Did the University of Utrecht uncover evidence that people can sense the future?

[PIT2]

In the 'black box can see the future' thread from awhile ago, the following part can be read:

Dr John Hartwell, working at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, was the first to uncover evidence that people could sense the future. In the mid-1970s he hooked people up to hospital scanning machines so that he could study their brainwave patterns.

He began by showing them a sequence of provocative cartoon drawings.

When the pictures were shown, the machines registered the subject's brainwaves as they reacted strongly to the images before them. This was to be expected.

Far less easy to explain was the fact that in many cases, these dramatic patterns began to register a few seconds before each of the pictures were even flashed up.

It was as though Dr Hartwell's case studies were somehow seeing into the future, and detecting when the next shocking image would be shown next.

It was extraordinary - and seemingly inexplicable.

But it was to be another 15 years before anyone else took Dr Hartwell's work further when Dean Radin, a researcher working in America, connected people up to a machine that measured their skin's resistance to electricity. This is known to fluctuate in tandem with our moods - indeed, it's this principle that underlies many lie detectors.

Radin repeated Dr Hartwell's 'image response' experiments while measuring skin resistance. Again, people began reacting a few seconds before they were shown the provocative pictures. This was clearly impossible, or so he thought, so he kept on repeating the experiments. And he kept getting the same results.

'I didn't believe it either,' says Prof Bierman. 'So I also repeated the experiment myself and got the same results. I was shocked. After this I started to think more deeply about the nature of time.' To make matters even more intriguing, Prof Bierman says that other mainstream labs have now produced similar results but are yet to go public.

http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=126649

Does anyone know any more about these experiments? I would like to see some published papers on this.

Have they been debunked or explained in some way?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I have been wondering about this as well.

 

[PIT2]

I just noticed that in the paragraph directly below it says:

'They don't want to be ridiculed so they won't release their findings,' he says. 'So I'm trying to persuade all of them to release their results at the same time. That would at least spread the ridicule a little more thinly!' If Prof Bierman is right, though, then the experiments are no laughing matter.

So it seems the results have never been published, even though some of the experiments were more than 30 years ago.

 

[RoboSapien]

Well, until they don't publish, we should wait, or its just a publicity stunt.

Its also possible that the result are due to anticipation of horible pictures. And not 100% acurate.

Its also possible that brain can extract information from the existing surroundings and not from the future, by syscronizing with the computers random number generator or something like from brain of the expreiments creator . This suggestion is too far fetched but remotely possible.

 

[Barbie]

Did I miss something?? Isnt it possible that these reactions came from the expectation much like in operant conditioning? Its not as if they had this reaction before they ever saw the images. They had them after being priorly exposed and in a time and situation where it would only be logical for them to expect to see the same type of images again. Again...I don't understand why this was not offered as an explanation...did I miss something??

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Its not as if they had this reaction before they ever saw the images.

Yes, this is exactly the claim made in what I saw.

 

[PIT2]

Did I miss something?? Isnt it possible that these reactions came from the expectation much like in operant conditioning? Its not as if they had this reaction before they ever saw the images. They had them after being priorly exposed and in a time and situation where it would only be logical for them to expect to see the same type of images again. Again...I don't understand why this was not offered as an explanation...did I miss something??

I vaguely remember hearing, seeing or reading something about these experiments. From what i remember, they showed the testsubjects either horrific or nice pictures.

Either case would trigger a certain reaction. They discovered that even before the picture was shown, their reaction would match the horrific or nice picture that they were going to see.

 

[Barbie]

I vaguely remember hearing, seeing or reading something about these experiments. From what i remember, they showed the testsubjects either horrific or nice pictures.

Either case would trigger a certain reaction. They discovered that even before the picture was shown, their reaction would match the horrific or nice picture that they were going to see.

That deals away with the expectation theory. lol Is it safe to assume that there was no pattern that they could have caught on to? If yes, then I don't have a better explanation than their own... although I have a hard time believing it.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I was wondering about the possability of expectation playing a role as well.
Having more info on the tests and the way they were run would probably help. Too bad they don't want to release their findings.
Being that we're talking about Dean Radin here though...
http://www.skepticreport.com/psychics/radin2002.htm
He doesn't have a very good track record I don't think.

 

[polyb]

Concerning the 'random number genaerator' that can 'see the future':

My first comment is that one cannot make a truly random number generator with current technology. At best you have a pseudo-random number generator.

Next: Even though I have looked at the websites conserning this report I still have a hard time buying their corrollary between world events and their data. If it is true then individualy one should be able to influence the distribution as well as a group. There should be controlled experiments to confirm their hypothesis, not speculative conjecture!

