the telepathy thread

[Moondira]

40 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

51 minutes ago, Moondira said:

Telepathy is but one facet of a worldview that says we are far more connected than what our measurements currently allow us to see. Telepathy should not automatically be discounted simply because we don't have the measurements to detect it, or because we see the world from a humancentric viewpoint.

Try substituting "the unseelie fey"  for "telepathy" in that example and see if you think it makes any more, or less, sense.

Stuff that we can't detect may well exist, but unless you've got at least some reason to suspect it exists and  some idea how we'd go about detecting it if it does, so we know if we ever come across it, how does it differ from stuff that, as far as we know, doesn't and can't exist?

It does exist for people, such as myself, who have experienced it. Like I've expressed, I'm more interested in what it says about how our world is structured; our world, our universe, extends far beyond what our human senses and measurements can currently access. I like to know reality, and to maintain an anthropocentric attitude toward reality is as egregious to me as those who maintain racist attitudes toward those who are different from themselves.

[Moondira]

32 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

56 minutes ago, Moondira said:

No, a true non-sensory experience might be detectable in the future, or it might not be. I've never separated them but it looks like you separated them in your mind and are imagining I did. I've always allowed a true non-sensory experience the possibility of detection in the future if new measuring devices allowed it.

But what are these measuring devices supposed to measure?    We can measure stuff only if it has some effect on the physical world -- that is, it causes some discernible effects on atomic or subatomic activity that can be recorded and quantified.

How does something have an effect on a meter or a recording device other than by interacting with it at the molecular level at least?   "Because quantum woo-woo" doesn't work, because quantum woo-woo involves things we can definitely observe and measure doing stuff that doesn't make much sense according to our current understanding of physics, so we revise our ideas in the light of the new data that's definitely there, even though we don't understand it.

You've yet to persuade me there's anything there to detect, let alone how to know when I've found it.

If and when someone can say, "look, if we do this, then that more or less reliably happens, and the  best way to explain it is through this testable hypothesis, which may or may not explain much, but should tell us something" then there's some point to the conversation.    Otherwise it's just idle speculation.

Well of course it's mainly speculation (in the hard sciences) at this point, just as much of quantum physics is. Theoretical physics is.......theoretical.

You may not be interested in it unless you see a test or a graph proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that it exists (honestly, I think you might be one of those people who, although feeling hunger pains, decides they aren't hungry because the clock doesn't say it's 6pm), but plenty of people are interested in it. And plenty of people have had psychic experiences. They just aren't the type who feel the need to find a lab to verify their experience in order to please someone such as yourself.

These experiences mean something to them, and show them a more complete picture of their world, and so I won't deny them their experience and evaluation of it just because we currently have no lab verification.

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Moondira said:

Do you see any solutions? I know there are competent science writers who sometimes do a good job. Frequently I like to read the philosophy of science more than actual science experiments.

Not any good ones, sadly.  I spent more than 20 years teaching college students, mostly undergrads.  My favorite classes to teach were the freshman-level classes, because I had the opportunity to talk with so many students who had not already decided to major in the sciences -- most of whom would not, in fact  When I crossed into the Dark Side of administration, I continued to argue that full professors, not fresh assistant professors and adjunct instructors, should be the ones to teach freshmen.  We definitely need more scientists conveying not merely the substance of their fields but also their excitement. I remember vividly the evening that my own freshman level Physics professor held a special evening class where Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov came to talk about astronomy.  It was riveting, even electric. 

I have had colleagues who volunteered to teach summer school classes for grade school kids . I did it myself twice.  I also have several friends who have written articles for popular media, including the newspapers. Efforts like those help.  So do books about the philosophy and history of science, like Walter Isaacson's books on DaVinci, Franklin, and Doudna.  The problem is that they are all most successful when they are preaching to the choir of people who are already interested in the sciences.  They face massive apathy and disinterest from most people.  The sciences require attention to logic and a rigorous, methodical approach to asking questions.  They require patience, critical observation, and a high tolerance for failure.  Those are uncomfortable requirements for many people, especially when we all have daily pressures of life to distract us.  It is one thing to read an excellent book about a scientist or about the philosophy of science; it's another very different thing to experience the act of using scientific methods to explore the world in greater depth than passive dioramas and canned museum demos.

So, no, I don't see any solutions other than one-on-one conversations across the cultural bridge, and those are slow.  Despite the many sparks of enthusiasm I have seen from children and from students in my college classes, I see little evidence that we are any closer to bridging the gap than we were 50 years ago.  If anything, it seems to be widening.

