3 ms·

> I have no idea what "psi" is Psi is the theorized ability in parapsychology for any sort of conventionally impossible ability. Telekinesis, mind reading, etc

> I have no idea what "psi" is Psi is the theorized ability in parapsychology for any sort of conventionally impossible ability. Telekinesis, mind reading, etc., it's all psi. The thing about parapsychology is that there is a very barely statistical evidence for it. But if you dig into it, the strongest predictor of whether or not a study will find evidence for psi is... if the experimenter believes in psi. As I've heard someone else put it, parapsychology is a natural test of the scientific method--it's something which is impossible by the rest of science, so we should find no evidence for it, and if we're finding systematic evidence for it, it indicates a failure of the scientific method to weed out statistically random hypotheses.

filoeleven 2y ago
Attempting to study psi leads to a paradox: > (1) if the existence of psi is proven in a classical scientific setting, then it demonstrates retroactively that this setting is inappropriate because psi implies that there is no clear “cut” between the observer and the observed. (2) So, if this assumption of the scientific setting is inappropriate (because of psi), then this setting cannot be used to prove the existence of psi. But, then, as psi cannot be proven, the scientific setting itself appears as being still appropriate! If psi exists, then it's unsurprising that experimenters who believe in it find evidence for it, because their belief influences the experiment. Same goes for skeptics and negative results. The paper describes how this problem carries up through any levels of blinding and meta-analysis: there can be no independent observer. They reference something called "Correlation Matrix Method" as a possible solution to the paradox, but I didn't follow the references as my interest is fairly casual. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.562992/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

filoeleven 2y ago

Attempting to study psi leads to a paradox: > (1) if the existence of psi is proven in a classical scientific setting, then it demonstrates retroactively that this setting is inappropriate because psi implies that there is no clear “cut” between the observer and the observed. (2) So, if this assumption of the scientific setting is inappropriate (because of psi), then this setting cannot be used to prove the existence of psi. But, then, as psi cannot be proven, the scientific setting itself appears as being still appropriate! If psi exists, then it's unsurprising that experimenters who believe in it find evidence for it, because their belief influences the experiment. Same goes for skeptics and negative results. The paper describes how this problem carries up through any levels of blinding and meta-analysis: there can be no independent observer. They reference something called "Correlation Matrix Method" as a possible solution to the paradox, but I didn't follow the references as my interest is fairly casual. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.562992/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....