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The Perplexing Appeal of the Telepathy Tapes

76 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

mtlynch 1y ago
I listened to the first episode of the Telepathy Tapes, but then I read this article[0] and watched this video[1] of someone using a spellboard with their child and felt like Telepathy Tapes had deceived me. I hope the people facilitating communication in the podcast aren't faking the communication as obviously as in that Instagram video, but the rest of the article showed specifics of the podcast where it feels like the host is using "sleight of hand" to present evidence in an overly strong way. [0] https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/the-telepathy-tapes-a-dangerous-cornucopia-of-pseudoscience/ https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/the-telepathy-tapes-... [1] https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_-ln0iO6i6/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_-ln0iO6i6/
- ch4s3 1y ago
  FC is always fake even thought the facilitator usually believes earnestly that it is real. It works partially through the ideomotor effect where the facilitator subconsciously makes physical queues to the letter they are thinking of next. There are plenty of tests where the facilitator is blind to a piece of information that the subject of facilitation can see and the FC always fails this test.
  - robocat 1y ago
    I would guess it is hard on facilitators once they're caught out. Nobody likes their beliefs to be shattered, especially when it is so brutally caring.
- an0malous 1y ago
  Are you serious? That video is nothing like the tests in the telepathy tapes, they have kids who don’t need to be touched at all and spell completely independently. I hate this whole “skeptic” culture so much, it’s just as religious as the people who believe things without evidence. You have a preconceived agenda about things you were told are wacky and you don’t even bother to review the evidence before drawing a conclusion. There is more rigorous peer-reviewed, published evidence for psychic abilities than most sociological and biological fields. The Ganz experiment has been reproduced 78 times by 46 different researchers, but sure it’s all fake and a blogger and an one obviously fake strawman instagram video are suddenly enough evidence for the skeptics who constantly demand the highest standard of academic rigor from the other side. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/
  - wredcoll 1y ago
    > There is more rigorous peer-reviewed, published evidence for psychic abilities than most sociological and biological fields. If this proved that such things were real, there would be a corporation exploiting it by now.
    - an0malous 1y ago
      That is folk logic, not rational thinking. First, the US and Russian governments did spend decades researching these abilities and in the US they CIA, DIA, Army, and other agencies all used psychics. Perhaps they are still using them, or maybe they found satellites and drones easier to work with. The other issue is that psi seems to have strong statistical significance but low effect size. It’s not a crystal ball, the inconsistent results make it inconvenient for things like stock markets and espionage. Finally, maybe people do use psychic abilities but they lack the introspection abilities to recognize it. Where do your thoughts really come from? If you’re a stock trader and you have a hunch or insight about an opportunity, where did it come from? Sure you likely gathered data and evidence to support your investment, but didn’t you first have a hunch or a fuzzy idea that seemingly came from nowhere? We have much to learn about consciousness. I’m not asking anyone to accept psi on faith, but this culture of skepticism boils down to “psi isn’t real because psi can’t be real” and I believe it’s holding back our understanding of reality to be so close minded.
      - wredcoll 1y ago
        > First, the US and Russian governments did spend decades researching these abilities and in the US they CIA, DIA, Army, and other agencies all used psychics. Perhaps they are still using them, or maybe they found satellites and drones easier to work with. Yeah, and they all stopped using "psychics" because, shockingly, they were worse than useless. (Please don't tell me the US military has somehow managed to keep actual psychics a secret for multiple decades despite people like trump being involved). > but this culture of skepticism boils down to “psi isn’t real because psi can’t be real” No, it boils down to asking for proof when people make claims. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. Like, you can believe that stock brokers use psychic powers to get stock tips all you want, people believe in gods and demons and all sorts of things, but if you want this to actually be useful you need to find some way to demonstrate it in a repeatable way.
almosthere 1y ago
I haven't watched the TT but anecdote. One of our friends has an autistic child, but fairly high functioning. When he was about 6 or 7 one morning this child complained he didn't want to go to a weekly playground and told his mom the slide was broken and it wouldn't be fun. Mom said what are you talking about - when they arrived, the slide was literally broken. The friend said there was no possible way he should have known that (I don't know the details) but this child does not have a phone and is under non-stop supervision.
- igor47 1y ago
  Selection/confirmation bias. Think of all the times the child told their mother some other random things which turned out not to be true. Those incidents don't stick out because children say nonsense all the time.
