Does quantum mechanics explain extra sensory perception?

Here is an article that poses the same question as RW did to start this thread. I think that some people do indeed "know" when close friends or relatives experience trauma although they are physically great distances away. The problem is trying to make sense of sub atomic phenomena using a complex organism like the brain that is made up of almost innumerably atoms. Or to put it another way I have given this some thought and read various articles and books about it but it is always just beyond my comprehension and tends to give me a headache.

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Albert Einstein called the theory of quantum entanglement, "Spooky action at a distance." Quantum entanglement basically says that any two particles that have interacted before are bound to each other regardless of distance, and affects the other one. Quantum entanglement theory may be a scientific explanation of ESP in that people who exhibit these tendencies, interact with information on a sub-atomic level. Someone who is perceptive to extra sensory material may be tuned into this type of linking much like we can tune into a radio station.

When one particle, which was once linked to another, can affect its distant partner instantly than this could explain telepathy. Science has shown us how two particles can somehow interact on different sides of the universe without a signal passing between them. If you take quantum entanglement one step further, it could explain ESP as well.

http://imgreencat.hubpages.com/hub/canextrasensoryperceptionbeexplainedt...

Even Richard Dawkins doesn't claim a 100% certainty there is no god - you're building a straw atheist.

I think you'd have to show some evidence that extra sensory perception exists beyond the level of random chance in a large enough sample before you could even begin to explore whether quantum physics has any intersection. Not that it has stopped shysters like Chopra and innumerable other from quantuming it up all over the place.

There doesn't appear to be an end to the stuff we don't know about, or don't know enough about in order to render qualified opinions.  I suppose the same might apply to much of the stuff posted hereabouts.  Such as where all of the rubble and torn apart mass of suns, planets and galaxies go when they’re devoured by black holes?  Does it all disappear from existence entirely, or if not, into what reality does the material emerge into?  In terms of different realities from one body to another, someone's experience and reality may be remembered quite differently by another person that has observed the same life being spoken about.  And so the true reflection or recording of someone’s life may be marked on other people’s consciousness in a slightly altered manner which bends or warps the reality of the life being spoken about.  If we were to conclude that most people would prefer that only the best moments of their lives are recounted during their funeral service, and final instructions are given to this effect by the deceased prior to their passing, this is the only means of transmission that we know of whereby some of the contents of one’s brain is transmitted to another, and then onward into other memories.

.....aaaaaaaaand cue Fidel's collection of whack jobs!

It's certainly an area of study requiring caution because of the tendency for well established extrapolations to abound.

Rebecca West wrote:

If you can change the properties of a particle by observing it, does that not mean that perception informs physical reality? If thoughts are a series of electrical impulses, without conductors and capacitors what's to constrain them? Discuss.

Changing the properties of a particle in quantum mechanics refers to the fact that in order to observe a particle at that level, which means defining it's position in this case, you have to intract with it with relatively large forces that will change it's position. It's not changing the particle itself, just it's trajectory. So if you used a jet of air to measure the speed of a ping pong ball vs a basketball, the obvious physical realities mean the air would likely affect the ping pong balls trajectory much more than the basketball, but the balls aren't changed. So, if in order to see a tree, our eyes put out rays that burn the tree, perceiving the world changes it.

And, the electrical impulse in the nerves is a chemical process that occurs across the cell membrane of a nerve cell. It's not like in a wire, although it could be thought of as many short wires that span the cell membrane, rather than along it. Any fields associated with them due to "thoughts" and/or physical asymmetries would be the sum of all the smaller ones, which is a function of instantaneous physical condition.

Timebandit wrote:

.....aaaaaaaaand cue Fidel's collection of whack jobs!

By comparison Utts has a Ph.D, has written text books on statistics, and she uses her real name online.

Who's more credible in this case,  someone who goes by 'Timebandit' or Jessica Utts who's "done the math"?

Sorry to undermine your babble cred like this, but someone had to say something.

From your article, Fidel:

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These proposals are extremely speculative.

What do those quotes that have to do with anything I said?  Never mind that we could just as easily look at what some people expected was going to happen a decade ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6ywMnbef6Y

I'm just saying that physical principles that apply at the subatomic level and in high energy states don't translate so well to the stable environment necessary to support our existence. I also wouldn't look at a waterbug and assume I could take a stroll across the pacific ocean.  And speculation notwithstanding, there aren't any solid links.

