/fringe/ - Fringe

Scepdicks 01/19/14 (Sun) 05:03:01 No. 2335

01/19/14 (Sun) 05:10:40 No.2336

File: 1390108240347.jpg (42.83 KB, 360x240, top10_phenomena_psychic.jpg)

'Sixth Sense' Can Be Explained by Science

At least one type of "sixth sense" isn't real, new research suggests.

The new study, detailed Monday (Jan. 13) in the journal PLOS ONE, found that what people perceive as a sixth sense may simply be their vision systems detecting changes they can't articulate.

"People can sense things that they believe they cannot see," such as changes in a person's appearance, said study co-author Piers Howe, a vision scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia. "But this isn't anything magical or a sixth sense; this can be explained in terms of known visual processing."

>Sixth sense?

Most Americans believe in the supernatural. In fact, one survey found that almost one-third of people believe in extrasensory perception and more than two-thirds reported a paranormal experience. [Teleportation, ESP & Time Travel: 10 Tales of Superpowers]

While a few scientific studies have hinted that people can sense the future just before it happens, follow-up studies concluded these results were artifacts of statistics or flawed study design.

Howe's interest was piqued when a student came to him claiming she had a quasi-magical sixth sense.

"She claimed that she could sense things that she couldn't see," such as when a friend was recently in an accident, Howe told LiveScience.

Howe was skeptical, so he and University of Melbourne psychology graduate student Margaret Webb decided to test this sense.

>Normal visual processing

Webb had friends dress up to pose in a pair of pictures, with slight appearance changes. For instance, his friends would wear glasses in one photo but not in the other, or put on lipstick in one photo and not in the other.

The team then showed 48 undergraduate students the first photo for 1.5 seconds, followed by a 1-second pause, before revealing the other photo. Participants then had to indicate if there were any differences between the photos and, if so, what those differences were. (The students could pick possible changes from a list.)

Participants often accurately detected there were changes in the photos. But the students weren't very good at identifying what had changed, even with big alterations, such as the removal of a large Mexican hat. The same phenomenon is at play when friends miss that new hairstyle or pair of glasses, or sense a change but can't quite put their finger on it, Howe said.

Howe suspected that the brain detected shifts in the visual metrics it uses to understand a scene — such as darkness, color, verticality or contrast — but that it didn't translate to the person's ability to verbalize what had changed.

In a second experiment, the team showed students an array of red disks and green disks, and showed the array again with some of the disks randomly switched from one color to another. Once again, many people detected changes they couldn't identify.

But when the team changed the color of some disks, but not the total amount of red and green in all of the disks combined, this "sixth sense" went away.

>Die-hard believers

The findings suggest the origin of the phenomenon in which a person seems to be intuitively aware of something that they don't believe they have seen or sensed in another way is due to the perception of differences in these visual metrics, not a sense that operates outside the normal laws of physics. For instance, in the case of Howe's student, she may have noticed tiny changes in his appearance (such as small cuts or a bandage), but not been consciously aware that she picked up on those cues.

The study is unlikely to convince believers in the supernatural, Howe said.

"I can present this evidence, but people who feel they have a sixth sense — they are just going to carry on believing it," Howe said. "It's a very compelling feeling that you have a sensing ability. And you do have a sensing ability — it's just not magical."

http://www.livescience.com/42635-esp-sixth-sense-just-vision.html

01/19/14 (Sun) 17:59:10 No.2345

http://propagandaprofessor.net

This one is skepticist without end

That one article about "Hitler took da guns hurr" is good

01/26/14 (Sun) 19:35:47 No.2457>>2472

File: 1390764947329.jpg (19.32 KB, 237x317, carriercropped.jpg)

http://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/14077933/

This scepdick article caused a lot of upset: http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1365

01/29/14 (Wed) 01:46:58 No.2472>>2475

>>2457
If you feel your entire belief system has been undermined because of an article then is it really a belief system? Are you grasping for meaning or really believing?

01/29/14 (Wed) 03:06:21 No.2475>>2476

01/29/14 (Wed) 03:08:43 No.2476>>2477

>>2475
why* I'm here… and by that I mean in this whole stupid world I don't want to be apart of that I got forced into and haven't ever been able to escape since.

01/29/14 (Wed) 03:11:19 No.2477

>>2476
Either convince yourself or take away your life, that is an escape.

Scepdick.com -- lazily "debunking" anything that threatens their kosher agenda since 1994... 02/02/14 (Sun) 21:13:33 No.2581

morphic resonance

Morphic resonance is a term coined by Rupert Sheldrake in his 1981 book A New Science of Life. He uses the expression to refer to what he thinks is "the basis of memory in nature….the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species."

