The Collective Placebo Effect? Collective Belief & Disbelief?

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

Morphic resonance can explain everything. If the efficacy of a drug improves with time then morphic resonance predicts this. If the efficacy decreases then morphic resonance predicts this too.

I am not unhappy with that hypothesis, it is worthy of testing IMHO however it is Sheldrake's theory, it is up to him to define the limits of his theory and possibly wrong for me to stamp extra interpretations upon it.

This is the beauty of a content free theory. It can predict anything. The accuracies of the predictions increase dramatically if you know what the results are before you make the predicitions.

Well of course, ideally the prediction must be made first. Possibly the best way to test it, is indeed to make a prior prediction but others in experiment believe something else is being tested altogether.

For example testing a placebo 1 against a placebo 2 however tell the single blinded medical researchers that one of these is a esteemed drug with excellent results in prior (invented) trials, monitor the results. Then do double blind later, if the effect continues in the double blind stage, that is impossible in current scientific paradigm?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David

Unfortunately, this same accusation can easily be levelled at natural selection. If a certain bird evolves a longer tail, it helps it to fly better, if it evolves a shorter tail, maybe it makes it less obvious to predators....

But you see, evolution doesn't require evidence, as Marvin Minsky so simply describes:

The Process of Evolution is the following abstract idea:

There is a population of things that reproduce, at different rates in different environments. Those rates depend, statistically, on a collection of inheritable traits. Those traits are subject to occasional mutations, some of which are then inherited.

Then one can deduce, from logic alone, without any need for evidence, that:

THEOREM: Each population will tend to increase the proportion of traits that have higher reproduction rates in its current environment.

Unless you disagree with the premises, the result follows. What the concept of "natural selection" does is suggest strongly that less fit organisms will disappear in the face of ones that are more fit. It does not say whether longer or shorter tails fit the bill.

Originally Posted by Chris

You can't do the same with morphic resonance. There is no way to manipualte it. There is no way to transparently make predictions from morphic resonance.

Hell, you can't even say which objects are associated with morphic resonance and which are not.

~~ Paul

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Hell, you can't even say which objects are associated with morphic resonance and which are not.

Guys I've just suggested an placebo VS placebo experiment above that could monitor the effects....

'....testing a placebo 1 against a placebo 2 however tell the medical researchers performing single blind experiment that one of these is an esteemed drug with excellent results in prior (invented) trials, monitor the results. Then do double blind later, if the effect continues in the double blind stage, that is impossible in current scientific paradigm? ...

The prediction would be the highly esteemed placebo beats the normal placebo in single blind, continues to work better than the non-esteemed placebo in double blind trials ......until researchers find out the drug was a placebo then, then the esteemed placebo decreases.

If that occurs, only something like Sheldrake's formative causation could explain it IMHO

[David Bailey]

Paul,

Minsky's theorem doesn't tell you that the only relevant effect is NS, nor does it tell you if there is enough time for NS to create our biosphere.

Chris likes to rubbish morphic resonance at least once a week, and I think he doesn't realise that theories often start off as tentative gropings after the truth.

I respect Rupert Sheldrake because he doesn't pepper his ideas with a large theoretical superstructure that is not justified by the facts, he concentrates on exposing facts that suggest Ψ, but then falls foul of Chris for not having a complete theory!

I guess that if drugs become less effective with time then SOMETHING has to have a memory. In the case of antibiotics, the reason for the change is obvious, but for other drugs, who knows?

David

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David

Minsky's theorem doesn't tell you that the only relevant effect is NS, nor does it tell you if there is enough time for NS to create our biosphere.

Indeed.

Chris likes to rubbish morphic resonance at least once a week, and I think he doesn't realise that theories often start off as tentative gropings after the truth.

I've got no problem with that.

I respect Rupert Sheldrake because he doesn't pepper his ideas with a large theoretical superstructure that is not justified by the facts, he concentrates on exposing facts that suggest ?, but then falls foul of Chris for not having a complete theory!

Of course he does. In order to convince us in the long run, he's gotta start coming up with a theoretical superstructure. Until then he's a data miner.