  - pfdietz 1y ago
    Or, perhaps the slide was cracked the previous week and now had completely failed.
- pulvinar 1y ago
  There are other possibilities, the most likely being that the slide was already in the process of breaking when the child used it last, and he noticed that before others did.
- driggs 1y ago
  Of every story you've ever heard about this child, this singular event is your evidence for telepathy? Shouldn't that alone be strong evidence against your interpretation? I'm reminded of the anecdotal, arbitrary miracles attributed to Jesus in the gospels of the New Testament. An omniscient, all-powerful son of god chooses to prove his infinite power by providing wine at a party. Or maybe there was another, much more likely and mundane explanation.
  - almosthere 1y ago
    No it's not, it's just anecdata. That's a common thing in HN. Yes it absolutely does not rise to the level of "the truth". I just thought it would be interesting to share.
igor47 1y ago
> skeptics generally don’t care to push back They do care to push back though! It's just that there's much more of a market for wishful pseudoscientific bullshit than for careful, history and evidence based sceptical bashing of hopes. Just another example of how broken our information ecosystem is. I learned about TT from my favorite podcast the SGU, where it was placed in the historical context of the FC controversy and then roundly debunked. https://www.theskepticsguide.org/ https://www.theskepticsguide.org/
- sunscream89 1y ago
  [flagged]
- VMG 1y ago
  I am eternally grateful for the SGU. Our escape to reality indeed
- an0malous 1y ago
  It’s not pseudoscientific, it’s one of the most rigorously studied topics in academia and has pushed the standard for psychology research: https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references The Ganzfield experiments have been reproduced 78 times by 46 researchers and this review article concludes that anomalous cognition meets the standards of proof: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/ The president of the American Statistical Association has reviewed the evidence for psi and said: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well-established” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/202005/do-psi-phenomena-exist-the-debate-continues/amp https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/202... Of course you don’t believe it because you listen to a podcast about skepticism so it’s a dogma for you, you’ve drawn your conclusion without even considering the evidence. Skepticism is a religion as much as Catholicism in Galileo’s time.
  - Catwady 1y ago
    [flagged]
Hugsun 1y ago
I listened to a few episodes on a recommendation. The episodes lead you to believe that the host is some agnostic person that's just curious about these reports. They are not as the original lead is from another superstition believer podcast. They also present the cameraman as a token skeptic, who is of course quickly swayed into belief. They lean heavily on a host of tricks with long histories of non-reproduction when tested rigorously. A "scientist" (known crackpot and woo believer) is employed to make the experiments sound. And their terrible academic reputation was explained away using conspiratorial arguments. I found TT wholly unconvincing and consider it a scam to get people to pay for the actual evidence. I won't pay of course and confidently assume it to be poor based on the publicly available material.
sunscream89 1y ago
[flagged]
parpfish 1y ago
> For months, I was puzzled as to why a great number of listeners wholly ignorant of the autistic experience were so enamoured by The Telepathy Tapes. ... I feel I’m finally starting to understand. Moving forward, the series has expressed a desire to explore the wider nature of consciousness and explore topics outside of the autistic community. It's right there in the name -- Telepathy. It's not a show about autism, that's just a means to the end. It's a show about the paranormal and it appeals to people that want to learn about the paranormal. The fact the the author has this 'revelation' about the true appeal at the end is strange. it'd be like having a big breakthrough that "i though people were watching The X-Files because they were all interested in learning about FBI bureaucracy, but it turns out people are interested in aliens!"
- rdtsc 1y ago
  > It's right there in the name -- Telepathy. It's not a show about autism, that's just a means to the end. It has to be both. If it was just about "hey, look random fortune tellers are telepathic, let's watch 500 hours of video about it" that won't go anywhere. It would be dismissed right off the bat. But it has to be something like autism. Everyone has someone in their family or acquaintance circle who has autism nowadays. Some are non-verbal and it's sad and frustrating not being able to talk with them. Aha, but what if there was a way? - Telepathy to the rescue. So it's like a necessary two part thing.
  - cogman10 1y ago
    What I don't like is that these things ignore the individual. Rather than dealing with "this is a nonverbal person, they likely have limited understanding" people that believe this garbage think "oh, this is a magic guru with super powers and wisdom beyond comprehension". That becomes dangerous when it comes to watching these individuals. No, they really don't know to not play in the street. They don't know not to eat the berries. They aren't connected with animals and don't know some can hurt them.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
