J.E. Kennedy wrote me a nice email regarding my blog post on his review of Chris Carter's book, and, at my request, gave me permission to post the entire message.
Consider this post a continuation of "Kennedy v. Carter," published on January 25.
Here's the email:
George Hansen recently suggested that I take a look at the discussion on your blog of my review of Chris Carter’s book. It appears that the discussion has been limited because my review has not been openly available. I have now put it on my website for those who are interested at http://jeksite.org/psi/jp12rev.pdf. In writing the review, I thought the last paragraph was the most important point. In the posted review, I also added a link to a concise summary of my conclusions about paranormal phenomena at http://jeksite.org/psi/conclusions.pdf. I developed that summary because there is such a strong propensity to try to put me (and everyone else) into simplistic, polarized boxes for proponent or skeptic, without recognizing the problematic gray area that has actually dominated psychical research for the past 130 years. As noted in the book review, parapsychology is stuck and will remain stuck until the problematic areas are confronted.
I noticed some comments that parapsychology lacked resources to do good research. That may indicate that those participating in your blog are not aware of George Hansen’s discussion of the decline of parapsychology at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0jMPQnVV-U. In fact, parapsychology had substantial resources and was growing into the 1980s, but was unable to produce results that could maintain the interest of the funding sources. The current lack of resources reflects the failure to produce effective research results when they had the opportunity. This is another manifestation of the failure to confront the problematic properties of psi (as well as possibly poor management of research programs).
Jim Kennedy
I think I agree with some of the spirit of Jim Kennedy's argument. I consider the decline effect the key question of scientific experimental parapsychology and believe it must be addressed on both experimental and theoretical grounds. I currently consider CIRTS (http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/Bierman2010CIRTS.pdf) one of the most promising avenues of research, since it connects psi with the formalism of fundamental physics. I agree with Dick Bierman that the decline effect is related to the idea of "anti-bilking", or the avoidance of temporal paradoxes, though I presently disagree with his explanation on how exactly this creates decline effects.
Any practical applications, indeed, any continued research, must solve the decline problem to get reliable results. I think we will be able to understand and overcome the decline effect (this is not an uninformed opinion... but I do not want to comment further until publication). I also think that throwing up our hands and saying "psi is a mystery and will always be such" is not a valid scientific solution to this important problem.
I am starting a new lab to work on this problem but it will be several months yet before it is fully operational (I still need to acquire some more pieces of equipment, have some paperwork finished, and hire a researcher).
Posted by: Stephen Baumgart | January 31, 2014 at 09:11 PM
Thank you Mr. Kennedy. I find both your assessment of the state of paranormal research and your perspective on paranormal phenomena to generally be fair, reasonable and in accordance with my own perspectives.
A slight caveat being that I'm not sure I can totally readily agree with you regarding meta-analysis in parapsychology. I say this based on Dean Radin's responses to similar criticisms. If Radin is to be believed, meta-analyses that carefully control for all aspects of experimental design do show great significance and are in line with accepted meta-analysis methodology. Again, according to Radin, it is only when the control for design protocol across experiments is less concisely applied that the effect drops off. This is, of course, where things get messy - where one can say that what meets the design control criteria is fairly decided and another can say it is cherry picking to cause a desired result. Yet another might say that the decisions are due to unconscious bias. It is impossible for us dilettantes to form an opinion because we don't have all of the details on all of the individual experiments in the pool for consideration in the meta-analysis. We have to end up trusting someone's opinion and trust is thin in this area of research what with the warring camps and all.
Perhaps, if you are reading and are familiar with Radin, you could speak to his work in the area of meta-analysis.
Again, thank you.
Posted by: no one | January 31, 2014 at 11:33 PM
P.S. I want to add that I very much appreciate Mr. Kennedy's call for a paradigm shift in paranormal research. I think he is spot on.
Posted by: no one | January 31, 2014 at 11:36 PM
I just realized that since I quote from Mr. Kennedy's letter, I should have posted this comment on this thread, rather than the earlier one. Sorry for the dual post:
I don't know enough about statistics to know how much weight to give this comment of Jim Kennedy's:
"Most meta-analyses in parapsychology with 30 or more studies with good methodology and a variety of experimenters have found that about 20 to 33 percent of the studies obtained statistically significant results. Parapsychologists have not been able to reliably obtain the higher replication rates of 80 percent or more that are expected for properly designed, convincing experiments."
