Men like to be right — Duh! Novel experiment demonstrates link with psychic abilities |288|

Alex

Administrator
Men like to be right — Duh! Novel experiment demonstrates link with psychic abilities |288|
by Alex Tsakiris | Sep 29 | Consciousness Science, Parapsychology



Northwestern University Psychology professor Dr. Julia Mossbridge’s has a novel experiment demonstrating psychic abilities among her male students.

Photo by Daniela Vladimirova

The experiment is tantalizingly simple, you’re presented four images and asked which one the computer will select. It may be simple, but since the images are randomly selected after you’ve made your choice it’s also impossible, right? Not according to a new research study that shows our body may know when events in the future are likely to occur. And, here’s the twist — it seem to happen often for men who are obsessed with being right. In her recently published study, Dr. Julia Mossbridge showed that men who “wanted to win” were statistically more likely to accurately predict the future than women who expressed no interest in “winning.”

But this research into presentiment, and our body’s ability to to know the unknowable, has implications far beyond Psych 110 experiments on college Freshman. It strikes a blow against mainstream science’s insistence on the narrow limits of our abilities and our very nature.

Join Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Dr. Julia Mossbridge where the experiment and the broader implications for neuroscience and science at large are discussed:
 
Good show, liked it a lot. Both the (often male) 'science as ruthless falsification' style and (often femal) 'let's find the truth together' approaches came to alive in the show.

As towards your question.

I have tried several approaches :

1) just don't talk to people who do not look at the data or misrepresent it purposefully (result: they win, they are the majority)

2) attack their underlying beliefs (Toulmin's backings) and show how they leads to absurdity (result: they become defensive, hurt and dig in harder, against formal logic)

3) question (by asking questions, not attacking) their selectively targeted outcomes and or specific models/theories with experimental data, that their model cannot explain (result; confusion, sometimes dismissal, quite often at least a short discussion, i.e. sharing. Not sure it really changes anything in their position in the end - as everybody's got a mortgage to pay...)

So, I pick (3) most of the time these days, but all forms and style have their place. I'd like to be more inclusive, but it is difficult when really learned, well-trained and clearly intelligent people become some emotional that all of their training, learning and formal intelligence is thrown out of the window. However, in that situation, the harder I push, the harder they recoil. That's my style - mostly, for now.

Your style? That is why I keep listening to Skeptiko (in addition to the wonderful and sometimes wacky guests). Thank you for being your honest self and not trying to be somebody else or a generic PC, no-smell-no-taste & all-smiling interviewer.

P.S. For me, the beginning of the interview was good and the end of interview was beautiful. Same coin, different sides.
 
Sorry Alex but I thought this conversation was way too awkward. At times it sounded more like a bad date then conversation on the nature of consciousness and science. I feel Alex has quite a strident attitude about the political agendas of many neuroscientists however his siting of Koch and his team as being beneficiaries to the billion dollar plus brain project does remind me of the massive invested interest Koch may have in making sure that no other theories discredit the mind = brain paradigm. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don't think most neuroscientists have such big money invested in their unworked out ideas being right. I'm also not sure why Alex is so sure Dr Mossbridge's presentiment studies necessarily discount materialism. It is possible that such experiments could be modelled as physical quantum phenomena in a purely materialistic paradigm. I myself strongly doubt it but as Dr Mossbridge says, perhaps we need to be open minded.
 
Is there a link (or a citation), for the research described in the opening paragraph (the one about the men who want to win and the women who don't)? I've looked around a bit for the research and couldn't find it, including checking on the trials registry at the KPU site.

Beautiful avatar, Inner Space.

Linda
 
Good show, liked it a lot. Both the (often male) 'science as ruthless falsification' style and (often femal) 'let's find the truth together' approaches came to alive in the show.

As towards your question.

I have tried several approaches :

1) just don't talk to people who do not look at the data or misrepresent it purposefully (result: they win, they are the majority)

2) attack their underlying beliefs (Toulmin's backings) and show how they leads to absurdity (result: they become defensive, hurt and dig in harder, against formal logic)

3) question (by asking questions, not attacking) their selectively targeted outcomes and or specific models/theories with experimental data, that their model cannot explain (result; confusion, sometimes dismissal, quite often at least a short discussion, i.e. sharing. Not sure it really changes anything in their position in the end - as everybody's got a mortgage to pay...)

