Improbability Principle

I've been thinking about ways to counteract our tendency to treat examples selected post hoc as somehow representative and to intuitively guess at probability/frequency, rather than measure it.

One idea I've mentioned before goes back to the idea of falsification/disconfirmation - that is, ask "what do I expect to see in the absence of the effect?" However, this runs into the problem I brought up in the OP, where people guess at what they expect to see based on intuitively estimating the probability of the specific event. It has been discovered that if you measure the frequency of an extraordinary event in the absence of an effect instead, the frequencies are much, much higher than our intuitive estimations. So I'm thinking that the next bit of advice is to measure that frequency rather than guessing at it. This made a huge difference in medicine when it turned out that guesses about what would happen without treatment or simply giving current treatments more time, were wildly inaccurate. Once you measure what happens by adding control groups, the frequency of what happens in the "treatment" group often turns out not to be remarkable or different. 

And speaking of frequency, it probably also wouldn't hurt to measure the frequency of extraordinary events prospectively, rather than depending upon our usual method of examples selected post hoc, especially in the form of anecdotes (an anecdote is an undocumented story, and something is undocumented if it is based on recollection rather than a more permanent record of the events made prior to any feedback). 

The NDE research has been a good example of this disconnect. NDEs came to our attention because a (relatively) tiny set of stories were regarded as extraordinary. And people went about asking for these same kinds of stories to form a collection (e.g. IANDS), which produces a highly selected sample. When the samples are collected prospectively instead, the frequency of extraordinary experiences which are similar to the stories on IANDS is very low relative to all the experiences people have. And the stories selected post hoc turn out to be unrepresentative of the population of experiences. That is, the process of asking for "NDEs" selects for a set of experiences which are memorable and have an element which can be regarded as spiritual. This is taken as meaningful when people start to assume that most experiences had by people during medical crises are of this type, and that the experiences which are not of this type are different in quality (i.e. they aren't life-altering, realer than real, richly detailed, veridical, emotional, etc.). Prospective studies instead show that experiences which have an element which can be regarded as spiritual don't differ from the other experiences in terms of whether they are memorable, life altering, realer than real, richly detailed, veridical, emotional, etc. 

Ask what you'd expect to see in the absence of the proposed effect.
Measure the frequency of those expectations.
Collect representative samples of extraordinary experiences.

Other ideas with respect to addressing the issues raised in the OP?

Linda

That's a gross misrepresentation of NDE research and a really weak attempt to equivocate between them and hallucinations, but I expect that you hoped to have that be glossed over.

Linda,

I would have liked your post -except for the obfuscation exhibited in the above paragraph.

In terms of reported human behavior, within all cultures, you imply that NDE's and paranormal experiences started in a recent time-frame and are reported by only a few people.  When in fact; the elephant in the room is that paranormal events are reported in all places and times of recorded history.  The study of stone and bronze age cultures are replete with reports.

I agree. I made no implication that NDEs and paranormal experiences are recent phenomena.

So before measuring something (merelogy) you need to define some stuff.  First if you say - NDE/paranormal is a category, then the category needs a specific definition that will lead to accurate measurement!  So let's look at a RCA (root cause analysis).

Paranormal events are events where information transfer (both formal information or semantic information) occurs without a signal and a physical channel where the signal can forwarded to a receiver capable of decoding the message.

Dreams, intuitive senses, instinct, understanding from imagination, understanding from empathy of abstract circumstances - all qualify.

Ok now you can start working on frequency with an unrestricted environment - all places and all time - and an informational definition of what sorts  - normal perception - from paranormal perception.  Take a sample of people who have taken meaning that has changed probable actions in their lives; and then project it on the environment; resulting get a frequency of occurrence.  It will be in the hundreds of millions.

Note that spirtual (what ever the frack that is in a formal defintion) IS NOT a variable in this methodology - just a clear measurable definition of mutual information being generated with a physical signal.

I don't understand how you are determining no signal or physical channel. And how are you determining information transfer (going back to the problem that sometimes extraordinary correspondences (which have the appearance of information transfer) are found due to happenstance (examples in post #14)? 

Linda

I agree. I made no implication that NDEs and paranormal experiences are recent phenomena.

I don't understand how you are determining no signal or physical channel. And how are you determining information transfer (going back to the problem that sometimes extraordinary correspondences (which have the appearance of information transfer) are found due to happenstance (examples in post #14)? 

Linda

The discovery of physical signals capable of transfer involves testing for energy sources that radiate or are channeled in wires or diffused like chemicals.  Look at the list I gave:  "Dreams, intuitive senses, instinct, understanding from imagination, understanding from empathy of abstract circumstances".

