| Thread Closed |
Precognition paper to be published in mainstream journal |
Share Thread | Thread Tools |
| Nov17-10, 02:46 PM | #18 |
|
|
Precognition paper to be published in mainstream journalThese people are using similarly low odds to claim precognition exists without any basis. And any of this has what to do with precognition? Aside from that 50/50 test with the porn I see no reason to ascertain precognition's existence. I'd want that test reapeated many times to hold that there are >50% correct guesses occurring. But even then I'd still wouldn't hold out much for it. Why not do it with 5 / 10 / 15 pics? If precognition actually exists it would still show up, and wouldn't be so close to an even draw (as you'd expect without precognition). |
| Nov17-10, 02:51 PM | #19 |
|
Mentor
Blog Entries: 4
|
I loved the aspirin bit, that was so off the wall and of no significance to this, I'm still scratching my head on that one.
|
| Nov17-10, 03:14 PM | #20 |
|
|
|
| Nov17-10, 03:42 PM | #21 |
|
Mentor
Blog Entries: 4
|
Still meaningless when the discussion is about guessing something. If I only performed my job correctly 53% of the time, I'd be fired. If a doctor killed 47% of his patients it would be unacceptable. Know what I mean?
|
| Nov17-10, 04:10 PM | #22 |
|
|
You mean... you... edited it.. out. Everyone keeps deleting my posts...
|
| Nov17-10, 05:02 PM | #23 |
|
Mentor
Blog Entries: 4
|
![]() And it was a truly great post. |
| Nov17-10, 06:22 PM | #24 |
|
|
(Edited for increased cleverness) |
| Nov18-10, 08:26 AM | #25 |
|
|
Traditional: Show word -> show cat -> delay -> judgement Show cat -> judgement Bem's version: Show cat -> delay -> judgement -> show word Show cat -> judgement They are talking about moving the word but not moving the delay. Again, I would like to see the response of the testee input into a supercomputer and if they show a delay, then have a supercomputer NOT display the word "ugly" afterwards. Then what do they attribute the delay to? Or does the universe simply fall apart? I've found out the "Catch 22" here. Since scientific studies seek to establish causal relationships (i.e. this causes that), Bem will claim that such a metric is invalid since the very thing they are demonstrating is non-causal. EDIT: Do you believe in miracles, Evo? |
| Nov18-10, 12:06 PM | #26 |
|
|
A test for precognition should be simple, shouldn't it?
I propose the following: The test subject must accurately* predict a future event. The event must be something that is otherwise considered un-predictable (or of such low odds any other method wouldn't be able to determine its occurrence accurately). *Accuracy is defined here in relation to the complexity of the prediction. See following examples. Example 1 Task - A person predicts the outcome of a number of rolls of a fair dice. Accuracy Required - Due to the nature of the task, the person must predict the exact result. Additional Requirements - The dice must be rolled a number of times to ensure the probability of simply guessing the outcome correctly each time is made as low as possible. Recomendation is 20 rolls as a start. Example 2 Task - A person predicts a seemingly random event, in this case we'll use a car crash. Accuracy Required - The event must be described in enough detail so that a random person could match the description to the crash should it occur, without any details being left vague or open to interpretation. "A car will crash on the M4 tomorrow" is not a valid predicition. "A blue Ford will crash into a red Hyundai near junction 10 on the M4 tomorrow" is acceptable, but more detail would be preferred. Additional Requirements - As above, the event must clearly match the description given in order to be considered an accurate prediction of said event. As you can see, all you need to do is describe a future event in enough detail for us to clearly identify it when it occurs. Simple. |
| Nov18-10, 12:17 PM | #27 |
|
|
I think the idea is that this is an unconscious response. And that it is uncontrollable by the individual. Specifically, they are saying that psychological tests are functional even if causality is reversed.</Devil's Advocate> |
| Nov18-10, 10:58 PM | #28 |
|
|
The entire process for each participant was done in private on a computer. There were a total of 100 precipitants.
