How Certain Are You That PSI Effects Are Real?

I think there are more people in the middle part (25-75%) than I'd have expected. Currently 40% of respondents.

Do you mean any of them or all of them or what?

any of them

I think there are more people in the middle part (25-75%) than I'd have expected. Currently 40% of respondents.

I think that's a positive state of affairs. If the question had been posed with regard to a list of specific types of psi phenomena, my own votes would vary wildly across that list. It implies, among all of us, a healthy dose of scepticism, not in the sense of being dismissive or close-minded, but in the sense of asking questions, gathering evidence and being open-minded, rather than committed to a belief for or against.

Those effects we call "psi" are real. I suspect the question is "how certain are you that psi effects are anomalous?" 

Linda

I think that's a positive state of affairs. If the question had been posed with regard to a list of specific types of psi phenomena, my own votes would vary wildly across that list. It implies, among all of us, a healthy dose of scepticism, not in the sense of being dismissive or close-minded, but in the sense of asking questions, gathering evidence and being open-minded, rather than committed to a belief for or against.

Isn't that just a reflection of relative ignorance of the evidence for each of these phenomena, though? The level of evidence seems pretty much the same (or at least falls into a fairly narrow range) for every specific type of psi phenomenon, once you make the effort to look at it in detail (and I realize most people have not done so). If you accept it for one, why withhold it for another, just because you haven't looked into it?

Linda

Those effects we call "psi" are real. I suspect the question is "how certain are you that psi effects are anomalous?" 

Linda

Personally I don't consider them to be anomalous. At one point in time I would have said they were. However my views on psi haven't changed.

Personally I don't consider them to be anomalous.

Obviously, the question was whether they are "real." If someone wants to ask a different question, of course they can do.

Propagation in a psi "field" is somewhat hard to defend, as the term field has a precise science set of definitions (as a force field) and associated rules for empirical measurement.  There maybe some relationship in science if one holds that "wave" packets propagate in a field, but the context is one of an abstract math/logic nature.  Sheldrake's morphic field would be another view.

Feilds are generally defined as a set of elements with related characteristics that are bound into a system by a common influence. In classical physics, a field is also defined by the extent of influence. That is, the influence of an attractor (kernel, source, center) diminishes over distance from the source of the influence.

An important characteristic of the psi field is that it is nonlocal, meaning an effect in New York can be sensed in Chicago. That is reasonably well established. A second characteristic that I think needs more study is that it is nontemperal, meaning that the personality in Chicago senses the event in New York as it occurs. It sometimes appears that nontemporal includes precognitive sensing, but that is confused with presentiment which may be the mind sensing the psi signature of an event before presenting information about the event to conscious awareness. It seems more likely that precognition is the sensing of the potential for one or more versions of the future to manifest.

Influence in a psi field (more generally, an etheric field) is a thought influence and not a physical force. The influence does not diminish over distance because there is no distance. It does not directly act on physical space. It acts on concepts.

I define the creative process as the process of expressing a visualized influence on reality to produce a new and intended order. The equivalences seem to be:

• Thought objects rather than physical objects – Terms like wave and frequency have no meaning when discussing etheric fields.
  
• Concepts—the idea of something rather than the physical instance of that thing.
  
• Influences (want, love, visualized intention) rather than forces (gravity, magnetic, centripetal).
  
• Difference in potential is the influence of intentionality on potential characteristics of intended order fields.
  
• In the etheric or conceptual space, attention provides the unit of influence and intention provides the difference in potential.
  

In the physical, psi phenomena are the effect of the creative process as it is expressed by an individual. For instance, I argue that EVP are the expression of intended order (psychokinetic) on a physical process to produce the imagined result. The psi field-to-physical conduit is the practitioner or an interested observer who is anywhere in the world. Physical processes appear to be more amenable to influence if they are more conceptually indeterminant; in EVP, randomly puntuqated noise, for instance.

All of this is to some extent established science in parapsychology. Well, established parapsychology does not accept EVP, so that part is reasonably well-established theory amongst laypeople studying EVP. See https://ethericstudies.org/etheric-fields/

Perception of psi phenomena is moderated by the observer's worldview (the Judge). If a person has decided that such phenomena do not exist but is delusion, mundane mistaken as paranormal or fraud, their perceptual processes will tend to reject the incoming information (goat) (See https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/artic...oat-effect)

Sorry for the long explanation. I have learned not to assume prior understanding.

Personally I don't consider them to be anomalous. At one point in time I would have said they were. However my views on psi haven't changed.

I think that's the more interesting discussion.

Linda

[Laird]

I think that's the more interesting discussion.

OK, I'll bite... what's your answer to that question, and why?

(P.S. Was my solution to the pirate problem valid or did I mess up somehow? Been curious to get your response...)