RPKP: How did Decision Augmentation Theory come about, and who else was involved in its development?
May: DAT resulted from a carefully conducted RNG study we did for the Army in 1979. We spent over $250,000 on that single experiment so that if we saw an effect we would be certain from an engineering point of view to learn how it happened. Well we did see an effect and could prove that the hardware was not changed. The only thing left was that subjects were being statistical opportunists to capture deviant subsequences from otherwise unperturbed sequences. Beverly Humphrey and Jessica Utts are my colleagues from the beginning. James Spottiswoode joined much later but has also contributed.
RPKP: Could you elaborate on the basic hypothesis of DAT?
May: An RNG experiment is like an electronic coin flipper. Imagine that someone flipped a fair coin 10,000 times and wrote on a very long piece of paper the results. Might look something like this: htthhthttthhththhhhh.... Suppose I gave you a red pen and asked to walk along this long piece of paper and mark a spot where the next 10 coin flips had far too many heads in a row. You would have no problem making such a "decision." In the DAT model, subjects use psi to make a similar decision.
I thought it was any anomalous cognition, i.e. psychic perception, not just precognitive.My basic understanding was that DAT uses a variety of precognitive sensory experiences that factor into the decision making process?
I thought it was any anomalous cognition, i.e. psychic perception, not just precognitive.
Cheers,
Bill
In fact, DAT leads to the idea that there may be only one underlying mechanism of all anomalous mental phenomena, namely, a transfer of information from future to past.
Linda, I guess I did not understand your description. They say in the first paper:It's still regarded as "psi". The idea is that the selection is made non-consciously and sort of before the fact, making it still anomalous.
I thought they were simply saying that AC is integrated into the decision making process, but do not say how the AC occurs.Since the case for AC-mediated information transfer is now well
established (Bernm & Honorton, 1994), it would be exceptional if we did
not integrate this form of information gathering into the decision
process. For example, we routinely use real-time data gathering and
historical information to assist in the decision process. Why then should
we not include AC in the decision process? DAT holds that AC
information is included along with the usual inputs that result in a final
human decision that favors a "desired" outcome. In statistical parlance,
DAT says that a slight, systematic bias is introduced into the decision
process by AC
The "decision-making process" includes making sure that the targets are assigned in a way that makes the experiment look like it was successful. The idea is that anomalous cognition on the part of the researcher is used to let them know in advance which assignments will be advantageous. This is different from subjects altering the outcome based on anomalous cognition. In statistical parlance, there is a systematic bias introduced into 'selection from a normal distribution' vs. unbiased 'selection from a perturbed distribution'.Linda, I guess I did not understand your description. They say in the first paper:
I thought they were simply saying that AC is integrated into the decision making process, but do not say how the AC occurs.
Cheers,
Bill