The discussion centers around Rupert Sheldrake's exploration of telepathy as presented in his book "The Sense of Being Stared At." Participants engage with the evidence Sheldrake provides, critique his proposed mechanisms, and debate the scientific validity of his claims, including the concept of "morphic resonance." The conversation includes perspectives on the nature of science and metaphysics, as well as personal experiences related to telepathy.
There is no consensus among participants. While some find merit in Sheldrake's claims, others strongly oppose his views and label him as unscientific. The discussion reflects a range of competing perspectives on the validity of telepathy and the nature of scientific inquiry.
Participants express varying definitions of science and its boundaries, leading to unresolved questions about the classification of Sheldrake's work. There are also references to specific experiments and claims that remain unverified or contested.
zoobyshoe said:Einstein didn't invent any new concepts like "morphic resonance." In fact, his Theory of Relativity is what put the last nails in the coffin of the "morphic resonance" of his day: the aether theory of light, by providing a much more logical alternative.
You don't even have a basic understanding of Einstein or Galileo, do you? Galileo, likewise, killed the "morphic resonance" of his day: literal interpretation of the Bible.
Thank's for the frank admission.
SGT said:Scientists will not accept a new theory unless it is supported by evidence. Sometimes they are wrong as happened with the plate tectonics theory, but the reason they rejected the theory was because there was no known mechanism to support it. When that mechanism was discovered by scientists, the theory was immediately accepted.
If someday scientists find some mechanism in support of telepathy, all other scientists will accept it. Until then, nobody with any grasp of what science is will swallow it.
SGT said:One thing you must understand about science is that there is no inspirational breakthrough in it. Scientists use results found by other scientists to develop their theories.
Wow! I didn't know you were a neurologist. I knew that there areas of the brain dedicated to vision, audition, etc, but I never heard of an area dedicated to mathematics. And never heard that you could divert energy to a specific part of the brain, letting the opposite area lacking energy. Could you please provide a cite for those ideas?Happeh said:Just because you don't believe in something does not negate it's existence. I said in that other post a very good reason why no one proves telepathy. The possession of telepathic ability will arouse fear and hatred in others. These others will want to erase that source of fear and hatred by extermination or control.
You will find that as long as you hold your rigid mind set, you will be unable to believe things that are real. It is common knowledge that the brain is divided into sections with different sections performing different tasks. It seems trivial to me that if someone specializes in, say mathematics, to the exclusion of developing the other parts of the brain, the person will be good in math but they will be deficient in other areas.
Think of your brain as a sphere with a center. The center determines which part of the brain is getting energy and working properly. If the center is actually at the center of the sphere, all areas of the brain are being equally stimulated. A person decides to do mathematics. The center of the sphere moves towards the area of the brain associated with mathmatics. Any science guys know all about balance.
If you have a balanced sphere with the center in the center, then you move the center over to the math area of the brain, the brain just went unbalanced. The areas that are opposite of the math part of the brain are not receiving the stimulation they could be receiving. Their share of energy is being diverted to the math section to make it stronger.
This would obviously mean that whatever function of those areas of the brain receiving less energy did, that function would be less than it could be. If the area of the brain opposite the math area is the telepathy area, then a mathmatician will never "get" telepathy. He traded the telepathic area of his brain for more mathmatical ability.
The words may have been invented, but not the concepts. Every scientist builds on other scientists work. Sheldrake made up not only the words, but the concepts. May be he is a genius and he had an epiphany, but until someone can replicate his alleged results I keep my skepticism.That seems obvious. Why does that contradict what I said about people inventing words? What about Muon's or Quarks? Those sound like kid's made up words. If you go back to Einstein, he never heard of Muon's or Quarks. He would think you were making stuff up. Somebody building on Einstein's work invented the words out of thin air.
If you discover something new, it is expected that you would name it. The trouble with Sheldrake is that he hasn't discovered anything at all. He just decided "morphic resonance" must exist to account for telepathy. Even if you stipulate the existence of telepathy for the sake of discussion, then his "morphic resonance" is still no different than deciding there must be a "luminiferous aether" to account for light.Happeh said:If you want to feel superior to me, that is OK. I don't mind.
I think I made my point. A person in a new field must invent their own words. It is not a sign of failure or error.
