New theoretical paper by Marwaha and May

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - here's a new theoretical paper by Sonali Bhatt Marwaha and Edwin C. May entitled "Informational Psi: Collapsing the Problem Space of Psi Phenomena," which is to be published in the Zeitschrift für Anomalistik. In line with the journal's Open Peer Commentary System, the paper is being made available online before publication, together with comments from Hartmut Grote, Walter von Lucadou, Michael Nahm, Dean Radin and Hartmann Römer and a response from the authors:
https://www.anomalistik.de/en/zeitschrif...prerelease

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - here's a new theoretical paper by Sonali Bhatt Marwaha and Edwin C. May entitled "Informational Psi: Collapsing the Problem Space of Psi Phenomena," which is to be published in the Zeitschrift für Anomalistik. In line with the journal's Open Peer Commentary System, the paper is being made available online before publication, together with comments from Hartmut Grote, Walter von Lucadou, Michael Nahm, Dean Radin and Hartmann Römer and a response from the authors:
https://www.anomalistik.de/en/zeitschrif...prerelease

OK!  Applying information science is the way forward.

 Although dualist and panpsychist approaches to understanding psi have their proponents (e. g., Dossey, 2014; Hardy, 2017; Kelly, Crabtree, & Marshall, 2015; Neppe & Close, 2012; Rao, 2011, 2013), in our view, psi is best understood as other sensory systems are; that is, psi is the perception and cognition of informational signals from the external world.

Dean Radin responds with the problem.  Signals are physical.

 This is not to say that the proposal is wrong. But what makes M&M’s article unsatisfying is that it provides no new answers to the key questions that have been discussed without resolution for many decades. The only accepted physical theory that allows for the kinds of nonlocal connections required by M&M’s proposal is quantum mechanics (QM), but in its orthodox form QM disallows any form of signaling. In addition, no clues are provided for what processes in the brain might be able to receive nonlocal signals, nor are there any hints about the source of such signals. 

Proposing a physical theory for psi is understandable, and even desirable, because it would provide an explanatory framework for the ample empirical evidence for psi without challenging the prevailing scientific worldview. That in turn might allow psi to become mainstreamed more easily. However, even if the problem of transmission and reception of nonlocal signals were solved, the proposal still fails to solve an important problem raised by J. Beloff (1970):
 
For all their ingenuity, such [physicalist] theories are really nonstarters. They concentrate on the energetics of the psi process while ignoring its even more intractable informational aspects. For the crux of the problem, as I see it, lies, not so much in specifying what kind of energy might surmount spatial and temporal distances or material barriers, but rather in explaining how it comes about that the subject is able to discriminate the target from the infinite number of other objects in his environment. Perhaps my point can best be illustrated with the help of an analogy: Imagine that sound waves were no longer attenuated with distance. It would follow that every conversation going on for miles around would be equally audible to you. But by this very fact, every conversation would be equally unintelligible. (p. 138)  

In the above quote, Beloff ’s use of the term “informational aspects” was not meant in the entropic sense, but rather in the sense of meaning. 

The method of using "informational objects", where negentropic structures are naturally bound to "real world meanings", such as affordances, can bridge the gap.  IMHO.

I've read the paper and the comments so far, but not the authors' response.

The exchange doesn't give me the impression they are anywhere near a theoretical understanding of psi.

Has anyone here looked into von Lucadou's ideas of "Generalised Quantum Theory", "Pragmatic Information" and so on? His comments about the paper were rather spiky.

I am now looking at the response. I must admit I am not finding it easy to follow.

For example:
Based on a computation of the bit rates for SRI/SAIC experiments, the weighted average of information transfer bit rate per symbol is approximately 0.176 ± 0.048 bits/symbol leading to a 95% confidence interval of [0.269, 0.082]. This bit rate is far too small to win a lottery, for example, because it limits the amount of information that can be acquired by a psi process in a given period of time. Thus, for a typical lottery of six 2-digit numbers, it takes approximately 7 bits of information for each pair including the correct order. Therefore, it requires 42 bits of information to win, and at the bit rate implied above, it would take approximately 50+ hours of continuous remote viewing.

Can anyone explain what the meaning of "bits/symbol" is, or how the estimate of 50+ hours to transfer 42 bits of information was obtained?

I thought it was interesting that a couple of the commenters, though critical of the theory as a whole, picked up on the entropy aspect as something potentially valuable. I followed up a few of the references on this, and was surprised to discover that what they meant by "changes of entropy" in the target favouring anomalous cognition was changes in thermodynamic entropy, not informational entropy. It seems their main formal evidence for this effect is a remote viewing study in which:
"Entropic changes at a remote site was accomplished by dispensing three liters of liquid nitrogen (LN) approximately eight seconds into a picnic cooler containing 2,000, ½ inch diameter aluminum balls."
[Presentation at 60th Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association, 2017 - abstract at p. 115 here:
http://www.rhine.org/images/jp/JPv81n2.pdf ]

Descriptions were found to be more accurate under the "pour" condition, compared with the "no-pour" condition, though the statistical significance was questionable. (For the whole study, the difference was non-significant, but by comparing just the first half they found significance at p = 0.036.)

It seems the reason that changes in thermodynamic entropy were thought to be significant was because they noticed in exploratory remote viewing studies that targets associated with such changes had a high success rate. Examples include an electron accelerator and a microwave generator:
https://www.academia.edu/38150687/Anomal...py_Concept

It seems an unexpected idea to me, and I wonder if the evidence is strong enough to justify making it a cornerstone of their theory.