So, I pick (3) most of the time these days, but all forms and style have their place. I'd like to be more inclusive, but it is difficult when really learned, well-trained and clearly intelligent people become some emotional that all of their training, learning and formal intelligence is thrown out of the window. However, in that situation, the harder I push, the harder they recoil. That's my style - mostly, for now.

Your style? That is why I keep listening to Skeptiko (in addition to the wonderful and sometimes wacky guests). Thank you for being your honest self and not trying to be somebody else or a generic PC, no-smell-no-taste & all-smiling interviewer.

P.S. For me, the beginning of the interview was good and the end of interview was beautiful. Same coin, different sides.
that's a great description of the landscape :) It's nice to be able to get this stuff out and not keep it bottled up.
 
Sorry Alex but I thought this conversation was way too awkward. At times it sounded more like a bad date then conversation on the nature of consciousness and science. I feel Alex has quite a strident attitude about the political agendas of many neuroscientists however his siting of Koch and his team as being beneficiaries to the billion dollar plus brain project does remind me of the massive invested interest Koch may have in making sure that no other theories discredit the mind = brain paradigm. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don't think most neuroscientists have such big money invested in their unworked out ideas being right. I'm also not sure why Alex is so sure Dr Mossbridge's presentiment studies necessarily discount materialism. It is possible that such experiments could be modelled as physical quantum phenomena in a purely materialistic paradigm. I myself strongly doubt it but as Dr Mossbridge says, perhaps we need to be open minded.
not really. tortured apologetics.
 
Is there a link (or a citation), for the research described in the opening paragraph (the one about the men who want to win and the women who don't)? I've looked around a bit for the research and couldn't find it, including checking on the trials registry at the KPU site.

Beautiful avatar, Inner Space.

Linda
from julia:
Hi Alex --

You've got it -- I never published those results independently -- people would need to look at the last figure (figure 6) in the link you gave.

The follow-up (using smartphones over the internet) also gave similar results but that's not published yet.

Take care,

Julia
 
Last edited:
Thank you Alex (and Julia).

Here is the abstract and the citation for figure 6 (for informational purposes only):

PHYSIOLOGICAL MARKERS OF FUTURE OUTCOMES: THREE EXPERIMENTS ON SUBCONSCIOUS PSI PERCEPTION DURING CONCURRENT PERFORMANCE OF A GUESSING TASK

JULIA MOSSBRIDGE, MARCIA GRABOWECKY & SATORU SUZUKI

ABSTRACT: Physiological responses to arousing (vs. calm) stimuli arriving 3-7 seconds in the future have been described in peer-reviewed journals using five different physiological measures in at least four different laboratories. However, only a handful of these have used tasks in which participants must perform conscious guessing at targets. In order to eventually improve performance at intuitive guessing, understanding the mechanisms of physiological presentiment effects during the performance of behavioral guessing tasks is critical.

To address this gap in knowledge, we performed three experiments. Our hypothesis for all three experiments was that two measures of autonomic state, heart pulse period or inter-beat-interval (IBI) and skin conductance (SC), would both show distinct and significantly different patterns associated with future correct versus incorrect guesses in a guessing task. In the first two experiments we show that at the group level, significant differences in heart period are observed, such that IBI is higher preceding a correct guess than an incorrect guess. However, at least at the group level, there was no SC difference associated with correctness or incorrectness of a future guess in either of the two experiments. The third experiment found no significant anticipatory effects. Finally, an exploratory analysis comparing data from all females to all males across the four experiments showed that while at the group level SC was not responsive to correctness of future guesses in any experiment, a robust sex difference in SC anticipatory responses exists, in which males have increased skin conductance preceding correct versus incorrect guesses, while females show the reverse pattern.

None of the significant effects in any of the experiments or the post hoc sex difference analysis could be explained by expectation bias. Reasons for the lack of a significant effect in the third experiment are discussed. Overall, the results support the hypothesis.

Department of Psychology, Northwestern University

Evanston, IL, USA

Email: j-mossbridge@northwestern. edu

Read more: http://www.readperiodicals.com/201110/2591274421.html#ixzz3n8XpDQKk

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390/full#B38
 
"Am I being too hard on Christof Koch?"

