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Scientific method applied to Temple

  
  

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Sam T.
07:05 / 23.03.06
You're absolutely right. Funny you should mention that. It was what got the whole thing started in a way.

My very first try at a proof were with a coin. Even before the RPK stuff. Used to play heads and tails quite a lot. Could pretty often get series of 7 or 8 heads (or tails). Tried with co-workers too, getting them to throw the coin. I coaxed: what about a good old fashioned game of head or tails? I was mostly always winning. Then nobody wanted to play against me anymore

Sure, try coins. I still even use them for a yes/no oracle sometimes.

A RNG is just a fast automatic coin thrower.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
07:24 / 23.03.06
One thing with the coin-toss: choosing whether you try for heads or tails. When I was dickering about on the RPK site a lot, I chose 0s or 1s pretty much at random... or that's what I thought at first. Then I caught myself mulling over the choice quite seriously, and picking the target that 'pinged' the loudest in my head. When I moved from that to a strict pattern of alternating targets (0s one run, 1s the next) my results suffered somewhat. My (completely untested) theory is that I was actually predicting the target that would give me the best outcome, 'looking' at the data and fixing the result. I guess the same thing might be possible with a coin-toss experiment.
 
 
Isadore
07:41 / 23.03.06
I've done the same sort of thing with dice in the past, often rolling 6's on a d6 or 0's on a d10 on command. I find, though, that I do better at calling dice rolls when I'm rolling them a lot, such as at the height of my roleplaying days in my mid-teens, than I do when I haven't rolled one for months, such as, ehrm, now.
 
 
Evil Scientist
08:03 / 23.03.06
What would be needed to prove actual control over the probability of the coin flips would be for a large population to produce the same effect. Let's face it, you have a 50% chance of being right when predicting any coin flip even if you're doing nothing more than guessing (I myself have done this). It's impressive when it happens though.

When it becomes really impressive is when the number of choices increases (dice, deck of cards, etc).
 
 
Sam T.
09:51 / 23.03.06
One thing with the coin-toss: choosing whether you try for heads or tails.

Let's face it, you have a 50% chance of being right when predicting any coin flip even if you're doing nothing more than guessing.

Agreed. This could be precognition. Or a clustering illusion. Or both. I even thought, after reading 'American Gods', that it could be the way I was throwing the coin.

That's why I had friends do it for me. I also tried to go for the largest number of heads, or tail, in a row. Record is around 10. If this is enough to prevent the clustering illusion, I don't know. I seemed to always win.

What would be needed to prove actual control over the probability of the coin flips would be for a large population to produce the same effect

Do you mean a lot of people or a lot of coin toss? The RPK is like a large number of coin toss. Since the effect is probably not so large, it allows for statistical analyze. In fact, this is the continuation of Rhine research on psychokinesis on dice. Then they tried with random numbers produced in the past...

If you meant a lot of people, I surely agree with that.

Kylark made the remark that if you looked at all the people that only tried the experiment once, (they were 7773), and at their z-score, you got a whooping 3.73 (1 against 1000).

Only, in the wrong direction. So, they tried it, got an absolutely contrary result to what they expected (left instead of right). And then they quitted.

But collectively, it is way too much, Isn't it? How can it be so high? Does the quitting itself have a role in the high score, be an artefact?

It looks to me to be plain beginner's luck. Only in the wrong direction. What philosophical implication you can get out of that, I don't know :-)

If it is not an artefact, it says at least that this is something absolutely everybody can do.
 
 
Sam T.
10:29 / 23.03.06
As for having a tingle for choosing the direction, it happens to me too. So mostly I go with whichever I fancy, after the start, without worrying.

I read that in some experiment, you can have a switch to choose after the start, the most favorable direction. Didn't seem to raise any hair. Most important thing seems to be the absolute value of the z, then.
 
 
Evil Scientist
10:50 / 23.03.06
If you meant a lot of people, I surely agree with that.

Yes that's what I meant.

The thing to remember is that, with coin tosses. The probability doesn't change. It's always a 50/50 chance. So strings of heads or of tails do occasionally pop up in multiple flips.
 