But the fact that Mr. Kennedy says (on page 2, next-to-last paragraph) that he himself has had some "convincing personal paranormal experiences" does suggest that he's approaching Carter's book without a skeptical agenda, no?
I mean, you don't claim to have had paranormal experiences if you think the paranormal doesn't exist, right?
Posted by: Bruce Siegel | February 01, 2014 at 03:05 AM
Kudos to Mr. Kennedy for some of the most honest and sensible comments on psi I've read for a while (and I say this as a big fan of Chris Carter's books).
Posted by: Warren | February 01, 2014 at 09:08 AM
FYI, a collection of J.E. Kennedy's writings can be found here:
http://jeksite.org/psi.htm
He seems to be more pessimistic about the evidence produced by parapsychology than I am. It's true that relatively few people can consistently manifest psi abilities, as he observes, but then again, it takes only one white crow ... And the inconsistency strikes me as most likely relating to how little we know about the mechanism of psi. If we understood how it worked, we could perhaps marshal it more effectively. Then again, this might just be an instance of "promissory anti-materialism," so to speak.
As for the problems with funding, I suspect this has much to do with the trend toward large government-funded and corporate-sponsored science projects. As many people have noted, scientific breakthroughs in the past were frequently achieved by individuals or small teams working in relative isolation. Today, the scientific world is far more corporate and bureaucratic. It took only two researchers, Crick and Watson, to work out the helical structure of DNA; how many hundreds were needed to sequence the human genome?
Psi, which has traditionally been relegated to the margins anyway, finds even less support in this new atmosphere than it did in the past. The government (as far as we know) stopped funding it after the Stargate program, even though Stargate did produce some striking results; while the program had problems, particularly in its later years, the main reason funding was cut off was the determined opposition from skeptics. Corporations seem unlikely to find anything as avant-garde as ESP research unless it can be commercialized.
It's sometimes been observed that the pace of new, radical, paradigm-shifting discoveries has slowed. I suspect the main reason is that it takes a free-thinking individual, working on a hunch, to come up with something really new and follow through on it. Think of Einstein imagining himself riding on a beam of light, or Crick using LSD to dream up the double helix. This kind of freewheeling creativity has little place in the heavily corporatized environment of Big Science today.
In short, it seems to me that a combination of organized militant skepticism (a relatively new phenomenon - CSICOP was founded in 1976) and increasing bureaucratization has largely shut the door to path-breaking experimentation, not only in psi but in other areas.
The problem, I think, is not in our Stargates but in ourselves.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | February 01, 2014 at 01:42 PM
A little more on the issue of individuals who can consistently manifest psi ...
I've long thought that psi ability can be analogized to musical ability. The majority of people have some rudimentary musical ability; with practice, they can learn to sing or play a musical instrument adequately. A small number of people are musical prodigies who have natural talent and can excel in musical skill. There is also a small number of people who are tone deaf and have no musical ability at all.
It could be argued that only a small number of people show consistently above-average musical ability. But it doesn't follow that musical ability is impossible to prove empirically, or that it is any more mysterious than any other human talent.
Of course, in our society there is far more acceptance of, and demand for, musical skill than for psi talents. As a result, amateur musicians can be found easily, while amateur psi practitioners are rarer and tend to keep a lower profile.
I can also think of another analogy, though it may seem a little off-color: sexual performance. Most men can perform sex adequately. A few are sexual superstars (e.g., porn stars). And there are some men who are impotent and cannot perform at all. In some cases, performance can be improved by doing certain exercises, removing mental blocks, or taking medications.
Again, psi ability in the general population seems to track the same bell curve, and it can sometimes be improved with practice (or by using techniques like hypnosis or sensory deprivation).
I guess the bottom line is that I really don't see the problem with the well-known fact that psi ability is usually inconsistent. How many human abilities, either physical or mental or a combination of both, are *not* inconsistent? Could Michael Jordan unfailingly make three-point shots, or did he only make a certain percentage of them? And if even Jordan couldn't do it 100% of the time, how can we expect the average person to do it on demand? Nevertheless, human beings unquestionably do have the ability to play basketball.
The quest for statistical consistency in the general population, beyond a fairly low level consistent with latent, undeveloped psi, just strikes me as misguided. In the general population, psi abilities – like musical talent, like sexual performance, like athletic skill – are always going to be no better than average; while measurable, they are not robust. Why would anyone expect otherwise?
