Telepathy: Rupert Sheldrake & Evidence from "The Sense of Being Stared At

[zoobyshoe]

The set up reported in the quote you provided, Pit2, sounds pretty good, although I am a bit leary of the fact they only specified that the two Faraday cages were "soundproof". Call me a stickler, but I want to be assured they were both "light proof". It would mean nothing at all if it turned out the second subject could see the flashes off in the distance. If he could, there would be no mystery whatever to his having "simlar" evoked potentials.


The other thing I would want to know is what they mean by "similar". EEGs are notoriously hard to read, and can be interfered with in many ways. They are notoriously sensitive to any EM waves in the vicinity, especially fluoresent lamps. If the lamps inside the Faraday cages were plugged into the same lines as the strobe lights, then there in a good chance those lamps would oscillate slightly along with the strobe light.
The "similar" evoked potentials, could well have been picked up from the lamps, and not the person's head. This would have undercut a main point of putting the people in the Faraday cages to begin with.

Do they show the EEG tracings comparing the responses of the two subjects during the strobe stimulation? (I would look myself, but I can't open pdf files.)

Their point is to show there is telepathy, and that it is not electromagnetic. Their set up seems sound to me in principle, but you wouldn't believe the dumb mistakes people can make. So, I would like to be sure that the cages were lightproof, and that all the equipment had independent power.

 

[SGT]

Well i haven't yet invented a theory of everything, so no, i cannot explain it to u.

But since we are talking about consciousness experiencing telepathy, it is even unclear whether it belongs in the micro or macroscopic domain, or both. After all, what is the size of a thought?

Wavefunctions are associated to material particles. Is a thought material?

 

[PIT2]

The experiment u are talking about (by Grinberg-Zylberbaum) is only briefly mentioned in the paper. The details u are requesting arent in it.

Oh and SGT, about how they intend to measure quantum superluminal communication:

(1). Complete the experiment at much longer distance, say longer than the bound distance 40km, in which the possible classical signals with light speed can’t be used to explain the statistical relevance between the potentials of the subjects. Thus we can strictly confirm that telepathy is one kind of superluminal and non-electromagnetic phenomena, and further confirm the existence of “QSC condition” in human brains.
(2). Replace the flashes with flickering light. Here the evoked potentials of the stimulated subject will contain some measurable frequency information. It is expected that the corresponding transferred potentials of the other subject will contain the same measurable frequency information. Then we can use the transferred frequency information to realize non-electromagnetic and superluminal human brain communication more reliably.

http://cogprints.org/3065/01/qmt.pdf

 

[PIT2]

Wavefunctions are associated to material particles. Is a thought material?

lol is that supposed to be a trick question?

Anyway, whether a thought is material or not is unfortunately unknown. And exactly what is 'material', is also unknown.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The experiment u are talking about (by Grinberg-Zylberbaum) is only briefly mentioned in the paper. The details u are requesting arent in it.

Oh and SGT, about how they intend to measure quantum superluminal communication:

If they simply prove telepathy, then the superluminal gibberish is pretty much irrelevant.

If the evoked potentials are picked up be the second subject at a large distance like that, it should be headline news around the world in and of itself. If there's anything to it, then any other teams who tries it should have equal success. I think Evo and her daughter ought to be tested this way.

 

[PIT2]

If they simply prove telepathy, then the superluminal gibberish is pretty much irrelevant.

The paper is not about proving telepathy, but about theorising how it might work.

Heres the introduction from the .pdf:

The physical nature of Psi phenomena such as telepathy is an important problem in the life information science. Scientists have confirmed the existence of telepathy phenomena through many strict experiments[1-3]. Then can modern science (e.g. quantum theory) provide a scientific explanation for telepathy phenomena? In this paper, we will seek the possible quantum nature of telepathy from both theoretical and experimental respects, and present a primary quantum model of telepathy phenomena. It will be shown that, according to the principle of quantum superluminal communication (QSC)[4-11], quantum theory can in principle provide a scientific explanation of telepathy phenomena, and some experiments have indicated the validity of this explanation[6]. Furthermore, we will propose a serious of feasible experimental schemes to test the quantum model, and discuss the technical possibility of realizing controllable and applicable human brain communication on the basis of the proposed experimental schemes. Lastly, we give some remarks and expectations about the technical virtue and application foreground of such communication means.