munificent 1y ago
I have a pet theory (certainly unoriginal) that humans as a species feel a compelling need to indulge in some form of magical thinking in order to cope with existential horror. A few things are simultaneously true: 1. We have a truly fantastic level of agency as actors in the world. A single human can build a house out of raw materials, write a book series with hundreds of settings and believable characters, start a war, etc. 2. In order to make the most of that agency, we need a psychological system that makes us feel empowered to use it. Having nature's most impressive brain would be pointless if we all believed everything we tried was doomed to fail anyway so we should just sit in the dirt and eat slugs. 3. We are also corporeal objects made of surprisingly fragile meat and bone subject to the careless whims of physics. Through no fault or intention of anyone, all of your agency can be completely taken in an instant. Just be standing in the wrong place when a tree branch snaps off, have one cell misdivide and become cancerous, choke on a grape. We need 2 in order to make the most of 1. But the more we believe ourselves in control, the more horrific contemplating 3 becomes. I often wonder if we evolved magical thinking and all of its manifestations like religion, parapsychology, destiny, fate, etc. in order to hold these three realizations in some sort of stable configuration.
- cactusplant7374 1y ago
  My theory is that this all about "I know something you don't know." The people I have met with the most fringe theories don't have much agency in life. I suppose it could be a form of narcissism as well.
- WJW 1y ago
  In addition to the accidental things already listed under 3, there is also the additional points that: - Other people exist and they also have a lot of agency, the exercise of which sometimes directly interferes with your life. Not to mention how much capacity bigger entities like countries have to mess with your life it they wanted to. - In opposition to point 1: while humans do have tremendous agency, they also have very little agency when seen against how big the universe really is. There are more stars in the sky than people on Earth, by a considerable margin. Nobody can do anything at all to influence them. Hell, we can't even manipulate the orbit of our own planet in any meaningful way. I think many of the magical thinking paradigms are ways to cope with that as well.
andrewla 1y ago
Blocked & Reported (the podcast) did two episodes on this [1] and [2] that breaks down most of the controversy. This has completely ruined me on anything even adjacent to this, like whether Koko the gorilla could actually communicate. [1] https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-210-facilitating-communicating https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-210-facilitatin... [2] https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-242-the-telepathy-tapes-wants https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-242-the-telepat...
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  Of course Koko could communicate. The beef is over whether she engaged in true use of human language.
  - andrewla 1y ago
    > Of course This is what I was taught once upon a time -- that scientists acknowledged she could sign "food" and "thank you" and such, but is this language? But this doesn't hold up. Nobody but her handler could interpret the signing even for basic gestures. Identical signs were often interpreted differently depending on the context. Similarly, unrelated gestures were given the same translation, also in context. No reason to suspect any malfeasance or anything; the interpreter (as in the telepathy tapes and FC) is most likely acting in good faith and just unaware how much weight they are giving to their own mental model of the subject.
- Loquebantur 1y ago
  A podcast manages to convince you, but you cannot tell what exactly the issue is that renders "anything even adjacent" logically impossible? What about the possibility of being fooled the other way around, along with the majority? Truth isn't decided by majority vote after all.
  - JKCalhoun 1y ago
    Sure. But often one of the two sides has an obvious agenda. I thought of James Randi and "spoon bender", Uri Geller. I suppose if you're cynical enough you can presume that both are desperate for airtime, self-promotion and we should therefore be skeptical of both. Randi though for me has much less to gain in exposing frauds.
sunscream89 1y ago
[flagged]
- nkrisc 1y ago
  Sounds like schizophrenia.
  - sunscream89 1y ago
    It is very like schizophrenia. In fact, I doubt most accounts of voices in our minds could be technically considered schizophrenia by any scientific measure of the brain.
    - nemosaltat 1y ago
      Nemo saltat sobrius… nobody dances sober nisi forte insanit… unless he is insane Your user name, HN join date, and comment history (largely flagged) are intriguing to me. Do you have any longer form version of your ideas publicly available?
      - sunscream89 1y ago
        I share my normal as of you congenial side to acrue karma, so that I may burn it saying truthful things the mind coddled intelligentsia do not want to hear. For me, these are the hare. I will message something from your profile. Thanks for taking an interest in the greatest estrangement of our humanity. I have had a hand full of former HN accounts. Some search condition (“thought control”) may reveal them all.
      - robocat 1y ago
        Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit https://latinitium.com/nemo-saltat-sobrius/ https://latinitium.com/nemo-saltat-sobrius/
    - fipar 1y ago
      Your comment reminded me of this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...
sys32768 1y ago
Reminds me of how in the early 1980s we used my great-grandmother's Ouija board to spook ourselves to no end. It was telling us names, giving us addresses, and all sorts of serious stuff you wouldn't expect adolescents to make up.
aaroninsf 1y ago
PSA the appeal is the only perplexing part, and ITT many of us agree, it's not perplexing, it's just humans engaging in the same magical thinking and coping strategies we always to. The "telepathy" is 100% a fabrication of parents desperate to believe their situation and kids are something other than they are.
marze 1y ago
I was interested to learn recently that Alan Turing believed telepathy was a real thing. At least that is what someone wrote.
- ianburrell 1y ago
  He brought ESP up in his paper about the Turing Test. My understanding is that it is possible counter argument to his proposed machine intelligence. Belief in ESP back then is more understandable since they didn't have the experiments that disproved it, or the knowledge of biology that doesn't show a mechanism.
  - wahern 1y ago
    > Belief in ESP back then is more understandable since they didn't have the experiments that disproved it, or the knowledge of biology that doesn't show a mechanism. IMO, quite the opposite. They had more than sufficient knowledge about biology to entertain hypotheses about how it could work in theory, e.g. electrical signals leaking from the brain, etc. And there was plenty of "science" purporting to show an effect, if not the mechanism. OTOH, every generation since before time immemorial[1] has been burned by people making and profiting from these and similar claims. So just paying attention to what the old timers tell you, and keeping tabs on claims as you age, remembering how they pan out, can go a long way to honing one's B.S. detector. (This current ESP fad and the "tests" used to prove it seems to mirror identically a similar wave of claims I remember hearing about on the news and TV talk shows as a kid in the 1980s.) But some generations get carried away more than others, perhaps because of excessive optimism during periods of rapid technological advancement. Even stone cold geniuses can be too credulous; being optimistically credulous may even positively correlate with success in advancing fields of endeavor. [1] 1189 to be specific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1189 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1189 Skeptics since at least the time of the Romans have lamented magic grifts.
speak_plainly 1y ago
An ideal listen for anyone looking to sharpen their critical thinking. The reasoning moves are subtle, and it’s easy to miss the small leaps and omissions that reveal how persuasive but unsound arguments work. If you want to test your logic radar, keep a Reasoning-Error Bingo Card handy — here are some of the most common moves to watch for: - Anecdotal Evidence as Proof – moving personal testimonies presented as sufficient evidence. - Cherry-picking – highlighting the few “hits” or successful moments and ignoring null or failed sessions. - Facilitator/Ideomotor Bias – unacknowledged influence of helpers who already know the answers. - Lack of Experimental Control – demonstrations without blinding or verification procedures. - Equivocation on “Spelling” and “Communication” – shifting definitions of what counts as independent expression. - Over-extension/Universal Claim – extrapolating from a handful of cases to “all nonspeakers.” - Appeal to Emotion and Narrative Framing – using distressing or inspiring stories to disarm skepticism. - Appeal to Authority – invoking credentials, research funding, or famous supporters in place of data. - Confirmation Bias/Omission of Counter-Evidence – excluding decades of research debunking similar methods. - Shifting the Burden of Proof – implying critics must disprove telepathy rather than producers proving it. - Quantum-Language Hijack – invoking “quantum entanglement” or “energy fields” as pseudo-explanations. - False Dichotomy (“open-minded vs. materialist”) – framing skepticism as moral or emotional failure. - Paradigm-Appeal Fallacy – claiming we’re witnessing a scientific “revolution” instead of providing data. - Ambiguous Success Criteria – redefining what counts as a correct answer or “connection.” - Halo Effect through Compassion – moral halo from helping disabled children transferred to truth of the claim. Ironically, in trying to transcend “materialism,” the series repeats Descartes’ old mistake — treating mind and matter as mutually exclusive instead of as aspects of a single natural order. That move saddles them with the same impossible burden Descartes faced: explaining how an immaterial mind could causally interact with the physical world on top of everything else they need to prove.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- martin-t 1y ago
  This should be taught in primary school. I had a realization that logical biases and fallacies form well-known patterns only at uni and only on my own. I then had a much worse realization - that most people still don't know about them and that they don't care. You can't make people care, that only comes when they are the ones getting hurt by others being manipulated. But you can give them tools to know what they should care about when that happens.
Lapsa 1y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOdZtFWvwL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOdZtFWvwL0