Posted by: Michael Prescott | February 01, 2014 at 02:07 PM
Michael, I agree with both of your above comments. Also, it is intriguing to me that Kennedy focusses on the decline effect in psi experiments as if it is a problem particularly for that area of research. Actually, the decline effect is well known in pharmaceutical efficacy studies as well; Kennedy's own area of focus. There are many drugs patented and marketed and heavily consumed whose effects in subsequent studies are no better than the drugs they are supposed to replace and, in some cases, no better than placebo - though in original studies were significantly more effective.
Posted by: no one | February 01, 2014 at 08:11 PM
I'm not impressed with Kennedy's statement on paranormal phenomena. Here's my take on what he wrote:
||1. Paranormal phenomena beyond current scientific understanding
sometimes actually occur. This conclusion is based almost entirely on my personal paranormal experiences around age 20.||
So far, so okay. Even if they just occur a couple times in a lifetime, as Kennedy says they did to him, they are still occurring all over the world *all* the time. Of course, I think phenomena that violate the materialist worldview happen regularly to everyday people. Still, it's brave of him to make this claim, for it would be far easier just to say they never occur and retain the purity of one's position.
||2. Most parapsychological experiments do not manifest actual paranormal phenomena.||
This is so vague as to be meaningless. Does he mean that most parapsychology experiments that claim to have achieved positive results actually have not done so?
||The experiments are dominated by methodological noise, various types of experimenter misconduct, and wishful thinking.
These obstacles severely hinder scientific understanding
and could be avoided with established methodological
practices.||
What percentage of experiments are so dominated? What does "methodological noise" mean? Is "misconduct" really so common--outright cheating? "Wishful thinking" is irrelevant if the protocols are correct.
||3. Most (probably more than 80%) of the spontaneous paranormal experiences that people report are not actually paranormal.||
Even if 20% are "actual," that's still a *lot* of real paranormal phenomena happening, as people report quite a bit of stuff.
||Most research on spontaneous cases is actually investigating characteristics of wishful thinking.||
"Wishful thinking"? People are hoping that something paranormal will happen in their lives, and 8 times out of 10, they just imagined it?
||4. The occurrence of actual paranormal phenomena is associated with certain people and varies greatly among people.||
Again, it depends on what is to be considered "paranormal." I think a certain amount of psi is simply baked into the hardware, and we use it without particularly noticing it. I agree, however, with what Michael said about a bell curve.
||Few people experience many actual paranormal occurrences.||
I disagree. Psychics and others who have the ability to manifest paranormal phenomena have experiences all the time.
||Actual paranormal effects in experiments tend to be associated with certain experimenters.||
Seems overly general. In autoganzfeld too? It's auto!
||5. Reliable applications of psychic abilities for material benefit such as for financial success or military uses
appear to be prevented by some principle that limits
paranormal phenomena. Reliable applications have
not been achieved after decades of effort.||
I think reliable applications have been developed. Here's one: asking my psychic friends for advice. It works. If governments and other entities are not availing themselves of what psychics can offer, then it's probably because of ideological or political reasons.
||The claims of those who profess reliable paranormal abilities
are usually based on wishful thinking, deception, and/or
sporadic, uncontrolled, sometimes striking instances of
actual paranormal phenomena.||
It's true that psychic ability is fairly variable. Many psychics can produce at least *some* hits in a reading on a regular basis. For example, sometimes my psychic friends are really "on," but they rarely are totally "off."
||6. My most convincing paranormal experiences appeared to be guiding my life and provided a sense of meaning in life. Similar effects have been frequently reported by others. A sense of meaning in life and paranormal guidance or destiny are
the most common effects of anomalous experiences and may be the primary purposes of actual paranormal phenomena.||
This is all over the place. First, he seems to be privileging his own type of experience over those of others. (I.e., those experiments are bunkum, but what I experienced when I was 20 was real, man!)
Second, I think there are a wide variety of paranormal experiences that are not especially meaningful, as they are related to the "baked-in" psi I mentioned earlier. For example, when the phone rings and you know who it is, that is the type of informational psi that is running in the background all the time and helps the organism survive. It is the kind of psi that Sheldrake has demonstrated in the one dog. Sure, there is "meaning" in there as well, but we are not talking about a big message from a spirit guide or something.
Third, I think Kennedy underestimates just how easy it is to experience meaning from spirit guides, departed loved ones, etc. To him, such experiences are rare; to me, they are everyday things.
