3 ms·
Like you say, science can't really help with questions of subjective experience. I think this is more about observing an objective phenomenon, which is that "th
by delluminatus 12y ago
Like you say, science can't really help with questions of subjective experience. I think this is more about observing an objective phenomenon, which is that "thought" can affect random number generators. The problem, as stated on the site, is this:
When it comes to "what we are measuring" the story becomes
more complicated because there is no real understanding of
the mechanism whereby an REG [Random event generator]’s
behavior can be altered by thoughts and emotions or
intentions.
[...]
We do not know how a mental state such as an intention or
emotion is able to inform the physical system to affect
its behavior. In addition, all of the robust measures we
have providing evidence for the anomalous effects are
statistical in nature, and the signal to noise ratio is
extremely low. This means that we typically cannot be
sure that the "signature" of an effect in any individual
analysis is driven by the hypothesized influence of
consciousness. The details written in the data from
single instances are more likely to be chance
fluctuations than consciousness effects. Only in larger
concatenations, gathering the weak signals from many
separate events, can we be satisfied that trends and
structure represent the hypothesized effect.
In short, they believe they have observed an inexplicable phenomenon -- intention influencing random number generation. The attempt to quantify, describe, and eventually fully understand that supposed phenomenon is the key purpose of their research.