SGT said:Wow! I didn't know you were a neurologist. I knew that there areas of the brain dedicated to vision, audition, etc, but I never heard of an area dedicated to mathematics. And never heard that you could divert energy to a specific part of the brain, letting the opposite area lacking energy. Could you please provide a cite for those ideas?
zoobyshoe said:If you discover something new, it is expected that you would name it. The trouble with Sheldrake is that he hasn't discovered anything at all. He just decided "morphic resonance" must exist to account for telepathy. Even if you stipulate the existence of telepathy for the sake of discussion, then his "morphic resonance" is still no different than deciding there must be a "luminiferous aether" to account for light.
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Happeh said:The problem with telling people new ideas is that there is no one to cite. Scientist have a failing. They refuse to entertain any idea without an expert or someone to cite.
I am the kind of person who tries to get people to think on their own. If you can mentally visualize what is going on, why do you need an expert? You are an adult man. You can consider something and make up your own mind. Then you will be absolutley certain your decision is the right one.
Most people think their brain is up in the head and it is doing it's thing. That is an incorrect body view. Your brain is designed to be activated or to grow stronger by being...infiltrated? inundated? with material from your body. If this material from your body enters the brain in an uneven way, the various areas of the brain are stimulated unevenly.
To answer your question about mathematics area of the brain. I was under the impression that psychologists classified the brain into halves with one half being devoted to scientific thinking like mathematics and the other half being devoted to things like music?
In the meantime, the puzzles about memory have grown even stranger. This part of our story will take us to one of the most controversial frontiers of current science, although it actually starts back in 1920 when W. McDougall, a biologist at Harvard, began an experiment to see if animals (in this case white rats) could inherit learning. The procedure was to teach the rats a simple task (avoiding a lighted exit), record how fast they learned, breed another generation, teach them the same task, and see how their rate of learning compared with their elders. He carried the experiment through 34 generations and found that, indeed, each generation learned faster in flat contradiction to the usual Darwinian assumptions about heredity. Such a result naturally raised controversy, and similar experiments were run to prove or disprove the result. The last of these was done by W.E. Agar at Melbourne over a period of 20 years ending in 1954. Using the same general breed of rats, he found the same pattern of results that McDougall had but in addition he found that untrained rats used as a control group also learned faster in each new generation. (Curiously, he also found that his first generation of rats started at the same rate of learning as McDougall's last generation.) No one had a good explanation for why both trained and untrained should be learning faster, but since this result did not support the idea that learning was inherited, the biology community breathed a sigh of relief and considered the matter closed.
SGT said:You say we should not believe on those stupid scientists, who are not able to have an original idea and believe in your made up ideas?
You did not say they are stupid, but you said they refuse to entertain any idea without an expert or someone to cite. This to me corresponds to calling them stupidHappeh said:I didn't say any such thing. Not in the quote of mine you included. Why are you making things up? Ya, on a cursory look thru, I never called anyone stupid. Doesn't sound like me at all.
What is Kinkos? Since you provide no source for the weird ideas you propose my only conclusion is that you made them up. If you want to know to what ideas I refer, here they are:Which idea is it that I made up? It is only your opinion that it is made up. If you want, I can go to Kinkos and get a real official looking document with stamps and gold leaf that says I am a super wonder expert and you should believe me.
andThink of your brain as a sphere with a center. The center determines which part of the brain is getting energy and working properly. If the center is actually at the center of the sphere, all areas of the brain are being equally stimulated. A person decides to do mathematics. The center of the sphere moves towards the area of the brain associated with mathmatics. Any science guys know all about balance.
If you have a balanced sphere with the center in the center, then you move the center over to the math area of the brain, the brain just went unbalanced. The areas that are opposite of the math part of the brain are not receiving the stimulation they could be receiving. Their share of energy is being diverted to the math section to make it stronger.
This would obviously mean that whatever function of those areas of the brain receiving less energy did, that function would be less than it could be. If the area of the brain opposite the math area is the telepathy area, then a mathmatician will never "get" telepathy. He traded the telepathic area of his brain for more mathmatical ability.
