.  LaBerge was
disappointed in these results, but seemed resigned to them, at least from
what I read.

>  Anyway, these are fairly obvious points I guess, and ultimately with only X
>amount of funding for scientific research, some of the "less likely" phenomena
>are not going to be proven to exist for a long time yet...

I agree that for a conjectured phenomenon as sporadic and (so far)
unreproducible as precognition, the amount of money that it would take
to come up with good statistics is very large.  However, quite a bit of
money has already been spent.  The USSR was very active, the CIA has even
put in some effort on "paranormal" research in general, how much we can
only guess.  And apart from the amount of money spent at any given time,
people have been investigating it for a very long time.  You'd think they'd
have a solid theory by now.

Occam's razor not only cuts out the more complicated explanation; it also
cuts out the NON-explanation.  "Precognition" is not an explanation until
it HAS an explanation.

My theory about all this: ESP, telepathy, astral projection,
telekinesis, etc., -- are all enormously appealing AND intuitively
obvious ideas to us because (whether we remember consciously or not) we
are experiencing these kinds of things almost nightly in our dreams.
Dreams being wish-fulfilment to a great extent, it's not surprising
that people are very interested in any apparent (waking) manifestation of
such events.

Contrast this with lucid dreaming.  Lucidity, in some sense, involves a
sacrifice.  You have to be willing to give up the perception of real-life
power that you have when you do "paranormal" things in your dreams, getting
only more volition in exchange.  You get, paradoxically enough, more freedom
and power but only in exchange for acknowledging that your freedom and power
are limited to the span of your skull and the length of the dream, neither of
which is under your control.

This explains (to me) the frequent motivational problems of lucid dreamers.
You work at it, get a little reward, some temporary exhilaration, and then,
after a while, you wonder: is this all?  Few have the combination of
temperament and talent to pursue it in highly creative ways.  I doubt that
I'm one of these few, but I'm in there trying.
---
Michael Turner
miket@tcs.com