
Parapsychology: the control group for science - gort
http://www.nothinginbiology.com/para.html
======
bOR_
So.. how do we know _for a fact_ that in parapsychology the null hypothesis
should always be true?

We do not understand how it could work, but to therefore say that whenever we
label some experiment as falling under the school of parapsychology, any
significant results must be a fluke.. that is almost analogous to saying that
any deviation from newtons' prediction of planet movements must be due to
measurement errors.

In my opinion such a mindset is a sure way to hinder scientific progress: it
heavily favors finding acceptable truths.

~~~
pmichaud
I just wrote an essay that supports what you said:

[http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/dont-reject-your-
experien...](http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/dont-reject-your-experience/)

We HAVE to assume "out there" stuff has some objective underpinning, or we
commit the same sin as invoking God, but in mirror image.

~~~
Confusion
Assuming there is an "out there" is unwarranted. As Nietzsche famously stated,
"God is dead". He didn't mean the Christian god: he meant _every_ objectivist
philosophy. There is just the world with us immersed in it. It is not even
wrong to attempt to describe the world in objective terms, separate from
ourselves.

~~~
gort
If there's no truth to the matter of what's out there or how the world is,
then I invite you to leave your 10th floor apartment via the window some time.
After all, there's nothing out there that makes this dangerous.

~~~
Confusion
_Truth cannot be out there—cannot exist independently of the human
mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out
there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world
can be true or false. The world on its own—unaided by the describing
activities of humans—cannot._

\-- Richard Rorty

The point is not that the world does not behave in consistent ways: the point
is that if you assume there is some objective truth 'out there', you are bound
to sometimes end up with 'wrong' conclusions, because truth is only in us,
because 'truth' is not an attribute that 'what is out there' has.

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Alex3917
If the findings of parapsychology are always false, then it's only because
things cease to become parapsychology as soon as there is an established
mechanism. Things go from being parapsychology to psychology all the time.

Synaesthasia, mirror neurons, and mystical experiences are three completely
different parapsychological phenomena that have become accepted by mainstream
science within the last ten years. I see no reason why science won't keep
validating more paranormal theories in the future.

~~~
kurtosis
What's a mystical experience? I find parapsych pretty interesting, but I've
never heard of this, at least in the context of mainstream science.

~~~
a-priori
Two examples I can think of:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_lobe_epilepsy>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide_poisoning> (the "haunted houses"
section)

~~~
Alex3917
Those aren't mystical experiences. An experience is only a mystical one if it
scores above a certain threshold on the empirically derived Mysticism Scale,
and ghost experiences definitely would not qualify.

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psygnisfive
This position is incredibly difficult to actually maintain, given that when
_non_ parapsychologists (that is, people who don't presuppose the telepathy
exists) reproduce the experiments, they consistently get contradictory
results. Infact, its only when the believers in psi phenomena do these
experiments that they discover positive results. Is this a problem with
science as a whole, or is this a problem with parapsychologists?

~~~
gort
_its only when the believers in psi phenomena do these experiments that they
discover positive results_

Hmm? Isn't that what we expect if there are no psi phenomena?

[ETA: Ah, perhaps this was an argument against the premise that
parapsychologists use exactly the same procedures as other scientists. But in
other sciences, one suspects that researchers who believe in XYZ tend to find
it more than those who don't...]

~~~
psygnisfive
Indeed, that's precisely the point. When findings are unreplicable _despite
identical procedure_ it's usually considered a disconfirmation of the results
of the initial experiment. Maybe not of the phenomena, but of the experiment.
And since pretty much _all_ psi experiments have been disconfirmed, this
effectively (tho not technically) disconfirms the phenomena.

------
gort
The article behind this small webpage was a blog post by Eliezer, which I see
has now been submitted to HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978124>

~~~
carbocation
Eliezer's post is a good one, and this page is also a nice framing of what I
also thought was the best part of his post. It is a refreshing way of
perceiving parapsychology, and for once I am glad that John Archibald Wheeler
was unable to get parapsychology expelled from the AAAS.

At last, with this perspective, someone has turned the pile of steaming refuse
that is parapsychology into a vein of gold, waiting to be mined.