Results: Mean DR% score: Main group:2.27% Control group: 0.26% A variation of the experiment was performed which had a slight change of how the superset of words were originally given to the participants. In this version of the experiment, the sample size was much smaller; only 50 participants. There was also a 25 participant control session. Mean DR% score: Main group:4.21% Control group: Not given in the paper, but only mentioned as, "DR% scores from the control sessions did not differ significantly from zero." For details, here's a link to where I gathered this: http://dbem.ws/FeelingFuture.pdf I'd like to see the experiment reproduced with a larger sample size. For now I am not impressed. And why does the paper not give the control group's mean DR% in the second experiment ?!? Perhaps because all DR% scores in the whole experiment do not statistically differ significantly from 0? I'm not impressed. |
| Nov18-10, 11:17 PM | #29 |
|
|
© 2010 American Psychological Association http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/psp/index.aspx 0022-3514/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0021524 This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record. Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect Daryl J. Bem Cornell University |
| Nov18-10, 11:23 PM | #30 |
|
|
Actually, I didn't even link it, I just quoted from the paper linked in the op.
|
| Nov19-10, 07:03 AM | #31 |
|
|
53% means you are only 3% over the expected 50/50 odds of guesswork. Without a much larger test group that 3% doesn't mean anything. It could simply be a statistical anomaly. Any of you seen the Derren Brown episode where he flips a coin ten times in a row and it comes out a head each time? The test group is too small and this 3% doesn't show anything. If I sat in a room and flipped a coin 100 times, calling heads each time, there is a an equal chance that heads will come up as tails and so although you'd expect an even spread of heads vs tails, however there is a chance that you get more heads than tails and as such would show me as being correct >50% of the time. But there's nothing precognitive about that. Also, as per the Derren Brown experiment, I flip a coin ten times and could call heads ten times in a row and each coin toss come out heads. Again, nothing precognitive there. Despite what it looks like. As a note, DB spent 8 hours stood in front of a camera flipping the coin until it came out heads ten times in a row (they showed this at the end). He used it to explain something in a show (he made out it was extremely likely to happen to help what he was trying to get the audience to do), but the purpose of the explanation (showing the 8 hours worth of attempts) at the end was him trying to demonstrate that it is possible for heads to come out ten times in a row, how unlikely it was - but not impossible. |
| Nov19-10, 07:24 AM | #32 |
|
|
Considering the experiment involving the word memorization followed by the "practice" typing of a random subset of words,
Now I am kinda' impressed. (But not jumping out of my seat or anything). I just created a C# program to simulate Daryl J. Bem's experiment in order to analyze the statistics. Basically, the program simulates the experiment, except without any human interaction so we can rule out any human influences. This way one can compare the paper's reported DR% against simulated DR% values. When simulating 100 participants in a given experiment, and repeating the experiment 5000 times, the mean DR% was very close to 0 as expected, but the standard deviation of the mean DR% was only 1.097%. The paper's reported DR% (for the first trial of 100 participants) was 2.27%. That's over two standard deviations better than expected. That could be significant. For the second trial with 50 participants, repeating the experiment 5000 times, the simulated mean was (of course) almost 0, and the standard deviation of the mean DR% was 1.54%. The actual experiment apparently had a DR% of 4.21%. That's about 2.7 standard deviations away from what is expected. So, the numbers in this experiment might be somewhat statistically significant. But I still would be curious to see how it turns out with a larger sample set. I've attached the code below. Please forgive my poor coding, I wasn't putting a whole lot of time into this. Code:
//Written by Collins Mark.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
namespace Precognition_tester
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int NumLoops = 5000; // <== number of experiments
int SampleSize = 100; // <== number of participants in each experiment.
double memoryMean = 18.4; // <== averge number of words recalled.
double memoryStDev = 5; // <== standard deviation of number of words
// recalled (I had to guess at this one)
int ItemsPerCat = 12;
int i;
Random uniRand = new Random();
// Load the category lists.
