> And even if you could, “you have no technology to demonstrate the existence of the waves, and everyone justifiably points out that the onus is on you to convince them.
Take the radio into a cave, or stand somewhere where the radio is shielded, and the voices will stop. That should convince people that there's something outside involved.
My point is only that our Kalahari Empiricist is not totally helpless. He might even be able to work out which direction the funny voices are coming from and set off to find the speakers.
In the sense of testing for the presence of outside influences — I.e., non-material sources of consciousness. Loss of consciousness when we sleep seems analogous to shielding the radio from reception by standing in a cave. In both cases, the technology fails and we have to explain why in order to have a really comprehensive theory.
Maybe I’m pushing too hard on the metaphor, though. I read it as saying that the brain is like the radio and a materialist viewpoint is like the Kalahari person who can’t conceive that it’s picking up a signal from far away. It could be that I’ve missed its point.
No I think that makes sense. I thought you were saying something you could do internally to your own mind. I do believe that exogenous entities, ideas, whatever can enter your consciousness and you might subjective feel that to be the case, but I'm not sure if you could ever scientifically prove that (and I also believe you can be delusional and mistaken about this).
In brief, people have done these experiments where they put a number or some other sign somewhere at the top of a hospital room in case someone having an NDE/OBE can see it and thus confirm their consciousness has left their body, however these have not been successful. The Phantom World Hypothesis suggests you can only see/know things in NDE/OBE that have been experienced before by at least one person before, so the reason these experiments haven't been successful so far is because they are double blind and the experimenters also do not know the number.
Would beliefs without proof work to some degree? One might say "Oh, that's just people", but what if that isn't true (how could one prove it, after all?)?
Rationalists are largely a dogmatic clique, at least when in comes to this particular subject. Scott Alexander has been tying himself in knots trying to avoid admitting the obvious consequences of modern physics, and the mountain of evidence from the field of parapsychology, since 2014: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/
One of those articles which grabs me by the shoulders and shouts, "WAKE UP YOU DUMB FUCK," directly into my resigned and placid face. This is an increasingly rare occurrence but I'm not dead yet. Thanks.
"A recent finding worth commenting upon from “The Myth of the Decline Effect in Psi Research: The Empirical Evidence”: studies trying to detect ESP find just as much of it today (with our greater attention to methodological rigor) as they did decades ago. (h/t Scott Alexander)"
A comment from Scott's blog says -
(The article) is about a claim that psi effects (don’t) decline in individuals over time, not that they (didn’t) decline in the research with better methods.
After several minutes wrangling with exactly how to say this, I'm just going to write:
1. This was a very interesting post, I enjoyed it very much, I will likely return to it in the future, I'm thankful that you wrote it, and I'm grateful to Dino for drawing my attention to it.
2. You really don't know things that you would have needed to know to make this post accurate. Specifically, the idea that "'intensely boring' experiments like Susan Blackmore’s 1993 study of twin telepathy will never allow us to detect or manipulate transcendence" is belied by the many, many, many parapsychological studies which report some kind of psi effect. Meta analyses of these boring studies have been coming out since the 1940s. Whether you look at studies using Zener cards, dice, the Ganzfeld, or emotional precognition, the results overall are positive. Yes, individual studies do return null results, but common meta-analytic results give astronomically low p-values: https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/the-rising-star-of-parapsychology
Traumatic transcendence may be very interesting; the idea of the third man factor is interesting; reading about Mark Twain's experiences is definitely interesting. But the kind of replicable science on which one can hang a proverbial hat on has been returning evidence for better-than-chance psi effects for over eighty years. Ultimately if traumatic transcendence exists, then it's much more convincing to write "and hey look at this, TT is in line with an enormous mountain of experimental evidence," even if it's not as interesting as it is to quote William Thompson claiming "We are like so many flies crawling across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel"
Thank you for the kind words, I enjoyed your post as well, it's a nice complement to mine.