Edited July 20, 2021 by Rolig Loon
typos. as always.

[Love Zhaoying]

4 hours ago, Moondira said:

Check out the respected scientist Erwin Laszlo -- he ties together quantum physics with some of the concepts we're discussing here much better than any new-age mumbo jumbo. 

Yeah, my guru quotes him all the time.

[Love Zhaoying]

Hey kids, just remember to use your Second Life Telepathy for "Good", not for "Evil"! Make the moderator's job easy!

[Madelaine McMasters]

3 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

8 hours ago, Moondira said:

Check out the respected scientist Erwin Laszlo -- he ties together quantum physics with some of the concepts we're discussing here much better than any new-age mumbo jumbo. 

Yeah, my guru quotes him all the time.

It looks like I'll have to add László to the 2nd tier of my reading list, along with Sheldrake and Lawson.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

It looks like I'll have to add László to the 2nd tier of my reading list, along with Sheldrake and Lawson.

 

Argh it was Rupert Sheldrake. My bad. He mention Laszlo less often.

[Madelaine McMasters]

6 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Hey kids, just remember to use your Second Life Telepathy for "Good", not for "Evil"! Make the moderator's job easy!

Buzzkill!

[Arielle Popstar]

On 7/20/2021 at 1:35 AM, Madelaine McMasters said:

The physics of synchronizing objects in this way is well understood and has been replicated countless times. I've done it mechanically, electrically and optically. Drawing an analogy from that to telepathy might seem right to someone who doesn't understand the physics, but it's nonsense to someone who does. When I posit subconscious processes with biases and vulnerabilities, I'm not making an analogy.

I've no problem with people expressing feelings of synchronicity or connectedness, deja vu or premonition, and wondering about them. I feel those things at times, and I wonder, too. Wondering is enjoyable.

I do challenge ascribing things to natural mechanisms that don't apply, or claiming things can't be caused by natural mechanisms that can, have, and have been explained, particularly if I've experienced and used those mechanisms myself.

I don't think I've ever said that alternative explanations can't exist, but rather that if they're extraordinary, I'll want evidence.

In both cases it is the transference of a type of "information" from one place/object/person to another place/object/person whether by a regular physics and another through quantum entanglement?

Quote

I don't think I've ever said that alternative explanations can't exist, but rather that if they're extraordinary, I'll want evidence.

Then maybe posit your own explanation rather than waiting for others to hand it to you on a platter? What do you think it could be because there really is not much doubt that it does.

[Arielle Popstar]

17 hours ago, Ayeleeon said:

But are these cases truly common enough, and in situations controlled enough to be a valid basis for drawing a conclusion? Out of millions of people, 100 people get a feeling that corresponds to some event happening to someone they know far away. Our memories can be influenced, so there will be a tendency to remember the feeling at the time of the event, even if it occured before or after it. Whenever anyone had a feeling that does not corrispond to a real life event, it is forgotten. Those 100 people are offered up as proof, even though they are a minute percentage of the population, and the situations can easily be explained as mere coincidence.

Well when 100 out of millions experience an adverse vaccine event there is certainly enough scrambling to draw a conclusion as to why rather than tell people it is just a figment of their imagination. In the case of telepathy and other types of clairvoyant events, it would appear to be significantly more than just 100 out of millions though. Seems most at one time or another have experienced something which doesn't quite line up with what we know and accept but then chalk it up to coincidence, good or bad luck, etc. 

[Ayeleeon]

3 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

but then chalk it up to coincidence, good or bad luck, etc. 

or to some spiritual reality, which is a far different thing than telepathy.

[Moondira]

5 hours ago, Ayeleeon said:

8 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

but then chalk it up to coincidence, good or bad luck, etc. 

or to some spiritual reality, which is a far different thing than telepathy.

Under some conceptions of reality telepathy and a spiritual reality would be the same thing, whereas not so in other systems.

So you really need to define what you mean by the word "spirituality" as this is such a loaded word and people mean different things when using this word.

[Innula Zenovka]

On 7/20/2021 at 3:19 PM, Moondira said:

It does exist for people, such as myself, who have experienced it. Like I've expressed, I'm more interested in what it says about how our world is structured; our world, our universe, extends far beyond what our human senses and measurements can currently access. I like to know reality, and to maintain an anthropocentric attitude toward reality is as egregious to me as those who maintain racist attitudes toward those who are different from themselves.

You believe it exists, because you've experienced it.

But since no one else can experience what you've experienced, or know whether something they might have experienced is anything like your experience, there's not a lot that can be usefully said about it, to my mind.

