Likelihood of telepathy, PK, precognition, survival of consciousness and mediumship.

I'd also be interested to know why berkelon put the likelihood of precognition so low in comparison with telepathy. Was it because of some kind of fundamental philosophical objection?

I don't think the scientific evidence for precognition is as good as it is for telepathy, and I find telepathy anecdotes more persuasive than precognition anecdotes. Also, telepathy just feels more likely to me, purely from a living human perspective. If you know of recent blinded experiments other than Bem's, I'd love to read them. 

In terms of mediumship, I did mean communicating with the dead. I can't have my mediumship score higher than my consciousness survival score, since I need a surviving consciousness in order to communicate with the medium, I would think. I don't find the evidence for survival of consciousness particularly persuasive, so, in turn, I doubt mediums are in contact with surviving consciousnesses. Or at least that's what I'm thinking on a random Tuesday night...

[Ninshub]

telepathy - 99.5%
survival of consciousness - 98.7%
PK - 97.2%
precognition - 90.5%
mediumship - 88.35%

I don't think the scientific evidence for precognition is as good as it is for telepathy, and I find telepathy anecdotes more persuasive than precognition anecdotes. Also, telepathy just feels more likely to me, purely from a living human perspective. If you know of recent blinded experiments other than Bem's, I'd love to read them. 

In terms of mediumship, I did mean communicating with the dead. I can't have my mediumship score higher than my consciousness survival score, since I need a surviving consciousness in order to communicate with the medium, I would think. I don't find the evidence for survival of consciousness particularly persuasive, so, in turn, I doubt mediums are in contact with surviving consciousnesses. Or at least that's what I'm thinking on a random Tuesday night...

When you say survival of consciousness, do you mean personal, ego-istic consciousness? Or a more broad sort of vague existence of consciousness, but less personal or entirely impersonal?

Also, as Kam pointed out, perhaps getting percentages (since that's what we're doing, though it is not my preference) on people's belief that the mind does/does not reduce to the physical brian would be interesting.

I don't think the scientific evidence for precognition is as good as it is for telepathy, and I find telepathy anecdotes more persuasive than precognition anecdotes. Also, telepathy just feels more likely to me, purely from a living human perspective. If you know of recent blinded experiments other than Bem's, I'd love to read them. 

As E mentioned, there is quite a lot of interest in presentiment experiments, where physiological measurements are monitored immediately before a stimulus is applied. For example, there's a meta-analysis by Mossbridge et al. here, covering material published up to 2010:
http://deanradin.com/evidence/Mossbridge...timent.pdf

[Laird]

I'm not comfortable offering percentages because any figure would be to some extent arbitrary (there is a fuzzy range), but will offer rough estimates from the following (hopefully intuitive) set: certain, extremely likely, likely, agnostic, somewhat unlikely, extremely unlikely, certainly not. I will also try to offer some insight into why I have chosen each descriptor:

* Telepathy: certain to extremely likely. Why? Mainly: personal experience. Also: powerful evidence from studies like the Ganzfeld, especially the meta-analyses thereof.

* PK: extremely likely to likely. Why? Whilst I have never experienced this myself, I have seen a lot of apparently legitimate evidence that this occurrs, ranging from rigorous experiments on Uri Geller to accounts by people I trust (e.g. Dean Radin) of successful spoon-bending parties. Also, there is the PK Man - and whilst I haven't read this book, I have heard quite a bit about the man at the centre of it, and it sounds persuasive.

* Precognition: extremely likely to likely. Why? Because of the experimental data, from Andy's studies on his dream journals to Daryl Bem's experiments to Dean Radin's experiments on presentiment (closely related to precognition).

* Survival of consciousness: extremely likely to likely. Why? Partly philosophical, in that dualism seems to be the most plausible ontology to me, and I can see no reason why the dualistically-intertwined "soul" would die once the body does. Partly because of the experimental evidence in support of dualism, e.g., NDEs and OBEs.