I don't disagree with anything and you've said and I don't doubt the validity of the studies you cite. I also certainly painted with a broad brush and I don't think TT is the whole story when it comes to parapsychology/supernatural phenomenon. I guess I would just say 1) given the state of psychology and science more broadly along with the chequered history of parapsychology, it just doesn't seem like any amount of scientific studies will convince skeptics (cf. the Reber and Alcock quote you cite), so 2) change must proceed from the bottom-up - from culture, aesthetics, metaphysics, spirituality, etc. - and because of this 3) I aim to entertain and tell stories rather than instruct. Skeptics gonna skeptic, so I might as well write about things that I enjoy and that people will enjoy reading regardless of whether or not they believe it (and this might be the gateway drug for people to investigate more deeply).
I am interested, but I don't have a working email at present, and perhaps this is the point at which I had better bite the bullet and just get another address.
One thing about (actual) reality that scientists don't like/believe: an absence of evidence is not proof of absence, that it does appear to be is due to consciousness + culture.
> scie tists don't like/believe: an absence of evidence is not proof of absence
This is not true. I have a master's in physics and have carried out research in physics, biology, psychology, and sociology, and I wrote, for example, this:
From a relative perspective, it's a great essay. But from an absolute perspective, I have some critiques (but I'm really digging deep into "pedantic" (oh what a powerful word to keep a society people dumb) here....no offense intended...and some praise too):
I loved this (that you left a part in but crossed it out, a true Rationalist!):
> The more information we have, the more confident we can be about ~~the world we live~~ (crossed out in the essay, not sure if markdown is supported in the comments) in tanks.
This part, I have more of a problem with:
> The more unbiased information we have, the more confident we can be.
> The less unbiased information we have, the less confident we can be.
I'm skeptical of this if the argument is (even implicitly, as I have a causality first perspective) that it can be applied to the metaphysical realm with the same effectiveness as in the physical realm (no caveats were noted, so, being not charitable to the science crowd, I will assume that is implied, hypocrisy be damned).
> The tl;dr here is that possible bias doesn’t have to be fatal to understanding, so long as we can identify which direction that bias is in.
A problem: how do you know if you're in such a situation where direction is deceiving? Or, how do you know if you might be in a black swan scenario? Tautologies are powerful when used safely, but it's easy to accidentally cut oneself (or others) using them.
> What I am interested in is time. My university training is in physics, and this is what physicists do: we think about the past, and the future, to try to understand how systems evolved to reach the present, and where they will go.
Ahem: a *subset of* (the physical realm, solely).
Also: I suspect you and I would not see eye to eye on what "Reality" is, but I also have an intuition we'd disagree less than usual.
> But what if, instead of this, we imagine that a well known discovery was never made?
10/10, high quality thinking, love it!
> For centuries at least, no one believed anyone in the ancient world was capable of making such a thing, because no evidence had been found.
I don't deny that at least *some* scientists can *sometimes* get the logic here right, but I could easily go onto social media and get 100 science fans (and some actual scientists, though they're much more rare than simple fans) in under two hours to assert as a fact that an absence of evidence is proof of abscence.
Another important (tangential) thing to keep in mind here from a general perspective: the output of any given scientist (a human) when writing a paper using "System 2" cognition is *very* different than when they're engaged in realtime, "System 1" cognition....but conveniently (so I am told, over and over and over, with supreme confidence):
- the former is all that counts
- if a scientist *actually is* caught in wrong doing/thinking, then "they're not a scientist" (I've had easily 100+++ science fans tell me this with complete sincerity)
- various other Meme Magic
> Well, what would you have thought? I know exactly what I would have thought: I would have thought No, the ancient Romans couldn’t have done that, since I have no evidence that they could.
Another common problem, at least among the faithful fan base: they literally(!) cannot distinguish between beliefs and knowledge - in this case, they would *perceive it as a fact* that the ancient Romans couldn’t have done that, "since there is no evidence (yet another faith-based belief) that they could".
> Because I do know that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
Actually, it is. (Your second "evidence" should be "proof" - there's a good paper out there somewhere on this. Notice also that you used the word "know" - uh oh!)
