ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) never dies, so will this thread
Recently I've been digging into ESP again, just to reaffirm the evidence I skipped over because Of lack of time. It is actually pathetic how bad old habits persist: scientists who are normally practical and "supposedly" unprejudiced people, stick to extreme prejudice in spite of overwhelming SCIENTIFIC evidence that ESP is real.
From the physics point of view ESP is settled and that's not just my subjective view. Basically, debate boils down weather universe we live in is local or non-local. In simple terms "local" means that no two points in universe can communicate faster than speed of light. "Non-Local" means the opposite, two points can actually communicate faster than speed of light. Speed of interaction depends on the type of interaction: 4 classic fields (electromagnetic, gravitational, strong and weak force) move within speed of light limit. But, quantum entanglement is instantaneous regardless of even largest distance, so faster than speed of light. Now, that's just for intro.
And here verdict is cast with industrial level of certainty: OUR UNIVERSE IS NON-LOCAL because quantum entanglement is real and Google, IBM and Intel are currently running quantum computers whose working principle is based on entanglement. If we have practical devices using entanglement then entanglement is real and universe is non-local. Practically all scientists are aware of this and this would be no news to any of them.
From this it follows that ESP is possible, because ESP would work on entanglement between two biological organisms. Now, what many scientists will say here is: "Quantum entanglement only works near absolute zero, at cryogenic temperatures". But that is not actually true, many recent scientific studies had shown that photosynthesis is based on entanglement and photosynthesis worked for billions of years in "wet and worm" conditions inside plants, far above absolute zero temperature. And here is the problem, some scientist know about photosynthesis entanglement, some don't and some deliberately ignore it.
Here is actually the final verdict of Dr. Jessica Utts, professor of statistics at UC Irvine, who worked with Dr. Hall Puthoff and Russel Targ during their ESP research. By nature of statistician's job, she couldn't tell what was the underlying mechanism of the phenomena, but she could tell weather results were caused by pure chance or not.
Now, in the above video Dr. Utts only skimmed over her's many important ESP findings. Dr. Utts had "birds eye view" of all the ESP experiments and she published a detailed paper in which she gave the most down-to-earth scientific overview of what ESP is and is not:
(PDF) An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning
Here are some extracts:
"In 1988 an analysis was made of all of the experiments conducted at SRI from 1973 until that time
(May et al., 1988). The analysis was based on all 154 experiments conducted during that era, consisting
of over 26,000 individual trials. Of those, almost 20,000 were of the forced-choice type, and just over
1000 were laboratory remote viewings. There was a total of 227 subjects in all experiments.
The statistical results were so overwhelming that results that extreme or more would occur only
about once in every 1020 such instances if chance alone were the explanation (i.e. the p value was less
than 10-20)."
"A summary of the results revealed the following:
1. “Free-response” remote viewing, in which subjects describe a target, was much more successful
than “forced-choice” experiments, in which subjects were asked to choose from a small set of
possibilities.
2. There were six selected individuals whose performance far exceeded that of unselected subjects.
The fact that these same selected individuals consistently performed better than others under a
variety of protocols provides a type of replicability that helps substantiate the validity of the results.
If methodological problems were responsible for the results, they should not have affected
this group differently from others.
3. Mass-screening efforts found that about 1% of those who volunteered to be tested were consistently
successful at remote viewing. This indicates that remote viewing is an ability that differs
across individuals, much like athletic ability or musical talent. (Results of mass-screenings were
not included in the formal analysis because the conditions were not well controlled, but the subsequent
data from subjects found during mass screening were included.)
4. Neither practice nor a variety of training techniques consistently worked to improve remote-viewing
ability. It appears that it is easier to find than to train good remote viewers.
5. It is not clear whether feedback (showing the subject the right answer) is necessary, but it does
appear to provide a psychological boost that may increase performance.
6. Distance between the target and the subject does not seem to impact the quality of the remote
viewing.
7. Electromagnetic shielding does not appear to inhibit performance.
8. There is compelling evidence that precognition, in which the target is selected after the subject
has given the description, is also successful.
9. There is not evidence to support anomalous perturbation (psychokinesis)--that is, physical interaction
with the environment by psychic means."
To me observation #4. is particularly important: it means that ESP is limited to talented few, or about 1% of population, and ESP can not be improved by training. So, many "gurus" who are selling ESP courses are just milking the eager crowd, who's maybe hoping to make money on stock market
I know that this post is getting very long, but just yesterday I found something very interesting that makes a completely new angle on ESP. Unintentional, this video indicates that people with schizophrenia can actually broadcast hallucinations to their partners who don't have any psychiatric illness. Its interesting that this telepathic cases occurs suddenly, mostly late during night, when partners are relaxed. Ability of schizophrenics to "emit" images would be another angle to further study ESP.