Virtual Reality Gaming System Tests for Telepathy

Big Ben writes "UK scientists have built a virtual computer world designed to test telepathic ability. Approximately 100 participants will take part in the group gaming experiment at the University of Manchester which aims to test whether telepathy exists between individuals using the system. The project will also look at how telepathic abilities may vary depending on the relationships which exist between participants." Note: for their sakes, I hope they succeed in proving anything paranormal's going on — if they can reproduce such a result, it could earn them the $1 million prize long offered by the James Randi Educational Foundation.

I think it happens but is currently unprovable

[Some_Llama]

There are many times where my daughter says something that I am thinking or vice versa, or someone is searching for a word and it pops into my head, or my wife and I thought about something at the same time of day (within minutes of each other) but being miles apart.

Too many times to be coincidence has things like this happened. But trying to force it never has produced any results...

It will be interesting to see if this experiment can "prove" anything...

Paranormal research also at respected institutions

[mdkemp]

Research into this stuff isn't just for cooks and crazies -- even Princeton has a small lab the goal of which is to experimentally gather a "better understanding of the role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality". It's called the "Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research" (PEAR) lab, and its web page can be found at http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/ [princeton.edu] -- Martin

Calling bullshit

[bananaendian]

it's more likely to disprove the existence of telepathy than to reveal evidence of psychic phenomena.

I'm sorry but as much as anyone would like it to be, it isn't possible to disprove that something doesn't exist. You can merely point out the continuing lack of credible proof that something does exist.

However one can estimate the likelyhood of the existance of so-called psychic phenomenon sphere by simply testing out if it holds up a test of internally consistent and logical structure. Indeed we do not know exactly how our brain functions and if it can send and receive signals. However such a possibility becomes ever less likely as our understanding of physics deepens. For such phenomenon to exist would mean so many ramifications that it would be highly unlikely that our scientific knowledge and measurement abilities wouldn't have stumbled on atleast a few of them by now...

PS: sorry, no references or links at this time of the night - just my own ramblings...

Re:need an icon for crank science

[paulthomas]

Funny that you should say that about the Einstein icon. Einstein wrote the preface for Upton Sinclair's Mental Radio [amazon.com] which was a book about remote viewing/telepathy.

Convergence, not telepathy

[PeterWone]

If you put the same set of stimuli into two separate functions and they map to the same result, this does not prove or even suggest interprocess communication. It shows that the mapping functions are equivalent.

The mapping functions in this case are trained into large neural networks (brains) by a wide variety of life experiences. Primary in this process is learnt language (otherwise the participants won't know what "pick one of these objects" means), secondary is learnt social values (I am a man, lipstick is a woman thing, I will pick the football or the carkeys but not the lipstick), and tertiary influences include personal preference (I like football more than cars), presentation (people seldom choose the end items) and feedback effects (sceptics will choose items they think others won't choose, believers will choose items they think others will choose, and this is again modified by their knowledge - conscious or otherwise - of primary and secondary influences).

All of this is well known and exploited by (for example) advertisers and card sharks.

We already do have a method for transmitting thoughts between physically separated individuals. It's called "speech" and it certainly does give us profound advantages over the other animals. If you think about it, from a dog's perspectives, humands definitely are telepathic, insofar as we can share complex ideas and emotions at a distance. We can even transmit through time. This is called "writing". Both can be learnt, and both can be technologically enhanced in every respect.

As far as I can see, the only difference between "ESP" and language is inability to detect a medium. As is frequently quoted, any sufficiently advanced technology will look like magic. Give two people cellphones and they can share thoughts at a distance. If the cellphones had direct neural interfaces, there wouldn't be any practical difference from telepathy as sought by crackpots.

Re:Do you think telepathy exists?

[koreth]

If you were told that the only way you could have an ability such as telapthy would be to eliminate your attachments and improve your moral quality (given a moral standard of course), would you set out in achieving it?

Or what if you were told that the only way you could have that ability would be to maximize your attachments and jettison your sense of morality completely?

About equally likely in my opinion.

Re:Randi is viewed as a fraud by 'people who can'.

[Wavicle]

The U.S. government financed development of 'remote viewing' for over 20 years. It's said that the spooks hated the program, but because they got results, right from the start, they allowed it to continue until the soviet union broke apart.

Or there is an alternate [fas.org] explanation... Like maybe the researchers involved were scientologists, most of the supposed psychics were too, and this was just a clever project to milk the public for a few million dollars.

Re:Tax payer money at work

[Anonymous Coward]

Matt,

I agree with you. I'm not saying we're right,... I'm just saying I agree with the general premise that ruling it out might be equivalent to folks who are color blind questioning the absurdity of other colors that they can't see.

There are times when I half-believe that speech is a "cover up" for telepathy.

It begs the question of what's being communicated, images or language,... and, if images, does that mean that a blind person would be at a disadvantage. It's worth a moment to ask what we're really speaking about.

Also, might be worth a moment to go back and look at the "party line" reaction to the early reports of electrical signs of brain activity being picked up on the "first" EEG machines.