 
Sam T.
12:53 / 23.03.06
Right, the coin doesn't have a memory, that is a common fallacy. Calling before the fact a side and managing to toss it out a certain number of time in a row probably qualify as a sort of proof, if you can do that on demand most of the time.

But I'm sure you'll have to fall back on z-score to analyze this thoroughly.
 
 
Evil Scientist
13:47 / 23.03.06
Statistical analysis of results gathered under controlled settings. It's really the only way that magicians are going to introduce magic to the average humaton on the street as anything other than a form of religion.

What is really required is a large population each performing the same magic to achieve the same effect.

There should be no reason magic can't perform under lab conditions should there?
 
 
Sam T.
18:08 / 23.03.06
Statistical analysis of results gathered under controlled settings.

Won't happen anytime soon. But then, I guess you're not the average humaton

What about: You try it and you try to convince yourself ?

(And that I Ching idea is probably what you should start with).
 
 
Woodsurfer
00:13 / 24.03.06
It would seem that with all of the suggested tests, there are equivalent chances of the results "proving" whatever outcome you prefer. If you want to save yourself a lot of trouble, refer back to the Rhine experiments (q.v.: Joseph Banks Rhine) of 1920's. I am inclined to believe that the desires of the experimenter exert a large influence on the outcome. For this reason, unless things change drastically, no-one will be collecting James Randi's prize for proving parapsychological events any time soon.

The supposition that the predilections of the observer are crucial to the outcome of magickal experimentation would seem to be a natural conclusion if you follow the implications of the many-worlds view (to give another whack to that particular gong). The "you" that follows the fork of disbelief will land in a universe in which the experiment failed while the another "you" in another branch smiles in pleasure as you witness a successful result. If this meta-reality is accepted, magick is both real and not-real simultaneously but each possibility is on a separate track and each is invisible to the other.

I'll tell you something that me 'n me Mrs. have mused on a time or two over the decade that we've traveled along the magickal path: we meet more and more people who believe in magick (just incidentally -- like the guy who cuts my hair told me some amazing stories of his wild psychism yesterday) and more and more evidence of things that I once thought to be completely in the realm of story books. This could simply be of the same order as when you buy a car you suddenly see the same model everywhere you go (though I've yet to see more than a couple of Mini Coopers a month in our neck o' the woods).

To conclude: go ahead and be as scientific as you wish -- your results will be exactly as you expect them to be!
 
 
illmatic
08:41 / 24.03.06
There should be no reason magic can't perform under lab conditions should there?

You really should read Ramsey Dukes. He deals with precisely this problem, in his SSOTMBE - Sex Scerets of the Black Magicians Exposed.

Thread here with lots of links and a podcast interview
 
 
illmatic
08:42 / 24.03.06
There should be no reason magic can't perform under lab conditions should there?

You really should read Ramsey Dukes. He deals with precisely this problem, in his SSOTMBE - Sex Scerets of the Black Magicians Exposed.

Thread here with lots of links and a podcast interview
 
 
illmatic
09:51 / 24.03.06
This is quite an interesting quote from the Ramsey Dukes interview (I post this in response to the Eval one:


The trouble with successes in magic is that you can look back and describe some things that happened and they are so amazing when that when you tell them to people they think you must be the world’s greatest Magician if you could do things like that. But you know that actually they didn’t happen in the way magic ought to - ‘I just want this to happen and I make it happen’. Very little have I managed to achieve in that way, life has a habit of springing surprises however hard you try to direct it. Some of those surprises are uncannily close to what you asked for, and yet they have a way of occurring which is not what you expected. I am very much aware of what is happening to me and it’s a sort of theme which occurs in fairy stories; the wish is granted but it doesn’t work out the way it was meant to. I think it must be a cosmic law that that should happen.