Doesn't mean it's not real, but it does limit the possibilities for scientific investigation.

[Innula Zenovka]

RL example.   My late father had a story about how a friend of his had a psychic experience, while serving in North Africa during WW2 as part of Montgomery's Eighth Army.      They met up after the war, or when his friend was home on leave, and were catching up, and Dad started to tell his friend about how, since they'd last met, he'd been taken very badly ill  and almost died.   The friend then told him how he'd been sitting in his tent one night in North Africa, thinking of nothing in particular, and suddenly for no reason he apparently had a mental picture of my dad in a hospital bed looking really ill, and knew something was wrong.

Anyway, that was dad's story and he wasn't sure if he believed it or not.    And bearing in mind it must have been 50 years ago he told me the story, and that would have been about an event more than 30 years before that, there's no way of knowing what actually happened, or what the friend actually told my father (in a pub, I'd imagine) and what my father remembered all that time later, just as there's no way of know what bits of my father's story I've forgotten and what I've added since then.

So what are we left with?   As with all the other stories we have about odd things that once happened to us (or more usually to a third or fourth party), nothing, as far as I can see, other than a story.    May have happened, may not have done, no way of knowing one way or the other, but since it's a story rather than a scientific demonstration, that's not really the point.    

We describe our universe and our experience of it in lots of different ways.  Science is but one of them, and all I am trying to do-- and I think Matty and Rolig would agree with me -- is trying to ensure we don't mix up what's science and what's something else, which is equally important but which does not serve the same purposes as does scientific discourse, and neither does it operate under the same rules, and nothing good ever comes of forgetting that. 

[Madelaine McMasters]

13 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

In both cases it is the transference of a type of "information" from one place/object/person to another place/object/person whether by a regular physics and another through quantum entanglement?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem

Here's the first sentence from that wiki page...

In physics, the no-communication theorem or no-signaling principle is a no-go theorem from quantum information theory which states that, during measurement of an entangled quantum state, it is not possible for one observer, by making a measurement of a subsystem of the total state, to communicate information to another observer.

This is an example of the comprehension failure I mentioned in a previous post in this thread. Thinking Quantum Physics would give you a "Get Out of Jail Free" card, you have actually pulled the "Go Directly to Jail" card, by violating QP's No-Communication Theorem. You are, as always, free to invent any theory you wish to explain the experiences you have. If you wish to put the imprimatur of science on that explanation while violating its existing fundamental theories, you'll need tremendously compelling evidence.

14 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Then maybe posit your own explanation rather than waiting for others to hand it to you on a platter? What do you think it could be because there really is not much doubt that it does.

I have, in this post, in this thread, and in other threads, presented well documented (and maybe even well thought out) refutations to claims you've made as well as alternative explanations for effects you and others have experienced. This would be at least the second time you've claimed I don't do my homework. I'll leave it to others to decide if that's true, or if you are increasingly becoming an example of my alternative explanations.

[Luna Bliss]

On 7/21/2021 at 9:19 PM, Madelaine McMasters said:

On 7/21/2021 at 2:21 AM, Arielle Popstar said:

In both cases it is the transference of a type of "information" from one place/object/person to another place/object/person whether by a regular physics and another through quantum entanglement?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem

Here's the first sentence from that wiki page...

In physics, the no-communication theorem or no-signaling principle is a no-go theorem from quantum information theory which states that, during measurement of an entangled quantum state, it is not possible for one observer, by making a measurement of a subsystem of the total state, to communicate information to another observer.

This is an example of the comprehension failure I mentioned in a previous post in this thread. Thinking Quantum Physics would give you a "Get Out of Jail Free" card, you have actually pulled the "Go Directly to Jail" card, by violating QP's No-Communication Theorem. You are, as always, free to invent any theory you wish to explain the experiences you have. If you wish to put the imprimatur of science on that explanation while violating its existing fundamental theories, you'll need tremendously compelling evidence.

No need to violate QP's No-Communication Theorem -- there does not need to be any movement or transference of information (any communication) from one entity to the other if the information is always there already, and all we need to do is become conscious of it.  Quantum entanglement does not enable the transmission of classical information faster than the speed of light, and so would protect your beloved law. 

And it is consistent with the correlations predicted by quantum mechanics, and observed in experiment, which reject the principle of local realism, which is that information about the state of a system should only be mediated by interactions in its immediate surroundings. In other words, there is a connection or entanglement between things, things even great distances apart, that does indeed still feel very spooky.

Now I'm not saying this is how non-sensory communication happens. I'm only saying the law you're using to say it doesn't happen this way is invalid because nobody said any kind of information "travels", thereby invalidating the No-Communication Theorem.