Eh,... some people like to live with secure boundaries,... and some folks don't need them quite as badly.

regards,
gerry

Re:Fakes, Crooks, & Liars

[Anonymous Coward]

All true, but Randi is just a stage act of a different kind.

While I am not a believer of the paranormal, I KNOW first hand that Randi is amazing...and amazing turd, that is. Years ago, he was invited to speak at a summer governor's school (state sponsored residential summer camp for gifted students) where I was a staff member. Long story short, he was so abusive to the faculty and staff, and his "talk" was so short and lacking of anything approaching a coherent theme, that he was never asked to return in subsequent years.

The talk consisted of almost nothing but name dropping - he must have talked about his "good friend" Johnny Carson and his 17 appearances on the Tonight Show for most of the half-hour he spoke. Mind you, he was paid for a 90 minute presentation.

My favorite was when one of the students asked if he really had a million dollars, which of course he didn't and doesn't. The same kid followed up by asking whether he could have it held in escrow or similar - a perfectly appropriate question given his constant touting of the "prize." Randi only replied, "You should be more respectful."

Make no mistake, Randi was never anything but an entertainer out to promote Randi, and the non-existent $1 million prize is nothing but more promotion but he's safe in that he will almost certainly never be challenged on it.

Re:Tax payer money at work

[Thing 1]

I haven't posted this in a while...

Around the turn of the century, I read two articles which forever changed my view of the possible.

The first said that the human brain works not only on chemical, electrical, and biological principles, but that it also takes advantage of quantum effects. So if we're going to design a machine as powerful as the human brain, we're going to need to understand quantum mechanics.

The second article said we had isolated one quantum effect in the lab, that being entanglement. Through a process, two electrons become "entangled", and when separated experimentally up to 10 km, when the spin on one is changed, the spin on the other is changed immediately--with no speed-of-light delay.

(It didn't stop at 10.1 km; they had success at all distances they tested, 10 km being the largest.)

So, if the human brain works on quantum principles, and one of those principles is communication at a distance, then that tells me that telepathy is possible.

So then I looked for evidence. We have a ton of anecdotes in which a mother knows when a child is in danger. However, we have zero anecdotes in which a father knows. This follows; the child spends 9 months in physical proximity to the mother, exchanging fluids; it's likely that entanglement is happening during that fluid exchange.

In addition, twins are much more closely linked than any mother and child; even one of the twins and the mother. Twins are said to have an "unspoken language" before they learn to speak. This also makes sense: twins develop within inches of each other, rather than the three feet or so that separates a developing baby from the mother's brain. So it makes sense that more entangled particles are shared between twins.

None of the above implies communication without energy.

Ahem...

[Chabil Ha']

Has anyone maybe considered that maybe this isn't an experiment for testing telepathy, but maybe is a psych study on something else? I mean, wouldn't this kinda taint the group by telling them that they are trying to do telepathy. I think its just a cover for some other expermint.

Re:Tax payer money at work

[mjm1231]

Sure, if you think a triangular piece of glass and a thermometer [wikipedia.org] are fancy equipment.

Re:Tax payer money at work

[myrdos2]

Years ago, we used to farm wild boars. In the morning my father and I would sit at the breakfast table, talk about which boar to kill, plan out how we were going to do it. We were excited, and a little afraid (wild boar are dangerous and cunning), and thinking about the kind of meat we'd get (sausage, pork chops, etc). Our goal was clear: to kill the boar.

And when we stepped outside, all the boars would look up from their troughs behind the fence, the one we had selected would run off into the bush, and the others would continue eating. We used to joke that they had a wire tap to our kitchen. It happened over and over. Now, I don't really think that any of the boars had telepathy, since I don't buy into that crap. But what if they did?

I think you could never, ever test for it in controlled conditions. If the goal of the activity is to kill a boar and eat it, it 'knows'. If the goal is to prove the existence of ESP and incidentally kill some boars, it doesn't. If there's some deep instinct in the boar that's somewhat telepathic, what does it care if humans prove some abstract ideas? Maybe it only triggers if the humans are mainly concerned with hunting and killing it. Humans are always doing strange things that would be incomprehensible to some subconscious pig instinct.

If the hunters didn't know they were in an experiment, it still might not work if the telepathy pulls its understanding from some kind of big picture of what's going on, or gets it's information from multiple humans who are interested in the pig. (say the scientists who are fooling the hunters).

Re:Tax payer money at work

[GooberToo]

Considering many animals use what could be dubbed, "telepathy" (using that word makes me cringe). Many, many animals have sensativity to electromagnetic information from both their environment and other creatures around them. In most species the exact purpose and type of information of this abiity is completely unknown; or at least minimally understood. For example, sharks can sense each other and prey...possilby signal to one anothers. In fact, it's thought the last several feet of a great white shark strikes are performed strictly by this sense as their eyes are rolled back and closed. Initial tests have confirmed that EM generation during this phase can confuse them, causing them to miss. Rays and skates often use this to sense to locate prey hidden just under the sea floor. Some species of eels actually use it for communication (breeding signals, warning...etc... with lots still unknown) Pigeons use it for direction finding like a compass, using visual cues to correct like a VFR pilot with a compass. So it's not far fetched at all to wonder if this mechanism is also available in a select few, higher order animals. If it were available, the exact nature of information conveyed is certainly open for debate.

Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research

[spun]

PEAR [princeton.edu] is a very interesting lab at a very prestigious school that has been performing research into two areas of paranormal effects for over fifteen years. They have done numerous scientifically rigorous studies of human-machine interaction and remote perception. While remote perception experiments have been inconclusive, PEAR has pretty much proven that human thought has a slight but measurable impact on physical systms.

In the human-machine interaction experiments, a high quality source of randomness, either a radio-isotope hooked to a geiger counter, a pachinko-like machine which drops balls down a triangular array of pins into slot, or a radio tuned to static is measured and a baseline is determined for that source. Three trials take place, in which the subject is asked to skew the results higher, keep them the same, and skew them lower. Then the results are measured and compared to the baseline.

Their conclusions, as listed on the wiki page [wikipedia.org] are as follows:

• Human minds can affect random physical processes, to a minor but statistically detectable degree.
• The effect seems to disappear when deterministic (pseudo-random) sources are substituted.
• The effect is idiosyncratic (different individuals produce different results).
• The effect is erratic, showing long-term fluctuations which can be partly (but only partly) explained by changes in the operator pool.
• The scaling in response to simple physical variables is not obvious: for example, speeding up sampling by a factor of 10 produced no detectable difference in the effect size per bit, but speeding up sampling by a factor of 10,000 inverted the sign of the effect and reduced the per-bit effect size by a factor of 30.

This is Princeton we're talking about. From what I've read, they have done their experiments right. The effect is measurable. People's thoughts impact the world, through some unexplained mechanism. The really weird thing is, it doesn't matter how far away the subject is from the experiment, either in space or in time. Forwards or backwards. They have done experiments where the apparatus is in a locked room, the trial is run but the results not measured, and some time later the subject asked to skew the results. When measured, the results are the same as if the subject had been asked to change them before-hand.

So all you naysayers out there can go shove your skepticism where the sun don't shine. Paranormal phenomenon exist and have been scientifically demonstrated in the laboratory of one of the world's best universities. James Randi, Princeton is expecting your check for (pinkie to mouth) One Million Dollars! Mwahahaha!

Re:Tax payer money at work

[mrxak]

When it comes to ESP I chalk it up to the subconscious mind picking up on subtle information, and beliefs in ESP I chalk up to the human brain always looking for patterns in chaos. Anecdotes are meaningless. There are anecdotes for everything but it's simple superstition. There's not a single proven instance of telepathy. Nothing has been repeated in a lab. I won't believe in telepathy until it's been scientifically documented.

Coincidence and subconscious clues explain "telepathy". Your brain is constantly processing the most subtle details of your senses, things you wouldn't be aware of consciously if you tried. Add in the psychology of living with certain people for extended periods of time. You pick up on people's behavior and rhythms. You haven't heard from your sister in a while, subconsiously you're probably going to compute about when you'd get a phone call. It's not some sort of long-range paranormal communication, just simple behavioral computation. And of course it won't work every time, but when it does, you remember it because that's how the human brain works. Superstition is largely recognized as a behavioral phenomina. Telepathy is just another type of superstition.

Re:Tax payer money at work

[Digital Vomit]

if telepathy really exists, then we would see some derivative of it show up in a meaningful pattern of somekind in this world.

If we had the knowledge to know what to look for and the technology to be able to see it, yes. For all we know there are supra-intelligent beings in another dimension (like the Sphere is to A. Square) which can know our minds via some extra-dimensional energy fluctuation (think string- or m-theory) given off by the quantum particles in our brain (we still don't understand how consciousness arises or even what it is - maybe it has extra-dimensional aspects to it). They could 'read' our minds by simply watching us from a direction we cannot measure, then like-wise influence another person to think similar thoughts. (Why? Maybe some of them do it as a hobby? Who knows?)

What always gets me is that every generation derides the previous one for being intellectually arrogant, then goes on to be intellectually arrogant itself. There's no proof that the universe stops at the limits of modern science.

Re:Odd feeling

[ZeroExistenZ]

they cannot be over the large distances between two brains, because of quantum decoherence.

wiki [wikipedia.org]: In quantum mechanics, quantum decoherence is the mechanism by which quantum systems interact with their environments to exhibit probabilistically additive behavior - a feature of classical physics - and give the appearance of wavefunction collapse.

So you look at a thought as matter, which should "travel" somehow to some other brain.

I believe there hasn't been any scientific precise breakdown of a "thought", as a dream in which an individual can experience a whole new world over a perceived longer timespan as the actual few minutes of the REM-period other then the brain releasing certain chemicals and reacting in a specific way. If dreams and thought were "matter", it would be possible to actually script a dream and a thought, and to back those up. You wouldn't be able to perceive time, in any concept, longer then a few minutes in that thinking, as you cannot travel faster then light or slow down time.

It DOES give interesting possibilities. Before Newton there wasn't such thing as gravity, it was there, but it was just to be "discovered". If they find nothing, then alot of people might have to review their beliefs and you can persist yours, but if there are some other results, it might prove an interesting new look to certain philosophy and religion.