Fourth and related to the third point, the purpose of paranormal experiences may be to send a message of meaning, purpose, destiny, etc., but that is because the messengers themselves have a purpose. In other words, he seems to be saying, "This weird thing happened to me, so it really had a purpose!" whereas I am saying, "It's not weird unless you think it is, and everything in life has purpose and meaning."
In sum, I am not seeing a great critique here, and I think his thinking only further muddies the water. That is not to say that he hasn't had valuable points to make elsewhere. I haven't read his other material.
Posted by: Matt Rouge | February 02, 2014 at 02:46 AM
Another reason for the decline in funding, as documented by Craig Weiler in Psi Wars, is that bequests to colleges for its study were diverted to other topics, or even used to fund skeptics.
Posted by: Roger Knights | February 02, 2014 at 04:30 AM
Nice critique of Kennedy's critique, Matt. OTOH, I read many of the essays on Kennedy's site. I think he does make useful observations concerning studying psi in the laboratory.
Posted by: no one | February 02, 2014 at 03:32 PM
Matt, I think you're right that J.E. is overly dismissive of some of the psi manifestations that most proponents take seriously. If we sometimes tend to see psi where it's not really happening, it may be equally true that we tend to see randomness in other situations that have a spiritual context we're not able or willing to see. (Randomania, as someone has called it.)
On the other hand, I confess to really liking his independent thinking. He's a rare bird -- someone who writes on these matters but is not likely to make a lot of friends on either side of the fence. To believe in psi, yet be willing to criticize a figure as revered by proponents as Carter, makes his voice unique, and I think, important.
Posted by: Bruce Siegel | February 02, 2014 at 05:55 PM
I have to say I agree with Matt on this. Though I appreciate J.E. Kennedy's willingness to participate in this debate, I found his summary of the state of parapsychology unduly pessimistic.
As far as the question of "meaning" is concerned, I have to say that the majority of my experiences that I regard as psychic have not been particularly meaningful, except to the extent that they hint at a nonlocal reality. I've written a couple of essays on this subject, called "Unusual Occurrences" and "More Unusual Occurrences" (Google it plus my name). Most of my experiences are extremely trivial in terms of their content, and typically involve TV shows!
For instance, just the other day I happened to be listening to an old Beatles song while I was driving home, and somehow I got to thinking about Paul McCartney and his divorce from his second wife, and I thought about how he should've gotten a prenuptial agreement. Out loud, in my car, I uttered the words "prenuptial agreement."
When I got home, I watched an old episode of "Cheers," in which the first major dialogue exchange involved one of the characters, Woody, arranging a prenuptial agreement.
Kennedy would probably dismiss this as "wishful thinking," but it happens to me so often, and the correlations are often so specific, that I cannot agree.
Enough statistically significant results have been obtained from laboratory studies (even without meta-analysis) to bolster my conviction that psi has already been proven, at least by accepted standards of mainstream science – a point that even skeptic Richard Wiseman has publicly made.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | February 02, 2014 at 06:48 PM
I think you bring up a great point, Matt, that so many people have HAD paranormal experiences. It just seems to occur on a pretty regular basis and throughout history (just google the haunted U.S. White House). I've had them myself, and so have several people I've known. These aren't people interested in the paranormal or wishing to experience something either. But these experiences can't be recreated in a lab. Then again, if you're studying something like the science of animal behavior, for the most part, you can't prove much of it in a lab.It just seems to me there must be something to it if so many people regularly report experiencing it.
Posted by: Kathleen | February 02, 2014 at 07:14 PM
Yes, Michael. Maybe Kennedy's perspective regarding meaning in psi experiences is colored by the fact that his personal experiences were limited to a brief period of time in his life. Like you, I have psi experiences all of the time (especially since following Bruce's advice on tracking dreams for precognitive content). Yet, overwhelmingly, these experiences are utterly trivial in nature. I have a close friend who is highly psychic, but most of the time he is displaying psi it is about things of little or no consequence; often trivia with a humorous flavor.
Kennedy does speculate in one of the papers that perhaps the "meaning" in some instances is simply to show that psi exists. This does seem like stretching a hypothesis a little too far.
Alternatively, I would say that psi not only exists, it is a common, totally normal and integral part of human life; so much so that it need not have any more meaning than scratching one's head or putting one's shoes on.
Still, like Bruce, I have developed a soft spot for Kennedy. It is rare that someone can recognize that sometimes perceived psi is just coincidence or wishful thinking and yet sometimes it is real. I respect him for being able to take that stance.
