On Sun, 10 May 1998 Damien Broderick <damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> Wrote:
>I knew in advance from many decades of psych tests on college kds
>etc, and from previous psi studies, that populations don't
>free-respond literally *at random*.
If there is anything to psi then the responses should most definitely not be
random. The only thing wrong with hunches generated from astrological charts,
birthdays and patterns on play slips is that they're wrong.
>people will always collectively choose White in the first place, but
>the vote is two percent higher (say) when White *was* the target
>than when it wasn't.
I don't know enough about the Zenith study to comment specifically but in
general I do know that if I flip a coin a million times the probability I
will get exactly half a million heads and half a million tails is almost zero.
>The answer is obvious: don't compare 7's vote with 41's, but
>7-when-it-wins with 7-when-it-loses.
Well OK, but then you've reduced your effective sample size to only about 2%
of what it was before, and that would greatly increase the noise in the data.
>No data or animals were harmed in the course of this experiment.
Glad to hear of it, otherwise I'd have to report you for cruelly torturing
innocent data bits. By the way I once had an idea I admit is more than a
little loony, maybe psi exists but there is an inverse relationship between
the faith a person has in it and a persons psi ability. Perhaps that explains
its ephemeral nature, a person experiences psi directly and becomes convinced
that it's real and as a result loses every last shred of psi ability .
If so then the real psychics are those who think it's all a crock of shit and
a die-hard skeptic such as myself is due to have a profound mystical
experience worthy of the X files any day now. (:>)
John K Clark johnkc@well.com
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