Here's a more reasonable articulation of my stance: I am ok with the good part of science, but I have a VERY big problem with:
- scientists laying claim to all lanes, when they belong in one: the physical realm (the red-headed stepchild Psychology being the exception....underfunded, and forced to follow a bunch of silly guidelines not appropriate outside of the hard sciences, *holding humanity back for decades, and counting*)
- the fan base, the fact that these idiots get zero negative attention (press coverage, for example) for their foolish behavior (never mind the Nth order metaphysical consequences (Trump?), and that "the institution of science" does NOTHING to reign them in (but if power is the goal, it is a wise strategy)
- the Climate Change (and other) narratives - I do not like how science gets praise for the positive things they do, but when its found out after the fact that the toys they put into the hands of babes without thinking turn out to destroy the ecosystem, they're nowhere to be found, if not "proven" to be innocent - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
So that's a short glimpse into the insane world of how I have a mean on for The Science. I encourage you to review me harshly, it's a fun!
EDIT - forgot this:
> This is not true.
Watch out for that word "is", it is (ha!) extremely tricky!! (The problem lies in set theory.)
“On my fortieth birthday, rather than merely bore my friends by having anything as mundane as a midlife crisis I decided it might be more interesting to actually terrify them by going completely mad and declaring myself to be a magician.”
> And even if you could, “you have no technology to demonstrate the existence of the waves, and everyone justifiably points out that the onus is on you to convince them.
Take the radio into a cave, or stand somewhere where the radio is shielded, and the voices will stop. That should convince people that there's something outside involved.
Sure, but that's not exactly conclusive evidence, one could imagine other reasons why a radio wouldn't work in a cave
My point is only that our Kalahari Empiricist is not totally helpless. He might even be able to work out which direction the funny voices are coming from and set off to find the speakers.
Any suggestions for how people trying to explore consciousness could metaphorically stand in a cave? Is that what we’re doing when we sleep?
Hmmm explore consciousness in what sense? I think I catch your drift but I'm not totally sure I'm mapping the cave metaphor here.
In the sense of testing for the presence of outside influences — I.e., non-material sources of consciousness. Loss of consciousness when we sleep seems analogous to shielding the radio from reception by standing in a cave. In both cases, the technology fails and we have to explain why in order to have a really comprehensive theory.
Maybe I’m pushing too hard on the metaphor, though. I read it as saying that the brain is like the radio and a materialist viewpoint is like the Kalahari person who can’t conceive that it’s picking up a signal from far away. It could be that I’ve missed its point.
No I think that makes sense. I thought you were saying something you could do internally to your own mind. I do believe that exogenous entities, ideas, whatever can enter your consciousness and you might subjective feel that to be the case, but I'm not sure if you could ever scientifically prove that (and I also believe you can be delusional and mistaken about this).
This suggests an example, I think.
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2024/02/the-phantom-world-hypothesis-of-ndesobes.html
In brief, people have done these experiments where they put a number or some other sign somewhere at the top of a hospital room in case someone having an NDE/OBE can see it and thus confirm their consciousness has left their body, however these have not been successful. The Phantom World Hypothesis suggests you can only see/know things in NDE/OBE that have been experienced before by at least one person before, so the reason these experiments haven't been successful so far is because they are double blind and the experimenters also do not know the number.
Would beliefs without proof work to some degree? One might say "Oh, that's just people", but what if that isn't true (how could one prove it, after all?)?
Psychedelics and a bit of luck can facilitate that.
The Rationalist reaction to this on SSC was about what I'd expect! 😂
lol I just post it to troll them
Perhaps, but we're it not for such trolling we may never know their weak points.
There's another 1 or 2 posts with next to no comments, or sheer delusion, on the front page there now.
indeed
Wait where did you post it? The ACX open thread?
SSC reddit
Weird I can't find the link. I'd be curious to see what folks say
honestly what you'd expect, nothing too substantial or interesting
Rationalists are largely a dogmatic clique, at least when in comes to this particular subject. Scott Alexander has been tying himself in knots trying to avoid admitting the obvious consequences of modern physics, and the mountain of evidence from the field of parapsychology, since 2014: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/
That Rationalists, smart people who genuinely try hard, cannot reach rationality, seems rather substantial to me.
A TT happened to me and another man when he was in a bad car accident and I was in an ayahuasca ceremony an ocean away from him.
It was so profound that I wrote a novel based on it. Still seems unbelievable to me. Yet, it happened.
And yet it happened! The revolution can only start there: just believe that it happened (just believe in the Outside).
:)
I believe.