Posted by: no one | February 02, 2014 at 07:27 PM
Bruce,
||On the other hand, I confess to really liking his independent thinking. He's a rare bird -- someone who writes on these matters but is not likely to make a lot of friends on either side of the fence. To believe in psi, yet be willing to criticize a figure as revered by proponents as Carter, makes his voice unique, and I think, important.||
Oh I'm glad that someone taking his position is out there. There ought to be a lot more people like this!
And I trust no one that he has made good points about laboratory psi. But his overall approach seems muddy to me at this point.
Posted by: Matt Rouge | February 02, 2014 at 10:37 PM
"Like you, I have psi experiences all of the time (especially since following Bruce's advice on tracking dreams for precognitive content)"
Great to hear that, no one! If I had to put money on it, I'd bet that precognitive dreams are much more common than we suspect, and widely distributed among the population, but rarely noticed for a variety of reasons.
"Kennedy does speculate in one of the papers that perhaps the "meaning" in some instances is simply to show that psi exists. This does seem like stretching a hypothesis a little too far."
I disagree. On the one hand, I was somewhat surprised to read that Kennedy finds so little concrete, practical value in psi experiences, because I know of many cases where the benefits of precognitive dreams, for example, have been clear and even life-saving.
But I'm not surprised that he says *most* of his own psi experiences have served mainly to show that psi exists and the spiritual perspective is valid. That's been the case for me, and evidently for you, your friend, and Michael.
And why should that seem odd? If one of the main components of our journey in the physical is gradually waking up to the spiritual, why is it far-fetched that psi should manifest, in many cases, primarily to foster that process?
Posted by: Bruce Siegel | February 03, 2014 at 03:32 AM
Michael, my response to no one was really a response to you, too.
You said:
"As far as the question of "meaning" is concerned, I have to say that the majority of my experiences that I regard as psychic have not been particularly meaningful, except to the extent that they hint at a nonlocal reality."
In one of his papers, Kennedy makes exactly the same point.
On a separate note, you said:
"Most of my experiences are extremely trivial in terms of their content, and typically involve TV shows!"
That's true for me, too. And I think part of the reason is this: what makes for compelling and easily identifiable precognitive dreams are images that I'm not expecting to see, and that's exactly what TV can and does provide -- surprising sights and scenarios that aren't part of my normal routine, and that I would have no way of knowing about in advance.
It's especially true for me because I work out of my own home (as you probably do too), so the scenery I see each day doesn't change much.
Posted by: Bruce Siegel | February 03, 2014 at 03:51 AM
"It is rare that someone can recognize that sometimes perceived psi is just coincidence or wishful thinking and yet sometimes it is real. "
I'm not sure what you mean here no-one. I'd have thought that was a perfectly sensible position to take and I know I view it that way. Is it really rare? (In which case I'm special so that's ok :)).
Posted by: Paul | February 03, 2014 at 04:55 AM
The weak effect of psi in the lab is a subject Tricia Robertson addresses in her excellent book 'Things you can do when you're dead'.
Tricia, who has a lifetime of exploring paranormal phenomena in situ, feels that it is EMOTION which is the key driver of psi phenomena.
In moments of extreme emotional experience, individuals are capable of extraordinary psi-related episodes. It is emotion that drives the effect, and provides the motivation required to create impressive psi effects. Such emotional drives might include the desire to communicate with a loved one, or impart some message or piece of information which is seen as crucial to those involved.
Tricia makes the very good point that it is precisely this raw emotion which is missing from lab-based psi experiments. Most lab experiments utilise on-campus students as their subjects, usually without a great amount of life experience, and it is not hard to see why the use of such subjects is unlikely to fully replicate the instances of psi that you might expect in the real world.
This may account for the persistent underlying psi effect reported. Lab based psi experiments seem to be good at revealing an underlying, largely inactive weak psi effect, but they are useless at studying psi in the real world as lab conditions are not real life conditions. For that, we really need a social science-based field study approach. Lab tests don't cut it.
Posted by: Douglas | February 03, 2014 at 09:06 AM
Chris Carter is a clunkhead and has had no luck whatsoever in moving me off my fence regarding psi.
Arouet
Posted by: Arouet | February 03, 2014 at 12:07 PM
Somehow I doubt that Carter is aiming his arguments at Arouet ...
Posted by: Michael Prescott | February 03, 2014 at 02:14 PM
"I'm not sure what you mean here no-one."