How might it happen? I like some of the concepts of physicist David Bohm, who posited Quantum Potential:

 "Physicist  David  Bohm  studied  plasma  (a highly-charged,  subatomic  rich  gas). He  noticed  that  electrons  behaved  as  a  connected  whole,  which  he  called  plasmons.  The  difference  between  individual  particles  expressing  non-locality,  and  the  particle  party  that  Bohm  observed  in  his  study  of  plasma,  was  that  all  the  particles  knew  what  each  other  was  doing.  According  to  Bohm:  "photons  ...are  able  to  register  what  happens  to  one  another,  not  because  they  are  sending  signals  back  and  forth,  but  because  their  separateness  is  an  illusion  and  they  are  actually  all  part  of  the  same  fundamental  and  cosmic  unity" . In  other  words,  instant  communication  did  not  exist just  between  two  particles,  but  rather  among  all  the  particles  simultaneously  because,  in  essence,  they  were  all  one  and  the  same".   

Would like feedback from @Arielle Popstartoo.

Edited July 28, 2021 by Luna Bliss

[Madelaine McMasters]

19 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

No need to violate QP's No-Communication Theorem -- there does not need to be any movement or transference of information (any communication) from one entity to the other if the information is always there already, and all we need to do is become conscious of it.  Quantum entanglement does not enable the transmission of classical information faster than the speed of light, and so would protect your beloved law. 

And it is consistent with the correlations predicted by quantum mechanics, and observed in experiment, which reject the principle of local realism, which is that information about the state of a system should only be mediated by interactions in its immediate surroundings. In other words, there is a connection or entanglement between things, things even great distances apart, that does indeed still feel very spooky.

Now I'm not saying this is how non-sensory communication happens. I'm only saying the law you're using to say it doesn't happen this way is invalid because nobody said any kind of information "travels", thereby invalidating the No-Communication Theorem.

How might it happen? I like some of the concepts of physicist David Bohm, who posited Quantum Potential:

 "Physicist  David  Bohm  studied  plasma  (a highly-charged,  subatomic  rich  gas). He  noticed  that  electrons  behaved  as  a  connected  whole,  which  he  called  plasmons.  The  difference  between  individual  particles  expressing  non-locality,  and  the  particle  party  that  Bohm  observed  in  his  study  of  plasma,  was  that  all  the  particles  knew  what  each  other  was  doing.  According  to  Bohm:  "photons  ...are  able  to  register  what  happens  to  one  another,  not  because  they  are  sending  signals  back  and  forth,  but  because  their  separateness  is  an  illusion  and  they  are  actually  all  part  of  the  same  fundamental  and  cosmic  unity" . In  other  words,  instant  communication  did  not  exist just  between  two  particles,  but  rather  among  all  the  particles  simultaneously  because,  in  essence,  they  were  all  one  and  the  same".   

Would like feedback from @Arielle Popstartoo.

I've highlighted an apparent contradiction in your post, in purple that arises from mixing Bohm's theories with classical QP. First, you say there is no need to violate the No-Communication Theorem", then quote that instant communications exists between all particles in a plasma, not just two, violating the No-Communication Theorem. Bohm actually allows for violation of QP via "higher order fields" that act on QP. As I recall, those fields are superluminal and fully deterministic, but layer atop each other, ad infinitum. Turtles, all the way up?

If telepathy is merely becoming aware of information that is always already there, then the thought or feeling a telepath "senses" from afar is present within the telepath prior to the remote individual experiencing it. That gives the telepath ample time to become conscious of it before it happens, doesn't it? Telepathy represents becoming aware of a infinitesimally narrow sliver of that infinite information space... the right now. Doesn't it seem much more likely that you'd become aware of things that already happened in the wider expanse of past information (which you'll mostly ignore because you experienced them classically and knowing the past isn't novel) or things in the potentially even larger space of the future, which is premonition? The further into the future one sees, the less likely one might be to recognize anything about it, but the odds still seem to vastly favor premonition over telepathy in the reality you propose.

The idea that everything is always already there also seems to disallow free will, unless you invoke something like Deutch's infinite worlds theory. There should be realities in which telepathy is demonstrated and accepted, simply because infinite rolls of the dice  produce arbitrarily long strings of coincidence, with sufficient temporal skew to become evidence of causation. You might be able to "will" your own unique path through this infinite multiverse, but at every instant of time there would be a forking of reality with the high probability that the infinite paths you didn't take will produce more (or less) "telepathy" than the one you did.