Unless you provide some evidence for those ideas, I must conclude that you or someone else made them up.Most people think their brain is up in the head and it is doing it's thing. That is an incorrect body view. Your brain is designed to be activated or to grow stronger by being...infiltrated? inundated? with material from your body. If this material from your body enters the brain in an uneven way, the various areas of the brain are stimulated unevenly.
SGT said:You did not say they are stupid, but you said they refuse to entertain any idea without an expert or someone to cite. This to me corresponds to calling them stupid
What is Kinkos? Since you provide no source for the weird ideas you propose my only conclusion is that you made them up. If you want to know to what ideas I refer, here they are:
and
Unless you provide some evidence for those ideas, I must conclude that you or someone else made them up.
You are right! We have a problem! There are at least four possibilities for your sight:Happeh said:We have a problem. What evidence will you accept? I can provide you with proof. Proof in my eyes. When I show these proofs to others, the do not agree it is proof. I expect the same reaction from you. I have proof, but no one has the necessary background or open mindedness or capability to observe and correlate it takes to understand.
I am sorry, I really can't understand your analogy from graph paper to the brain.Can you tell me why my graph paper example means nothing to you? If I move the X,Y axis on a piece of graph paper, the various quadrants change size according to where the X,Y axis are currently located. These quadrant size changes would correspond to different areas of the brain receiving more or less energy. Do our definitions of energy need to be compared to verify we think the same way?
As I said above, I can't see the analogyThe idea of the "center of the brain sphere" acts exactly like the above description. The forward right and left or the rear right and left quadrants would change in size as the axis was moved. It is more complex because of the z axis. It is the same principle.
How can I go inside my own body? This is topologically impossible.I cannot prove that "your brain is supposed to be inudated with other material in order to activate it". You have to go inside of your body and discover this for yourself in order to prove it. I can show you the outward signs, but if you refuse to accept my interpretation, the only way to prove it is for you to do the work yourself with your own body.
Thank you. Not living in your country I didn't know it.Kinko's is the local copy machine chain store. They sell frames and fancy documents. I think they must have a "Guaranteed Expert in ..." blank document I could fill out and have printed out to convince people needing an expert.
Only people that have no arguments appeal to derision.I would like to thank you for being courteous. You have stated your disbelief and pointed out where with no derision. Thank you.
SGT said:I am sorry, I really can't understand your analogy from graph paper to the brain.
SGT said:What does not exist is what new-agers call energy. Something insubstantial that people can absorb through chakras, third eye, etc.
SGT said:How can I go inside my own body? This is topologically impossible.
I apologize for butting in here but what does it mean to be "western"? I am not sure if I am western or not? I live in Los Angeles and that's on the west coast of the U.S.Happeh said:Can you feel your internal organs? Where they are and what they currently this minute feel like? That is going inside of your body. Most western people's awareness resides in the outer layer of their body only.
Math Is Hard said:I apologize for butting in here but what does it mean to be "western"? I am not sure if I am western or not? I live in Los Angeles and that's on the west coast of the U.S.
Happeh said:This seems incredibly trivial to me. I am at a loss as to how to make it more simple. EDIT: Did I make it clear that the origin point is the focal point of the energy of the body? What I am saying is that as the origin point moved from it's normal centered position, the focus of the energy moves with it. Whatever part of the brain is under the focal point, that point would be recieiving the majority of stimulation to the brain.
You are wrong.
EDIT: I need to say that I probably use energy in confusing ways. There is energy as you describe above. I also use energy to describe the intent of a person. If a person's body was focused on an object, I would describe that as "they are putting their energy on that object".
Can you feel your internal organs? Where they are and what they currently this minute feel like? That is going inside of your body. Most western people's awareness resides in the outer layer of their body only.
Even though some superphysical phenomena may be not real, telepathy does exist. Its usual display is that between the familiar people, say twins, relatives or friends, one can perceive the other's happening, say being sick or being injured etc, at a distance. Many people have this kind of experience. At present, the telepathy phenomena have been confirmed by some strict scientific experiments[1-3], and are being studied by more scientists. One of the most convincing experiments was done in 1994 by Grinberg-Zylberbaum et al[2].