I don’t do much results magick myself for various reasons (part of which I never found a method that worked for me) but even amongst people that I know who are heavily invested in that sort of thing. it seems to me more like an exploration of their own creativity, a kind of strange adventure, than a simple process with casual cause-effect relationship. It's never input x - output y. This might make it seem from the outside like they’re making it all up, but seen from the inside this doesn’t matter - and also, one occasionally undergoes – or even frequently (if things get a bit heavy) - sufficiently startling coincidences that make such criticisms just irrelevant.
 
 
grant
13:00 / 24.03.06
There should be no reason magic can't perform under lab conditions should there?

Well, I'm thinking there's something contextual or social about the way some of this stuff seems to work that would be destroyed by blinding & the isolation necessary in lab conditions. But that's just my interpretation; dismissing things as "placebo effect" or "cold reading" assumes that refinements of those things aren't exactly what the practitioner is seeking.
 
 
Doc Checkmate
19:46 / 29.03.06
Let me disclaim by saying straight away that I'm a novice magician, a first-time poster, and also a dummy. That said: I think problems with laboratory magic might arise from the "lust for results" issue.

Whatever magic is and however it works, I think most people would agree that manipulation of consciousness and thought plays some role. If magic isn't all in our heads, it at least arises out of them. I learned that when I realized that simply crossing myself, drawing pentagrams in the air, and pronouncing names didn't cause anything to happen. The words and gestures aren't some ontological cheat code that just triggers change in the universe; magic depends (at least in part) on what's going on internally. Magic is much more like playing a sonata or throwing pottery than flicking a switch, and mental roadblocks can interfere with the manifested result: your attitude DOES matter, you CAN psych yourself out, and worrying about pulling the thing off WILL cause you to futz it up. Fellas, I offer sex and the dreaded Melty Man as a further, horrifying example.

With any activity requiring skill, you have to deftly navigate the comlicated and taxing bits without allowing yourself to a) notice how hard it actually is, or b) worry about messing up. This is tougher when a failure would have witnesses, or when there's some other consequence. Think of a gymnast, spinning and tumbling on zen autopilot in the middle of her routine; a trumpet player performing "Flight of the Bumblebee" at speeds beyond conscious processing of the notes; Arthur Dent keeping his attention gently diverted from the fact that he's flying, dreamily aware that dwelling on this fact would attract gravity's unwelcome attention. We all do this sort of mental water-walking to some degree, but - while I can't speak for anyone else - it can be hard as hell for me. I'm no Tibetan lama or zen archer.

Playing music at a recital introduces mental obstacles I don't face when playing in private, and I bet that working magic in a lab under a battery of recording devices would do the same thing. I have enough "is this gonna work?" concerns to deal with as it is, and I don't even want to think about how crap my magic would be if I knowingly brought in a methodology designed solely to measure and test results. I'm sure that a little more mental control would mitigate this problem a ton, but I still have to wonder whether anyone short of a seriously one-pointed magical badass could pull off a decent working with the oversized microscope overhead and electrodes clipped to the berry bag.

I know I'm rambling, which is a terrible thing to do on a first post. I'm spaced out from schoolwork and sleep deprivation. Sorry about that.
 
 
Doc Checkmate
22:18 / 29.03.06
Fellas, I offer sex and the dreaded Melty Man as a further, horrifying example.

Not actually offering sex, by the way. Bad choice of phrasing.
 
 
Evil Scientist
05:58 / 30.03.06
I have enough "is this gonna work?" concerns to deal with as it is, and I don't even want to think about how crap my magic would be if I knowingly brought in a methodology designed solely to measure and test results. I'm sure that a little more mental control would mitigate this problem a ton, but I still have to wonder whether anyone short of a seriously one-pointed magical badass could pull off a decent working with the oversized microscope overhead and electrodes clipped to the berry bag.

I would have thought there would be at least a few magicians with enough self-confidence to perform under lab conditions. I accept there might be more pressure, but "magical melty man" does sound like an excuse rather than an explanation. People can lower themselves into a meditative trance under lab conditions, an opera singer can hit the right note too. Why should magic be any different?

If it took that much self-confidence to work magic then how would anyone be able to start?
 
