4 ms·

Has anyone considered some of these people might be psychic? Professor Daryl Bem's published study "Feeling the Future" comes to mind.

gboudrias 9y ago
You're being serious? I don't mean to be overly hostile, but the implications would be world-shattering and the "mundane" explanation is quite sufficient. Also lottery-winning psychics wouldn't get caught.
- romeopov 9y ago
  The mundane explanations doesn't answer anything. It's just pure speculation. They didn't eben talk to the guy who had the most frequent wins. Why wouldn't psychics get caught?
  - pg_bot 9y ago
    ...because psychics don't exist
    - hnzix 9y ago
      I knew you were going to say that.
  - WalterBright 9y ago
    Psychics explanations don't explain anything.
  - danso 9y ago
    What is the burden of evidence you have for the mundane explanations? That is, what would they have to show to you for you to believe them beyond a reasonable doubt? Technically, every possible criminal act conceivable in our known universe could be blamed on an invisible, time-traveling Hitler.
  - csydas 9y ago
    Well, let's assume for a second that psychics exist and know that they are psychic. The second assumption is kind of important as if they just act on impulse without knowing they're psychic we can't really differentiate that from all the other chance winnings on a hunch. For the Powerball, two ways to play: pick your own numbers or randomly generate them. Would a winning psychic choose one over the other more often? An ability to sense and know the future means they would have to either know the winning numbers and pick them, know the machine that produces the numbers (but not necessarily the numbers themselves), or somehow manipulate chance or psychics so that the lottery machine produces the psychic's number during the draw. Psychic is kind of loosely defined right now by your question so for convenience let's rule out the last one since that's more telekinetic/magic than psychic. With these conditions, we should see some pattern from the winner: they would either always pick their own and get the winning numbers or they would always happen to go to the right machine at the right time. Both should show pretty consistent behavior on the part of a psychic, as we can see that the bar for big winnings is pretty low ($600) and multiple statistically improbable winnings would likely be investigated. (per the atriclr, only 10 states do not investigate frequent winners). So to summarize so far: Frequent winners very likely investigated unless they are in the 10 states Psychic will likely pick their own numbers Psychic will go to a specific machine and have erratic pattern of purchase If psychic are playing the lottery, my assumptions lead me to think that it makes no sense to frequently win, instead banking on a single explainable big win. This of course would be only if the psychic did not want to be found out as a psychic, which for the purpose of the lottery I think would be a valid want as I believe that there are rules about additional knowledge, etc meant to catch people defrauding the lottery. Future-visions would most definitely qualify, so probably would require that the psychic forfeit their winnings. The mundane explanations do explain a lot, both from the investigations and admissions from the frequent winners. To me anyways, the psychics, if they exist, would more likely be the one time big winners, not the frequent ones.
    - projectant 9y ago
      Good points, but continuing with the thought experiment, I think you fail to consider what might be a reality for your psychics. What if the psychics don't have perfect information, nor perfect control, but have, perhaps varying on the psychic in question, some amount of power that lets them see or control future numbers with some amount of probability, but not certainty? In that case, they might win more often, but not every time. Given that so many things in nature follow a power curve or a bell curve, I think your presumed psychic abilities, we can assume, follow the same curves, and if most of your psychics then have "some ability" to predict these numbers, but not a certainty, then I think they are more likely to be frequent smaller winners. For example, if you have an ability that let's you see a 4/8 of the future numbers, with 33% certainty, then one time out of three, you will win 4/8 of the numbers, and sometimes more than 4/8 if you're lucky. TL;DR -- your presumed psychic abilities probably exist on a spectrum ( bell / power curve ) and likely most of your psychics do not have "perfect" future information. PS - I have a feeling that psychics would prefer to play the stock market, than lottery. I just sense their expected payoff is higher in that case, probably because there are a lot more factors that affect a stock price, so even partial information across a lot of these seems to provide a better advantage, than partial information on 1 single list of numbers.