* Mediumship: extremely likely to likely. Why? Because of veridical information which cannot be explained by trickery. e.g. the double(triple?)-blind studies conducted by Julie Beischel. I must say though that when it comes to the proposition that the communication comes from the actual supposedly deceased entity, I am agnostic. There are plenty of spirits out there who watch our every move and who could potentially impersonate any being whom they have observed. Not all of these spirits are benign. Thus, I would be unlikely to actually consult a medium, and would certainly be very wary of any advice they offered that was supposedly from a deceased friend/relative.

^^ I find it unlikely Uri Geller has or had genuine PK ability in the past. Here are some useful quotes on the matter:

"The observers were more appalled, however, than impressed. The SRI staffers (physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, who specialized in lasers) “already believed in E. S. P., and therefore their goal was to make Geller as comfortable as possible in order to make him produce it” said one of the independent experts, Ray Hyman. Hyman, a University of Oregon psychologist (and amateur magician), added that the think tank’s work was “incredibly sloppy”. Geller was not psychic but a very gifted conjurer, Hyman concluded, employing classic mentalist’s tricks that would and should have been exposed by more objective methods. Over the course of his six-week stint at SRI (for which he was paid 100$ a day and all expenses), Geller had not even been searched for magnets, something that any good researcher would have known to do to instantly identify a fake. A magnet taped to one’s leg could make a Geiger counter click wildly, this a feat Geller had performed before researchers at the University of London who had been hoodwinked by the man."

Source: Samuel, Lawrence R. (2011). Supernatural America: A Cultural History. Praeger. p. 101.
 

"Skeptics point out that Geller is a former magician, that magicians can duplicate his effects by clever tricks, and that he refuses to perform when magicians are observing-apparently afraid they might discover his trickery. In fact Geller has actually been caught cheating. In one instance, although he pretended to cover his eyes while a secretary made a simple drawing, Geller actually peeked, thus enabling him to appear to read her mind and produce the drawing. Again, instead of bending a key "by concentration" as he pretended, Geller bent the key against a table when he thought no one was looking."

Source: Nickell, Joe. (2005). Camera Clues: A Handbook for Photographic Investigation. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 198-200.

For the purposes of this thread, I'd like members to assign a percentage to telepathy, PK, precognition, survival of consciousness and mediumship in terms of their likelihood of being real. 

The reason I like these kinds of exercises is that they show us how few people there are in the "all basically 100%" or "all basically 0%" factions. I always hoped that the original skeptiko forum would eventually embrace the fact that there are proponents and skeptics of all different stripes, and that there are people who believe strongly in one thing, but not in another.  I'm sure some members will take issue with my wording or categories, but that's what the comments are for.

Anyway, hoping for good things on this new forum! 

My rankings would be:

telepathy - 75%
survival of consciousness - 35%
PK - 15%
mediumship - 10%
precognition - 5%

Thanks!

telepathy - 99%
survival of consciousness - 99%
PK - 75%
mediumship - 99%
precognition - 99%

^^ I find it unlikely Uri Geller has or had genuine PK ability in the past. Here are some useful quotes on the matter:


Source: Samuel, Lawrence R. (2011). Supernatural America: A Cultural History. Praeger. p. 101.
 

Source: Nickell, Joe. (2005). Camera Clues: A Handbook for Photographic Investigation. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 198-200.

I'm interested to see what anyone else has to say about Geller but I don't want to sidetrack this thread so I'll open a new one.

When you say survival of consciousness, do you mean personal, ego-istic consciousness? Or a more broad sort of vague existence of consciousness, but less personal or entirely impersonal?

I was thinking about the same you making it through to the other side that is reading this post, with your memories and your ideas intact...I always assumed that was what people meant when they referred to survival of consciousness...Alex was always pointing to anecdotes from the hospital rooms, and in those cases, it certainly seemed like the complete person was crossing over to the other side, ego and all, and then coming back.

Evidence for Psi: Thirteen Empirical Research Reports 

Jim once found the links for most of these, will see if I can dig them out of Skeptiko...