~~ Paul

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

I am not unhappy with that hypothesis, it is worthy of testing IMHO however it is Sheldrake's theory, it is up to him to define the limits of his theory and possibly wrong for me to stamp extra interpretations upon it.

A real theory makes predictions not because the author says they do but because the predictions transparently follow from the theory itself.

This is exactly the problem with morphic resonance. It has no substance. Nobody can formulate it in a manner in which it can transparently make predictions.

It should be possible for me to look at the theory and design an experiment which could falsify the theory. It should be possible for me to say that morphic resoance predicts A, my experiment found B therefore morphic resonance is false. Do think Sheldrake would accept that or do you think he's going to say well morphic resonance is my theory and it doesn't predict A it actually predicts B therefore your experiment supports morphic resonance?

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Chris likes to rubbish morphic resonance at least once a week, and I think he doesn't realise that theories often start off as tentative gropings after the truth.

Morphic resonance deserves to be rubbished. It was barely tentative groping in 1981. It is still content free 27 years later. The field of developmental biology for which morphic resonance was supposedly the answer has continued to make rapid progress.

I respect Rupert Sheldrake because he doesn't pepper his ideas with a large theoretical superstructure that is not justified by the facts, he concentrates on exposing facts that suggest ?, but then falls foul of Chris for not having a complete theory!

That is eerily reminiscent of somebody else. Guess who.

?You?re asking me to play a game: ?Provide as much detail in terms of possible causal mechanisms for your ID position as I do for my Darwinian position.? ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it?s not ID?s task to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories.?

I guess it's not Morphic Resonance's task to match the pathetic level of detail in physcial sciences.

[David Bailey]

Chris,

You don't seem to realise that some of us see science as having developed in a lop-sided way. This is no criticism of anyone involved, but the end result is that we have enormous detail of certain things, but only a very vague set of ideas about consciousness. Try looking at some orthodox ideas about consciousness if you want to experience some hand waving arguments.

Consciousness and Ψ are so little understood that any theory has got to be a far more tentative affair. For example, it can't possibly have a mathematical component at this stage. Demonstrating that conscious behaviour is inconsistent with known physics (as presentiment seems to do) is a very significant result, and would be well worth more testing by the science community. RS's results are also inconsistent with physics (more or less the definition of the paranormal). You call this a desperate search for anomalies, but in reality it is an attempt to demonstrate that consciousness operates at a much deeper level than is normally understood - i.e. it is not simply a consequence of the operation of normal physical laws.

If skeptical scientists could easily rubbish Sheldrake's or Radin's work, I suspect they would, but instead they rely on trying to score debating points (which doesn't work, BTW in a head to head discussion with RS as you have probably already discovered if you have listened to his radio encounter with Peter Atkins or his public debate with Lewis Walpert).

Remember that a lot of scientific development has begun with mavericks picking away at orthodox ideas.

David

[Tor]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Chris,
Demonstrating that conscious behaviour is inconsistent with known physics (as presentiment seems to do) is a very significant result, and would be well worth more testing by the science community.
David

Is it inconsistent with known physics? I'd say that modern physics is open to such effects. Delayed choice experiments can be interpreted as retroactive effects. In physics, the whole concept of time gets blurry when you start to pick at it.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David

You don't seem to realise that some of us see science as having developed in a lop-sided way. This is no criticism of anyone involved, but the end result is that we have enormous detail of certain things, but only a very vague set of ideas about consciousness. Try looking at some orthodox ideas about consciousness if you want to experience some hand waving arguments.

And some of us read a paragraph like this and just shake our heads. First of all, could it be that consciousness is a complex problem and so more time is needed to understand the details? And second, how can you say "... some hand waving arguments" with a straight face, when the solution of idealists and dualists is nothing but a hand wave?

Remember that a lot of scientific development has begun with mavericks picking away at orthodox ideas.

By all means, the mavericks should pick away. It's funny you should say that they are picking away at the "orthodox ideas," when their fuzzy ideas have been around much longer. The unorthodox scientist is the one who says that consciousness is a brain process.

David, you keep doing something I simply don't understand: You keep talking about the alternative ideas as if they have contributed something that mainstream scientists simply choose to ignore. Can you list three testable ideas from the likes of Sheldrake or Radin? I don't think so.

~~ Paul