Paul, I'm just saying that the scientific and media culture is highly politicized and divisive when it comes to the paranormal. Most of the personalities involved on the skeptical side would detect, accurately, a situation of perceived psi that was really just coincidence or wishful thinking and they would generalize that finding to ALL incidents of perceived psi, i.e. "see, it's all bunk perpetuated by foolish deluded people".
OTOH we've got a whole culture of believers that run around channeling angels, burning sage incense, waving crystals and proclaiming that EVERYTHING happens for a reason.
So, yes, I think Kennedy is rare - especially since he is a scientist - as are you and most everyone in this little community that Michael has helped enable.
Posted by: no one | February 03, 2014 at 02:42 PM
Somehow I doubt that was the real Arouet who made that comment...
Posted by: Ray | February 03, 2014 at 03:59 PM
"Chris Carter . . . has had no luck whatsoever in moving me off my fence regarding psi."
And in that respect, he's different from . . . which other writers again?
Posted by: Bruce Siegel | February 03, 2014 at 04:44 PM
"Somehow I doubt that was the real Arouet who made that comment..."
Perhaps not. The IP address and email address were different from other Arouet comments.
Anyway, I think there are two reasons someone's argument can fail to convince a skeptical listener: 1) the argument is poor, or 2) the listener is not willing to be convinced. I'm always surprised when people think, "Well, *I'm* not convinced!" is some kind of devastating rebuttal.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | February 03, 2014 at 05:33 PM
Bruce,
||But I'm not surprised that he says *most* of his own psi experiences have served mainly to show that psi exists and the spiritual perspective is valid. That's been the case for me, and evidently for you, your friend, and Michael.
And why should that seem odd? If one of the main components of our journey in the physical is gradually waking up to the spiritual, why is it far-fetched that psi should manifest, in many cases, primarily to foster that process?||
Well, look at Michael's example. These things happen to him all the time. Does it make more sense to say,
1. They happen because of background psi always being open to connections, whether they are particularly meaningful or not.
Or
2. Each one is a symbol purposely sent to Michael from some intelligent entity to wake him up to the spiritual.
I think 1) is the more parsimonious and sensible explanation. Michael is already awake to the spiritual. He doesn't require convincing. The synchronicities continue unabated, however, so I would infer that they continue based on an innate function or potential of the mind.
That is not to say at *all* that particular messages are not purposely given from entities (of course they are) OR that an entity could use a "meaningless" (I don't necessarily believe anything is meaningless) yet impressive synchronicity to stimulate someone who needs wakening. Further the line between psi experiences that mediate meaningful content and those that don't (i.e., "mere" coincidences) is not necessarily clear.
Posted by: Matt Rouge | February 03, 2014 at 05:47 PM
"Enough statistically significant results have been obtained from laboratory studies (even without meta-analysis) to bolster my conviction that psi has already been proven, at least by accepted standards of mainstream science – a point that even skeptic Richard Wiseman has publicly made."
You're right, Michael. Wiseman's statement should not be overlooked or forgotten.
To clarify, what I liked about what Kennedy said concerning psi lab experiments was that there are so many unusual variables involved - including even the psi potentiating abilities of the researchers - that arriving at a final lab/statistical conclusion using every day methodologies is damn near impossible. I think this is very true and I think that there will always be wildly varying results depending on these variables *even if commonly recognized variables are controlled to the utmost rigorous degree*.
Kennedy also calls out the fact that research will not continue if the phenomena don't produce a consistent return on investment. Psi is real - he admits so - but research has shown it is sufficiently unreliable to be profitable.
Sure, there are a number of lab studies that have some very convincing findings supporting the reality of psi. I'm convinced. OTOH, there are some lab studies - allegedly the same design as the positive studies - that show the opposite.
This speaks to unreliability and unreliability to speaks to risk/downside concerning investment.
Of course skeptics seize upon unreliability and try to use it as proof of absence. What are you going to do? They're fanatics.
Capital is almost always looking for a chance to grow. Very little capital will be spent for pure humanitarian or pure exploration purposes. Sometimes they say it is being used that way, but behind the scenes there are alternative applications for the research findings.
An author who writes a stellar best seller half the time and a dud the other half won't be contracted with a major publishing house for long. That doesn't mean he can't write. Ditto a sports player's contact who plays like an MVD 25% of the time and trips over his feet the other 75%.