In their experiment, pairs of subjects were first allowed to meditate together, and then put into two semisilent Faraday chambers 14.5m apart. Their EEG activities are registered by two EEG machines. One subject of each pair was stimulated by 100 flashes at random intervals, and each photostimulation resulted in an evoked potentials for the stimulated subject. It is observed that, when the stimulated subject showed distinct evoked potentials, the nonstimulated subject showed "transferred potentials" similar to the evoked potentials in the stimulated subject, at the same time, the subjects both felt their interaction had been successfully completed. Since the subjects were separated by the soundproof faraday chambers, this experiment guarantees that neither sensory signals nor electromagnetic signals is the means of communication, and thus strictly demonstrate the existence of nonlocal correlations between human brains.
http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003065/01/qmt.pdf
“If our quantum model of telepathy is confirmed by the experiments, then it can be naturally used as one new kind of quantum superluminal communication (QSC) means. Compared with the conventional wire and wireless communication, such new kind of communication will undoubtedly have more advantages. First, the transfer delay of QSC is irrelevant to the communication distance, and can be zero in principle, thus QSC is the fastest communication means. Secondly, the carriers of information may not pass the space between the sender and receiver for QSC, thus the communication process is not influenced by the in-between environment, and QSC is one kind of complete anti-jamming communication means. Thirdly, since the carriers of information can be only stored in the sender and receiver for QSC, the third party can't eavesdrop the transferred information, thus QSC is the most secret communication means. Lastly, there is no electro-magnetic radiation for QSC, and it is one kind of green communication means.
How did they measure the delay for stating that QSC is faster than light?PIT2 said:Here is an interesting paper on Quantum Telepathy:
They also mention a theory called "Quantum Superluminal Communication":
SGT said:How did they measure the delay for stating that QSC is faster than light?
A scientific theory must make predictions that can be tested. If they theorized that QSC is faster than light, they must measure the time delay between sending and receiving.PIT2 said:The bit about QSC is theory i believe. But perhaps there are some experiments mentioned, i haven't read the whole paper.
SGT said:A scientific theory must make predictions that can be tested. If they theorized that QSC is faster than light, they must measure the time delay between sending and receiving.
Have they done those experiments? If they didn't it is not a theory yet. It's only a hypothesis. Only after the experiments don't falsify the hypothesis, can it be considered a theory.PIT2 said:In the paper they mention some experiments that could be done.
SGT said:Have they done those experiments? If they didn't it is not a theory yet. It's only a hypothesis. Only after the experiments don't falsify the hypothesis, can it be considered a theory.
In the following, we will analyze the above telepathy experiment in terms of the principle of quantum superluminal communication (QSC)[4-11]. According to the principle of QSC, the proper combination of dynamical collapse of wave function and consciousness of observer will permit the non-electromagnetic superluminal transmission of information. It will be shown that this may provide an possible explanation of the above telepathy experimental results, and indicate that the telepathy process may be realized based on the quantum process in brains.
4. A quantum theoretical model of telepathy process
On the basis of the principle of QSC and the above analyses, we will present a primary theoretical model of telepathy process. In this model, the telepathy process includes three phases.
And I suppose they arrived at this principle either through their third eye or by receiving a telepathic transmission from highly evolved aliens. Nothing in our present understanding of physics allows for 'PIT2 said:They call QSC a principle in the paper:
They also mention a theoretical model:
the proper combination of dynamical collapse of wave function and consciousness of observer
SGT said:And I suppose they arrived at this principle either through their third eye or by receiving a telepathic transmission from highly evolved aliens. Nothing in our present understanding of physics allows for '
Do you, or the proponents of this hypothesis have any idea of the meaning of the expression collapse of the wavefunction?PIT2 said:The interpretation of QM in which consciousness causes the collapse of the wavefunction is just as valid as any of the other interpretations.
SGT said:Do you, or the proponents of this hypothesis have any idea of the meaning of the expression collapse of the wavefunction?
And can you see it happening in the macro world? If yes, please explain it to me. In my understanding wavefunction is a property associated to particles, not to sets of particles like a rock or a human being.PIT2 said:Irrelevant. Whether one is a proponent or an opponent, it is a valid interpretation of QM.
(and btw, yes i think i have a decent idea of what it means, but I am no QM expert of course)
SGT said:And can you see it happening in the macro world? If yes, please explain it to me. In my understanding wavefunction is a property associated to particles, not to sets of particles like a rock or a human being.