 
Quantum
07:17 / 30.03.06
When it becomes really impressive is when the number of choices increases (dice, deck of cards, etc). 'KinEvil

I regularly predict the next Tarot card to be turned over, because it's implicated by the cards already exposed. From an experimental perspective that's impossible, all face down cards have the same chance of being Death as The Lovers, but after the two of cups the Lovers is more likely. It really is.
I believe (without resorting to two-tailed t-tests) it's because the reading as a whole is set when the cards are shuffled and placed. Although they're face down to me, they are actually, physically one card or another, they're not like Schroedinger's Cat, they're pasteboard.

More to follow...
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
08:03 / 30.03.06
I'm kind of with Ev.Sci. on the meltyman thing. I think it might be quite stressful to perform magic under lab conditions, but then I often find magic stressful anyway; after all, I'm going to know if A got that new job or B recovered from hir health problems whether anyone else is watching or not. I almost never engage in magic that I have no emotional investment in, so there's always a certain amount of pressure at the beginning. You learn to rise above it, to let go of lust-for-result.
 
 
Quantum
13:52 / 30.03.06
I'd perform under lab conditions. TO THE LABORATORY! CRANK UP THE SONIC OSCILLATOR THREE MORE NOTCHES!

Otherwise you may as well say you're only magic when nobody's looking, pfft. Bring on the experiments!
 
 
Doc Checkmate
15:00 / 30.03.06
Otherwise you may as well say you're only magic when nobody's looking, pfft. Bring on the experiments!

Fair enough. As for me, I AM only magic when nobody's looking. It's bad enough that I'M looking. But then, that's n00bz for you. You're right, all, I shouldn't assume that the Melty Man cometh for experienced and at ease magicians.

It just seems to me that magic works better when you firmly believe that it's going to, without it even occurring to you that it might not. Bringing in "the method of science" for the specific reason of testing "whether it's real" brings in the question of doubt by its very nature. I reckon it'd be hard to credibly maintain a position of indifference towards results while taking efforts to verify them. I think this is a bit different from my (admittedly weak) "melty man" suggestion. Sorta reminds me of my classmates swearing they don't care about their exam grades while checking the online registrar every 10 minutes to see if they've been posted. They're being a tad dishonest, even if THEY believe they're not. No matter how confident you are in your work, by bringing in the experimental methodology you're basically acknowledging both the importance of results and the possibility that they may not come. I can see that being a problem in a field which, more than most, depends on the banishing of such ideas.
 
 
Quantum
16:04 / 30.03.06
It just seems to me that magic works better when you firmly believe that it's going to, without it even occurring to you that it might not.

True, introducing a critical observer might ruin the mood (as it were) and affect the results, but there would still be results surely? Is magic a delicate souffle that can't survive close examination? I don't think so, I think it's more like Art ("I cannot paint with that man with the clipboard watching! Painting is like making love to a beautiful lady!").
Couldn't you do the working then tell a third party what results you aimed at, so they could verify any success? Then you could avoid performance anxiety.

My problem with the whole scientific analysis of magic is that nobody can seem to agree what would constitute proof. If my intent is to help someone feel better and my method is talking to them for an hour, that's not going to convince anyone. If I win the lottery after predicting I will, that *would* convince some people but others would say it was luck or cheating. If I summon the Archangel Michael with a burning sword and the voice of God physically, on live national TV, there will still be people who deny it. S'a trick innit, like that Blaine bloke, probably CGI or done with mirrors or drugs in the water or CIA mind control... rationalisation makes the world safe. To hark back to Hume on miracles for the nth time, it is always going to be more rational to disbelieve violations of natural law. If an experiment did prove magic to be effective, the methodology would be assumed to be unsound. If the methodology were flawless, the participants and observers would be assumed to be liars, and even if well respected eminent scientists ran a massive double blind experiment that was significant to a zillion places and proved magic works, people would still not believe it because they don't want to.

What would proof of magic look like? What would convince YOU, personally, that magic wasn't demented superstition devised by misguided fools to delude and deceive the gullible?
 
 
Doc Checkmate
17:02 / 30.03.06
[...] even if well respected eminent scientists ran a massive double blind experiment that was significant to a zillion places and proved magic works, people would still not believe it because they don't want to.