As for what you guys have been discissing it seems that classical Pavlovian conditioning should apply escpecially if there is prior exposure. The anticipation of such distressing pictures should be considered as part and parcel of the phenomena they are conjecturing!

 

[PIT2]

Concerning the 'random number genaerator' that can 'see the future':

My first comment is that one cannot make a truly random number generator with current technology. At best you have a pseudo-random number generator.

From what I've read they use atomic decay to create random numbers and this is apparently truly random. In one of the skeptical reports of the GCP it says:

The GCP’s experiment comprises a network of true, not pseudo, random number generators distributed widely around the world. Each of approximately 38 hardware EGG’s generates one trial of 200 binary bits each second, where the probability of obtaining a one or a zero are equal to 0.5.

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/papers/Sep1101.pdf

Next: Even though I have looked at the websites conserning this report I still have a hard time buying their corrollary between world events and their data. If it is true then individualy one should be able to influence the distribution as well as a group. There should be controlled experiments to confirm their hypothesis, not speculative conjecture!

Uve probably heard abou PEAR, and what ur saying is exactly what the PEAR results seem to indicate, that individuals can influence RNGs.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/

 

[Alkatran]

Sounds interesting. I'll believe it when I can see the whole layout and the unmodified data.

Data selection is a possibility. So is them sensing the future. Data selection is improbable, but how improbable compared to sensing the future?

 

[Chronos]

One could argue that PEAR is not an entirely impartial source of information. You could also make a pretty good case they are statistically challenged. You might even conclude this source is more reliable:
http://www.skepdic.com/pear.html

 

[Ivan Seeking]

One could argue that PEAR is not an entirely impartial source of information.

I would say the same is true for your link. I would stick with science sources and not debunking stumps. When I look at subjects that I know quite a bit about, the skeptical sites are usually quite pedestrian and the information presented is unrepresentative of the subject as a whole. Anyone can cherry pick including [in fact, especially] the debunkers.

 

[RoboSapien]

From what I've read they use atomic decay to create random numbers and this is apparently truly random

Obviously It means the either the atomic decay is not random or the universe is a Matrix.

OR

There is nothing random and being neural network we can learn to predict the future. That leaves us open to create a PRECOGNITION programs ?
This depends upon the fact whether the results are the same in case of new subjects compared to thoes who are taking these test for a longer time. The Brain learns.

Uve probably heard abou PEAR, and what ur saying is exactly what the PEAR results seem to indicate, that individuals can influence RNGs.

What if we change the picture from horrific to nice ones as soon as we detect the brains reaction to an in comming horrific picture. Will we be changing the future ?

 

[PIT2]

When i was looking for info on Professor Bierman, i found this link from the university of Utrecht where u can participate in an online experiment and test ur own precognitive skills:

http://www.parapsy.nl/precognitie/

My result:

P-value of your trial: 0.819

Dont know if that's good or bad...

*i just found this link where u can participate in more of these experiments:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/experiments/

 

[PIT2]

Obviously It means the either the atomic decay is not random or the universe is a Matrix.

OR

There is nothing random and being neural network we can learn to predict the future. That leaves us open to create a PRECOGNITION programs ?
This depends upon the fact whether the results are the same in case of new subjects compared to thoes who are taking these test for a longer time. The Brain learns.



What if we change the picture from horrific to nice ones as soon as we detect the brains reaction to an in comming horrific picture. Will we be changing the future ?

I think I've seen some randomness and free will threads in the Philosophy section

Personally i don't think our conscious experience of being able to make decisions is an illusion.

 

[PIT2]

Here is an interesting article about martial arts students that can influence the past. Apparently it was published in New Scientist in 1994:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/martial.html

Here is the New Scientist article, which unfortunally u can't view fully without being registered:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg14319402.500

 

[Chronos]

My work involves considerable use of statistics and probability theory. I cringe when I see naked assertions of hugely improbable events. There are many ways to arrive at a faulty conclusion of what is and is not meaningful. Even professional scientists screw this up a lot more often than you might think. If I dealt you a poker hand then informed you there was only 1 chance in 2,349,060 of being dealt that particular hand. What have I actually told you? [yes, it's a trick question].

 

[russ_watters]

If I dealt you a poker hand then informed you there was only 1 chance in 2,349,060 of being dealt that particular hand. What have I actually told you? [yes, it's a trick question].