As for the paranormal, I already said that I consider it an open question, so I am not sure who you are arguing with. That doesn't mean I ascribe to all the ideas that are justified by pseudoscience, for instance stuff along the lines of "the secret". The dark side of that belief is that people who suffer illness, misfortune or violence are secretly asking for it and drawing it on themselves through the law of attraction.

Fidel wrote:

Why do you think scientists are studying particle physics if it's as disconnected from reality, human biology, grammar and punctuation as youve implied?

Well to my understanding the grail they are looking for is a unified field theory.

Also, a lot of it does have practical applications, from stuff as mundane as sausage casings, to replacing the work of making isotopes that we currently need reactors for.

I expect janfromthebruce knows a lot more about that than I do.

As for that other stuff, I'm not saying that no connection is possible. On the other hand, it's not good science just leap to an assumption and then go looking for stuff that fits your model. And that goes double for quantum theory, which has been way over used and abused as an excuse for stuff that likely has nothing at all to do with what it is really about.

There's plenty of stuff I think might exist for which I have no explanation. But until such time as an explanation or a refutation happens, I prefer to keep it simple.

Actually we do have evidence for between humans.

It just doesnt happen routinely as with other animals.

The minimum: countless documented cases of people knowing a loved one has died or is in serious distress. Do the math, and there is essentially zero probability that all the investigated cases are just undiscovered hoaxes and/or cases where people wittingly or not hid how they otherwise knew. This will never amount to 'proof' to dogmatic skeptics because there is never going to be an intsitution with a stake in cataloguing and verifying information.

It isnt only simple thoughts that are transmitted between people. It is just that it so episodically happens that it isnt really feasible to set up the kind of testing that comes easily. Seems to me it would take data crunching rooted in data gathering and the design and execution od sophisticated probabilistic enquiries... a more modest version of what it took to try out the theories of partcicles so that there would be some idea of what to look for.

Rebecca West wrote:

Just because you don't yet have the capability to prove something does not mean it's untrue. Merely untested. There have been studies that strongly suggest that the electrical impulses we call thoughts can be transmitted and received. Proof of ESP? Not nearly. But it's enough to create a compelling argument for the possibility that our thoughts are not necessarily confined within our grey matter. I'm not talking about crystal balls, tarot cards or The Amazing Kreskin. What science suggests is that simple thoughts and emotions can be transmitted between people without any visual cues. There isn't so much evidence in humans (hey, who needs ESP when you have Facebook), but other animals show us that information gets passed between them all the time (migratory patterns, group behaviors, etc.). So why not us?

Personally I don't understand the constant caveats and apologies that attend these conversations. ESP simply means extra-sensory perception, meaning the ability to perceive something beyond the normal capacity of what we traditionally accept as our five physical senses. Of course this exists. And of course phenomena exist outside of our sensory ability to perceive it. Perhaps most phenomena in the universe, in fact. Why would we assume the contrary? That would be idiotic, given the limitations of our physiology.

I don't understand why anyone would argue against this. What possible interest or stake could they (one) have in such an argument?

Now, as for possible connections to quantum theory, I have no idea. I'm still trying to figure out relativity.

Fidel wrote:

 There are two kinds of science today. There is basic research, and then there is corporate science, and they are not the same thing.

The problem is that its almost always difficult to tell them apart, but you're right to suggest that it's about the uses science is dedicated toward in Capitalist societies for example, and their influence upon research. Take Psychology for instance, a peer reviewed, scientific sounding field of inquiry, studied, evaluated, and fine tuned in practice and in the universities. We already know from this society that universities are geared toward the production of managers, technologists, and theorists for Capitalism. They're not in the business of growing revolutionaries on trees. The observation here is that Psychology, as a product of the institutions of learning, attempts to treat the individual so as to better adapt to society, and not the other way around. Correspondingly, almost any scientific field we can think of, geology, biology, genetics, etc, are continuously adapting everything imaginable to the economy. As biological forms ourselves, we're almost entirely subsumed by it, and thus our expectations of science are already preconceived, pre-packaged in shrink wrapping if you will. Instead of shutting the door on everything as a result of such challenges to science, its better to leave it open a crack, if only to facilitate an escape route for the truth across the threshold of scepticism.

"The minimum: countless documented cases of people knowing a loved one has died or is in serious distress."

I've actually had such an experience.  I was asleep on the couch in the living room.  I woke up for no reason I could discern, and looked right at the telephone on the coffee table. 

It started to ring.  It was 3:30 AM.

The person calling though unrelated by blood was nonetheless close to me, but living 200km away in Toronto.  She was in a great deal of distress.  Not life threatening, but in a very distressfull situation.

