The RSA Telepathy Debate

[Charles Pegge]

Royal Society of Arts, London, 15th January 2004

Text

http://www.sheldrake.org/D&C/controversies/RSA_text.html


(http://www.sheldrake.org/D&C/controversies/RSA_text.html)

[danbaron]

Lewis Wolpert:

The only way would be to try and repeat those experiments by other people, and I think, when for example, Rupert wants to go for personal anecdote … I’m terribly sorry, I don’t take personal anecdote seriously … sorry, that’s not the way science works. Sorry, you actually think … let me give you one of your personal anecdotes. When you’re at 400mph in an aeroplane, do you think there’s a force pushing you forward? Yes, or no? Cowards, come on … yes, or no? There isn’t, you know that. Force causes acceleration, not motion. So, your anecdote … all of you would say, “Yes, of course it’s a force. It’s the aeroplane pushing me forward. It’s false.”

What he said is absolutely false (wrong). If it were true, then, when you reached the plane's cruising speed, the engines could be turned off, and you could glide to your destination. Wind resistance is always active, trying to slow the plane, with a force linearly proportional to the square of the plane's speed. So, when you are flying at 400 mph in an aeroplane, besides the wind force pushing you back, there is in fact another force pushing you forward - that of the jet (or propeller) engines. The wind is constantly decelerating the plane, and simultaneously, the engines are constantly accelerating it.

Why does the wind try to slow you down? Basically because, in order to pass through the air, you must expend the energy necessary to move it out of your path.

[Charles Pegge]

Lewis Wolpert forgot to do his homework before the debate, or perhaps considered it unnecessary to study any of the telepathy research before adopting a sceptical posture. And several other scientist have gone so far as to deliberately misinterpret or disregard experimental data in order to maintain their public stance.

If you have time, Rupert Sheldrake's papers are a very good read. And he has designed some ingenious experiments to test aspects of his morphic field hypothesis.

Charles


Here is a sample video:

How Do Pigeons Home?
http://www.nautis.com/2007/06/how-do-pigeons-home/

[danbaron]

Lewis Wolpert:

Do you not think it’s remarkable that in a small group of people, very often two of you have the same birthday? Do you not find … would you find that? Do you know how many people you need in a room in order for the probability of two of you to have exactly the same birthday, is one half? Bet you don’t know … 23 … so if you want to make money, go to groups of 50 and that evens that there are two people in that room who have exactly the same birth date … you will make a fortune. You only need 23. If you don’t believe me, take any [who’s ?] who you like, (as I’ve done with students) and just let them randomly write down the birth dates of the people. How many do they have to go through, on average, before they find two with the same birth date? 23 - coincidence can be much more surprising than you would imagine.

n = number of people in room

p(n) = probability that at least two of them have the same birthday

p(n) = 1 - (365! / 365n / (365 - n)!)

Lewis Wolpert:

Well, it’s hard to review critically, without going into each case separately. I suppose, as a scientist, it’s slightly weird that, what the people who work in this field is just to provide more examples. They make no effort whatsoever to understand what’s going on. You see, any normal scientist would say, “Let’s take our best example for telepathy.” Let’s say it’s the phone. “Now, let’s try and understand what’s going on there.

I think that almost always in science, a phenomenon is observed to exist before it is understood. The debate was whether or not telepathy exists, not to criticize investigators for not having attempted to understand why it exists. He seems to have abandoned refuting the results of the supportive evidence, and changed to refusing to taking anything the investigators do seriously, because he is unhappy about what he feels they should also look at.

[Charles Pegge]

Rupert Sheldrake on Belief (and the Science Delusion)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b018nsjk/Belief_Rupert_Sheldrake/?ref=nf%20BBC%20Radio%203

[danbaron]

Interestingly, before I saw Charles' latest post in this thread, I started a thread about Montague Keen.

http://www.thinbasic.com/community/showthread.php?11579-Montague-Keen&p=85800#post85800

There, Montague Keen also refers to Rupert Sheldrake.

Charles' post = 2012-01-08, 23:14

my post 888888= 2012-01-09, 01:06

[Charles Pegge]

Yes the Montague Keen message was part my trail.