One of those articles which grabs me by the shoulders and shouts, "WAKE UP YOU DUMB FUCK," directly into my resigned and placid face. This is an increasingly rare occurrence but I'm not dead yet. Thanks.
:D
Birth, falling asleep, waking up...
"A recent finding worth commenting upon from “The Myth of the Decline Effect in Psi Research: The Empirical Evidence”: studies trying to detect ESP find just as much of it today (with our greater attention to methodological rigor) as they did decades ago. (h/t Scott Alexander)"
A comment from Scott's blog says -
(The article) is about a claim that psi effects (don’t) decline in individuals over time, not that they (didn’t) decline in the research with better methods.
Huh, maybe I'm missing something because it seems to me like that comment is wrong and Scott's interpretation is right.
After actually reading the paper I now agree Scott's interpretation is right.
Another substacker ("Apple Pie") writing about similar things - "The Rising Star of Parapsychology"
https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/the-rising-star-of-parapsychology
interesting, thanks for sharing.
After several minutes wrangling with exactly how to say this, I'm just going to write:
1. This was a very interesting post, I enjoyed it very much, I will likely return to it in the future, I'm thankful that you wrote it, and I'm grateful to Dino for drawing my attention to it.
2. You really don't know things that you would have needed to know to make this post accurate. Specifically, the idea that "'intensely boring' experiments like Susan Blackmore’s 1993 study of twin telepathy will never allow us to detect or manipulate transcendence" is belied by the many, many, many parapsychological studies which report some kind of psi effect. Meta analyses of these boring studies have been coming out since the 1940s. Whether you look at studies using Zener cards, dice, the Ganzfeld, or emotional precognition, the results overall are positive. Yes, individual studies do return null results, but common meta-analytic results give astronomically low p-values: https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/the-rising-star-of-parapsychology
Traumatic transcendence may be very interesting; the idea of the third man factor is interesting; reading about Mark Twain's experiences is definitely interesting. But the kind of replicable science on which one can hang a proverbial hat on has been returning evidence for better-than-chance psi effects for over eighty years. Ultimately if traumatic transcendence exists, then it's much more convincing to write "and hey look at this, TT is in line with an enormous mountain of experimental evidence," even if it's not as interesting as it is to quote William Thompson claiming "We are like so many flies crawling across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel"
Thank you for the kind words, I enjoyed your post as well, it's a nice complement to mine.
I don't disagree with anything and you've said and I don't doubt the validity of the studies you cite. I also certainly painted with a broad brush and I don't think TT is the whole story when it comes to parapsychology/supernatural phenomenon. I guess I would just say 1) given the state of psychology and science more broadly along with the chequered history of parapsychology, it just doesn't seem like any amount of scientific studies will convince skeptics (cf. the Reber and Alcock quote you cite), so 2) change must proceed from the bottom-up - from culture, aesthetics, metaphysics, spirituality, etc. - and because of this 3) I aim to entertain and tell stories rather than instruct. Skeptics gonna skeptic, so I might as well write about things that I enjoy and that people will enjoy reading regardless of whether or not they believe it (and this might be the gateway drug for people to investigate more deeply).
Would you be interested in cross-posting your essay on the Seeds of Science Best of Science Blogging feed? https://www.theseedsofscience.pub/
Email me at info@theseedsofscience.org if you are interested.
I am interested, but I don't have a working email at present, and perhaps this is the point at which I had better bite the bullet and just get another address.
Do it!
OK, I just sent you an email; let me know.
emailed you
One thing about (actual) reality that scientists don't like/believe: an absence of evidence is not proof of absence, that it does appear to be is due to consciousness + culture.
EDIT: fixed horrendous spelling from on mobile.
> scie tists don't like/believe: an absence of evidence is not proof of absence
This is not true. I have a master's in physics and have carried out research in physics, biology, psychology, and sociology, and I wrote, for example, this:
https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/the-past-was-more-than-you-think
From a relative perspective, it's a great essay. But from an absolute perspective, I have some critiques (but I'm really digging deep into "pedantic" (oh what a powerful word to keep a society people dumb) here....no offense intended...and some praise too):
I loved this (that you left a part in but crossed it out, a true Rationalist!):
> The more information we have, the more confident we can be about ~~the world we live~~ (crossed out in the essay, not sure if markdown is supported in the comments) in tanks.
