Are you interested in the scientific investigation of psi?

Are you interested in the scientific investigation of psi?

Yes.

Are you interested in the scientific investigation of psi?

IMHO, the primary issue getting off the starting blocks is data collection.  Specifically, formulating methods that work with the units of measure to quantify psi.

Psi is recognized when information is "communicated" and there is no obvious physical channel for the message to travel.

• Events of psi need to been quantified as to measures of information science, because that is the category of scientific phenomena that are being described.  
  
• Set-up a framework of observables to quantify psi 
  
• Make process models that predict how these observables evolve
  
• Actually get somewhere in addressing mainstream issues
  

Yes, but I believe the investigation of Psi will need to await the work being done on quantum and field effects occurring in the brain in tandem with the metaphysical questioning that is gaining ground in academia.

As with research into the benefits of psychedelic therapy, we may find the lab is not a neutral ground removing extraneous context but rather a context in itself.

Additionally, "Why Psi?" is more of a pertinent question to my interests than attempts to convince the skeptics via lab research.

Yes though I wish they would focus more on developing practical applications than remaining stuck on the idea of whether it's real or not. Its annoying that they'll take something like psychokinesis, say that its like a human performance task, but then test it in a black and white "is it real" way.

Imagine taking 1000 people who range from claiming they can spoon bend at will to just being passively interested in it and putting them through a spoon bending bootcamp for a whole year. Where day after day they do little more than different trials of spoon bending just to try to see if they can develop the skill for real. Encouraging people to teach each other and try out different ideas and such. And you'd record everything, even the off hours. Hell you could livestream it and get thousands and thousand of eyes looking it over. You could roll in so many different tests into this one study, with built in replication trials, all because you focused on trying to actually develop spoon bending rather than one shot trials of "can this guy do it?"

If it's not real, it'll falsify itself. Because, if after a year of conscious, concerted effort specifically to develop this one skill in the best conditions possible no one out of the group can get anything to happen then chances are no one ever will and you could finally put it to bed. I mean, people like me would just keep training anyways out of principle because a reality without PK is totally worthless but at least you could finally say real effort was put into the study of it.

But the only way for a study like that to even be conceived of in the first place is for people to stop treating it like such a black and white thing that either exists or doesn't. And I think that needs to happen pretty much across the board in parapsychology. You could apply this to mediumship studies and OBE studies and weather influence studies and so many other things. But it will probably never happen without that culture change.

Yeah I'm sure a study like that would be horrendously expensive. I'd estimate a minimum of $100 million. But when the result could be so world changing I'm sure something like DARPA would have little problem with it given how much they throw at other projects. $100 million is practically pocket change for them. But I do think there's the flipside that if it did reveal real ability it kinda screws over the government if that's public since you've just revealed to the public that there's a way that they, through just some hard work, could learn a skill that could counter firearms at range and I'm guessing they wouldn't like that. I mean, you've seen the gun debate, now imagine the hadouken debate. Imagine when you're not just trying to regulate owning a physical object but personal knowledge.

So I doubt a name like that would ever want to touch a study like this unless they could have absolute control and secrecy of the results, regardless of what they were.

Thanks for the responses.

I wanted to ask the question because I'm never sure how much interest there is here in the scientific side of things, and indeed there sometimes seems to be hostility to "scientists" in general (which I think is deserved by only that tiny minority of scientists who are (i) interested in and (ii) unreasonably sceptical of psi).

To be clear, I have nothing against people who aren't particularly interested in the scientific side. But that's my main interest, and I do think it is important.

Of course  I'm pleased to get "Yes" from 100% so far.

Obviously it's also interesting to discuss  how best to investigate psi experimentally, and to what extent parapsychologists should still be trying to prove the existence of psi rather than trying to understand how it works. Though I suspect any reasonably well designed experiment will be able to serve both those purposes. Maybe those questions deserve their own thread.

For me scientific research in the mid 20th century was something I found immensely important in guiding my developing worldview and expanding my horizons. I suppose nowadays I don't find it as fresh and exciting as I did when I first came across that research. However if I picture a younger version of myself, I would definitely consider such studies, conducted right now in the present day to be valuable, vital. What we cannot do is to turn historical research into today's 'ancient scriptures', it is necessary to move forwards.

As for hostility towards science or scientists, it really comes down to our media-saturated world. Here in the UK at least much of the accepted media tends either ignore the topic, or to cast it in a negative light. That some scientists in the media spotlight revel in such denigration does play its part in lowering the status of science as a whole. So for me it is a problem in the way these things are communicated.

Of course  I'm pleased to get "Yes" from 100% so far.

If anyone answered "NO" to such a question on a forum named "Psiencequest" they should get banned immediately. 

I am interested and think it is a useful pursuit with the caveat that I think we could be bumping into the fundamentally creative/insane aspect of existence which I like to call the "Abyss" which is where structure/pattern/logic break down - in which case science cannot study that as it will defy all regularity and pattern. However, I think that the act of imagining anything pulls that thing out of the abyss into the realm of pattern and regularity and enables it to be studied.

So in short, when something is new, it might be genuinely impossible to study with science, but this doesn't mean it is useless to study it with science because as we feel around it and work it over in our imaginations and have more encounters with it, we engage in the process of co-creating it which brings it structure and enables it to be studied.

Thanks for the responses.

I wanted to ask the question because I'm never sure how much interest there is here in the scientific side of things, and indeed there sometimes seems to be hostility to "scientists" in general (which I think is deserved by only that tiny minority of scientists who are (i) interested in and (ii) unreasonably sceptical of psi).

To be clear, I have nothing against people who aren't particularly interested in the scientific side. But that's my main interest, and I do think it is important.

Of course  I'm pleased to get "Yes" from 100% so far.

Obviously it's also interesting to discuss  how best to investigate psi experimentally, and to what extent parapsychologists should still be trying to prove the existence of psi rather than trying to understand how it works. Though I suspect any reasonably well designed experiment will be able to serve both those purposes. Maybe those questions deserve their own thread.

Whether or not it's the best way to do it, I suspect that when/if psi phenomena are demonstrated to the satisfaction of the mainstream, it'll be in a roundabout way. In other words - it's not going to be parapsychologists running experiments in labs that will make the sale. It'll be biologists detecting quantum processes, or physicists wiping away the dark matter/dark energy notion with a new discovery, or unorthodox neuroscientists engaging with radical procedures. They won't call their discoveries "psi" or acknowledge any body of knowledge that investigated these same phenomena prior to their "discovery" (and would probably be genuinely unaware of its existence), but they may use terms like telepathy, clairvoyance, etc.; the popular press definitely will. Then some parapsychologists will give a quiet cheer that their ideas were vindicated in some form, others will grumble at not getting credit; some skeptics will eat their crow, others will pretend they were never wrong; and most people will think the news is really cool, and then wonder what to have for dinner.

Why wouldn't scientific investigations of pyschic phenomenon be interesting?

Sure, it can't explore every facet of psi, but the aspects that it at least can, are fascinating.

It makes it harder for the militant physicalists to keep refuting it, especially when their own hypotheses and predictions keep failing.