We dealt with the problem, and about a week later I asked her if she had called a number of times.  My thinking was that she had called and got the answering machine before I actually woke up.  I sleep deep.  It seemed perfectly reasonable to me that her first calls brought me out of sleep, and I was only fully awake for the second call.

She said I picked up on the first ring.

I'm sure Fidel would describe me as a militant atheist and skeptic.  I am okay with that.  Rebecca West and I discuss ESP and quantuum stuff from time to time.  We don't agree.  I think it's a big stretch to say that somehow that person from the erie phone call and I somehow exchanged sub atomic particles and then "spooky action at a distance" set particles "spinning" in a fashion that is interpreted as alarum in the human brain.

Because if you are invoking quatuum stuff, this is what you are saying must be happening, if we are to restrain ourselves to what is known. (and if not, then anything can be true, so what's the point of all this conversation then?)

I was nearly 50 when that happened.  Think of that.  The one truly "wierd" event in my life that I can't explain.

What's wierd about that, really, is that in half a century of living, don't you think I should have MORE wierd experiences?

What happened was a coincidence.  Remarkable?  Maybe, but they happen and that's what happened there.  One wierd coincidence in 50 years is not really remarkable.

There are also times when I've felt anxious, felt something was wrong with my three daughters from my first marriage who live in Toronto, and called them.  They were fine and dandy.  There were times when bad-- really bad things-- happened to them when they lived close by here in London, and I had no inkling, no "feeling" that something was wrong.

 We remember the "hits" and forget the "misses". It's probably a valuable tool for survival-- pattern recognition.  I think we are so good at it, we often see patterns where none exist.

Tommy_Paine wrote:

We remember the "hits" and forget the "misses". It's probably a valuable tool for survival-- pattern recognition.  I think we are so good at it, we often see patterns where none exist.

Makes sense intuitively. But I dont think so.

What you can generalize is that we dump what does not fit. That can include seeing a pattern where there isnt really one. Possibly because we have some cognitive stake. Like something is cool, or that we want to believe.

But we are VERY good at not seeing patterns that later we realize were OBVIOUS... because they dont fit and/or they are inconvenient.

Well perhaps "militant" atheist is an extreme that you don't fit the bill for. I would say militant atheists are not only skeptical, they also spend a lot of time trying to prove the impossible, like trying to prove that God doesn't exist, or that the U.S. Government's version of 9/11 events is infallible and thereofore must be the truth. 9/11 Blogger site has been the target of much "debunkery" by anonymous self-proclaimed experts while the government guys just don't feel obligated to prove anything they say.

But there are people with certain "talents" in the world for sure. They are paid well for their efforts and don't advertise. There are plenty of charlatans, and the skeptics are al over them like loose fitting suits. One person has been known to be able to locate missing people, and he's pretty good at it. Try finding someone in the city of Tokyo from afar. He says much of Tokyo looks the same. And sometimes missing people don't want to be found, he says. Add to the difficulties faced by remote viewers, their targets often move around a lot like people do now and again. But Joe McMoneagle's best work was during the cold war locating nuclear power plants and hidden factories making weapons grade plutonium. He was a remote viewer for the Yanks. The former USSR used them, too.

Some people are like places: some shine more than others.  - Dick Hallorann, 'The Shining'

You are assuming that ESP would work perfectly, more or less like any other sense. The assumption is erroneous in itself.

And quite wrong.

Nor does it make sense even.

If these are things that humans do only sporadically and with difficulty...

[That very rare individuals can direct it predictably is an exception that doesnt change how the capabilities fit within what humans do. What certain exceptional individuals can do falls under the rubrik of what we as a species can do only sporadically and with difficulty / special effort.]

I'm not demonstrating it exists, or even trying really. Just accounting for if it exists, how it fits in.

Tommy_Paine wrote:

I would think ESP would be such a huge survival advantage that, if it existed, most of us would have it, and use it as a sense like we use our hearing and vision. 

I remember reading something about biological advantages. I think if we had evolved to be perfect predators, we would be able to outrun any other animal, and yet it's the other way around. We should have sharp claws and teethfor tearing open flesh with ease like a lion's paws or jackal's razor sharp fangs. Instead we are not much of a threat in that category, either, except to maybe apples and bananas. And we should have great nocturnal videes for seeing night dangers and food alike, like an owl or a cat.  Instead we were among the hunted and vulnerable for millenia's worth of evolution. Yes, big cats were the top predators for something like 40 million years. We have only managed to threaten the existence of every other living thing for a short time by comparison.