This part, I have more of a problem with:
> The more unbiased information we have, the more confident we can be.
> The less unbiased information we have, the less confident we can be.
I'm skeptical of this if the argument is (even implicitly, as I have a causality first perspective) that it can be applied to the metaphysical realm with the same effectiveness as in the physical realm (no caveats were noted, so, being not charitable to the science crowd, I will assume that is implied, hypocrisy be damned).
> The tl;dr here is that possible bias doesn’t have to be fatal to understanding, so long as we can identify which direction that bias is in.
A problem: how do you know if you're in such a situation where direction is deceiving? Or, how do you know if you might be in a black swan scenario? Tautologies are powerful when used safely, but it's easy to accidentally cut oneself (or others) using them.
> What I am interested in is time. My university training is in physics, and this is what physicists do: we think about the past, and the future, to try to understand how systems evolved to reach the present, and where they will go.
Ahem: a *subset of* (the physical realm, solely).
Also: I suspect you and I would not see eye to eye on what "Reality" is, but I also have an intuition we'd disagree less than usual.
> But what if, instead of this, we imagine that a well known discovery was never made?
10/10, high quality thinking, love it!
> For centuries at least, no one believed anyone in the ancient world was capable of making such a thing, because no evidence had been found.
I don't deny that at least *some* scientists can *sometimes* get the logic here right, but I could easily go onto social media and get 100 science fans (and some actual scientists, though they're much more rare than simple fans) in under two hours to assert as a fact that an absence of evidence is proof of abscence.
Another important (tangential) thing to keep in mind here from a general perspective: the output of any given scientist (a human) when writing a paper using "System 2" cognition is *very* different than when they're engaged in realtime, "System 1" cognition....but conveniently (so I am told, over and over and over, with supreme confidence):
- the former is all that counts
- if a scientist *actually is* caught in wrong doing/thinking, then "they're not a scientist" (I've had easily 100+++ science fans tell me this with complete sincerity)
- various other Meme Magic
> Well, what would you have thought? I know exactly what I would have thought: I would have thought No, the ancient Romans couldn’t have done that, since I have no evidence that they could.
Another common problem, at least among the faithful fan base: they literally(!) cannot distinguish between beliefs and knowledge - in this case, they would *perceive it as a fact* that the ancient Romans couldn’t have done that, "since there is no evidence (yet another faith-based belief) that they could".
> Because I do know that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
Actually, it is. (Your second "evidence" should be "proof" - there's a good paper out there somewhere on this. Notice also that you used the word "know" - uh oh!)
Here's a more reasonable articulation of my stance: I am ok with the good part of science, but I have a VERY big problem with:
- scientists laying claim to all lanes, when they belong in one: the physical realm (the red-headed stepchild Psychology being the exception....underfunded, and forced to follow a bunch of silly guidelines not appropriate outside of the hard sciences, *holding humanity back for decades, and counting*)
- the fan base, the fact that these idiots get zero negative attention (press coverage, for example) for their foolish behavior (never mind the Nth order metaphysical consequences (Trump?), and that "the institution of science" does NOTHING to reign them in (but if power is the goal, it is a wise strategy)
- the Climate Change (and other) narratives - I do not like how science gets praise for the positive things they do, but when its found out after the fact that the toys they put into the hands of babes without thinking turn out to destroy the ecosystem, they're nowhere to be found, if not "proven" to be innocent - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
So that's a short glimpse into the insane world of how I have a mean on for The Science. I encourage you to review me harshly, it's a fun!
EDIT - forgot this:
> This is not true.
Watch out for that word "is", it is (ha!) extremely tricky!! (The problem lies in set theory.)
There's a lot here, and while I don't mind replying in Secretorum, would you be willing to paste it into a comment at the essay itself at https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/the-past-was-more-than-you-think/comments
I will do so!
Wow. This was really engaging and thought-provoking.
Excellent piece, love it. Can I call myself an alchemist? lmk
Yes.
“On my fortieth birthday, rather than merely bore my friends by having anything as mundane as a midlife crisis I decided it might be more interesting to actually terrify them by going completely mad and declaring myself to be a magician.”
— Alan Moore