Materialism causes a lot of harm and scientists who ignore the overwhelming evidence that the mind is not the brain are betraying Science and humankind.

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-harm-caused-by-pseudoskepticism.html
Pseudoskepticism is harmful because pseudoskeptics are responsible for spreading incorrect information denying the existence of ESP and the afterlife. In reality, there is overwhelming evidence that ESP and the afterlife are genuine. Preventing people from knowing about ESP and the afterlife does great harm to individuals and society as a whole.

Belief in religion and the afterlife eases grief and fear of death. It deters suicide, and helps people cope with adversity such as unemployment and divorce. People who find meaning in life are healthier, but pseudoskeptics espouse materialism which says that life is meaningless.

Pseudoskeptics obscure the truth of psychic phenomena and this creates difficulties for people who have psychic abilities. Without accurate information about psychic phenomena, people experiencing those phenomena may become afraid or confused, they may think they are going crazy or are evil. They may be persecuted by people who don't believe in any paranormal phenomena. Psychic children may be punished by their parents or teachers who think they are lying. Psychics may be misdiagnosed as mentally ill and given mind-numbing drugs they don't need or they may be institutionalized.

Denying the truth about ESP and the afterlife does great harm to society and civilization. It prevents governments from licensing psychics and accrediting schools that teach psychic development. This directly abets charlatans who pretend to be psychic. Pseudoskepticism inhibits scientific freedom. There are many practical uses of psychic abilities including mediumship, dowsing, energy healing, remote viewing, induced after-death communication (a treatment for post traumatic stress disorder), past life regression, and psychic detectives. By denying the reality of ESP and the afterlife, pseudoskepticism may deter people from availing themselves of these helpful services.

If the evolution of the soul was correctly understood it would prevent ethnic and religious conflicts. If more people understood the life review and reincarnation there would be less cruelty in the world because people would understand that when you harm another person you also harm yourself. If the truth of the afterlife was more widely known, people would be less selfish because they would understand how their actions in this life prepare the conditions they will experience in the afterlife. A correct understanding of the afterlife would help people to understand the purpose of life and suffering. A correct understanding of the afterlife gives people certain knowledge of a better existence in the future. No matter what mistakes someone may have made in life they are never judged or punished in the afterlife but always have the opportunity here or hereafter to atone and work their way up to the highest levels of the spirit realm by helping others.

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/the-science-scam-is-one-of-biggest.html
All this suffering continues to occur because some scientists refuse to give up their self-appointed role as the sole source of knowledge about the universe and their artificial and unscientific attachment to philosophical naturalism as the only way to obtain knowledge about the cosmos. This leads them to reject the many independent forms of evidence for ESP and the afterlife which show that human consciousness is not produced by matter, not produced by the brain, but can and does continue to exist after the death of the physical body.
 
Alex Tsakiris: Say that last part again. What is craziness?

Julia Mossbridge: It’s easy to believe that going down the path of thinking that consciousness is something that maybe doesn’t have to do with the brain, or isn’t produced by the brain… you’re basically taught that way lies craziness. You might be crazy if you think that and anyone who thinks that is going insane, or it’s a drug-induced idea. There’s a lot of fear.

Oh, have Julia Mossbridge just visited Russia and talked with some old and incorrigible Soviet-school psychiatrists? Because they often state that everyone who is not is absolute, total, 100% skeptic about anything paranormal is slightly mad.

Or, well, even not slightly...

The position of these living leftovers of the USSR is more bizarre that even the one of similarly inclined Western skeptics because of their openly Orwellian, Newspeak/Doublespeak thinking. For example, Western skepics are fond of presenting themselves - mistakenly - as vanguards of "rationality" fighting against the invasive hordes of "irrational woo-woos" (thus mixing and confusing their materailist belief with rational thought). But Soviet-school psychiatrists went much further - they recognise that their opponent's position may be logical - but insist this is bad and sick logic - or, as they put it, "paralogic". Usage of this term by them is false and misleading, since in the discipline of logic, it is used to describe reasoning containting unintentional logical fallacies (intentional usage of these fallacies for rhetorical purposes is called "sophistry"). But Soviet psychiatrists' "paralogic" is not the paralogic of logicians. It is the line of reasoning that may not contain a single recognisable fallacy - but end in the conclusion that upsets the materialist worldview. Since materialism is presented by Soviet psychiatrists as the Absolute Truth, all logical arguments againt it are "delusional" and a sign of "delusional thought". For them, "truly logical" reasoning should be governed not by coherence and consistency, but by unquestioning agreement with materialist dogma.