Sheldrake has been trained in 20th century scientific models–he has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Cambridge University (1967)–but he prefers Goethe and 19th century vitalism. Sheldrake prefers teleological to mechanistic models of reality. His main interests are in the paranormal. One of his books is entitled Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals. One of his studies is on whether people can tell when someone is staring at them. (He says they can; others have been unable to duplicate his results.*) Another tests the telepathic powers of a parrot. He prefers a romantic vision of the past to the bleak picture of a world run by technocrats who want to control nature and destroy much of the environment in the process. In short, he prefers metaphysics to science, though he seems to think he can do the former but call it the latter. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that he sees no borderline between science and metaphysics.

'Morphic resonance' (MR) is put forth as if it were an empirical term, but it is no more empirical than L. Ron Hubbard's 'engram', the alleged source of all mental and physical illness. The term is more on par with the Stoic's notion of the logos. Bergson's notion of the élan vital, or Plato's notion of the eidos than it is with any scientific notion of the laws of nature. What the rest of the scientific world terms lawfulness–the tendency of things to follow patterns we call laws of nature–Sheldrake calls morphic resonance. He describes it as a kind of memory in things determined not by their inherent natures, but by repetition. He also describes MR as something which is transmitted via "morphogenetic fields." This gives him a conceptual framework wherein information is transmitted mysteriously and miraculously through any amount of space and time without loss of energy, and presumably without loss or change of content through something like mutation in DNA replication. Thus, room is made for psychical as well as physical transmission of information. Thus,

it is not at all necessary for us to assume that the physical characteristics of organisms are contained inside the genes, which may in fact be analogous to transistors tuned in to the proper frequencies for translating invisible information into visible form. Thus, morphogenetic fields are located invisibly in and around organisms, and may account for such hitherto unexplainable phenomena as the regeneration of severed limbs by worms and salamanders, phantom limbs, the holographic properties of memory, telepathy, and the increasing ease with which new skills are learned as greater quantities of a population acquire them.*

While this metaphysical proposition does seem to make room for telepathy, it does so at the expense of ignoring Occam's razor. Telepathy and such things as phantom limbs, for example, can be explained without adding the metaphysical baggage of morphic resonance. So can memory, which does not require a holographic paradigm, by the way. The notion that new skills are learned with increasing ease as greater quantities of a population acquire them, known as the hundredth monkey phenomenon, is bogus.

In short, although Sheldrake commands some respect as a scientist because of his education and degree, he has clearly abandoned conventional science in favor of magical thinking. This is his right, of course. However, his continued pose as a scientist on the frontier of discovery is unwarranted. He is one of a growing horde of "alternative" scientists whose resentment at the aspiritual nature of modern scientific paradigms, as well as the obviously harmful and seemingly indifferent applications of modern science, have led them to seek their own paradigms in ancient and long-abandoned concepts. These paradigms are not new, though the terminology is. These alternative paradigms allow for angels, telepathy, psychic dogs and parrots, alternative realities, and hope for a future world where we all live in harmony and love, surrounded by blissful neighbors who never heard of biological warfare, nuclear bombs, or genetically engineered corn on the cob.

—

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http://www.skepdic.com/morphicres.html

02/04/14 (Tue) 02:25:46 No.2618

I think the challenge is the paranormal reduces certainty about the very paradigms skeptics champion.

Prescott goes into this in Why I'm not a Skeptic

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/why-im-not-a-skeptic.html

"And here we come to what is, as I see it, the real problem with skeptics. They wish, above all, to be certain – and when reality doesn't oblige them by offering clear-cut answers, they turn away from reality and seek refuge in pre-existing theory.

They oversimplify history as a battle between good and evil, and miss its complexities and subtleties. They resist modern developments in science and cling to outdated, nineteenth century conceptions. They jump to prearranged conclusions and shut their eyes - and their minds - to anomalous data and alternative explanations.

In their quest to prove themselves right, they lose sight of the ambiguities and paradoxes of life. In their desire to be safe and sure, they turn away from anything interesting and new.

They are creatures of comfort and routine, not explorers. They cannot think outside the box. They will, in fact, deny that there is or ever could be anything outside the box - and they'll heap scorn on anyone who suggests otherwise. They'll call names, cry fraud, and holler that civilization is in danger and the barbarians are at the gates. They'll do anything, really - except examine their own assumptions with a remotely critical eye.

And that's why I'm not a skeptic."