If this is how it works, isn't the burden on each of us to will our ways into the realities we desire? Maybe yours is a future in which telepathy is widely accepted, with experimental evidence that somehow doesn't also reveal rampant and demoralizing precognition. Go for it. Still, Deutch might caution you to accept that your telepathy is synthetic. On the flip side, my not believing in telepathy might result in me selecting paths that lead to ever greater (but never total) certainty it doesn't exist, complete with impressive (and synthetic) lack of evidence. As my science doesn't have complete certainty in anything, I'm pretty much already there.

As for feedback from Arielle, she already knows you don't need it, why don't you?

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by Madelaine McMasters

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

That gives the telepath ample time to become conscious of it before it happens, doesn't it?

You are conflating simple telepathy with precognition (a specialty). Good job! (Yes, I saw the context.)

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Doesn't it seem much more likely that you'd become aware of things that already happened in the wider expanse of past information (which you'll mostly ignore because you experienced them classically and knowing the past isn't novel) or things in the potentially even larger space of the future, which is premonition?

Well now, yes but..the ability to know all past, present, and future outcomes, really treads into the siddhi realm. You don't like "just telepathy"? (Ok ok, context..)

[Madelaine McMasters]

15 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

You are conflating simple telepathy with precognition (a specialty). Good job! (Yes, I saw the context.)

I'm working from the description provided by Luna. Is there something in that I missed, or are you working from a more expansive explanation?

[Rolig Loon]

8 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

31 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

You are conflating simple telepathy with precognition (a specialty). Good job! (Yes, I saw the context.)

I'm working from the description provided by Luna. Is there something in that I missed, or are you working from a more expansive explanation?

Conflatulence, I think.  😎

[Love Zhaoying]

15 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I'm working from the description provided by Luna. Is there something in that I missed, or are you working from a more expansive explanation?

Telepathy = reading other's thoughts ("reading someone's mind")

Precognition = predicting the future

D'ya see how the two seem somewhat..different? One does not include the other, or preclude, or encompass the other. I saw the discussion on how the wiggly argument would try and use one to explain the other. Humbug, and even dare I say, Hogwash!

Luna provided a description? Hmm.

[Innula Zenovka]

Let's assume some people, apparently randomly and certainly unpredictably, sometimes experience what everyone would agree was ESP if only there was some way to confirm it.     

How would we ever know if that is, in fact, happening?    

I'm not asking for proof.   I'm not even asking what such a proof would look like.

I'm just asking what difference it makes if we do agree that there is such a thing as ESP ?    OK, let's agree that some people sometimes experience genuine ESP, just as people  win the lottery or score a hole in one at golf, or are dealt a royal flush at poker, but we'll still lack a way of distinguishing ESP from simple coincidence, so what difference does it make which it is?   

[Rolig Loon]

4 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

we'll still lack a way of distinguishing ESP from simple coincidence, so what difference does it make which it is?   

From a psychological point of view, it's difference between living in a universe that we can control (if only in a haphazard way) and one in which we are the hapless victims of fate.  ESP is an attractive explanation because it allows us to think that we can tip the scales in our own way sometimes.  It can be demoralizing to feel that many of the events around us are random.  So, true or not, ESP appeals to our hope that we are in control of something.

It also offers a window into a world of mystique and magic, in much the same way that Madeleine l'Engel and J.K. Rowling let us escape into worlds in which ordinary people can do things that twist the laws of physics.  We recapture a bit of the wonder that we once felt as very small children, when nothing seemed impossible. If some mysterious events are not simple coincidence, maybe the world is more wonderful than we have been led to believe. Maybe we are too.

I must admit that although I see no scientific proof for ESP -- in fact, doubt that it's even possible to verify that it exists -- I have always been fascinated by science fantasy.  I know that it's fiction, but while I am in the story I can believe that telepathy, telekenisis, and all the rest are real, and that I might be able to  do them myself.  And then I log in to SL and all I can do is fly, teleport, and make objects appear out of thin air.  It's a bit of a letdown, really.  

[Arielle Popstar]

13 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

I'm just asking what difference it makes if we do agree that there is such a thing as ESP ?    OK, let's agree that some people sometimes experience genuine ESP, just as people  win the lottery or score a hole in one at golf, or are dealt a royal flush at poker, but we'll still lack a way of distinguishing ESP from simple coincidence, so what difference does it make which it is?   

For the religious or spiritual person, it is in part the validation of their belief. An excerpt from the AA Big Book describes it well and its importance but the concept I think extends and is described in many different religious and spiritual practices.

In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don't struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while.

What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.