just want to say it's nice that you guys weren't assholes about beast having an interest in telepathy. deceptively cute thread
There are certainly people cashing in on the idea of telepathy. But, they aren't really using telepathy.
I am interested in it to. I have taken classes on the subject and studied it. It's fun to think about and to talk about. Glad to have the conversation.
Seems to me anyone who believes in prayer must believe in telepathy. Millions of people claim to talk to god everyday. Cloistered Monks and Nuns would take vows of silence and only talk through prayer. Taoist Monks chant and meditate and use prayer wheels to talk to god. Pretty old belief systems. I don't think any of them require proof or scientific validation and pretty much practice based purely on blind faith.
You might say the students who signed up to be in the study had interest in ESP, but what on earth would that matter? The effect is not supposed to be possible. But they have found that when the pairs have a personal connection, or have a long history of a meditation practice, or claim to experience form of extra sensory preception, the success rate is much higher. Your other bullet points are simply not true. The experiments have accounted for those things. The target pictures randomly chosen by a computer, the order presented randomly displayed, double blind. Did you get this list from an AI source or something? Look into the actual research and evidence. The last bullet point makes no sense. It's the statistical evaluation which reveals if something is due to chance or if there is another affect. That's how literally every scientific study works.
It matters because that brings bias into the experiment and shows a lack of proper controls. They are true. Computers were used later after all the mistakes of the original experiments were brought into question. Though the computer version of the experiment also had issues. The more a target picture was shown, the higher percentage it was guessed. Target pictures shown once were guessed within the probability of chance. This suggests issues with randomness and the use of patterns as visual cues. I studied this in college and on my own time as it's a subject that greatly interests me. The last bullet point makes perfect sense. For the experiment to be accurate, you must account for every factor, including chance. There must be an expectation of chance. A percentage of right guesses would have to be just that guesses, chance. Someone with true ESP would be expected to be able to choose the right target above that modicum of chance. While the computer version of the experiment fixed many issues from the earlier version, including the expectation of chance, it still had issues. Like I said, those who saw the target picture on the computer once guessed within the percentage of chance. Those who saw it multiple times guessed right at a higher percentage...but it left questions of whether the subjects were actually using telepathy or just recognizing patterns. Again, I find the subject intriguing and would like nothing more for telepathy to be a proven ability, but it just hasn't yet. Maybe that will change.