List<string> foodList = new List<string>();
foodList.Add("HotDogs");
foodList.Add("Hamburgers");
foodList.Add("Waffles");
foodList.Add("IceCream");
foodList.Add("Coffee");
foodList.Add("Pizza");
foodList.Add("Guinness");
foodList.Add("SausageEggAndCheeseBiscuit");
foodList.Add("Toast");
foodList.Add("Salad");
foodList.Add("Taco");
foodList.Add("Steak");
List<string> animalList = new List<string>();
animalList.Add("Cat");
animalList.Add("Dog");
animalList.Add("Snake");
animalList.Add("Whale");
animalList.Add("Bee");
animalList.Add("Spider");
animalList.Add("Elephant");
animalList.Add("Mongoose");
animalList.Add("Wambat");
animalList.Add("Bonobo");
animalList.Add("Hamster");
animalList.Add("Human");
List<string> occupationsList = new List<string>();
occupationsList.Add("Engineer");
occupationsList.Add("Plumber");
occupationsList.Add("TalkShowHost");
occupationsList.Add("Doctor");
occupationsList.Add("Janitor");
occupationsList.Add("Prostitute");
occupationsList.Add("Cook");
occupationsList.Add("Theif");
occupationsList.Add("Pilot");
occupationsList.Add("Maid");
occupationsList.Add("Nanny");
occupationsList.Add("Bartender");
List<string> clothesList = new List<string>();
clothesList.Add("Shirt");
clothesList.Add("Shoes");
clothesList.Add("Jacket");
clothesList.Add("Undershorts");
clothesList.Add("Socks");
clothesList.Add("Jeans");
clothesList.Add("Wristwatch");
clothesList.Add("Cap");
clothesList.Add("Sunglasses");
clothesList.Add("Overalls");
clothesList.Add("LegWarmers");
clothesList.Add("Bra");
// Add elements to superset without clustering
List<string> superset = new List<string>();
for (i = 0; i < ItemsPerCat; i++)
{
superset.Add(foodList[i]);
superset.Add(animalList[i]);
superset.Add(occupationsList[i]);
superset.Add(clothesList[i]);
}
mainLoop(
NumLoops,
SampleSize,
ItemsPerCat,
memoryMean,
memoryStDev,
superset,
foodList,
animalList,
occupationsList,
clothesList,
uniRand);
}
// This is the big, main loop.
static void mainLoop(
int NumLoops,
int SampleSize,
int ItemsPerCat,
double memoryMean,
double memoryStDev,
List<string> superset,
List<string> foodList,
List<string> animalList,
List<string> occupationsList,
List<string> clothesList,
Random uniRand)
{
// Report something to the screen,
Console.WriteLine("Simulating {0} experiments of {1} participants each", NumLoops, SampleSize);
Console.WriteLine("...Calculating...");
// Create list of meanDR of separate experiments.
List<double> meanDRlist = new List<double>();
// Loop through main big loop
for (int mainCntr = 0; mainCntr < NumLoops; mainCntr++)
{
// create Array of participant's DR's for a given experiment.
List<double> DRarray = new List<double>();
//Loop through each participant in one experiment.
for (int participant = 0; participant < SampleSize; participant++)
{
// Reset parameters.
int P = 0; // number of practice words recalled.
int C = 0; // number of control words recalled.
double DR = 0; // weighted differential recall (DR) score.
// Create recalled set.
List<string> recalledSet = new List<string>();
createRecalledSet(
recalledSet,
superset,
memoryMean,
memoryStDev,
uniRand);
// Create random practice set.
List<string> practiceSet = new List<string>();
createPracticeSet(
practiceSet,
foodList,
animalList,
occupationsList,
clothesList,
ItemsPerCat,
uniRand);
// Compare recalled count to practice set.
foreach (string strTemp in recalledSet)
{
if (practiceSet.Contains(strTemp))
P++;
else
C++;
}
// Compute weighted differential recall (DR) score
DR = 100.0 * (P - C) * (P + C) / 576.0;
// Record DR in list.
DRarray.Add(DR);
// Report output.
//Console.WriteLine("DR%: {0}", DR);
}
// record mean DR.
double meanDR = DRarray.Average();
meanDRlist.Add(meanDR);
// Report Average DR.
//Console.WriteLine("Experiment {0}, Sample size: {1}, mean DR: {2}", mainCntr, SampleSize, meanDR);
}
// Finished looping.
// Calculate mean of meanDR
double finalMean = meanDRlist.Average();
// Calculate standard deviation of meanDR
double finalStDev = 0;
foreach (double dTemp in meanDRlist)
{
finalStDev += (dTemp - finalMean) * (dTemp - finalMean);
}
finalStDev = finalStDev / NumLoops;
finalStDev = Math.Sqrt(finalStDev);
// Report final results.