 

[SGT]

The paper is not about proving telepathy, but about theorising how it might work.

Heres the introduction from the .pdf:

The introduction starts with a questionable affirmation:

Scientists have confirmed the existence of telepathy phenomena through many strict experiments[1-3].

So far no repeatable experiment confirmed the existence of telepathy. The fact that the million dollar prize offered by The James Randi Foundation is still being offered is a strong indication of this.
And don't tell me that researchers in paranormal phenomena don't care for money. Any scientist would be glad to have such a grant for his/her researches.

 

[PIT2]

The introduction starts with a questionable affirmation:
So far no repeatable experiment confirmed the existence of telepathy. The fact that the million dollar prize offered by The James Randi Foundation is still being offered is a strong indication of this.

The paper mentions the sources on which this claim is based. Feel free to actually investigate them.

Strangely, i don't see any mention of Randy with his million dollars as a source...

 

[zoobyshoe]

Strangely, i don't see any mention of Randy with his million dollars as a source...

You don't get it, Pit2.

 

[SGT]

The paper mentions the sources on which this claim is based. Feel free to actually investigate them.

Strangely, i don't see any mention of Randy with his million dollars as a source...

Of course not! No bogus investigator will dare to candidate to the prize.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Wavefunctions are associated to material particles.

I hardly know anything about the quantum world, SGT, so maybe you can bring me up to speed a bit. I have been under the impression that the only particle with a waveform that might be collapsed is the photon.

Are there other quantum particles with waveforms that can be collapsed?

 

[persef]

Does telepathy relate to quantum ? how can that be ?

 

[PIT2]

Of course not! No bogus investigator will dare to candidate to the prize.

Ur reasoning is illogical.

"oh randy hasnt given his million dollars away yet, so the investigators must be 'bogus'"

Please, try to remain objective and critical. As i said before, the sources are given in the paper.

(btw, i wouldn't want to give my billion dollars away either )

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I hardly know anything about the quantum world, SGT, so maybe you can bring me up to speed a bit. I have been under the impression that the only particle with a waveform that might be collapsed is the photon.

Are there other quantum particles with waveforms that can be collapsed?

Quantum systems remain in an undefined state until measured. Note however that the definition of a measurement is still the subject of debate. There are plenty of good links in the Credible Anomalies Napster: See "The Measurement Problem".

As for your question, consider as an example a two slit diffraction experiment using one electron. Just as with light, if we measure the system in such as way that we know which slit the electron passes through, the wavefunction is collapsed and the electron acts like a particle instead of a wave. In this respect there is no difference between the photon, electron, or any subatomic particle; a wave acts like a wave. If we measure for a unique position - one way to collapse the wavefunction - we find a thing that acts like a particle.

 

[zoobyshoe]

As for your question, consider as an example a two slit diffraction experiment using one electron.

Does an electron, or any other particle, exhibit the same "self-interference" a photon does in a double slit experiment?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Sure enough; the same wave equations apply to all. Many physics students do an electron diffraction experiment as part of the required lab work.

The wave itself is a statement of probability of the state or value we will get if we make a measurement on the system.

Edit: Strictly speaking, the wave function is used to calculate the expectation value for any observable of the system.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Sure enough; the same wave equations apply to all. Many physics students do an electron diffraction experiment as part of the required lab work.

Is the equipement expensive and specialized? In other words, would you only expect to find it at MIT and CalTech, or is it in the range of any school?

The wave itself is a statement of probability of the state or value we will get if we make a measurement on the system.

Edit: Strictly speaking, the wave function is used to calculate the expectation value for any observable of the system.

This takes some pondering. If I think about it in conjunction with Feynman's insistence in QED that photons are particles, and not waves, then it suggests to me that the "wave function" never refers to any literal wave at all. Rather it seems to mean that what is always a particle has to be analyzed as if it were a wave because this is the only mathematical way to get any traction on the always uncertain arrival point of the particle.