The question's academic, though, isn't it? Because no one's ever pulled that off. I figure if people were conjuring Tzadqiel or whoever to visible appearance in front of a live audience and under strict lab conditions, there wouldn't be nearly as much discussion of the difficulties posed by proof and the scientific method. I don't think the problem is that people simply refuse to believe; it's that, point in fact, no one has yet walked the walk under lab conditions. I don't know that much about Project Stargate and things like that, so maybe it's happened and just isn't common knowledge. But barring secret government stuff, I'd imagine that a verifiable magical success in a lab would have drawn major public attention.
 
 
Quantum
13:32 / 03.04.06
OK, so what would be a *minimal* proof? Distorting visible light recordable on film? Biofeedback? Inducing emotions? Clairvoyance? Telepathy? I can point you at a study that proves couples have a significantly better chance of guessing something their partner knows than pairs of strangers do, would that count?

I see your point, but it seems to assume that proof would be an undeniable physical phenomenon like a flash of light or something- can we unpack what is and what isn't evidence of magic?
 
 
Doc Checkmate
16:59 / 03.04.06
For me, personally, it could be VERY minimal. I'd only ask that

a) the results be statistically significant, and
b) the experiment be controlled such that alternative causes could be ruled out (i.e. the relationship between the magic and the result would be shown to be causative, not merely correlative).

It wouldn't have to be very flashy results magic, although that would obviously provide the most viscerally convincing evidence. However, I don't know of any magical research meeting the above criteria (which are pretty basic standards of data analysis), flashy or not. I don't draw any conclusions from that fact, and there may certainly be research out there I don't know about, but there you are.
 
 
Quantum
17:33 / 04.04.06
I'm not sure about 2) there, magic is traditionally defined as acausal. I'm unclear why correlation would be insufficient, a significant correlation between intent and result would be enough IMHO.

Research-wise, here's some leads,
interesting articles
people researching the paranormal
and some meta-analysis.
 
 
Quantum
17:49 / 04.04.06
That last link is especially good, here's a good example of an attempt at proof and check this out;

One of the greatest unjust but often repeated criticisms of parapsychology is that its experiments only work when performed by true believers, and invariably fail when skeptics attempt to repeat them. But Helmut Schmitt devised an experimental error and fraud-proof experiment that demonstrated statistical significance at the 1/8000 likelyhood of chance level, by allowing the input of independent observers to choose which data would be subject to attempted psychokinetic modification and which data would be treated as a control.
 
 
Quantum
10:45 / 13.06.06
*bump* so Science and Magic then? In opposition, conjunction or parallel?
 
 
SteppersFan
12:23 / 13.06.06
OK, some trajectories.

* Magic and science used to be not just connected but the same subject. Then the science-y bits got seperated off and elevated, and the philosophy, and the psychology, until the inconvenient weird stuff got swept under the intellectual carpet. (Until quantum physics came along! Errr, probably better not go there...)

* Magic gets called the art and science of changing reality under will. But I think it's more an an art than a science as quantum mentions upthread. (And if ze can get it on with that funny man with the clipboard watching then ze's... well ze's a better porn star than me.)

* I imagine this might irritate some people so I apologise in advance, but I don't think science is really up to the task of judging magic yet. I don't think it's really got either the tools or the models. I call two authorities in my defence - a friend called Rufus whose done loads of magic and has some scientific training, though more on the soft psychology side than the hard physics side, and my aunty Jo, who's in her 80s and is a very committed Catholic. Rufus reckons science is a good couple of hundred years away from having the tools to be able to explain - as opposed to explain away - the magical experience, and I think he's right. While my aunty Jo, when I talked about this with her a couple of weeks back, reckoned "there's a lot in this world we don't understand". And that makes a lot of sense to me.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
13:04 / 13.06.06
I so didn't want to get involved in this discussion, which is just not my $chtick at all, but...

Well, here's a thing : why do scientists refer to the enormous percentage of the human genome which they have absolutely no idea what it's for as "junk"? All those periodic crystalline sequence of ACACACACACACACACACACA...nobody has been able to ascertain a function for this enormous percentage of the human genome (I think, though don't quote me, in excess of 80%).

