If you had to pick a paranormal account / phenomena as real - which would it be?

[Dr B]

OK - just a bit of fun to exercise the old brain. Suspending all the usual and quite legitimate reasons for not subscribing to paranormal phenomena, lets assume you have to pick one area of the paranormal as being the most likely to be supported if such evidence were ever forthcoming....(in other words...it is kind of the nearest to being supported even though it is not) :D

It could be anything, ESP, PK remote viewing, apparitions, mediumship (steady on Mel ), dowsing, OBE / NDE, precognition, and so on. Now - you have to pick one area (maybe one i cant think of or have missed but you get the idea). You also have to provide say, some reason for your choice. Please note - no pouncing on people here shouting "...but there is no evidence...."

I will go first

I would probably opt for ESP at a push. Why? Well, it is the single most studied area of the paranormal in the laboratory (which should of course predict that it has the supportive evidence - which of course it does not). There are some very weak statistical effects for ESP (though in my opinion these are statistical artifacts from having too much power in meta-analysis style studies. Ray Hyman has provided some excellent reviews on this).....aaarrrhhhh you see its bloody hard to come up with one without talking yourself out of it.....have a go...

[Admin]

I'd go for ESP in the form of telepathy.

If one person has a thought or feeling that produces a brain state in that person which is physical (it may be electrical but chemically based) it should give rise to an associated field.

That field (I'll assume an EM field) could be sensed or picked up by someone close by whose brain is configured in the same way and so the thought-pattern field would fit the recipient's brain (a bit like a hand in a glove) and they could experience the same thought or feeling.

I think that at least sounds plausible (to someone who's not a neuroscientist ) but I very much doubt it's true.

I think the point is: if some evidence came to light that that is what really happens it would be easier to convince me of it than say someone receiving a highly unlikely message in a psychic reading proving the afterlife.

[median]

Third vote for ESP, although I would have to redefine it as possibly USP
(ultra sensory perception)
Dispensing with PK, precognition etc I would also have to limit it to telepathy and probably if a suitable mechanism of transference of information was proposed then the range would have to be fairly limited. In terms of testing for replicable results if both environmental and internal biological states could be reproduced then maybe an exact emotional or physiological trigger state could define the phenomenon. ???

Now I need a definition, let me see

Quantum Synchronized Oscillatory Pairing of Heightened Meta-cortex functioning

Can I have my bona fide pseudoscience degree, please :D :D

[Melanie]

...and another vote for telepathy! No real scientific reasoning because my mind doesn't work that way, sadly. But it's always seemed to me that some form of mind-mind communication isn't entirely out of the question. I think it could well be that an emotional state facilitates it - maybe it's just an enhanced kind of 'intuition'.

Telepathy could explain quite a lot of mediumistic phenomena. (Tho not life-after-death, obviously.)

[Nicky]

[vbloke]

you'll have to read my mind to find out what I'd pick. :)

[Mongrel]

I'd probably go with Precognition in what ever form but leave out the predestination...

Mostly because a lot of hardships in the world could be avoided, floods, fires, terrorist atrocities etc and a little bit of selfishness "Oh, I've won the quadruple rollover Euro lottery, again?! What are the odds "

[tkingdoll]

Hmm. Something like acupuncture, maybe? Something related to the placebo effect actually leading to physical change - mind over matter, etc.

This is a great exercise, Dr B. I think all skeptics should do this, it forced me to think about which claims sound plausible NOW to the uneducated, and why.

[Jocky]

Homeopathy! :D :D No sorry, only joking ... I retracted that the moment I heard Avogadro turning in his grave.

More seriously, and partly just to break up the ESP consensus and encourage a bit of discussion, how about precognition?

Of course, I don't mean that tarot cards and crystal balls can tell you what's coming (not totally lost my marbles here). But just maybe the human mind has an ability subconsciously to process very large amounts of information very quickly, in such a way as to infer likely events with a surprisingly high degree of accuracy. However, the brain does this in such a way as not to 'show its working' - so the person in whose head it's happening is barely if at all aware that it's a result of a cognitive process, and attributes it to mystic powers.

I'm thinking of the 'mentats' in Frank Herbert's Dune novels, if anybody knows what I mean. They are 'human computers' who have trained their minds to an incredibly high degree, capable of processing information in a way somewhat reminicent of the remarkable mental abilities exhibited by some autistic people.

I blush to propose such a thing in the presence of an actual brain scientist, Jason - so feel free to shoot me down However it does seem to my limited knowledge that there are enough unknown aspects of cognitive function to leave some room for uncertainty about the outer edges of our mental faculties.


Blimey, while I was writing this, Mongrel posted "Precognition". I hereby change my vote to 'psychic connections between people who have drunk beer together'

[Admin]

If we talk about precognition as used by psychics, making their yearly predictions for example, then it does become awkward.

If they can predict events accurately (i.e. not just likely events) it would mean that the future is predetermined. Where does this leave free will? ???

For someone to know the future, the future must already exist, or at least be mapped out in advance, for anyone to access the information. This would mean that our free will is an illusion (which some do believe) and every thing we do and choice we make was no choice at all.

If we genuinely do have free will then I can't see how the future can be foretold (other than the scientific forecasting of eclipses etc).

[Jocky]

I wasn't arguing for predestination (which I don't believe in for a moment). I was talking about accurate prediction based not on the predictor's awareness of perfect foreknowledge (or even the existence of such), but rather on the predictor having exceptional analytical ability. This could in principle make them able to achieve a more accurate ability to forsee events than an observer might expect.

This wouldn't work for knowing next week's lottery numbers of course. Truly random things are just that - random, and not suceptible to prediction. However it might make you better at foreseeing political events (when will coalition troops withdraw from Iraq) or complex sporting ones (who will win the Premiership). If one had an ability to process large amounts of relevant information, one might achieve an impressively high hit rate on such things.

There do seem to be people with remarkable mental faculties which are not yet fully explained: this bloke for example. I have no idea to what extent his abiliteis have been thoroughly tested and/or are understood, but the apparent existence of such abilities does suggest that 'mentat' like mental powers may exist or could be developed which could easily appear 'paranormal'.

All this in the context of Dr B's OP, of course