Speaking of a "collapse of the wavefunction" suggests the literal image of a wave, in water, say, traveling out in all directions from a source, and then suddenly contracting all its momentum and energy into a single impact point concentrated on the first obstacle it encounters. I can also, with a little more effort, imagine the same thing happening to an expanding three dimensional spherical shell consisting of comressed air, as in a sound wave. I'm pretty sure, though, these mental models of "wave function" are completely wrong, and that any particle in question always remains a particle despite not traveling in a straight line from source to detector.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The equipment required for electron diffraction is nominal. We did this experiment at OSU which is hardly known for its physics department budget.

The questions of measurement, collapse, and entanglement are all incredibly intriguing - the motivation for my own physics degree, really - and to a large extent they remain unresolved.

From the Napster: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=58374

Measurement in Quantum Theory
From the inception of Quantum Mechanics (QM) the concept of measurement has proved a source of difficulty. The Einstein-Bohr debates, out of which both the Einstein Podolski Rosen paradox and Schrödinger's cat paradox developed, centered upon this difficulty. The problem of measurement in quantum mechanics arises out of the fact that several principles of the theory appear to be in conflict. In particular, the dynamic principles of quantum mechanics seem to be in conflict with the postulate of collapse. David Albert puts the problem nicely when he says:

'The dynamics and the postulate of collapse are flatly in contradiction with one another ... the postulate of collapse seems to be right about what happens when we make measurements, and the dynamics seems to be bizarrely wrong about what happens when we make measurements, and yet the dynamics seems to be right about what happens whenever we aren't making measurements.' (Albert 1992, 79)

This has come to be known as "the measurement problem" and in what follows, we study the details and examine some of the implications of this problem. [continued]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-measurement/

 

[Ivan Seeking]

We shouldn't get too far off topic here.

 

[zoobyshoe]

We shouldn't get too far off topic here.

I'm trying to set up some structure within which to examine the notion of the non-electromagnetic, faster than light energy being proposed as the medium of telepathy.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Here's a lab device I tracked down:

Google Image Result for http://www.telatomic.com/art/electrondiffractiontube_sm.jpg
Address:http://images.google.com/imgres?img...raction+tube&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=G

This isn't quite the same as a double-slit experiment, but is similar.

The interesting point is to demonstrate proof of DeBroglie's reciprocal to the assertion that waves act like particles. If so, he said, then particles should act like waves. The electron diffraction tube, apparently, shows them doing just that.

I suspect this tube must be evacuated of air and gas, but they don't mention that it is. I think if it weren't, the electron stream would make the air glow like a neon lamp.

Edit: Much better picture:

Address:http://www.atas.gr/perigrafi.php?pr=2934

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Btw, one of my professors worked on matter wave interferometry. By using matter waves [atoms] instead of light waves to measure accelerations, higher resolution is possible due to the large momentum, hence shorter wavelengths involved.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I'm trying to set up some structure within which to examine the notion of the non-electromagnetic, faster than light energy being proposed as the medium of telepathy.

Well, I'm not about to take on that one, but here is an introduction to entanglement from the Napster.

Quantum Entanglement and Information
Most physicists dismissed the puzzling features of entangled quantum states as an artefact of Einstein's inappropriate ‘detached observer’ view of physical theory, and regarded Bohr's reply to the EPR argument as vindicating the Copenhagen interpretation. This was unfortunate, because the study of entanglement was ignored for thirty years until John Bell's reconsideration and extension of the EPR argument. Bell looked at entanglement in simpler systems than the EPR case: matching correlations between two-valued dynamical quantities, such as polarization or spin, of two separated systems in an entangled state. What Bell showed was that the statistical correlations between the measurement outcomes of suitably chosen different quantities on the two systems are inconsistent with an inequality derivable from Einstein's separability and locality assumptions — in effect from the assumption that the correlations have a common cause.

Bell's investigation generated an ongoing debate on the foundations of quantum mechanics. One important feature of this debate was confirmation that entanglement can persist over long distances(see Aspect et al.), thus falsifying Schrödinger's supposition of the spontaneous decay of entanglement as two entangled particles separate. But it was not until the 1980s that physicists, computer scientists, and cryptographers began to regard the non-local correlations of entangled quantum states as a new kind of non-classical resource that could be exploited, rather than an embarrassment to be explained away. (For further discussion of entanglement as a physical resource, including measuring entanglement, and the manipulation and purification of entanglement by local operations, see "The Joy of Entanglement" by Popescu and Rohrlich in Lo, Popescu, and Spiller, or Nielsen and Chuang.) [continued]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/

 

[zoobyshoe]

Btw, one of my professors worked on matter wave interferometry. By using matter waves [atoms] instead of light waves to measure accelerations, higher resolution is possible due to the large momentum, hence shorter wavelengths involved.

