Live presentiment test on the Discovery Channel

My colleagues and I appear on an episode of "Through the Wormhole" on the Discovery Science channel. It will be repeated a number of times on the air, it will eventually will be viewable on the Discovery website, and it is available now on YouTube. Note that on YouTube you can find all of the segments of this show, each of which is 10 minutes in length. My piece is in Part 3.

Comments

butterfly said…
But if you get impatient:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EHrIsyWZMo&feature=share
levis said…
Does dr.Michael Persinger EM field-Global Brain's 'QM entanglement' Network theory makes sense to you?
Michael Persinger on No More Secrets: youtube.com/watch?v=9l6VPpDublg

Thank You!
Lemmo
Dean Radin said…
Thanks Sandy.

I think Persinger's idea is interesting.
Dean Radin said…
Within a few hours of the first broadcast of this show, I received emails from four independent people, each of whom said approximately the same thing: "I've never told anyone this before. I'm not crazy [the writer is a policeman, military person, accountant, etc.]. I often dream about or have visions of things that come true. How can I understand what is going on? Maybe I can help you in your research."

I get the same reaction whenever I appear in a radio or TV program.

The fact is that psi experiences are common and they happen to lots of well grounded, ordinary people. We can never tell for sure from anecdotes whether the reports may be coincidence or confabulation, but from the laboratory tests we can tell that in principle some of those experiences are probably genuine. We also know that some people have many more of these experiences than others. Those relatively few who are drenched in psi experiences may find it difficult to remain productive and stable in a society that responds to such abilities with fear or mistrust. It's a pity, because in a more enlightened society such individuals might become shaman, those who can see beyond the appearances of mundane reality and help us all navigate into more fruitful tomorrows.
butterfly said…
Those relatively few who are drenched in psi experiences may find it difficult to remain productive and stable in a society that responds to such abilities with fear or mistrust.

I can't see myself becoming a shaman or a mystic. But I do think there are other options for someone who is challenged by having unusual experiences. I take notes. I keep logs of experiences. I'm working on simple experiments to help myself understand these experiences better and to give myself some sense of being in control.

Nothing is worse than feeling like psi is something that just happens to you that you whether you want it to or not. Being a participant in research isn't something everyone has the opportunity to do. That's unfortunate because it certainly can be a positive experience. But setting out to take notes, experiment and learn as much as possible about psi is something anyone can do.

I know science isn't the coping mechanism of choice for everyone, but it helped me and I think it could help others. I guess if there isn't a cure, at least it is possible to takes careful notes and do something useful.
MickyD said…
Hi Dean. wow, did I enjoy this episode! It was refreshingly free from the usual "counterbalanced" skeptic-proponent format. Your presentiment work came off particularly well. Talking of which, your Bial funded research has been submitted, any news on this? Also, what did you think of the SSE conference? Any presentations that really stand out?
levis said…
M.Persinger telepathy experiment is easy to replicate, someone should claim the JREF million dollar prize :)
butterfly said…
Telepathy might be real, but I doubt the million dollar prize is.
Pikemann Urge said…
Levis: Dean's presentiment experiment would also make the best candidate for the Randi prize (he has mentioned this before). However, I personally think that reality should never be arbitrated by prizes. The Nobel prizes are actually the opposite of the Randi prize: they're given to persons who have already demonstrated something.

Sandy: I think that there is enough evidence that the $1M exists. :-)
Dean Radin said…
I agree about scientific prizes, but challenges are also fine provided that the criteria for success are clearly specified in advance. Then you can assess whether it's possible to meet the challenge and if so, how much it would cost. As I've written here before, I believe that it would be possible to demonstrate a psi effect using the ganzfeld telepathy design, but it would cost more than $1 million to do so in a way that would be convincing to skeptical observers.
MickyD said…
Dean, you missed my question! :-)
Aaron said…
"As I've written here before, I believe that it would be possible to demonstrate a psi effect using the ganzfeld telepathy design, but it would cost more than $1 million to do so in a way that would be convincing to skeptical observers."

-This is what I don't understand. If I were wealthy enough I would hand you a couple of million dollars immediately and say get started! Lets get to the bottom of this thing. I just can't believe there isn't someone out there with serious money who isn't willing to make it happen.
butterfly said…
The real challenge of the MDC is pinning JREF down on the the criteria needed to win the million. There might be a million dollars prize, but so what? A one-off demonstration doesn't "prove" anything. And why give credibility to an organization that promotes showmanship over science?

Levis, you do a disservice to science by pretending that the MDC is some kind of litmus test for the existence of psi. The MDC is a publicity stunt geared towards raising awareness of an organization with an agenda to promote. It isn't about promoting science. It's about suppressing research that goes against a particular dogma.
francisco.j.93 said…
The million dollar challenge is real, but as Dean said, the costs of going there and demonstrating it are too high. We know psi is elusive sometimes and why waste money and time on showing something to people who will never believe on it. Imagine you spend all that money into that, with the ganzfeld. Then you try to demonstrate the effect and since it happens 33% of the time if I am right, we might have the bad fortune to have it absent. So we wasted a great deal of money and time that could be used on a real investigation and we got ourselves humilliated. So that is why no parapsychologist has applied and will never apply. I think there was actually someone who applied and won, but Randi refused to give the money to him. Randi knew he could demonstrate it, but he continued to say no to keep his gimick. "If you don't listen to me, you will be a big woo woo, so better listen to me!" It's just like those products they show on commercials: "If you use this cream you will be the most popular girl at school, but use other products and you will be the big loser and everybody will ignore you" It looks pretty much the same to me...
B & C said…
Hi, Dean.

What do you think of the Canadian scientist - can't recall his name - who says it's all "clearly physical," and attributes it all to the magnetic field? Confusing correlation with causation?

Thanks in advance.
butterfly said…
@B7amp;C
Were you thinking of Michael Persinger?
Malthus said…
Is it possible for Persinger's experiment to have been skewed by line noise artifact? Note that the setup in the tv program was different from the one in his paper.
Matt said…
I know this thread is 5 months old, but I just saw the " wormhole" episode on TV.
( 11-30-11 )

In the 90's, I had both daytime and nighttime ( dreaming ) presentiment episodes. Towards the end of the decade they tapered off.

This year the dreaming episodes seem to have started up again, with one I documented with my wife before it came true roughly a week later.

Mr. Radin, is it normal for those who have the tendency for presentiment to have it in different forms such as daytime vs dreams as I've seemed to have had?

Also, I'll add that I've had other members of my extended family who've had the "dreaming" experiences.
Dean Radin said…
More people have had precogntive or presentiment experiences in the dream state than in the waking state. A smaller percentage of people do report these experiences in dreams, or while fully awake, or in hypnogogic states, or while mildly intoxicated, etc.

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