Psience Quest

(2023-06-27, 05:21 PM)Brian Wrote: [ -> ]You're just reading what you want into it.  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Yeah I think Parnia relayed an NDEr did see something but it wasn't the stickers on the ceiling. So [if I'm right about that,] it isn't a "hit" in the controlled study [setting] but it is another in the witness testimony pile.

A person can say that they won't personally believe OOBEs occur until a hit comes in a controlled study, everyone has their own standard. But saying the claim is false due to lack of hits is reaching.

Though I suspect all of the combination locks could be opened and all the stickers in AWARE could be seen and it wouldn't matter for those who have a strong bias toward disbelief in anything but what Harris rightly refers to as a kind of religious faith in Materialism/Physicalism.

(2023-06-27, 05:06 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]The first paragraph does indeed state that controlled studies do consistently show veridical perception in NDEs to be a false claim.

As Brian has already pointed out, lack of hits on the visual target under controlled studies, doesn't mean the hypothesis has been disproved.

But the reason I'm responding, is because nobody is even testing for veridical visual perceptions - at least not in anyway that makes sense. Firstly there are researchers like Olaf Blanke ( https://doi.org/10.1038/419269a ) who don't even test for it, they simply assume it doesn't occur, and don't bother testing for it. Then there are the other researchers like Penny Sartori, and Sam Parnia, who hide the visual targets up high, so that they are hidden and secret.

Neither of these study designs help us with a third option (my own strong suspicion), that the typical spontaneous veridical NDE OBE in a hospital setting, might be the result of anomalous transmission of information from third parties.

If I take just Blanke's study. I’m speculating that Blanke’s report of induced ‘hallucinatory’ experiences, associated with electrical disruption of the patients neural network, might be the result of anomalous transmission of information from the researchers undertaking the experiment.

    Blanke says:

Quote:When asked to look at her outstretched
arms during the electrical stimulation
(n42; 4.5, 5.0 mA), the patient felt as
though her left arm was shortened; the
right arm was unaffected.

That’s certainly not excluded, as the researchers – presumably working on the right hand side of the patients head as mentioned in the paper – would perceive the patients left arm (which is further away from them) as shorter than the right arm which is nearer to them.

If the researchers perception of the patients arms, is anomalously transmitted to the patient, whilst the patient’s neural network is electrically disrupted. The shortened perception of the left arm might, become combined with the patients own perception, resulting in a hallucinatory perception within the patient that their left arm is shorter than their right.

Some images to illustrate:


Fig 1. Assumed position of Patient and researcher


Fig 2. Patients normal perception of arms.


Fig 3. Researchers normal perception of patients arms.

As Blanke’s patient is wakeful, when their neural network was destabilised. I’m speculating that anomalous local transmission of perceptual information from the researchers undertaking the experiment, can become combined with the patients own sensory perception, because the patients neural network is disrupted.

The problem we have is that no one is even testing for this idea. Researchers either don't test using targets, or they do test, but make the targets secret and hidden.

(2023-06-27, 03:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Also looks like Sam Harris is agnostic about Survival? Or maybe he's against personal Survival but not an Idealist-esque "unified with the Ur-Mind" type Survival?

 -End of Faith

Yes it looks like from that one quote he is agnostic about survival but over the years I've heard him on many occaisions refer to belief in an afterlife as irrational and dangerous especially when it comes to religious beliefs. Back when Eben Alexander first appeared on the scene and Sam was questioning Ebens credentials as a scientist he suggested defering to James Randi's million dollar challenge as a way to resolve matters of the paranormal. I think Sam wants to have his cake and eat it too. He leave's just enough wiggle room to be able to maintain his status as a world class debunker of religion while retaining some openess to some of the more mystical aspects of Buddhism

(2023-06-27, 07:47 PM)Larry Wrote: [ -> ]Yes it looks like from that one quote he is agnostic about survival but over the years I've heard him on many occaisions refer to belief in an afterlife as irrational and dangerous especially when it comes to religious beliefs. Back when Eben Alexander first appeared on the scene and Sam was questioning Ebens credentials as a scientist he suggested defering to James Randi's million dollar challenge as a way to resolve matters of the paranormal. I think Sam wants to have his cake and eat it too. He leave's just enough wiggle room to be able to maintain his status as a world class debunker of religion while retaining some openess to some of the more mystical aspects of Buddhism

It's possible he is just trying to straddle the line to make a buck from people who want/need religion but also want to be atheists...

OTOH it seems he has genuinely come to see that the nature of consciousness, when properly reasoned about, does open the door to possibilities his old atheist Horseman persona thought to be verboten.

(2023-06-27, 05:31 AM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]True, there are different types of dementia, some types are correlated with the presence of good days and bad days, and if a good day occurs at the end of a persons life, that 'might' define this temporal relationship to lucidity.

But good days, and bad days is not a satisfying explanation, neither is chance, and neither does the existence of this unexplained phenomenon demonstrate an afterlife.

I mean, you have to go and read the papers researching dementia type diseases, and incorporate the observations into some halfbaked theory, that might allow you to move forwards...

Certainly, but it much increases the probability of survival, since it demonstrates under very adverse circumstances a certain independence of the human mind from the physical brain.