So, this position are even weirder than the one of these extreme Western skeptics who insisted that Daryl Bem's evidence for psi, obtained using the generally accepted, orthodox methods of experimental psychology, is the reason for rejecting these time-tested methodologies (since psi is "impossible by definition"). To fully grasp the wild, mind-bendind absurdity of Soviet psychiatrists' position try to imagine that Daryl Bem's critics claiming that the methods used by him is perfect in all cases, but his study, which implement them, is unforgiveably methodologically weak, since their implementation leaded to a conclusion that psi is real.

And, of course, trying to demonstrate the this is the ultimate logical contradiction is - would you guess? - a sign of "delusional paralogic".

But this is not the end - not yet... According to the same Soviet psychiatrists, such "paralogical delusion" is literally contagious - a kind of infectious mental disease: everyone who communicated with the person already infested by allegedly "delusional" ideas and had not dimissed these ideas out of hand without a moment of doubt, was himself infested by them and now in a state of "induced delusion". And, to be labeled as a victim of this malevolent intellectual contagion, one should not even agree with them; simple doubt and ambivalence is enough for a diagnosis. I recall one Soviet-school psychiatrist saying that even a person who simply tries to evaluate any paranoramal idea, looking at its arguments and deciding whether they are true or not, is already "delusional", because any and every thought that is not in 100% accordance with materialism Is "paralogical". Only the immediate and unshakeable agreement with Soviet school of psychiatry and its materialistic premises is "truly logical" and "healthy"; every single momemt of hesitation is a step towards "mental illness".

All these sounds like a theatre of absurd - but, during a Soviet period, many persons were forced to become its actors. These times, Soviet psychiatry spreaded its tragicomical dogmatism out of sheer materialism to the whole ideological territory of Marxism-Leninism (which contained materialism as its core). Many Soviet dissdents were deemed "delusional" because of their disareement with the ruling ideology - as well as persons who were reading their publications (and became the victims of "mental contagion")...

Well, the last piece of absurdity: the above-mentioned psychiatrist who claimed that a tiniest bit of doubt about non-existence of paranormal phenomena is an example of "delusional paralogic" presents himself as a "liberal", a "freethinker". In the end of long irrational (even anti-rational) diatribe against anything paranormal, he asked the readers to "think openly" and "doubt everything".

Everything but the paranormal, I suppose... But showing this inconsistency to him was futile, since doing so would mark the messenger as "delusional" in his eyes. There is zero possibility of changing a worldview of such a person.

I call it the Utter Ultimate Unfalsifiability.
 
Last edited:
Alex's questions at the end of the interview:

How should we address the perceived inadequacies of the neuroscience model of consciousness? Is Alex being too hard on Christoff Koch? Is he maligning him, and other neuroscientists, who seem to him to be holding on to a view that is contradicted by the data? Do we need to go along to get along a little more?
 
How should we address the perceived inadequacies of the neuroscience model of consciousness? Is Alex being too hard on Christoff Koch? Is he maligning him, and other neuroscientists, who seem to him to be holding on to a view that is contradicted by the data? Do we need to go along to get along a little more?

I very much enjoyed this interview, Alex. Seems like you got your knuckles rapped (in the nicest possible way), by Julia. I'm a bit short on time right now, but should be back to say a little more later.
 
Interesting interview Alex in a way i was not expecting in that it was a great example of the difference in the male tendency towards agency and the female tendency for communion which Jane Loevinger describes in her theory of ego development.

Be that as it may I cannot help but wish Julia be a little less communal and more agentic. She is clearly smart and resourceful and capable of exposing the inadequacies of neuroscience as it stands by collecting data with her ongoing experiments.

This as we know too well is much needed. I don't want to get along with the current models I want to get rid of them.
 
Oh, have Julia Mossbridge just visited Russia and talked with some old and incorrigible Soviet-school psychiatrists? Because they often state that everyone who is not is absolute, total, 100% skeptic about anything paranormal is slightly mad.

Or, well, even not slightly...

The position of these living leftovers of the USSR is more bizarre that even the one of similarly inclined Western skeptics because of their openly Orwellian, Newspeak/Doublespeak thinking. For example, Western skepics are fond of presenting themselves - mistakenly - as vanguards of "rationality" fighting against the invasive hordes of "irrational woo-woos" (thus mixing and confusing their materailist belief with rational thought). But Soviet-school psychiatrists went much further - they recognise that their opponent's position may be logical - but insist this is bad and sick logic - or, as they put it, "paralogic". Usage of this term by them is false and misleading, since in the discipline of logic, it is used to describe reasoning containting unintentional logical fallacies (intentional usage of these fallacies for rhetorical purposes is called "sophistry"). But Soviet psychiatrists' "paralogic" is not the paralogic of logicians. It is the line of reasoning that may not contain a single recognisable fallacy - but end in the conclusion that upsets the materialist worldview. Since materialism is presented by Soviet psychiatrists as the Absolute Truth, all logical arguments againt it are "delusional" and a sign of "delusional thought". For them, "truly logical" reasoning should be governed not by coherence and consistency, but by unquestioning agreement with materialist dogma.
fascinating... would make for a good show. do you know anyone who could speak in this topic?
 
How should we address the perceived inadequacies of the neuroscience model of consciousness? Is Alex being too hard on Christoff Koch? Is he maligning him, and other neuroscientists, who seem to him to be holding on to a view that is contradicted by the data? Do we need to go along to get along a little more?

I very much enjoyed this interview, Alex. Seems like you got your knuckles rapped (in the nicest possible way), by Julia. I'm a bit short on time right now, but should be back to say a little more later.
really???
 
really???

Yeah. Seems to me that you were about to go into your winding-up-for-the-sake-of-argument mode when Julia knocked the feet right from under you and established a more meaningful means of communication that made for a splendid interview. I found that amusing, if I'm honest. Truth is, I'd likely have done the same thing and reacted in the same way.

She reminded me it's possible to accord someone with different views (i.e. consensus scientists) a certain amount of respect and thereby, just possibly, engage them better--softlee, softlee, catchee monkee. I found her attitude quite charming and have filed it in my mind as the latest entry in the "stealth strategy" section.

So the answer to your question is that, quite possibly, you are indeed being too hard on Christof Koch if you want to be able to establish a rapport with him. Of course, that might not always make for interesting listening!:)
 
Last edited:
fascinating... would make for a good show. do you know anyone who could speak in this topic?

No, I don't know anyone... These old Soviet guys are not much challenged by anyone, because of: 1) the obvious futility of any debate with them; 2) the staunch belief in orthodox psychiatry by a large segment of the Russian population (unlike the West, there coercive psychiarty is under growing and intensifying criticism, in Russia it is still almost worshipped by many); 3) the end of one's reputation because of the vocalized opposition (Russian skeptics are the only ones among their kind who has the institutional power - there is "a commitee to battle pseudo-science" inside the Russian Academy of Sciences, populated by the worst fanatics one can encounter; their activities had already resulted in a destruction of a career and status of many pro-paranormal academicians).

So, Russian "paranormal community" just evade them and do not engage in a meaningless quarrel.
 
Yeah. Seems to me that you were about to go into your winding-up-for-the-sake-of-argument mode when Julia knocked the feet right from under you and established a more meaningful means of communication that made for a splendid interview. I found that amusing, if I'm honest. Truth is, I'd likely have done the same thing and reacted in the same way.

She reminded me it's possible to accord someone with different views (i.e. consensus scientists) a certain amount of respect and thereby, just possibly, engage them better--softlee, softlee, catchee monkee. I found her attitude quite charming and have filed it in my mind as the latest entry in the "stealth strategy" section.

So the answer to your question is that, quite possibly, you are indeed being too hard on Christof Koch if you want to be able to establish a rapport with him. Of course, that might not always make for interesting listening!:)
wow, I experienced it entirely differently (as did others who have emailed me), then again, I think it's pretty cool that the show was able to create those multiple interpretations.
 
Back
Top