Heh - I'm going to use that the next time I play.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I would say the same is true for your link. I would stick with science sources and not debunking stumps. When I look at subjects that I know quite a bit about, the skeptical sites are usually quite pedestrian and the information presented is unrepresentative of the subject as a whole. Anyone can cherry pick including [in fact, especially] the debunkers.

True... I once read an article on skepdic.com pretaining to Kirlian photography. The author seemed to only conjecture and make opinions based on a limited knowledge of how the things are supposed to work. He then added an anecdote about being at a carnival and seeing a Kirlian photography attraction and picked apart the setup at the carnival. He was apearantly unaware that such carnival attractions don't use real kirlian cameras, and I say real irrespective of whether kirlian photography can do what it claims.

 

[PIT2]

My work involves considerable use of statistics and probability theory. I cringe when I see naked assertions of hugely improbable events. There are many ways to arrive at a faulty conclusion of what is and is not meaningful. Even professional scientists screw this up a lot more often than you might think. If I dealt you a poker hand then informed you there was only 1 chance in 2,349,060 of being dealt that particular hand. What have I actually told you? [yes, it's a trick question].

I know statistics are susceptible to manipulation, but it is not clear if that is the case with PEAR or GCP.

We shall have to wait till their results are published.

As for the 'sensing the future' experiments, statistics would not even have to play a significant role.

 

[RoboSapien]

Challenge for preRoboSapiens

NO NO, All of U can't igrnore my last question of my previous post in this thread. U all owe me answer, I may be a rookee but that question is important.

...

Your poker comments are proof that we can't predicts things properly if at all. That means the pictures are actually comming randomly ...

Now I am confused ?

 

[godzilla7]

What if our subconscious is a second or so ahead of our consciousness and the way we perceive the world is not happening in synch with time, this would mean the world we see is a second or so late, but how would we know that if we only perceive stuff a second or so later. If I 'sense' a danger a second before it happens, this might give us evolutionary advantages, if all life on this planet shares this lack of synchronicity with time then maybe it is an evolutionary trick, even whackier maybe time itself runs parallel with itself in a two time frame and our consciousness sees one time stream and we exist in one but our subconscious exists in another. Na too unreal, ever tried programming a computer to produce a number between 1 and 6, patterns often emerge that mean it is easy to predict which numbers will come up more often, the patience could merely be doing this on a subconscious level. Maybe we have innate understanding of probability? After all DNA is alleged to use Quantum principles to find base pairs quicker, if we scale that up maybe our subconscious has innate knowledge of probability now I am fantasizing

 

[arivero]

If I dealt you a poker hand then informed you there was only 1 chance in 2,349,060 of being dealt that particular hand. What have I actually told you? [yes, it's a trick question].

Off topic: Basque people likes to play a strange betting play called "mus". Over the same hand of cards, four bets are to be done. The last one, called "juego si", is the most valuable and it has a funny property: rules say that the most probable combination, "31", wins over the least probable ones, reversing all the intuition you could get from poker and similar betting games!

 

[arivero]

What if our subconscious is a second...

I like this idea. It is to say, that after all the termodinamic "arrow of time" is a macroscopical thing, so it could be perhaps extended not only in space but also in time.

 

[PIT2]

NO NO, All of U can't igrnore my last question of my previous post in this thread. U all owe me answer, I may be a rookee but that question is important.

Ur question was:

What if we change the picture from horrific to nice ones as soon as we detect the brains reaction to an in comming horrific picture. Will we be changing the future ?

I reply to that I've said that i believe in free will, which implies the future is not fixed and can be changed.

What if our subconscious is a second or so ahead of our consciousness and the way we perceive the world is not happening in synch with time

From what i remember, the reactions these people had in experiments occurred subconsiously in their bodies, and only a second before the picture was shown.

 

[PIT2]

Here are some screenshots i took from a book that describes how some of these experiments were done:

page 1,2: http://img69.exs.cx/img69/6597/page124tc.jpg
page 3,4: http://img69.exs.cx/img69/4749/page341wz.jpg
page 5,6: http://img69.exs.cx/img69/2164/page561jw.jpg


The following experiments are described on those screenshots:

1. Dean Radins experiment with tranquil, shocking or arousing pictures
2. Biermans experiments with a gambling card game (where people responded to their cards before being handed them)
3. Radins experiment with a RNG.
4. Helmud Schmidt's experiments with people trying to change the past (by manipulating a prerecorded audio-tape)
5. Bob Jahn's and Brenda Dunne's experiments with people trying to change the past (by changing the output of RNGs that had already taken place days or weeks ago)
6. Some other experiments

 

[Chronos]

If I dealt you a poker hand then informed you there was only 1 chance in 2,349,060 of being dealt that particular hand. What have I actually told you?