(2023-06-27, 08:40 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Certainly, but it much increases the probability of survival, since it demonstrates under very adverse circumstances a certain independence of the human mind from the physical brain.

We should keep in [mind] that - AFAIK at least - we're debating whether souls need brains for cognitive function.

So under that topic of debate I'd say terminal lucidity gives us an indicator that souls don't need brains.

In a more general argument I would agree with that Terminal Lucidity on its own is not proof of Survival though I suspect I think it's better evidence of Survival than he does.

(2023-06-27, 05:06 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]The first paragraph does indeed state that controlled studies do consistently show veridical perception in NDEs to be a false claim. The second paragraph does nothing to refute that claim. So there's that.

Regarding the claim of a meta analysis of studies verifying mediums, I would need to look into that further. That paper appears not to have been published under normal journal review safeguards. If a paper passes legitimate peer review, non-experts can assume this paper has at least some validity in the field. I don't think we get that assurance in articles in Explore. There are many ways a meta analysis can go wrong.  That doesn't necessarily mean this study is wrong. I would want expert confirmation before trusting something there.

You can read what you want into it, but I think the statement is actually in error, because Parnia's AWARE studies have severe fundamental limitations - they are not viable true controlled research studies. This is because the adopted-out-of-necessity research protocol can't by its very nature be expected to reveal any significant effect. This is due to the basic nature of the NDE being very rare and uncontrollable and unpredictable as to when and where and to whom it occurs, and also because even if a subject really does separate from his body and brain he is under extremely adverse circumstances which will make it very unlikely for him to even notice the cues. If the subject does have an OBE, at that moment he has many other more important concerns, is distracted by and focused on seeing his body, and probably is quite upset by the radically different and bizarre environment, and by the condition of his body. 

The experimental option of artificially inducing NDEs would be exceedingly unethical. So Parnia's protocol is the best he can do with a very recalcitrant phenomenon that strongly resists being pinned down experimentally. It seems to me that the most probable result from the limited applications so far would be the nearly null results reported so far as to subjects noticing and remembering such cues at such a moment in such an overwhelmingly bizarre environment and situation. Because of all these adverse factors, a much larger experimental sample size would be needed to demonstrate the phenomenon, something that just isn't practically and financially possible.

(2023-06-27, 09:21 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]You can read what you want into it, but I think the statement is actually in error, because Parnia's AWARE studies have severe fundamental limitations - they are not viable true controlled research studies. This is because the adopted-out-of-necessity research protocol can't by its very nature be expected to reveal any significant effect. This is due to the basic nature of the NDE being very rare and uncontrollable and unpredictable as to when and where and to whom it occurs, and also because even if a subject really does separate from his body and brain he is under extremely adverse circumstances which will make it very unlikely for him to even notice the cues. If the subject does have an OBE, at that moment he has many other more important concerns, is distracted by and focused on seeing his body, and probably is quite upset by the radically different and bizarre environment, and by the condition of his body. 

The experimental option of artificially inducing NDEs would be exceedingly unethical. So Parnia's protocol is the best he can do with a very recalcitrant phenomenon that strongly resists being pinned down experimentally. It seems to me that the most probable result from the limited applications so far would be the nearly null results reported so far as to subjects noticing and remembering such cues at such a moment in such an overwhelmingly bizarre environment and situation. Because of all these adverse factors, a much larger experimental sample size would be needed to demonstrate the phenomenon, something that just isn't practically and financially possible.

I'm not the first person to say this but if anyone wants to get hits for seeing those stickers you probably need to first look for people who have some skill in remote viewing or were trained as part of their culture to induce OOBEs (shamans).

At the very least one would ideally try to get lucid dreamers.

It's like the combination lock test - you need an incredibly large number of people to beat the odds of getting no communications. Then there are the communications that don't give the lock combination...

Bigelow is offering $1M in grants and I fear this will all be wasted on studies like AWARE that are near destined to fail.

(2023-06-27, 09:34 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I'm not the first person to say this but if anyone wants to get hits for seeing those stickers you probably need to first look for people who have some skill in remote viewing or were trained as part of their culture to induce OOBEs (shamans).

At the very least one would ideally try to get lucid dreamers.

It's like the combination lock test - you need an incredibly large number of people to beat the odds of getting no communications. Then there are the communications that don't give the lock combination...

Bigelow is offering $1M in grants and I fear this will all be wasted on studies like AWARE that are near destined to fail.

You are not going to get real-time hits on secret, hidden visual targets. The visual target information has to be a fact for you to have any chance of accessing it. It has to be measured. If you remove the real-time constraint, you can get access to something you will see in the future, but it requires the information to have feelings/emotions attached to it. Feelings/emotions seem to be a result of adding up information over what we understand as time. But in addition you've also got to be motivated, as motivation seems to be a result of adding up what we understand as the future. (Bem's best tests seem to confirm this). You can't use repeating patterns in the information, as they get smeared out due to interference. You can't trick it either, you've really got to believe it.

(2023-06-27, 03:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Also looks like Sam Harris is agnostic about Survival? Or maybe he's against personal Survival but not an Idealist-esque "unified with the Ur-Mind" type Survival?

 -End of Faith

Harris definitely does not believe in soul survival. He is the guy talking at this point is this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjKJ92b9Y04&t=4250s .