So, it's "junk". So what, right? It's just a way of referring to it...perfectly innocent.

I think in these little telling innocent moments we can gain some insight into the difference in approach to the phenomenal world. I often find people give more of themselves away in perfectly innocent little non-sequiturs than in detailed curriculum vitae or self identifications...

So anyway, a magician, or at least, the one's i know who deserve the title, would never use a pejorative to describe something they were unable to comprehend. I mean, why not "mystery" DNA?

No, it's not a mystery. It's "junk". There mustn't be mysteries. Science is the business, (the business, mind you) of demystification. To describe it as "mystery" DNA would be...well, why not? How many instances of this type of thing can you find? There are loads...it is a fairly common parlance response to mysteries within the sciences...pejorative terminology...which has quite the stink of Auld Religious Dogma about it, to my rather delicate olfactory senses.

There is a very obvious and plain answer to the why of this little nugget, and I think it reveals a great deal about the differences between the two disciplines.

Both are very useful, both are essential in different situations, Yes we can use science, sometimes we should use science, no, it really doesn't matter.

Any more tuppences?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
13:15 / 13.06.06
I mean, come on...

How many of the greatest advances in Science have been a result of DREAMS for cying out loud? Sudden moments of intuition...

These are then checked using rationality...apply left brain domination and control to right brain freedom and timeless-spaceless-ness.

Magic is far more concerned with Right Brain activity than Left Brain activity. In magic we occasionally bring the Left brain to bear on our Right brain, but we are largely concerned with DEFEATING THE FUCKER. It already RULES THE FUCKING WORLD...Us included...we are trying to rebalance our own Universe, to claim back the Timeless and Spaceless One and Eternal which WILL BE and IS, but which that Left brain refuses to acknowledge because it is a scaredy little shitcake and a total control freak, and will not let up without a big struggle...which can only be defeated by giving up completely the notion of...oh, fucking work it out for yourself.

YES, is the answer to everything, OK?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
13:17 / 13.06.06
sorry

i knew i should stay away from this one
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:21 / 13.06.06
Well, here's a thing : why do scientists refer to the enormous percentage of the human genome which they have absolutely no idea what it's for as "junk"?

Y'know, I read that sentence, and here's what I thought:

"I wonder if this is true, and ALL scientists do indeed refer to this part of the human genome as 'junk', and that that's indicative of a really BAD attitude on their part - or whether this is a sweeping generalisation intended to smear the scientific approach even as YH$WH's post ends with an attempt to deny this is what he is doing? I'm no Lurid Archive, but even I have a feeling that perhaps science is not so mean and horrid as YH$WH is making out, and I have a suspicion that 30 seconds worth of Googling might demonstrate this."

Yeah. Turns out some of those evil scientists themselves have decided junk DNA is not, in fact, junk.

The term junk DNA refers to those portions of the genome which appear to have no specific purpose.

But a team from IBM has identified patterns, or "motifs", that were found both in the junk areas of the genome and those which coded for proteins.

The presence of the motifs in junk DNA suggests these portions of the genome may have an important functional role.

These regions may indeed contain structure that we haven't seen before

The findings are reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

But they will have to be verified by experimenters in the lab, the scientists behind the work point out.

Oh, hang on - they insist on "verifying" this, which as we all know is the same kind of thing done by the SPANISH INQUISITION. Science = still evil, kids!
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:24 / 13.06.06
we are largely concerned with DEFEATING THE FUCKER. It already RULES THE FUCKING WORLD...Us included...we are trying to rebalance our own Universe, to claim back the Timeless and Spaceless One and Eternal which WILL BE and IS, but which that Left brain refuses to acknowledge because it is a scaredy little shitcake and a total control freak, and will not let up without a big struggle...which can only be defeated by giving up completely the notion of...oh, fucking work it out for yourself.

YES, is the answer to everything, OK?

I must say, it's good to have someone on the board who's so opposed to "the stink of Auld Religious Dogma"...
 
  

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