76 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

I listened to the first episode of the Telepathy Tapes, but then I read this article[0] and watched this video[1] of someone using a spellboard with their child and felt like Telepathy Tapes had deceived me. I hope the people facilitating communication in the podcast aren't faking the communication as obviously as in that Instagram video, but the rest of the article showed specifics of the podcast where it feels like the host is using "sleight of hand" to present evidence in an overly strong way. [0] https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/the-telepathy-tapes-a-dangerous-cornucopia-of-pseudoscience/ https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/the-telepathy-tapes-... [1] https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_-ln0iO6i6/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_-ln0iO6i6/

ch4s3 1y ago
FC is always fake even thought the facilitator usually believes earnestly that it is real. It works partially through the ideomotor effect where the facilitator subconsciously makes physical queues to the letter they are thinking of next. There are plenty of tests where the facilitator is blind to a piece of information that the subject of facilitation can see and the FC always fails this test.
- robocat 1y ago
  I would guess it is hard on facilitators once they're caught out. Nobody likes their beliefs to be shattered, especially when it is so brutally caring.
an0malous 1y ago
Are you serious? That video is nothing like the tests in the telepathy tapes, they have kids who don’t need to be touched at all and spell completely independently. I hate this whole “skeptic” culture so much, it’s just as religious as the people who believe things without evidence. You have a preconceived agenda about things you were told are wacky and you don’t even bother to review the evidence before drawing a conclusion. There is more rigorous peer-reviewed, published evidence for psychic abilities than most sociological and biological fields. The Ganz experiment has been reproduced 78 times by 46 different researchers, but sure it’s all fake and a blogger and an one obviously fake strawman instagram video are suddenly enough evidence for the skeptics who constantly demand the highest standard of academic rigor from the other side. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/
- wredcoll 1y ago
  > There is more rigorous peer-reviewed, published evidence for psychic abilities than most sociological and biological fields. If this proved that such things were real, there would be a corporation exploiting it by now.
  - an0malous 1y ago
    That is folk logic, not rational thinking. First, the US and Russian governments did spend decades researching these abilities and in the US they CIA, DIA, Army, and other agencies all used psychics. Perhaps they are still using them, or maybe they found satellites and drones easier to work with. The other issue is that psi seems to have strong statistical significance but low effect size. It’s not a crystal ball, the inconsistent results make it inconvenient for things like stock markets and espionage. Finally, maybe people do use psychic abilities but they lack the introspection abilities to recognize it. Where do your thoughts really come from? If you’re a stock trader and you have a hunch or insight about an opportunity, where did it come from? Sure you likely gathered data and evidence to support your investment, but didn’t you first have a hunch or a fuzzy idea that seemingly came from nowhere? We have much to learn about consciousness. I’m not asking anyone to accept psi on faith, but this culture of skepticism boils down to “psi isn’t real because psi can’t be real” and I believe it’s holding back our understanding of reality to be so close minded.
    - wredcoll 1y ago
      > First, the US and Russian governments did spend decades researching these abilities and in the US they CIA, DIA, Army, and other agencies all used psychics. Perhaps they are still using them, or maybe they found satellites and drones easier to work with. Yeah, and they all stopped using "psychics" because, shockingly, they were worse than useless. (Please don't tell me the US military has somehow managed to keep actual psychics a secret for multiple decades despite people like trump being involved). > but this culture of skepticism boils down to “psi isn’t real because psi can’t be real” No, it boils down to asking for proof when people make claims. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. Like, you can believe that stock brokers use psychic powers to get stock tips all you want, people believe in gods and demons and all sorts of things, but if you want this to actually be useful you need to find some way to demonstrate it in a repeatable way.

almosthere 1y ago

I haven't watched the TT but anecdote. One of our friends has an autistic child, but fairly high functioning. When he was about 6 or 7 one morning this child complained he didn't want to go to a weekly playground and told his mom the slide was broken and it wouldn't be fun. Mom said what are you talking about - when they arrived, the slide was literally broken. The friend said there was no possible way he should have known that (I don't know the details) but this child does not have a phone and is under non-stop supervision.

