

Live ESP Experiment: Sexual Arousal Going Backwards in Time - parapsych
http://parapsych.me/

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pamelafox
Re "this only works for straight males" - the research that I have read
indicates that females are aroused by a much broader range of visual images
(even images of monkeys), whereas males are focused on the images which are in
their sexual preference realm. [I believe I read this in "Sex Before Dawn", a
book I quite enjoyed.]

So, anyway, it might work for females too.

I was going to try it out, but after the first picture, I realized I should
probably wait until I get home. :)

~~~
naner
_the research that I have read indicates that females are aroused by a much
broader range of visual images (even images of monkeys)_

Physically aroused, not psychologically. There is no way to say this
delicately but the women in the study would start lubricating when witnessing
anything sexual in nature but they weren't on the verge of orgasm or anything.
They could still find the imagery unpleasant and in fact didn't actually
_feel_ aroused while witnessing the monkey business. The researchers
hypothesized that this had to do with protecting the lady parts even in a
situation of unwanted sex.

~~~
pamelafox
Good point, thanks for making that distinction.

I think I would still reword "this will only work for straight males" to "this
will only work for those that are aroused by men doing women" (or whatever the
subject matter is, in this case). The audience is probably bigger than
originally presumed.

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stavrianos
I feel like the fact that I can choose how many times to play might throw
things? If I were more likely to stop after non-arousing image than after an
arousing one, what will that do statistically?

~~~
parapsych
Even if you decide to stop having kids after your first son, the population of
males / females should be split evenly, so I don't think it would make a
difference.

~~~
staktrace
I don't think that's true.

    
    
      public class test {
          public static void main( String[] args ) throws Exception {
              int boys = 0, girls = 0;
              for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {
                  boolean isBoy = (Math.random() >= 0.5);
                  while (! isBoy) {
                      girls++;
                      isBoy = (Math.random() >= 0.5);
                  }
                  boys++;
              }
              System.out.println( "Boys: " + boys + "\nGirls: " + girls );
          }
      }

~~~
spicyj
I don't know what output you're getting, but this is what I got:

    
    
      $ java test
      Boys: 1000000
      Girls: 996931
      $ java test
      Boys: 1000000
      Girls: 1001605
      $ java test
      Boys: 1000000
      Girls: 1001656
      $ java test
      Boys: 1000000
      Girls: 999473
      $ java test
      Boys: 1000000
      Girls: 1000645
    

Looks pretty even to me.

Besides, if you compute the girls/boy ratio mathematically, you get

    
    
      0/2 + 1/4 + 2/8 + 3/16 + 4/32 + 5/64 + ...
    

which does converge to 1.

~~~
tel
This was recently released as an old Google interview question and sparked
some controversy.

This MathOverflow page [1] is a good (opinionated) summary. The best answer's
author believes that with finitely many families the ratio actually doesn't
work out evenly, but does converge to 50/50 with infinitely many families.

[1] [http://mathoverflow.net/questions/17960/google-question-
in-a...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/17960/google-question-in-a-country-
in-which-people-only-want-boys)

~~~
andreyf
Well, that's pretty obvious. If it involves an infinite sum, but you only have
n people, you don't quite get to that infinity-th guy ;)

~~~
tel
The answer suggested that even the expected value is never going to be 1/2 but
instead something similar to 1/2-1/(4k) for k families which stop having
children after the first boy. So, it's a bit more sophisticated than that
involving situations where you test the average percentage of an infinite
number of islands with k families each.

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koepked
You should maybe consider tracking which images are more likely to lead to a
correct curtain selection. Then run an additional survey where subjects rank
the same set of photos for hottness/arousal level, and see if there is a
correlation.

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dholowiski
Can somebody who knows math comment - There is a 5 % difference on a sample of
700. Not huge, but that seems statistically significant? Please post the
source code so we can verify, and try this ourselves...

~~~
parapsych
likely to happen once in 50 experiments or so.

I think we need more samples to gauge significance.

Why do you need to try this offline? I'm not opposed to the idea, just
curious.

~~~
dholowiski
Not offline, just on our own servers, so we can be sure it's random. But I
didn't realize it was written in Javascript, so anyone can inspect the code.

I don't like that it shows you your percentage as you go. Aren't people more
likely to quit when their Porn finding skills are higher?

Also, maybe i've been spoiled, but some of the 'erotic' pictures don't seem
that erotic.

However... it seems like the #'s are evening out now, both around 51%

I think with a bit of re-design this could make for a great, and useful
experiment.

~~~
parapsych
Whether the picture appears on curtain 1 or 2 is predetermined, and the server
provides proof in the form of a hash. You can see that on the bottom under
your stats.

Yeah, I had a tough time finding erotic pictures. If you have a better idea of
where I can find some to hot-link, also for gay / female audiences, lmk.

~~~
dholowiski
What are you talking about, of course I have no idea where to find those kind
of pictures... although, and this is pure speculation, a Google images search
with safe search turned off might return some interesting results.

