We also learn
something important here. It is that the
information flows through our lower brain allowing reaction ahead of an actual
awareness at the frontal cognitive level.
This allows threat recognition and reaction ahead of any actual manifestation. It is a wonderful talent for the wilderness
and certainly explains many levels of hunting prowess.
It also
conforms well to reports I have entertained over the years and I think that we
can simply accept the reality of the phenomena and ensure that when necessary
that we put our minds into an appropriate receptive state.
This also
tells us pretty clearly that it will not arrive on demand either which is
disappointing.
Do
Humans Have the Ability to Sense the Future? This Survey of Experiments So Far
Says....Yes!
Posted by Greg at 13:58, 14 Apr 2014
Can we sense the future before it happens?
That question was at the heart of a set of nine experiments that sparked
widespread controversy and debate when Professor Daryl Bem published his
results in the Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology in 2011. The reason: Bem's results
were positive, suggesting that we can in some way do the seemingly impossible,
and somehow 'know' (precognition) or 'feel' (presentiment) things before they
even occur. The controversy grew even further, however, with widespread coverage in science media outlets of attempted replications from others
that failed to find the same astonishing results. A number of scientists and
'skeptics' poured scorn on Bem's experiments, and prominent skeptic James Randi was even
moved to award his infamous 'Pigasus Award' to Bem "for his shoddy research that
has been discredited on many accounts by prominent critics".
[ I grow weary
of this form of gratuitous slanderous labeling by so called sceptics whose only
contribution to the debate is to throw insults. – arclein ]
In a previous post I pointed out that this
focus on replications with negative results had glossed over the fact that
there had also been a number of positive replications, suggesting that there might just be
something to Bem's original results. And now, a
meta-analysis of 90 experiments which replicated Bem's research,
performed in 33 different laboratories (in 14 different countries and involving
12,406 participants), has offered significant support for the theory that
humans can indeed sense the future:
The primary question addressed by the
meta-analysis is whether the database provides overall evidence for the
anomalous anticipation of random future events... the answer is yes: The
overall effect size (Hedges’ g) is 0.09, combined z = 6.33, p = 1.2 × 10-10.
The Bayesian BF value is 1.2 × 109, greatly exceeding the criterion value of
100 that is considered to constitute “decisive evidence” for the experimental
hypothesis.
A subsidiary question is whether independent
investigators can successfully replicate Bem’s (2011) original
experiments...the answer is again yes: When Bem’s experiments are excluded,
the effect size for the replications is 0.07, combined z = 4.25, p = 1.1 ×
10-5, and the BF value is 757, which again greatly exceeds the criterion value
of 100 for “decisive evidence.”
The meta-analysis paper, co-authored by
Daryl Bem, Patrizio E. Tressoldi, Thomas Rabeyron and Michael Duggan, began
with a search for all potential replications of Bem's method between the year
2000 and September of 2013. The experiments were then categorized according to
the type of effect tested for, the number of participants involved, the
statistical techniques needed to measure the effect, whether the study was
published through peer-review, and the type of replication (exact, modified, or
independently-designed). They found that 51 of the 90 experiments (56.6%) had
been published in peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings.
But could the positive results have been an
outcome of the 'file drawer effect', where mostly positive results were
published but negative replications were not - put in the file drawer, so to
speak, due to no interesting findings? The authors of the paper did the math,
and found that the number of 'missing' experiments needed to reduce the overall
effect size to a trivial value was (conservatively) 520. This seems unlikely.
Another possible criticism addressed by the
authors is the effect size. While the meta-analysis offered highly significant
results, statistically, the actual 'precognitive' effect was very small.
But, the authors note, "even very small effects can have both theoretical
importance and practical utility":
One frequently cited example is the medical
study that sought to determine whether a daily dose of aspirin can prevent
heart attacks. The study was discontinued after six years because it was
already clear that the aspirin treatment was effective (p < .00001), and it
was considered unethical to keep the control group on placebo medication. Even
though the study was considered a major medical breakthrough, the size of the
aspirin effect is actually quite small (d ≈.07), about one third the size of
the presentiment experiments and Bem’s (2011) original experiments and about
one half the size of the exact replications in our database.
Skeptics also often raise the lack of an
explanatory theory as a problem when it comes to psi results. The
authors of the meta-analysis argue, however, "that this is still not a
legitimate rationale for rejecting all proffered evidence a priori.
Historically, the discovery and scientific exploration of most phenomena have
preceded explanatory theories, often by decades or even centuries (e.g., the
analgesic effect of aspirin; the antidepressant effect of electroconvulsive
therapy; and Maxwell’s field equations of electricity and magnetism, which were
formulated centuries after the phenomena were first explored)".
The meta-analysis also revealed possible
refinements for future testing. 'Fast-thinking experiments', where the speed of
the test reduced conscious cognition, produced more positive results than
'slow-thinking experiments': "every fast-thinking protocol individually achieved
a statistically significant effect, with an overall effect size of 0.11 and a
combined z greater than 7 sigma. In contrast, the slow-thinking experiments
achieved an overall effect size of only 0.03, failing even to achieve a
conventional level of statistical significance (p = .20)". According to
the authors, "fast-thinking protocols are more likely to produce
evidence for psi because they prevent conscious cognitive strategies from
interfering with the automatic, unconscious, and implicit nature of psi
functioning". [ lower
brain function as expected ]
Another discovery (which might well dominate
some news reports on this paper) was that the experiments which tested for
precognitive detection of erotic stimuli achieved "a larger effect size
(0.14), a larger combined z (4.22), and a more statistically significant result
(p = 1.2 × 10-5) than any other protocol". The experiments were also the
most reliable in producing substantial effect sizes, with 10 of the 11
achieving effect sizes between 0.12 and 0.52 (perhaps notably, the one
replication failure in the erotic stimuli group was a study which used a set of
erotic photographs "that were much less sexually explicit than those used
by Bem and other investigators").
This latest meta-analysis adds to previous
data collections which suggest that precognition/presentiment is a natural (if
very weak) human ability. Just last month I reported on a meta-analysis of
results from seven independent laboratories testing physiological responses to
stimuli, that concluded the human body "can apparently detect randomly delivered
stimuli occurring 1-10 seconds in the future". And a 1989 meta-analysis of all forced-choice precognition
experiments appearing in English-language journals between 1935 and 1977 - 309
experiments conducted by 62 different investigators involving more than 50,000
participants - also found a small but highly significant hit rate (p = 1.1 ×
10-9). Both of those meta-analyses also reported that the file-drawer effect
was an unlikely explanation, given the number of experiments that would be
needed to overturn the positive result.
Other scientists - and skeptics - will no
doubt have their say on this paper in due course, which will hopefully bring
some clarification to the validity and overall importance of this
meta-analysis. From the data presented in it though, it appears that the debate
over human precognition and presentiment is a long way from settled. If only we
could look into the future to see how this all plays out...
1 comment:
When a baseball player spots a high-flying baseball heading his way, he'll often start running in the right direction to catch it - and thereby arrive at the ball's future location before the ball gets there.
Does such an athlete use precognition to predict where the ball will be at a future time - or does his subconscious mind "calculate" the ball's trajectory using the same part of the brain that evolved to avoid incoming threats - like stones, arrows, and leaping carnivores?
Has this latest precognition research ruled out such rapidly calculated predictions?
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