igor47 1y ago
Selection/confirmation bias. Think of all the times the child told their mother some other random things which turned out not to be true. Those incidents don't stick out because children say nonsense all the time.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  Or, perhaps the slide was cracked the previous week and now had completely failed.
pulvinar 1y ago
There are other possibilities, the most likely being that the slide was already in the process of breaking when the child used it last, and he noticed that before others did.
driggs 1y ago
Of every story you've ever heard about this child, this singular event is your evidence for telepathy? Shouldn't that alone be strong evidence against your interpretation? I'm reminded of the anecdotal, arbitrary miracles attributed to Jesus in the gospels of the New Testament. An omniscient, all-powerful son of god chooses to prove his infinite power by providing wine at a party. Or maybe there was another, much more likely and mundane explanation.
- almosthere 1y ago
  No it's not, it's just anecdata. That's a common thing in HN. Yes it absolutely does not rise to the level of "the truth". I just thought it would be interesting to share.

igor47 1y ago

> skeptics generally don’t care to push back They do care to push back though! It's just that there's much more of a market for wishful pseudoscientific bullshit than for careful, history and evidence based sceptical bashing of hopes. Just another example of how broken our information ecosystem is. I learned about TT from my favorite podcast the SGU, where it was placed in the historical context of the FC controversy and then roundly debunked. https://www.theskepticsguide.org/ https://www.theskepticsguide.org/

sunscream89 1y ago
[flagged]
VMG 1y ago
I am eternally grateful for the SGU. Our escape to reality indeed
an0malous 1y ago
It’s not pseudoscientific, it’s one of the most rigorously studied topics in academia and has pushed the standard for psychology research: https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references The Ganzfield experiments have been reproduced 78 times by 46 researchers and this review article concludes that anomalous cognition meets the standards of proof: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/ The president of the American Statistical Association has reviewed the evidence for psi and said: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well-established” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/202005/do-psi-phenomena-exist-the-debate-continues/amp https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/202... Of course you don’t believe it because you listen to a podcast about skepticism so it’s a dogma for you, you’ve drawn your conclusion without even considering the evidence. Skepticism is a religion as much as Catholicism in Galileo’s time.
- Catwady 1y ago
  [flagged]

Hugsun 1y ago

I listened to a few episodes on a recommendation. The episodes lead you to believe that the host is some agnostic person that's just curious about these reports. They are not as the original lead is from another superstition believer podcast. They also present the cameraman as a token skeptic, who is of course quickly swayed into belief. They lean heavily on a host of tricks with long histories of non-reproduction when tested rigorously. A "scientist" (known crackpot and woo believer) is employed to make the experiments sound. And their terrible academic reputation was explained away using conspiratorial arguments. I found TT wholly unconvincing and consider it a scam to get people to pay for the actual evidence. I won't pay of course and confidently assume it to be poor based on the publicly available material.

sunscream89 1y ago

[flagged]

parpfish 1y ago

> For months, I was puzzled as to why a great number of listeners wholly ignorant of the autistic experience were so enamoured by The Telepathy Tapes. ... I feel I’m finally starting to understand. Moving forward, the series has expressed a desire to explore the wider nature of consciousness and explore topics outside of the autistic community. It's right there in the name -- Telepathy. It's not a show about autism, that's just a means to the end. It's a show about the paranormal and it appeals to people that want to learn about the paranormal. The fact the the author has this 'revelation' about the true appeal at the end is strange. it'd be like having a big breakthrough that "i though people were watching The X-Files because they were all interested in learning about FBI bureaucracy, but it turns out people are interested in aliens!"

rdtsc 1y ago
> It's right there in the name -- Telepathy. It's not a show about autism, that's just a means to the end. It has to be both. If it was just about "hey, look random fortune tellers are telepathic, let's watch 500 hours of video about it" that won't go anywhere. It would be dismissed right off the bat. But it has to be something like autism. Everyone has someone in their family or acquaintance circle who has autism nowadays. Some are non-verbal and it's sad and frustrating not being able to talk with them. Aha, but what if there was a way? - Telepathy to the rescue. So it's like a necessary two part thing.
- cogman10 1y ago
  What I don't like is that these things ignore the individual. Rather than dealing with "this is a nonverbal person, they likely have limited understanding" people that believe this garbage think "oh, this is a magic guru with super powers and wisdom beyond comprehension". That becomes dangerous when it comes to watching these individuals. No, they really don't know to not play in the street. They don't know not to eat the berries. They aren't connected with animals and don't know some can hurt them.

