AAAS Symposium on Quantum Retrocausation
Predicting the Unpredictable: 75 Years of Experimental Evidence
Abstract. From time immemorial, people have reported foreknowledge of future events. To determine whether such experiences are best understood via conventional explanations, or whether a retrocausal phenomenon might be involved in some instances, researchers have conducted hundreds of controlled laboratory experiments over the past 75 years. These studies fall into four general classes, and each class has generated repeatable evidence consistent with retrocausation. The statistical results for a class of forced-choice studies is associated with odds against chance of about 1024; for a class of free-response studies, odds about 1020; for psychophysiological-based studies, odds about 1017; and for implicit decision studies, odds about 1010. Effect sizes observed in the latter three classes are nearly identical, indicating replication of similar underlying effects. These effects are also in close agreement with the average effect size observed across thousands of conventional psychological experiments, suggesting that retrocausal phenomena may not be especially unique, at least not in terms of commonly observed psychological phenomena. Bayesian analyses of the most recent classes of experiments confirm that the evidence is strongly in favor of a genuine effect, with Bayes Factors ranging from 13,669 to 1 for implicit decision experiments, to 2.9 x 1013 to 1 for psychophysiological designs. For the two most recent classes of studies examining retrocausal effects via unconscious physiological or behavioral measures, 73 of 82 studies (89%) reported by 23 different laboratories from the United States, Italy, Spain, Holland, Austria, Sweden, England, Scotland, Iran, Japan, and Australia, have produced results in the direction predicted by a retrocausal effect (odds against chance = 1.5 x 1013, via a sign test). Assessment of the methodologies used in these studies has not identified plausible conventional alternatives for the observed outcomes, suggesting the existence of a genuine retrocausal phenomenon.
Comments
In some areas it's obvious to see how helpful Bayesian analysis can be. In other areas one can get caught up in circular arguments. E.g. psi is improbable, so it requires a low prior probability, and because of that, new evidence in favour of psi is necessarily weak.
But how do we know that psi is improbable? What determines whether any physical phenomenon is 'probable'? It's like Charlie Brown just wanting to kick that football. And he is never allowed.
I believe that one prominent skeptic has stated that if you allow a 0.01 value for the PP of psi, which he characterized as "generous", then experiments like Bem's recent one show a negligible effect. Of course common sense refutes that tack.
I get the feeling that some skeptics really want to try to force psi to go away any way they can. Even if they have to force it. And as we all know when we take a crap, if you have to push too hard there's something wrong - with you, not the toilet.
Prior odds of 100 to 1 is not unreasonable. The Wagenmakers et al paper that appears in the same issue of JPSP as Bem's paper, selects prior odds of 100 trillion to 1 in favor of the null hypothesis.
I have been able to find nearly 100 experiments of the presentiment type so far, which includes psychophysiological designs like I've been doing, and implicit decision designs like Bem and others have been doing. About 90% of them have produced results in the predicted direction. This argues against experimenter psi effects, although we've yet to seen enough studies by people who would prefer that psi doesn't exist, so the jury is still out on that score.
I have 2 ESP thoughts from childhood (Mid 70s) to discuss with a Researchers like you & Others, that have come true (2001-2003 & 2005).I think the narration will almost "entice & astonish" all humans,irrespective of belief status. Interested?
Personally these 2 ESP thoughts have devastated/engulfed "My Entire Life".
But now I see some new insights for the applications, based on the experiences.
I am sorry for not disclosing the "content", as one is Career & Other is "......."
Thank you.
In that case, I wonder how one person can get no statistical significance with prior odds of 0.01, but another can get statistical significance with prior odds set much lower.
It's no doubt a simplistic question but I am just a beginner at statistics. If someone can put it in layman's terms, I'd appreciate it!
Is there a point, (pseudo) counter-point summary you could provide in plain English? Something like, Bem's initial study did this, Wagenmaker (or who ever) countered with this. Bem et al then a replied, etc.
The papers are rather dense and others commenting them would help keep me from not fully or specifically appreciating what's going on in these exchanges.
Thank you.