A bit of googling reveals this area of study has many manifestations. Aparently they've even done it with whole molecules. Here's one paper with a brief history:

Optics and Interferometry with Atoms and Molecules - I. Introduction
Address:http://rleweb.mit.edu/ifm/pubs/AAMOP/AAMOP-I.html

Other links mention "laser cooled atoms" being used, whatever that might mean.

-----

I looked back over some parts of QED, and I think Feynman was quite convinced of the purely particulate nature of photons. The whole first part of that book Photons: Particles of Light is essentially his non-heisenbergian, alternate way of analyzing their behaviour, and analyzing them as particles that take, not the straight path per se, but which favor the path of least time, explains everything.

If you look at what he says about how light behaves the narrower you make a slit for it to go through (on pages 54, 55, and 56 of the paperback edition) I think he has explained the Young double slit experiment without recourse to "collapsing" wave functions. He's obviated the need for the concept of "self-interference" by explaining how a narrower slit prevents the photons that take non-conformist paths from cancelling each other out, which they will do when the slit is large enough.

I think the direction from which you approach all these kinds of apparent mysteries can either exacerbate or evaporate all the kinds of philosophical problems mentioned in your link about measurement, etc.

Anyway, I think I've gotten myself up to speed on the variety of particles that can demonstrate the wave behavior of interference, including particles of matter, that SGT was talking about

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The dual nature of things is well established. I think you are taking his comments out of context... The key is to realize that as you said, a single photon can interfere with itself even in a double split experiment. In other words, the one photon had to pass through both slits. However, if we try to see which slit the "particle" passes through, the wave-like nature is destroyed and the interference pattern goes away.

I will have to check my QED but I can say for sure that this is not going to be resolved here. This problem has perplexed the greatest minds in physics for ninety years. There are probably half a dozen schools of thought on these issues.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Wavefunctions are associated to material particles. Is a thought material?

Interestingly, it appears to be true that a thought must have mass. I did a little checking most people seemed to agree with the logic. No matter how we veiw it, thought is more highly organized than random processes and it took energy to make it that way. What first gave me this idea is the solution to Maxwell's Demon paradox: Information contains energy.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I will have to check my QED but I can say for sure that this is not going to be resolved here.

Check out the pages 54, 55, and 56, and also his footnote on page 76. I am pretty sure Feynman has done away with the need for a "wave function".

 

[zoobyshoe]

Interestingly, it appears to be true that a thought must have mass. I did a little checking most people seemed to agree with the logic. No matter how we veiw it, thought is more highly organized than random processes and it took energy to make it that way. What first gave me this idea is the solution to Maxwell's Demon paradox: Information contains energy.

A strangely roundabout way of getting to it. All you really need to look at is the fact that it takes energy to "cock" a neuron: to pump the ions back out of it after it has fired, to know that thought requires the expenditure of energy.

To say thoughts have "mass" however is not really true. Theoretically, any energy might be converted to mass, but this never happens to the energy expended in thinking. IIRC, they have had to do some really elaborate gymnastics with particle accelerators to get any energy to convert into mass. The energy of thought just converts to different forms of energy.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Check out the pages 54, 55, and 56, and also his footnote on page 76. I am pretty sure Feynman has done away with the need for a "wave function".

No way; this concept if fundamental to all of QM. I will dig out my book but I can guarantee that you are misunderstanding what he says.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

A strangely roundabout way of getting to it. All you really need to look at is the fact that it takes energy to "cock" a neuron: to pump the ions back out of it after it has fired, to know that thought requires the expenditure of energy.

To say thoughts have "mass" however is not really true. Theoretically, any energy might be converted to mass, but this never happens to the energy expended in thinking. IIRC, they have had to do some really elaborate gymnastics with particle accelerators to get any energy to convert into mass. The energy of thought just converts to different forms of energy.

If the energy of the closed system has increased, the mass has increased.