deleted 1y ago

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munificent 1y ago

I have a pet theory (certainly unoriginal) that humans as a species feel a compelling need to indulge in some form of magical thinking in order to cope with existential horror. A few things are simultaneously true: 1. We have a truly fantastic level of agency as actors in the world. A single human can build a house out of raw materials, write a book series with hundreds of settings and believable characters, start a war, etc. 2. In order to make the most of that agency, we need a psychological system that makes us feel empowered to use it. Having nature's most impressive brain would be pointless if we all believed everything we tried was doomed to fail anyway so we should just sit in the dirt and eat slugs. 3. We are also corporeal objects made of surprisingly fragile meat and bone subject to the careless whims of physics. Through no fault or intention of anyone, all of your agency can be completely taken in an instant. Just be standing in the wrong place when a tree branch snaps off, have one cell misdivide and become cancerous, choke on a grape. We need 2 in order to make the most of 1. But the more we believe ourselves in control, the more horrific contemplating 3 becomes. I often wonder if we evolved magical thinking and all of its manifestations like religion, parapsychology, destiny, fate, etc. in order to hold these three realizations in some sort of stable configuration.

cactusplant7374 1y ago
My theory is that this all about "I know something you don't know." The people I have met with the most fringe theories don't have much agency in life. I suppose it could be a form of narcissism as well.
WJW 1y ago
In addition to the accidental things already listed under 3, there is also the additional points that: - Other people exist and they also have a lot of agency, the exercise of which sometimes directly interferes with your life. Not to mention how much capacity bigger entities like countries have to mess with your life it they wanted to. - In opposition to point 1: while humans do have tremendous agency, they also have very little agency when seen against how big the universe really is. There are more stars in the sky than people on Earth, by a considerable margin. Nobody can do anything at all to influence them. Hell, we can't even manipulate the orbit of our own planet in any meaningful way. I think many of the magical thinking paradigms are ways to cope with that as well.

andrewla 1y ago

Blocked & Reported (the podcast) did two episodes on this [1] and [2] that breaks down most of the controversy. This has completely ruined me on anything even adjacent to this, like whether Koko the gorilla could actually communicate. [1] https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-210-facilitating-communicating https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-210-facilitatin... [2] https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-242-the-telepathy-tapes-wants https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-242-the-telepat...

MangoToupe 1y ago
Of course Koko could communicate. The beef is over whether she engaged in true use of human language.
- andrewla 1y ago
  > Of course This is what I was taught once upon a time -- that scientists acknowledged she could sign "food" and "thank you" and such, but is this language? But this doesn't hold up. Nobody but her handler could interpret the signing even for basic gestures. Identical signs were often interpreted differently depending on the context. Similarly, unrelated gestures were given the same translation, also in context. No reason to suspect any malfeasance or anything; the interpreter (as in the telepathy tapes and FC) is most likely acting in good faith and just unaware how much weight they are giving to their own mental model of the subject.
Loquebantur 1y ago
A podcast manages to convince you, but you cannot tell what exactly the issue is that renders "anything even adjacent" logically impossible? What about the possibility of being fooled the other way around, along with the majority? Truth isn't decided by majority vote after all.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Sure. But often one of the two sides has an obvious agenda. I thought of James Randi and "spoon bender", Uri Geller. I suppose if you're cynical enough you can presume that both are desperate for airtime, self-promotion and we should therefore be skeptical of both. Randi though for me has much less to gain in exposing frauds.

sunscream89 1y ago

[flagged]

nkrisc 1y ago
Sounds like schizophrenia.
- sunscream89 1y ago
  It is very like schizophrenia. In fact, I doubt most accounts of voices in our minds could be technically considered schizophrenia by any scientific measure of the brain.
  - nemosaltat 1y ago
    Nemo saltat sobrius… nobody dances sober nisi forte insanit… unless he is insane Your user name, HN join date, and comment history (largely flagged) are intriguing to me. Do you have any longer form version of your ideas publicly available?
    - sunscream89 1y ago
      I share my normal as of you congenial side to acrue karma, so that I may burn it saying truthful things the mind coddled intelligentsia do not want to hear. For me, these are the hare. I will message something from your profile. Thanks for taking an interest in the greatest estrangement of our humanity. I have had a hand full of former HN accounts. Some search condition (“thought control”) may reveal them all.
    - robocat 1y ago
      Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit https://latinitium.com/nemo-saltat-sobrius/ https://latinitium.com/nemo-saltat-sobrius/
  - fipar 1y ago
    Your comment reminded me of this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...