.Answer: The deck is missing a card.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I find a few things about this idea interesting. First of all, if ESP does exist this is the first time I have seen it associated with evolution. It does make sense that a 1/3 second head start would be an advantage for predators and prey. Or course what I saw was highly biased in favor of the claims, but they did claim repeatable and significant results. Note that I am not certain if this was the same experiment as the one referenced in this thread.

Another reason that this interests me is that it agrees with some anecdotal evidence of my own. One example comes from a customer of mine - the owner of an industrial company in Portland whom I will call Joe. One day Joe was standing in front of his house doing something [I forget what] and he noticed that the neighbor was working on his motorcycle. The bike was set on a stand with the rear wheel off the ground and spinning under power [by running the engine and putting the bike in gear]. The guy then gets a rag and proceeds as if to clean the running drive chain. At this point Joe looked right at me, and with an emphatic tone of voice he swore that the following took place: In his mind's eye he saw the neighbor begin to clean the chain when his hand was immediately sucked into the running wheel. Joe said that he saw it and was moving to run across the street, and trying to yell "stop", when the guy stuck his hand into the chain, and just as was "foreseen", it was immediately pulled in and seriously injured.

I sure can't swear that Joe really saw this before it happened as he says, but I am convinced that he believed it was true. He described this as taking place in about one or two seconds.

I have heard several similar stories including a few related to sports. Also, keep in mind that I often probe and bring these stories out of people. They usually don't volunteer the information until I dig a bit. In this case I saw Joe light up when he remembered the event. He had nearly forgotten about it in lieu of the commotion that followed.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Yesterday I had a similar experience. I was coming onto campus for work and my co-worker had the arm of the security booth up as I was pulling into the drive way. I had the feeling, or saw if you will, as I started pulling in that he might forget that the arm was up and accidently drop it on my car as I was driving in. Sure enough he had forgotten and pushed the button but fortunately realized pretty quick what he had done and stopped it before it hit my car.
The thing is ofcourse that I have that worry every time I drive on in the same circumstances. I also have similar worries when ever I see a situation where something of that sort could happen. A glass of water someplace where someone is quite close and could knock it over or what not. And in the majority of these instances what I'm afraid might happen doesn't happen.
Also those times when it does occur as I have "foreseen" it impacts my memory far more than when it doesn't.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Clearly you can't consider situations where the outcome is expected and obvious. If you had never had this concern and you entered this gate everyday, that would be interesting. Your situation was just a matter of the odds of a small and insignificant mishap. This was certainly not the situtation in my example.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Clearly you can't consider situations where the outcome is expected and obvious. If you had never had this concern and you entered this gate everyday, that would be interesting. Your situation was just a matter of the odds of a small and insignificant mishap. This was certainly not the situtation in my example.

Perhaps I could have used a better example but that was the first that came to mind. I have certainly had other similar experiences in situations not so familiar to me. I would argue though that the significance of the mishap doesn't neccisarily play a role, nor the odds. I'd think that if I were to see someone working on a motorcycle that was running with the chain in view I might have an inkling that the person may have an accident. Depending on my state of mind at that moment I may feel the danger to be more serious than at a different time in a different state. As for the odds, you could say that it was more likely to happen in my case than in yours. Either way I could have driven through there and had it never happen what so ever or I could have had it happen the very first time I entered this campus. Same with the accident you described. No matter what the odds of it's occurance it could still happen and it could still happen the very first possible moment for it to occur or even never at all. I don't think most people's brains automatically calculate to a very effective degree the odds of any particular occurance.
After all of that I'm not dismissing the story either. I'm just giving a possible explination. If I have an experience similar to the ones I have already had but more intense I may find that the possibility of precognition in your story and in my own experiences is much higher. I obviously can't say I know what it was that your friend experienced.

 

[Chronos]

Hard to get a serious answer when poking aroung the edges.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The reason I see this example as significant is that his reaction was a once in a lifetime event. This is not a problem of the odds of the guy getting hurt by chance. How many people get hurt cleaning a chain that way? The odds are probably not in the mechanic's favor. But the fact is that the normal reaction for the observer is to shrug and think, damned fool, but instead his [Joes] reaction was atypical and inexplicable in his mind. At least this is how I perceived the events described and his feeling about things.

Or course this could have been some extended version of deja-vu. Could he have reacted after the event but transposed the order of events for some reason? He was sure that this was not the case, but who knows? As I said, this is only anecdotal evidence, but similar stories are fairly common.