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abless
Is anyone actually taking this _really_ seriously? I am still waiting for the
prank to be revealed...

~~~
ugh
What do you mean?

Somebody read about an experiment with surprising results, found out that it
would be possible to turn the experiment into a website and did just that. I
think that’s great.

~~~
abless
I am talking about the original experiment. I am wondering whether people
actually give ESP a serious possibility.

I am all for running experiments and finding out new things, and if this
really happens to be a ground-breaking new discovery, great! That being said,
what's more likely? That someone just _revolutionized_ physics and completely
changed our concept of time, OOOOOR that there is something wrong with the
experimental methodology? I don't know about you, but my 23 years on Earth
make me think that the latter is quite a bit more probable...

~~~
ugh
I think it’s rather unlikely that ESP is real. It’s a reality of statistics
that scientists will from time to time get wrong results; that and possible
methodological problems leave all scientific results (except maybe the most
obvious ones) up in the air until they have been confirmed again and again and
again. (Psychology could also pick a smaller alpha value like maybe physicists
and avoid being wrong more often but it’s questionable how practical such a
change would be.)

Still, this is a neat DIY experiment. There is quite a bit you can criticize
about the methodology but that discussion was pretty fun. Oh, and this
experiment doesn’t even seem to confirm ESP. (I think. I didn’t break out the
calculator.)

------
ajays
I just saw 2 pics and they were definitely _not_ erotic. Maybe that explains
the failure.

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parapsych
This is in response to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2068730>.

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maxwin
There is a big hole in this experiment. Think about it, let's say the future
me choose 1 curtain in round 5.And I was wrong so I see nothing and move on to
round 6. And the current me reaches round 5. Since in the future, i do not see
any sexual photo, there's no future (arousal) information coming back to help
me. (well, maybe the waiting punishment may discourage me to pick the same
one). If I got to see the sexy photo even if i pick the wrong one (with time
delay to separate it from picking the right one), then I might be motivated to
send back my arousal feelings back to the past so that i can see the picture
without waiting.

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jal278
anecdotally i was able to get 2/3 of porn and around 60% non-porn over 60
rounds...not statistically significant in itself, but piques my interest in
this line of thought

pie-in-the-sky thinking: is there some 'quantum immortality'-style argument
that can be made for this sort of effect? quantum immortality is a somewhat
fringe many-worlds-quantum-physics argument that an observer can never
experience death and thus will always find him/herself in a universe in which
they are alive (e.g. schrodinger's cat will always find itself in a universe
where the atom did not decay). that is, in certain situations, a random event
(e.g. decay of atom) would seemingly cease to be random (e.g. from the POV of
schrodinger's cat) due to its consequences in the future (cat death by
fumigation).

also, if this arousal-esp-effect actually is real (obviously exceedingly
unlikely due to how bizarre its implications would be) i wonder if the human
choice element would even matter; i'd like to see a similar experiment where
everything is the same but there is no human choice and the curtains are just
randomly chosen. the effect (if it actually did exist) might be due not to
somehow arousal traveling backwards informing our consciousness but somehow
arousal traveling backwards to influence what universe we find ourselves in.

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SapphireSun
I think the reason for the ESP is that people can decide to stop while they
are ahead. The only legit way to do it would be to present a predetermined
number of pictures and throw out the results if the entire sequence is not
finished.

This is the same problem as testing for statistical significance too early.

~~~
moultano
judging from my own behavior, I think the bigger effect is quitting after a
long string of losses, but YMMV

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batterseapower
There is a nice paper explaining why the "PSI paper" is a sign that
psychologists must adopt better statistics:
<http://www.ruudwetzels.com/articles/Wagenmakersetal_subm.pdf>

There is a _really nice_ paper that finally explained to me why Bayesian
statistics might be superior to frequentist ideas for these purposes:
<http://pcl.missouri.edu/sites/default/files/Rouder.bf_.pdf>

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zemaj
I don't know. Some of those nonerotic photos are doing it for me :)

~~~
nowarninglabel
Not sure if this is a sleight on myself or to the study, but I did not realize
there were non-erotic photos in this study until I read your comment. I was
confused with the nonerotic stat being presented below the erotic ESP stat
during the study iterations.

------
tejaswiy
Well done! I really wanted to do this myself :D

~~~
parapsych
:) Glad you enjoyed it.

~~~
tejaswiy
Any plans to do the other test too?

~~~
parapsych
Now I do. Which one should I do?

~~~
tejaswiy
The one where you show a bunch of nouns (around 25 I think). Then ask the user
to type in as many as they can remember. Then make the one group look at the
nouns again after the test, and the control group just left alone.

If his theory is right, the group that studied after the test should do better
I think.

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shard
Let me guess, this is actually a disguised paid-referrer site for Naughty
America.

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Charuru
I don't understand why you're making us wait 10 seconds?

~~~
parapsych
I thought I had to put _some_ delay, so as to prevent users from blowing
through the experiment.

I'm not sure what to set it as. What seems appropriate to you?

~~~
alex_c
Well, IF there's any future-reading effect to be found, and IF it diminishes
over time, then shorter delays would show a stronger effect.

------
regehr
paf paf paf