By way of caution, I would say that it is one thing to conceptualise it, but another to experience it. Precognition is the wrong word for it really as (in my experience anyway) it is not a "knowing" the future, but it is nonetheless very disorientating for a classically educated person. And given the crazy things we dream about it can on occasion be distressing. It is also incredibly fascinating and tantalising difficult to explain!!
And what happened with the anecdotal evidence about people seeing exact images of future events?
I guess so. Precognition implies that the person is aware of some aspect of the future event. In other words, the paranormally acquired infomation manages to penetrate their consciousness. This could result in gut feelings or intuitive impressions about the future etc.
But sometimes, that information is processed unconsciously, like in presentiment experiments.
And what happened with the anecdotal evidence about people seeing exact images of future events?
I was speaking to a friend who has waking visions (about every month or so). One day, she was due to meet someone at their office - lets call him John. In the morning before the meeting she saw, in her minds eye, John in hospital after having had a car crash. When she arrived at John's office, his secretary answered the door and told her John had not come in to work that day (she also had a vision about that!). Later on it transpired that John had indeed been involved in a car crash and had to go to hospital. So yes, there was lots of detail in that one.
I was wondering if you could talk about the results of the intention double-slit experiments. I think this would be a nice counter to the geomagnetic fields explaining psi phenomenon.
Thank you very much and have fun at the SSE conference!!
The communications often come in signs, symbols, feelings, and connections that tend to be subtle. These may not be easy to interpret correctly, especially when the rational mind gets involved. I've also had many impressions that were quite literal and specific, but they did not always make sense to me at first. The more relaxed and "open" I can be, the better. Given that lab-testing conditions would not be conducive to relaxation and (energetic) openness, it's impressive that controlled experiments have yielded such conclusive results.
Telepathy seems to be the easiest, at least presently. If I decide to contact someone but don't follow through, it's almost a given that they will contact me, generally in the next few hours but sometimes almost immediately. This occurs even with people I rarely hear from. Recently I was reading something on the Internet and had a strong impulse to thank the man for sharing the information, but knew only his first name and the country he lived in, so I had no idea how to get in touch with him. About 10 days later, on a message board I belong to (which was not where I'd read the information, although it did involve the same subject matter), I received a private message from this man! It turns out that he was a "lurker" and was contacting me about something I'd posted. I've received only a few PMs on that board, ever, and don't often post there, so this was quite a "coincidence."
It could be that probabilities are being generated in my brain, but these would need to include probabilities for events and people that I don't know of. Most of the time the dreams mean very little or nothing to me. All of this has lead me to believe that psi improves guessing to above chance levels, but that its not perfect and prediction is not what its doing. It feels more that my brain is sampling both the past and the future to make up a dream.
It may be perfect for other people I don't know, but if it were they probably keep quiet about it and make a killing on the stock market!!
Good stuff. The recent evidence seems pretty compelling.
I remember you saying some time ago that your Italian colleagues were in the process of doing a meta-analysis of such recent studies. I'm eager to read the paper when (and where) it's published.
I'm also VERY interested in reading your "double-slit" experiment series which you are presenting at the current SSE annual meeting.
Will you post info about where to read these on your webpage?
http://www.usedcomputersfromwarehouse.com/
Also, I was looking on the Bial website and noticed that you have submitted your work to mainstream journals (Physics Essays and JCogNeuro). Any news on this, as it would be great to get these results to a wider audience than the usual outlets can reach.
Another big difference between physics and psi is that 5 sigma is the threshold for announcing the discovery of a new particle. Recently a 3 sigma "bump" was observed at CERN but vanished when further data was taken.
It's a refreshing change here that Dean Radin is claiming that the "effect size" of many parapsychology experiments seem to be the same--this constancy suggesting that we are witnessing here a real effect in nature.
The discovery of a new constant in nature is no small accomplishment. Makes me wonder just what is the actual magnitude of this "consistent psi effect"?
For comparison, the magnitude of the violation of CP invariance in weak interactions (which also suggests a breakdown of Time-reversal invariance) was only 2x10^-3 but the accurate determination of this tiny effect won Cronin and Fitch the 1980 Nobel Prize.