sys32768 1y ago

Reminds me of how in the early 1980s we used my great-grandmother's Ouija board to spook ourselves to no end. It was telling us names, giving us addresses, and all sorts of serious stuff you wouldn't expect adolescents to make up.

aaroninsf 1y ago

PSA the appeal is the only perplexing part, and ITT many of us agree, it's not perplexing, it's just humans engaging in the same magical thinking and coping strategies we always to. The "telepathy" is 100% a fabrication of parents desperate to believe their situation and kids are something other than they are.

marze 1y ago

I was interested to learn recently that Alan Turing believed telepathy was a real thing. At least that is what someone wrote.

ianburrell 1y ago
He brought ESP up in his paper about the Turing Test. My understanding is that it is possible counter argument to his proposed machine intelligence. Belief in ESP back then is more understandable since they didn't have the experiments that disproved it, or the knowledge of biology that doesn't show a mechanism.
- wahern 1y ago
  > Belief in ESP back then is more understandable since they didn't have the experiments that disproved it, or the knowledge of biology that doesn't show a mechanism. IMO, quite the opposite. They had more than sufficient knowledge about biology to entertain hypotheses about how it could work in theory, e.g. electrical signals leaking from the brain, etc. And there was plenty of "science" purporting to show an effect, if not the mechanism. OTOH, every generation since before time immemorial[1] has been burned by people making and profiting from these and similar claims. So just paying attention to what the old timers tell you, and keeping tabs on claims as you age, remembering how they pan out, can go a long way to honing one's B.S. detector. (This current ESP fad and the "tests" used to prove it seems to mirror identically a similar wave of claims I remember hearing about on the news and TV talk shows as a kid in the 1980s.) But some generations get carried away more than others, perhaps because of excessive optimism during periods of rapid technological advancement. Even stone cold geniuses can be too credulous; being optimistically credulous may even positively correlate with success in advancing fields of endeavor. [1] 1189 to be specific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1189 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1189 Skeptics since at least the time of the Romans have lamented magic grifts.

speak_plainly 1y ago

An ideal listen for anyone looking to sharpen their critical thinking. The reasoning moves are subtle, and it’s easy to miss the small leaps and omissions that reveal how persuasive but unsound arguments work. If you want to test your logic radar, keep a Reasoning-Error Bingo Card handy — here are some of the most common moves to watch for: - Anecdotal Evidence as Proof – moving personal testimonies presented as sufficient evidence. - Cherry-picking – highlighting the few “hits” or successful moments and ignoring null or failed sessions. - Facilitator/Ideomotor Bias – unacknowledged influence of helpers who already know the answers. - Lack of Experimental Control – demonstrations without blinding or verification procedures. - Equivocation on “Spelling” and “Communication” – shifting definitions of what counts as independent expression. - Over-extension/Universal Claim – extrapolating from a handful of cases to “all nonspeakers.” - Appeal to Emotion and Narrative Framing – using distressing or inspiring stories to disarm skepticism. - Appeal to Authority – invoking credentials, research funding, or famous supporters in place of data. - Confirmation Bias/Omission of Counter-Evidence – excluding decades of research debunking similar methods. - Shifting the Burden of Proof – implying critics must disprove telepathy rather than producers proving it. - Quantum-Language Hijack – invoking “quantum entanglement” or “energy fields” as pseudo-explanations. - False Dichotomy (“open-minded vs. materialist”) – framing skepticism as moral or emotional failure. - Paradigm-Appeal Fallacy – claiming we’re witnessing a scientific “revolution” instead of providing data. - Ambiguous Success Criteria – redefining what counts as a correct answer or “connection.” - Halo Effect through Compassion – moral halo from helping disabled children transferred to truth of the claim. Ironically, in trying to transcend “materialism,” the series repeats Descartes’ old mistake — treating mind and matter as mutually exclusive instead of as aspects of a single natural order. That move saddles them with the same impossible burden Descartes faced: explaining how an immaterial mind could causally interact with the physical world on top of everything else they need to prove.

deleted 1y ago
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martin-t 1y ago
This should be taught in primary school. I had a realization that logical biases and fallacies form well-known patterns only at uni and only on my own. I then had a much worse realization - that most people still don't know about them and that they don't care. You can't make people care, that only comes when they are the ones getting hurt by others being manipulated. But you can give them tools to know what they should care about when that happens.

Lapsa 1y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOdZtFWvwL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOdZtFWvwL0