Interesting ESP experiments.

Cool.

Hopefully it bears fruit and nets her or her subjects the prize!

eta: The "mechanism" part seems dubious to me, though that seems to be a contribution of the article author and not any actual researcher.
 
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Dr. Diane Powell: The best that I can come up with for now is based upon the idea that we live in a holographic universe. Embedded in a multi-dimensional universe are hidden dimensions. I think non-locality is really just a product of living in a multi-dimensional universe. In a holographic universe, every point in space/time can have a representation of all of space/time. So all information could be embedded in space/time itself. When people have psychic experiences, they could be tapping into this information because of how the universe is constructed. Our consciousness field is also holographically organized and people with these abilities can access information from it selectively.
 
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I guess this is why magicians/illusionists can be useful observers in psi demonstrations ;)
Alex Tsakiris: Let me interject here. Do you recall what were some of the first instances of that that you bumped into that you really thought, ‘Wow, this is interesting,’ and then you followed it up and found that there weren’t good answers coming back?

Dr. Diane Powell: Yes. The first one happened when I was a teenager. A friend of mine traveled in the circus during the summer and invited me over to his house because the magician that he traveled with was there. He had talked very highly about him. His name was Jay Michelle and he did Houdini-like tricks, but when I met him he wanted to show me some other things that he could do. He had me stand across the room from him, which was about maybe 15 feet away. There was a bookshelf behind me with around 1,000 books. He said, “Pick any book out. Open it up to any page and as you’re reading it I’ll read it to you.”

And he did just that…. for several books and several pages. It blew my mind. When I asked him about it he said, “Oh, that’s just a magic trick. It’s just magic.”

I said, “Okay, okay. I guess it’s just magic.”

I asked my father about it and he said, “Well, there is this controversial topic called telepathy and that’s what it sounds like to me.”
 
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Well, it seems parapsychology has finally moved beyond the statistical desviations and it's pulling out the real deal. Waiting for the paper with enthusiasm :P
 
The idea of a Holographic Universe came from Bohm, and the Holonomic Mind from Pribram, but while both have - at least at some point - expressed belief in the reality of Psi I don't know if they'd explain it in the way that Powell does.

As I recall the savants mentioned in the Powell interview w/ Skeptiko were just good at factoring multiples of large primes, rather than having any Psi abilities?
 
I looked at Dianne's website and felt it was a bit wooly to say the least. That said, her book on ESP received ok reviews IIRC. In any case, it will be interesting to see what her results are at the parapsychology conference. I remain rather skeptical of the claim that it could be a breakthrough. But we'll have to wait and see.
 
I would caution the people running those expts to make sure the subject cannot be cued by another human being, even unconsciously. Because that is the first thing that the Randi Challenge will ask for, and it would be tragic to assume telepathy only to discover that when you eliminate all possibility for human interaction, the phenomenon disappears.
 
Yeah, maybe someone from this forum who has a keener intellect and is a superior subject matter expert on psychic research should email her and caution her about possible subtle sensory leakage. After all, what could she possibly know? She's only taught neuropsychiatry at Harvard Medical School, studied neuroscience and molecular biology, served as the Director of Research at the John E. Mack Institute, researched "the neuroscience of extraordinary states of human consciousness and anomalous experiences," and wrote a book on the scientific case for psychic phenomena. Not to mention personally studying autistic savants (the subject of the referenced topic).

Anyway, I'll reserve any judgment until I get a chance to review her publications on this. May be interesting.

Cheers,
Bill
 
Yeah, maybe someone from this forum who has a keener intellect and is a superior subject matter expert on psychic research should email her and caution her about possible subtle sensory leakage. After all, what could she possibly know? She's only taught neuropsychiatry at Harvard Medical School, studied neuroscience and molecular biology, served as the Director of Research at the John E. Mack Institute, researched "the neuroscience of extraordinary states of human consciousness and anomalous experiences," and wrote a book on the scientific case for psychic phenomena. Not to mention personally studying autistic savants (the subject of the referenced topic).
Let's see what she has done:
  • Wants to investigate Nandana.
  • Planning to run experiments with a 10-year-old autistic child.
  • Has some staggering results from last month.
That's it. We have no idea what she's got. My reference to Clever Hans concerned the parents of these children, not Powell.

I'd not take a stint at the Mack Institute as a good sign, but perhaps that's just me. I can find no information about her stints at Harvard or at UCSD.

~~ Paul
 
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