Console.WriteLine(" ");
Console.WriteLine("Participants per experiment: {0}", SampleSize);
Console.WriteLine("Number of separate experiments: {0}", NumLoops);
Console.WriteLine("mean of the mean DR% from all experiments: {0}",
finalMean);
Console.WriteLine("Standard deviation of the mean DR%: {0}", finalStDev);
Console.ReadLine();
}
static double Gaussrand(double unirand1, double unirand2)
{
return (Math.Sqrt(-2 * Math.Log(unirand1)) * Math.Cos(2 * Math.PI * unirand2));
}
static void createRecalledSet(List<string> recalledSet, List<string> superSet, double mean, double stdev, Random unirand)
{
// Determine how many words were recalled. (random)
double unirand1 = unirand.NextDouble();
double unirand2 = unirand.NextDouble();
while (unirand1 == 0.0) unirand1 = unirand.NextDouble();
while (unirand2 == 0.0) unirand2 = unirand.NextDouble();
double gaussrand = Gaussrand(unirand1, unirand2);
gaussrand *= stdev;
gaussrand += mean;
int recalledCount = (int)gaussrand;
if (recalledCount > superSet.Count) recalledCount = superSet.Count;
// Create temporary superset and copy elements over.
List<string> tempSuperSet = new List<string>();
foreach (string strTemp in superSet)
{
tempSuperSet.Add(strTemp);
}
// Randomize temporary superset.
shuffleList(tempSuperSet, unirand);
// Copy over first recalledCount items to recalledSet.
for (int i = 0; i < recalledCount; i++)
{
recalledSet.Add(tempSuperSet[i]);
}
}
static void createPracticeSet(
List<string> practiceList,
List<string> foodList,
List<string> animalList,
List<string> occupationsList,
List<string> clothesList,
int itemsPerCat,
Random uniRand)
{
List<string> tempFoodList = new List<string>();
List<string> tempAnimalList = new List<string>();
List<string> tempOccupationsList = new List<string>();
List<string> tempClothesList = new List<string>();
// load temporary lists.
foreach (string strTemp in foodList)
tempFoodList.Add(strTemp);
foreach (string strTemp in animalList)
tempAnimalList.Add(strTemp);
foreach (string strTemp in occupationsList)
tempOccupationsList.Add(strTemp);
foreach (string strTemp in clothesList)
tempClothesList.Add(strTemp);
// Shuffle temporary lists
shuffleList(tempFoodList, uniRand);
shuffleList(tempAnimalList, uniRand);
shuffleList(tempOccupationsList, uniRand);
shuffleList(tempClothesList, uniRand);
// Load practice list
for (int i = 0; i < itemsPerCat / 2; i++)
{
practiceList.Add(tempFoodList[i]);
practiceList.Add(tempAnimalList[i]);
practiceList.Add(tempOccupationsList[i]);
practiceList.Add(tempClothesList[i]);
}
// Shuffle practice list
shuffleList(practiceList, uniRand);
}
// method to shuffle lists.
static void shuffleList(List<string> list, Random unirand)
{
List<string> shuffledList = new List<string>();
while (list.Count() > 0)
{
int indexTemp = unirand.Next(list.Count());
shuffledList.Add(list[indexTemp]);
list.RemoveAt(indexTemp);
}
foreach (string strTemp in shuffledList) list.Add(strTemp);
}
}
}
|
| Nov19-10, 12:14 PM | #34 |
|
|
<whisper>Umm... so was I talking about the wrong thing or not?
</whisper>
|
| Thread Closed |
| Thread Tools | |
Similar Threads for: Precognition paper to be published in mainstream journal
|
||||
| Thread | Forum | Replies | ||
| Has anybody here been published in a scientifc journal ? | Academic Guidance | 85 | ||
| Published paper is needed | General Physics | 10 | ||
| New published issue of Journal of Physics Students (JPS) | General Physics | 0 | ||
| New published issue of Journal of Physics Students (JPS) | General Physics | 0 | ||
| Getting Published in a Journal | General Discussion | 2 | ||