Posted by: no one | February 03, 2014 at 06:58 PM
Agreed with Douglas (above). Right, that is the sort of thing that Kennedy is talking about too.
Posted by: no one | February 03, 2014 at 07:03 PM
"I think 1) is the more parsimonious and sensible explanation. Michael is already awake to the spiritual. He doesn't require convincing. The synchronicities continue unabated, however, so I would infer that they continue based on an innate function or potential of the mind."
You could be right.
But just maybe, that "innate function or potential of the mind" you refer to has, as one of its main purposes, simply keeping us in touch with other dimensions of reality. We all welcome frequent reminders and wake-up calls -- even those of us who are already convinced. I know *I* sure do, and Michael seems pretty delighted whenever he has one of these experiences, as well.
Posted by: Bruce Siegel | February 03, 2014 at 10:45 PM
I just wanted to highlight this comment from Bruce Siegel on why trivial scenes from TV shows often feature in everyday premonitions:
"... what makes for compelling and easily identifiable precognitive dreams are images that I'm not expecting to see, and that's exactly what TV can and does provide -- surprising sights and scenarios that aren't part of my normal routine, and that I would have no way of knowing about in advance.
"It's especially true for me because I work out of my own home (as you probably do too), so the scenery I see each day doesn't change much."
That's an excellent point, and one that had never occurred to me. I've often wondered why something as unimportant as TV - often TV sitcoms - would figure in premonitions. This explanation makes good sense to me.
As for "meaning," I confess that I think of most of these premonitions as something more like glitches in the system - a kind of hiccup that lets you see a little further than usual. Although I've had some meaningful premonitions and synchronicities, the trivial and apparently meaningless ones greatly outnumber them.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | February 04, 2014 at 01:25 AM
FYI, Chris Carter has sent me a reply to some of the issues raised here. I posted it briefly, then took it down because he wanted to make a small correction. I'll repost it again ASAP.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | February 04, 2014 at 02:26 AM
"I've often wondered why something as unimportant as TV - often TV sitcoms - would figure in premonitions."
Michael, I was actually quite relieved to find an explanation that made sense to me. Now when I tell people about my many TV-related precognitive dreams, I have some credibility when I say that I actually do have a life, and that I watch no more TV than the average person. (Quite a bit less, actually.)
The only dreams I bother to record these days are ones that have extraordinary images or scenarios -- sometimes truly bizarre stuff-- because that's the sort of dream that has the greatest potential to offer compelling proof of precognition.
And where is that kind of dream likely to find its (future) source? For some inexplicable reason, not too often in the life of a rather reclusive music teacher. But fairly often on TV and the internet. (And as I said, there's usually little or no possibility of foreknowledge in that situation.)
Another great thing about TV-related dreams -- since I got a Tivo, I often end up with the waking event (as JW Dunne and I refer to it) recorded, so I can go over it with a fine-tooth comb for correlations I might have otherwise missed.
And I can also share the experience with others. It's neat having both the dream *and* the waking event recorded.
Posted by: Bruce Siegel | February 04, 2014 at 05:55 AM
Greg answer no-one :)
Posted by: Paul | February 04, 2014 at 07:02 AM
sorry Michael last post should have read "Great answer :)"
Posted by: Paul | February 04, 2014 at 07:23 AM
Thanks Paul. There have been a lot of great answers from many folks on this thread. This is one of those times when I want to stop and thank Michael for his continued work on this blog and to express my appreciation of all the intelligent, thoughtful, polite people that participate.
Posted by: no one | February 04, 2014 at 10:50 AM
Thanks, No One!
J.E. Kennedy has weighed in with a fuller explanation of his position in my latest post. I also expect to publish some comments from Chris Carter soon.
FYI, I'll be traveling Wednesday, so comment approval may be greatly delayed that day.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | February 04, 2014 at 02:41 PM
I'm probably asking something stupid here but is there scientific evidence that humans dream? Is this demonstrable in the laboratory? Do some people dream when put to the test and others not able to dream in a laboratory setting. Do all people have the ability to dream? Reportedly some people dream in color while, people like myself rarely if ever dream in color. Do those experiments demonstrate the content of dreams, whether they are in color or not or do they just demonstrate electrical activity or blood flow in the brain? Aren't anecdotal reports all the information that's available to suggest that humans dream? Are dreams any more or less real than psi experiences? - AOD
Posted by: Amos Oliver Doyle | February 05, 2014 at 09:34 AM