  - brownbat 9y ago
    > Why wouldn't psychics get caught? Psychic powers would impede apprehension by authorities. See The Golden Man by Philip K. Dick. And you'd get some weird paradoxes too, or weird implications for information theory anyway. See also Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
  - carlisle_ 9y ago
    Ever hear of Occam's Razor? We have two broad options, a small set of people who are psychic, have kept it secret for the entire history of humanity, and use it to win the lottery but in almost no other context that we know of or have recognized. The other option is that these frequent winners are surrogates for others who can or would not hand in their lottery ticket on their own. What follows the razor?
    - hnzix 9y ago
      Occam's Razor doesn't make the simplest explanation automatically correct. Occam's Razor means you test the simplest hypothesis first. While I doubt it's psychics, if I were to assert that as fact I'd have to disprove that hypothesis.
- jaypaulynice 9y ago
  It is absolutely possible to influence an outcome based on thoughts. There are countless studies on this effect. Psychics in that sense don't foresee the future, they influence the outcome of the future. For example, the most common way to know what someone is thinking is for them to tell you, but I believe thoughts have another medium of transfer which is not well understood yet. Think about wavelength, radio frequencies, etc. Just because you can't see/touch it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Btw try this: close your nose and mouth and think about something, you'll realize that you're kind of talking/transferring your thoughts in the air. Here is a good link "Scientists Transmit Thoughts from one Brain to Another": http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/scientists-transmit-thoughts-brain/story?id=25319813 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/scientists-transmit-thought...
logicallee 9y ago
The parent poster is "serious" in the sense that I bet literally every person reading this had the idea of psychics briefly cross their mind as they read it. The problem is that psychics don't exist and the people who believe in them are unscientific. So it is the same as asking "Could God have favored these winners? Could it be divine providence"? That has no place in the article. If there were even half a sentence in the article stating something like: Are they psychics ------------------ As a fanciful aside we analyzed whether the winners involved could be psychics. The effect is not strong enough for that: a psychic could win 3 or 4 lotteries in a row, for example. A 1 in 10 million * 1 in 300 million is still much weaker than what a psychic could produce. The improbability is not strong enough to show psychc ability. Less fancifully, prediction of the results through some other means outside of psychic ability (such as by predicting the random number generator used), would show the same effect, also not present. The problem is that this validates "psychic ability" (which does not exist), in much the same way as a paragraph about God does. Imagine if the article had written: Is it Allah's will? ------------------- We asked our statistician whether the statistics show this may simply be the will of Allah. Our statistician stopped replying to our mail at that point, so that this analysis is inconclusive. The reason the statistician would stop replying to mail at that point is that nobody wants to mix statistics with religious beliefs. It just completely derails the conversation. I don't think that this HN thread will end up completely derailing anything, but just for your information, psychics don't exist, nobody in the world is psychic to any extent. (Some people are very good at reading information that is very subtle, however, and making inferences. Obviously this does not translate to predicting lottery numbers.)
romeopov 9y ago
Psychics do exist and some of them don't even know they have this ability. I have a friend whose Father is always winning at the race track. I asked him did he have some system and he says he just feels it. He could have psychic ability and not even know it like some lottery players might have. Science also tells us that the future can influence the past. Like Einstein said the distinctions between past, present and future is just a persistent illusion.

