[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre

Yeah I've seen that before. I still can't find any citations of that piece of research, nor do I have access to the full text (though I just emailed Dean). Considering that the controls were in California and the treated samples were in Tokyo, it's a safe bet the conditions in which they were kept were not identical. Of course they could have been identical, though at the least that would involve identical cooling systems (or sealed containers), identical temperatures (and temperature changes, if any), and identical sources of water.

I actually used to have the full text, in PDF form. Let me see if I can still find it in my hard disk.

Also your understanding of the experiment is wrong. The control samples were not in Tokyo. The controls were also in the US, but in a different location.

What was in Tokyo was the people thinking the thoughts. Thus among other things, the experiment shows that the thoughts produced in Tokyo can affect matter located in another part of the world. This sounds weird, but of course as you know, the Bohm interpretation already tells you about the principle of non-locality.

Also, an easy way to determine if the differences were a result of the 2000 people "treating" the samples, would have been to do two sets of shots of the crystals. The first set without any treatment. If there was a difference between the Tokyo and California crystals then, well, obviously something else is going on.

Oh, Radin was much more ambitious than you. He was not merely content to show that the thoughts affected the shape of the crystals. His experiment showed that positive thoughts affected the shape of the crystals in an aesthetically pleasing way.

This was done by getting a group of people to judge the photos of the crystals and rank them in terms of their aesthetic quality. Of course the judges were not permitted to note whether each photo belonged to which sample group of water.

Of course you might then point out that it could be the photographer being subject to confirmation bias, and unconsciously taking more beautiful photos of the water samples that he knew had been subject to positive thoughts. However, this was also subject to a blind control. The photographer was not allowed to know which group of water samples, each sample had come from.

End result - as you might guess by now - is that water samples subjected to positive thoughts produced crystals which were much more aesthetically pleasing (according to a bunch of unbiased judges who didn't know where each photo had come from). Yes the survey results were statistically analysed and the hypothesis held true at the 99.9% confidence interval (IIRC).

For those who forgot their statistics in high school, this means that there is only a 0.01 per cent chance that the survey conclusion was a fluke.

Clearly indicates? No, that's an interpretation of quantum theory and the results of some experiments. I'm not aware of any clear indication that it actually happens.

Yup, my point is more limited than that, and is merely a response to Cdn2wheeler. My point merely is that whichever interpretation in quantum physics you subscribe to - Everitt, CCC, Bohm, quantum entanglement etc etc - objective reality turns out not to be particularly "objective" at all (at least not in the way that Cdn2wheeler thinks it is).

IF you subscribe to the quantum entanglement theory, it DOES mean that every electron moving in my brain as I think thoughts is simultaneously influencing EVERY subatomic particle which each of those electrons has EVER collided with, REGARDLESS of when this collision took place and WHERE in the universe each of those subatomic particles currently is.

I think my above statement is quite precise btw. It sounds pretty awesome, but that's quantum physics for you.