I think we had few choices but to develop our mental abilities in order to survive as long as we have. I've met some amazing people with fantastically sharp minds. People never cease to amaze me. And we've only been supreme beings in the food chain for a relatively brief period.

Now, imagine that evolution is at work elsewhere in the grand scheme of things and even other worlds. Imagine that other species have developed similarly. They were the hunted for millenia and had to develop mental abilities to survive. Imagine that they survived their own technological adolescence and didn't blow-up their worlds with nuclear or biological weapons. Imagine that they are thousands and even millions of years more technically advanced than us. I suppose that would mean that we are not God's only creations, and that Toronto or New York is not the center of the universe. Preposterous, you say? I think that, too, is a possibility. Evolution may well have produced very, very amazing people elsewhere, and I think they might even be perceived by us to have God-like mental and technical capabilities. They might look at our ability to manufacture striped toothpaste and even iPhones as backwards or even primitive by comparison.

Why do I say this? Because evolution has no best by date. There is no rule that says it stops here with us.

Tommy_Paine wrote:

I find belief in ESP is akin to those who believe in the "God of the Gaps" -- it exists only where our knowledge ends, and dissapears when we aquire new knowledge.

I think it could be a sixth sense and expainable by an expanded theory of evolution. I think evolution produces anomalous quirks in biology which may or may not be advantageous to survival. I think ESP is one of those traits we may or may not need, like hair on our heads, tonsils, tailbones or an appendix. We don't need them to surivive, and yet they exist. Gravity is another one that stymies scientists - we can't see it directly yet everyone believes. And since Einstein etc we now understand there are natural forces of strong and weak nuclear. Our best minds living before turn of the last century would have been schooled in Newtonian atomic theory and thought the idea ridiculous. Since Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg, Newtonian atomic theory is overthrown. "Scientist as unobserved observer looking on" is no longer thought to be true. They think now that the universe is dynamic and seemingly self aware - it seemingly knows when scientists are attempting to observe it.  Perhaps the current standard model needs updating. Scientists think so. "Nobody understands quantum mechanics." - Richard Feynman. Perhaps we will someday. Evolution and technological advancement are just a matter of time.

Very good, fly. Impressive.

flymeetointment wrote:

These concepts will take hundreds or even thousands of years to understand.

That sounds reasonable. And I think evolution has been shown to skip long periods previously thought needed to develop certain characteristics. We went from using stone tools 50,000 years ago to landing on the moon by the 1960's. Seemingly this happened at breakneck speed in evolutionary terms.

Dr. Michio Kaku suggests that we man-womankind are, perhaps just 100 to 200 years from becoming a type I civlization described by the Kardashev scale of technological development. According to Dr. Kaku once and if we attain type I status, a number of tech possibilities should be within a few decades to a century or two.  Some of the tech possibilities he lists are the following: ray guns, force fields, invisibility, teleportation, star ships, anti-matter engines, telepathy, artificial inteligence etcetera.

Dr Kaku and a number of scientists and engineers he has interviewed over the years are optimisitc about the possibilities for telepathy and mind reading.  Computer technology can now be used to interfere with the brain. This isn't tinfoil hat theory but the truth.  They talk about  current technology for 'brain gate',  a direct connection between the brain of a stroke victim and a laptop is already possible. A paralyzed person can learn to play video games, send email, and control objects by thought processes.         

Telepathy? I would guess a few hundred but not thousands of years away.

flymeetpointment wrote:

We may have com a long way in a short time but we still use fossil fuel and that, I believe is our next big challenge. Of course, what baffles me the most is why any of us care about a future none of us will see.

Ah! I think we should never forget that people are amazing. We've had to be to make it this far.  There is no end to what we can imagine and eventually make real. Evolution and tech are just a matter of time. The next 100 to 200 years will be the most critical time in human development - we either make it or we don't.

“We now have the technology to take ET home. No, it won't take someone's lifetime to do it." - unconfirmed X-Files type internet quote of Ben Rich, former director of Lockheed's "skunkworks"

That's true. We may never understand the secrets of the universe, said Britain's top scientist. It could be that our brains are not evolved enough for the task. Understanding all of the secrets of the universe is probably a technically advanced type IV civilization. They would likely be capable of harnessing energy of the stars within a galaxy and capable of what is currently both technically and theoretically impossible for us. And if such a civilization exists somewhere out there, they would be god-like compared to us. They would likely be millions of years if not billion of years more evolved and more technically advanced. They would be totally awesome.