Dreams involve no external signal to carry new information to the experience.  Dreams are integrated information, much of which is subconscious. Likewise the rest of the events on the list.

"How is information transfer is determined" - sounds funny to me.  Information transfer is measured in bits of mutual information between source and receiver.  There are established science and engineer laws, formulas and equipment that measures signals.  Think Textronix equipment.

The transfer of semantic meaning - is measured by outcomes and their probability.  The red light works because the code is understood and the outcome is an alternating chance to go thru the intersection and not crash.  Measure crashes vs cars thru the intersection.

You seem not to "get it" that information transfer and coding of messages is work done by millions of people in modern culture.  And further, that information transfer and coding have developed well-beyond the scope of the average person.  We just trust the science works.  S Hawking went out with a warning about that it may work too well for the health of humanity.

Happenstance and  establishing normative baseline activity are well detailed in professional DoEs.  My point is not arguing the data (or how it can be twisted) - I'm arguing that a new view on the current science can yield a better process model that explains a lot of this stuff.

See Linda - if you concede that informational structure is real - and that variable information objects precede all physical events - then how minds work can move forward.

The problem is that most people identify "psi" by identifying improbable connections (hence the need for anomalous information). And most people intuitively estimate probability and are wildly off when they do so. A common mistake is to do what Andy did - estimate the probability of a specific connection post hoc, rather than estimating the probability of any connection. There's no point in estimating the probability that Andy's dream about his uncle's painting would be accurate (for a very loose definition of "accurate") given that nobody specified that this was the one dream out of thousands that was going to be accurate beforehand, and in what way it was going to be accurate.

Linda

As Hand writes, “The Improbability Principle tells us that events which we regard as highly improbable occur because we got things wrong. If we can find out where we went wrong, then the improbable will become probable.” I am reminded of the story of two gentlemen in a Dublin pub drinking to the amazing coincidences that keep piling up as they recount their early lives to each other. When another patron enters and asks what’s going on, the bartender merely points out that the O’Reilly twins are getting drunk again.

I acknowledge the above viewpoint applies to a lot of events that purport to be paranormal.  There is an underlying connection via physical interaction or through communication of information via a signal.  Hand, (whose book I should read), implies that there are logical relations that connect the events.  In the amusing anecdote - the point is made that close correlation means a relationship that most likely can be measured.  The mutual information between twins can be measured in a number of contexts.  Logic can sort seemingly rare probabilities from random relations from actual connections.

Compare this to two entangled particles.  The time when they become entangled is an actual connection.  Yet there is structured information that is not seen as normative.  Entanglement is not paranormal.  Yet - the result is clear -that without communication between particles there is continuing non-physical correlation.

My worldview is that the mental process of understanding any event is poorly researched.  Understanding is an informational event that changes real-world probabilities for future events and brings information from the past to the active present for use in the here and now.

Yeah, the biggest difference I notice between proponents and non-proponents is this fundamental misunderstanding of probability (it is seen in everything from mediumship readings ("they couldn't have known that") to evolution denial ("the chance of this mutation was impossibly remote")). The Birthday Problem makes it clear, and I keep pounding on it. But I haven't actually noticed a light bulb moment in anyone, yet. 

Linda

With regards evolution, I think molecular biologist Douglas Axe has a good idea of probability.

https://evolutionnews.org/2016/07/more_scientists_1/

https://www.str.org/blog/building-a-prot...vSj8Iq-mM8


"At each site you have 20 different amino acids to choose from. When you do the math, there are 10 (to the power) 195 total possible ways one can construct a protein composed of 150 amino acids. The question is, how many of those arrangements are actually functional? Doug Axe at Cambridge University has determined that the probability of getting a functional protein from all of the total possible proteins is 1 in 10  (to the power)  74. "

Words in brackets are mine because formatting was lost in pasting

https://winteryknight.com/2012/08/05/dou...-chance-2/

With regards evolution, I think molecular biologist Douglas Axe has a good idea of probability.

Yeah? How did you determine that?

Yeah? How did you determine that?

Sorry, I knew you were obstinate but I had thought you were clever.

It appears to be David Attenborough's conclusion that at least some crows in Japan do this - and not only that, but that some of these crows take advantage of pedestrian crossings.

Japanese crows do seem remarkably talented. Here's one apparently trying to work a ticket vending machine with the help of a stolen credit card:
https://www.dailygrail.com/2018/05/just-...in-ticket/