gboudrias 9y ago

You're being serious? I don't mean to be overly hostile, but the implications would be world-shattering and the "mundane" explanation is quite sufficient. Also lottery-winning psychics wouldn't get caught.

romeopov 9y ago
The mundane explanations doesn't answer anything. It's just pure speculation. They didn't eben talk to the guy who had the most frequent wins. Why wouldn't psychics get caught?
- pg_bot 9y ago
  ...because psychics don't exist
  - hnzix 9y ago
    I knew you were going to say that.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  Psychics explanations don't explain anything.
- danso 9y ago
  What is the burden of evidence you have for the mundane explanations? That is, what would they have to show to you for you to believe them beyond a reasonable doubt? Technically, every possible criminal act conceivable in our known universe could be blamed on an invisible, time-traveling Hitler.
- csydas 9y ago
  Well, let's assume for a second that psychics exist and know that they are psychic. The second assumption is kind of important as if they just act on impulse without knowing they're psychic we can't really differentiate that from all the other chance winnings on a hunch. For the Powerball, two ways to play: pick your own numbers or randomly generate them. Would a winning psychic choose one over the other more often? An ability to sense and know the future means they would have to either know the winning numbers and pick them, know the machine that produces the numbers (but not necessarily the numbers themselves), or somehow manipulate chance or psychics so that the lottery machine produces the psychic's number during the draw. Psychic is kind of loosely defined right now by your question so for convenience let's rule out the last one since that's more telekinetic/magic than psychic. With these conditions, we should see some pattern from the winner: they would either always pick their own and get the winning numbers or they would always happen to go to the right machine at the right time. Both should show pretty consistent behavior on the part of a psychic, as we can see that the bar for big winnings is pretty low ($600) and multiple statistically improbable winnings would likely be investigated. (per the atriclr, only 10 states do not investigate frequent winners). So to summarize so far: Frequent winners very likely investigated unless they are in the 10 states Psychic will likely pick their own numbers Psychic will go to a specific machine and have erratic pattern of purchase If psychic are playing the lottery, my assumptions lead me to think that it makes no sense to frequently win, instead banking on a single explainable big win. This of course would be only if the psychic did not want to be found out as a psychic, which for the purpose of the lottery I think would be a valid want as I believe that there are rules about additional knowledge, etc meant to catch people defrauding the lottery. Future-visions would most definitely qualify, so probably would require that the psychic forfeit their winnings. The mundane explanations do explain a lot, both from the investigations and admissions from the frequent winners. To me anyways, the psychics, if they exist, would more likely be the one time big winners, not the frequent ones.
  - projectant 9y ago
    Good points, but continuing with the thought experiment, I think you fail to consider what might be a reality for your psychics. What if the psychics don't have perfect information, nor perfect control, but have, perhaps varying on the psychic in question, some amount of power that lets them see or control future numbers with some amount of probability, but not certainty? In that case, they might win more often, but not every time. Given that so many things in nature follow a power curve or a bell curve, I think your presumed psychic abilities, we can assume, follow the same curves, and if most of your psychics then have "some ability" to predict these numbers, but not a certainty, then I think they are more likely to be frequent smaller winners. For example, if you have an ability that let's you see a 4/8 of the future numbers, with 33% certainty, then one time out of three, you will win 4/8 of the numbers, and sometimes more than 4/8 if you're lucky. TL;DR -- your presumed psychic abilities probably exist on a spectrum ( bell / power curve ) and likely most of your psychics do not have "perfect" future information. PS - I have a feeling that psychics would prefer to play the stock market, than lottery. I just sense their expected payoff is higher in that case, probably because there are a lot more factors that affect a stock price, so even partial information across a lot of these seems to provide a better advantage, than partial information on 1 single list of numbers.
- brownbat 9y ago
  > Why wouldn't psychics get caught? Psychic powers would impede apprehension by authorities. See The Golden Man by Philip K. Dick. And you'd get some weird paradoxes too, or weird implications for information theory anyway. See also Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
- carlisle_ 9y ago
  Ever hear of Occam's Razor? We have two broad options, a small set of people who are psychic, have kept it secret for the entire history of humanity, and use it to win the lottery but in almost no other context that we know of or have recognized. The other option is that these frequent winners are surrogates for others who can or would not hand in their lottery ticket on their own. What follows the razor?
  - hnzix 9y ago
    Occam's Razor doesn't make the simplest explanation automatically correct. Occam's Razor means you test the simplest hypothesis first. While I doubt it's psychics, if I were to assert that as fact I'd have to disprove that hypothesis.
jaypaulynice 9y ago
It is absolutely possible to influence an outcome based on thoughts. There are countless studies on this effect. Psychics in that sense don't foresee the future, they influence the outcome of the future. For example, the most common way to know what someone is thinking is for them to tell you, but I believe thoughts have another medium of transfer which is not well understood yet. Think about wavelength, radio frequencies, etc. Just because you can't see/touch it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Btw try this: close your nose and mouth and think about something, you'll realize that you're kind of talking/transferring your thoughts in the air. Here is a good link "Scientists Transmit Thoughts from one Brain to Another": http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/scientists-transmit-thoughts-brain/story?id=25319813 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/scientists-transmit-thought...

logicallee 9y ago

The parent poster is "serious" in the sense that I bet literally every person reading this had the idea of psychics briefly cross their mind as they read it. The problem is that psychics don't exist and the people who believe in them are unscientific. So it is the same as asking "Could God have favored these winners? Could it be divine providence"? That has no place in the article. If there were even half a sentence in the article stating something like: Are they psychics ------------------ As a fanciful aside we analyzed whether the winners involved could be psychics. The effect is not strong enough for that: a psychic could win 3 or 4 lotteries in a row, for example. A 1 in 10 million * 1 in 300 million is still much weaker than what a psychic could produce. The improbability is not strong enough to show psychc ability. Less fancifully, prediction of the results through some other means outside of psychic ability (such as by predicting the random number generator used), would show the same effect, also not present. The problem is that this validates "psychic ability" (which does not exist), in much the same way as a paragraph about God does. Imagine if the article had written: Is it Allah's will? ------------------- We asked our statistician whether the statistics show this may simply be the will of Allah. Our statistician stopped replying to our mail at that point, so that this analysis is inconclusive. The reason the statistician would stop replying to mail at that point is that nobody wants to mix statistics with religious beliefs. It just completely derails the conversation. I don't think that this HN thread will end up completely derailing anything, but just for your information, psychics don't exist, nobody in the world is psychic to any extent. (Some people are very good at reading information that is very subtle, however, and making inferences. Obviously this does not translate to predicting lottery numbers.)

romeopov 9y ago

Psychics do exist and some of them don't even know they have this ability. I have a friend whose Father is always winning at the race track. I asked him did he have some system and he says he just feels it. He could have psychic ability and not even know it like some lottery players might have. Science also tells us that the future can influence the past. Like Einstein said the distinctions between past, present and future is just a persistent illusion.