Psychic Experience - Actually psychic, or explainable by science?

[Calculusaurus]

Originally Posted by MattFYF

I read my sic-induced post as if I had the hiccups!

We live in a world where everything thinks they're right. I could possibly tolerate that, but it gets worse: We not only live in a world where everyone thinks they're right, but also where everyone thinks they're open-minded!

Everyone's right AND open-minded. Agh! It's a frustrating combination. And to think that I (of all people) am one of them!

So thanks, Matt, for not taking my post as an attack. But as a scientist myself, I find it frustrating to find ego-driven, biased opinions STILL lingering in the minds of scientists (and I'm sure I have plenty).

If you look at the history of science, just about every big advancement pissed people off. The earth's not the center of the universe? Bollocks! Ecological diversity is the product of "natural selection"? Laughable! Particles are just probabilistic waveforms? Even Einstein hated that one.

Our current knowledge in neuroscience is faced with two big "elephants in the room" -- huge unanswered mysteries that even the best neuroscientists dishearteningly lose sight of.

The first is that we have no theory of how the brain works. Lots of data, but no theory. This roughly boils down to us not knowing how information is encoded in action potential spike trains.

The second, which may or may not be a question of neuroscience, is that we have no working theory of consciousness. This question may be so far down the road of science that it's scary just to think about.

I find it somewhat sad that with those two big unanswered questions, people passionately defend either side of the extra-sensory perception debate.

I second Erin! Does anybody have any links like that? Or perhaps links to interesting studies done that have been validated by science?

There's so many...

For pro-paranormal science, I highly recommend starting with Dean Radin's book:

Amazon.com: Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality: Dean Radin: Books

It meticulously reviews significant studies in extra-sensory perception to the date of publication. I would be wary of his meta-analysis which concludes that the odds of ESP not existing is something like 1 in a googol. There are many invisible "statistical demons" he ignores in his analysis. Nevertheless, it's a good read.

Also, read Dean Radin's blog while you wait for your book to ship:

Entangled Minds

The second person you might want to follow is Susan Blackmore. She's had many paranormal experiences such as OBEs, which inspired her to become one of the most prominent researchers in parapsychology. After 10 years in the field she threw in the towel because the studies just weren't giving any indication that ESP exists.

Read her story here:

First Person - Into the Unknown

Originally Posted by Susan Blackmore (from the link)

It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena and launched me on a crusade to show those closed-minded scientists that consciousness could reach beyond the body and that death was not the end. Just a few years of careful experiments changed all that. I found no psychic phenomena - only wishful thinking, self-deception, experimental error and, occasionally, fraud. I became a sceptic.

And for more Susan Blackmore (these articles are a must-read):

The Elusive Open Mind: Ten Years of

Originally Posted by Susan Blackmore

After all these years of research, I can only conclude that I don’t know which is more elusive—psi or an open mind.

[Cuddles444]

There is a lot yet to be discovered by science and in the future they probably will be able to tell us why certain things we term psychic work. That doesn't discount the fact that we are able to lock into unfamiliar territory long before science gets to play with it.