But I still think it's possible that we may develop into a type I to type II(Star Trek) civilization with a few hundred years. This is not unrealistic. Type III(i.e. Star Wars technology) is probably hundreds of thousands of years in the future. And type IV("the Borg"?), if it's even possible, would surely represent millions of years of evolutionary and technological advancement.

"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."

flymeetointment wrote:

Are we in other words "doomed" to become borg like as an inevitable result of technological advancement?

I don't know, but I don't think so. I mean, Star Trek is science fiction even though the writer put a lot of time and effort into researching the science and pseudo-science behind it. I think that for one thing we would not be exploring space like the Federation. According to Kaku and the scientists he has spoken with, manning space ships for arduous and long space journeys would be a most ineffecient way of exploring space. We will likely stay at home and send out von Neumann probes similar to the 2001: Space Odyssey scenario.

As for will we continue along the path of predatory aggression but this time in space? I don't think so, either. As Kaku said about it, if a type III or IV is that technically advanced, for what reasons would they want to enslave us or dominate us in any way? I think predatory aggression and even imperialism is a primitive trait that advanced civilizations will have left behind in their evolutionary and technological development. And I think, according to Sagan anyway, that we will not evolve much past our own technological adolescence unless we drop the imperialism and aggression toward one another. As Sagan said about it, most scientists before him were not very optimistic about not blowing ourselves to kingdom come with nuclear weapons or whatever in a fit of passion.

I think that if a Borg-like civilization does exist, then they will surely have no need to either assimilate us or to occupy our planet or our minds. I think that this is a leftover idea from our imperialist past which has no place in the future by virtue of, perhaps, aggression is and violent behavour is probably a non-successful evolutionary trait beyond a certain point, like a built-in safety mechanism against proliferation of would-be interplanetary evil doers.  If I read Sagan right, the species which might be out there and survived their own technological adolscence perhaps thousands if not millions of years ago, will have need of nothing from us.  In my own opinion, I think they will not only be much more technically, physically and mentally more evolved than us, they will also have highly developed ethics and morals and probably not want to interfere with us any more than Darwin would have wanted to imperialize the Galapagos and its occupants. I think that we might be assuming that having vast intellect must equate to superimperialism in the future? Will we become the Borg in the future? Uber-Morlocks perhaps? Or will we be supplanted by our own technological creations for artificial intelligence, like Gort in Day the Earth Stood Still?

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"Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”  ― H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

Well I think the current state of affairs doesn't look good for the future. Dr. Jane Goodall answered a question about climate change put to her recently in an interview with CBC's Business News. She was asked what she has to say to people who don't believe in dangerous climate change. And Goodall said that by all scientific accounts that she has read, it is happening and largely due to unsustainable levels of carbon emissions by us.

We surely have unleashed human desire and greed on the world since the mid 1980's. We were told that this is far better than Soviet communism which couldn't keep up with promises of two cars in every garage and middle class capitalism based on consumerism. We know now that it was lies and propaganda by the west. We know now that unleashing greed on the world has resulted in stripping the world's resources at a frenzied pace and pollution galore. We know now that unfettered greed will destroy us if we can't control it. Not so easy to do under a socio-economic system that pretends to believe in invisible hands for non-intervention in economic affairs.

Professor Barnhardt: "It's only at the precipice that we change."

I think the problem for us is that we don't change so easily. We evolve and somewhat slowly. Our ancestors are killed by saber tooth cats a long time before we develop our brains well enough to avoid being kitty snacks. Nuclear weapons scared hell out of my generation. But 'global warming'? It sounds as if fuzzy and warm on a planetary scale. I think if we want people to react to global warming, then we should paint the same words on the side of some lions and tigers and unleash them on main street. That should light a motivational fire under us to deal with the issue.

ETA: I think that a type IV will have conquered a lot of things. Diseases? They may have attained immortality. It would merely be more efficient allocation of resources than to watch one another, society's long term investments,  die off so soon after pouring all that time and education and life experiences down the mortality hole a few decades later as old age overtakes them. I think they will have solved immortality like we have solved mass die offs by small pox and the like. Death might be just a preventable disease for them.

I think a type four will have conquered material desires and material poverty millions of years prior. I think it was conquered on the old Star Trek with the replicator. Creating new matter would be a neat trick, though, and perhaps a technical capability for a type IV. And they surely will have developed energy resources beyond our on own energy from dead plant material in fossil fuels. I think there would be nothing we could offer them that they would need or desire. It would be like coveting the worldly possessions of a troop of monkeys.

I think they might want to observe us, catalog and classify us, like Charles  Darwin did with lizards, turtles  and birds. They might have some curiosity for us and want to keep tabs on us from time to time.