nagirrac wrote: » I do believe we have caught a live one here, an actual person who does not understand the scientific method. Note I have chosen your psychic dogs point here which leaves me most vulnerable to your scorn but I am made of stern stuff so here goes: The Scientific Method: 1. Pose a question, 2. Do some research on the subject and formulate a hypothesis, 3. Design and run experiments to test your hypothesis, 4. Analyze your data and draw conclusions, 5. Communicate your results. The following is the research that Sheldrake conducted on dogs: Question: It has long been observed that some animals have some kind of enhanced sense that is not easily explained. Is this true or not? Hypothesis: Some animals have an enhanced sense that among many other manifestations (e.g. warning their owners of impending natural disasters) exhibits as knowing when their owners are coming home. Experiment: Design experiments to monitor dogs while their owners are away and look for specific signs that the dog is anticipating their owner's return. In general terms this is done by videotaping the dog in its natural environment and having the owner return at random times. Data analysis and Conclusions: Simple enough, record the number of times and the duration of time the dog sits by a door or window at the home entryway while the owner is out and when the owner is returning. Conclude whether the dog shows any indication of knowing when it's owner is returning by sitting by the window/door in anticipation. Publish your results. This is called science following the standard scientific method. Now for the interesting bit. The controversy over this research centered on a dog called Jaytee who demonstrated remarkable signs of precognition. Thirty separate experiments were run. The data clearly showed that the dog spent far more time at the window when its owner was returning home than any other time (55% versus 4%) and spent a significant amount of time there compared to random vists to the window. The behavior was consistent regardless of the length of time the owner was away or when they were sent a signal to return (by beeper). The chances of this happening are 10,000:1. The results were published and of course met with skepticism as one would expect. Richard Wiseman suggested several explanations including routine times of return all of which had been tested and eliminated by Sheldrake. Sheldrake invited Wiseman to perform tests of his own. This is where it gets really interesting Wiseman ran his own tests following Sheldrake's method and ran 4 experiments, three at the same location and one at a separate location. His data was identical to Sheldrake's for the first 3 experiments, actually better, the fourth was inconclusive. However he discounted all three experiments due to the dog going to the window for "no apparent reason" during the experiment. He discounted all 30 of Sheldrake's experiments for the same reason i.e. the 4% of the time that the dog spent by the window invalidated the experiment regardless of the fact that the dog was at the window for an extended period during the owners return 55% of the time. Sheldrake's claims were as follows: 1) the dog spent significantly more time at the window when the owner was returning home than any other time, and 2) The difference is statistically significant. Wiseman's data showed the same thing but Wiseman chose to apply an arbitrary criterion to ignore the data based on the dog going to the window at any other time for no apparent reason, even momentarily. This completely ignored the fact that the dog sat for an average of 5 minutes at the window while the owner was returning. In this example I am making no claims for physic dogs, just pointing out that Sheldrake's work followed the scientific method and therefore is science. Furthermore, Wiseman's work replicated Sheldrake's work and also was science even though he came to a different conclusion, so we have a difference of opinion between researchers, hardly unusual in science. I will leave it to you to decide whether Wiseman's approach to the data was "honest" or not. My opinion on Sheldrake's research and my own observations and the observations of others I know who have spent a lot of time around animals is that animals generally are more intuitive than most humans. You may choose to call intuition magic if you insist.
nagirrac wrote: » I do believe we have caught a live one here, an actual person who does not understand the scientific method. Note I have chosen your psychic dogs point here which leaves me most vulnerable to your scorn but I am made of stern stuff so here goes:
King Mob wrote: » Long rant for little point, to defend a very silly claim. So never mind your pathetic, dishonest dismissal of the criticisms of the experiments. How do the dogs know that their owners are coming home? Are they sensing the owner's thoughts? Are they seeing the future? How come they only display this ability in conditions that allow for other explanations?
nagirrac wrote: » Glad to see you've given up on the claim that Sheldrake's work is not science. What is a thought? Surely before deciding on the behavior of thoughts we should actually understand what they are?
Zombrex wrote: » He is calling the assertion that it is pre-cognition magic. Psychic ability is a why claim, not a what claim. It explains why something happens, it doesn't merely detail the circumstance of the observed phenomena. If there isn't any then there is nothing supporting the idea that anything psychic is happening at all other than guesses by the people supposing it is. Which is anti-science.
King Mob wrote: » And again, avoided my points and went on a random, silly point. And you wonder why cranks like yourself aren't taken seriously....
nagirrac wrote: » You are the one that consistently ignores questions that you cannot answer, on this and other threads. If it doesn't fit into your narrow world view then you choose to ignore it. I am taken very seriously in my professional community I assure you.
King Mob wrote: » Lol, somehow I doubt that very much....
mickrock wrote: » I don't have any explanation for the origin of species.
mickrock wrote: » If evolution is just gradual change from a common ancestor the fossil record should reflect this but it doesn't. Although there are many fossils of fully formed species, there is a lack of transitional, intermediate forms.
Humbert Humbert wrote: » ALL species are transitional, moran. :pac:
endacl wrote: » What?!? Even homo sapiens?!? Are we not special? Some kind of pinnacle? !
endacl wrote: » There is a widely accepted one available for your use however. Feel free. I've been using it for ages, and its yet to let me down.
mickrock wrote: » How have you been using Darwinism and how would you know whether or not it had let you down?
endacl wrote: » To feel superior when bantering on online forums with people who don't accept it, or refuse to understand it. There! It just worked again! Never fails!
nagirrac wrote: » You are falling into the same materialistic-reductionism trap that King Mob is. Science is the pursuit of knowledge and isn't limited by what a materialistic-reductionist thinks it should be limited by.
nagirrac wrote: » When asked recently about man's disbelief in flying machines 300 years ago a reputable scientist responded "well, we didn't know the laws of physics so well 300 years ago". Did he not realize the irony in his statement that people will be saying the same about him 300 years from now? Who would have thought that birds use the earth's magnetic fields to navigate? If birds have this ability then perhaps humans had the same ability at least at some point, seeing as 50 other species appear to have the ability.
nagirrac wrote: » In terms of evolutionary biology navigation using the earth's magnetic field has clearly evolved, it would actually seem counterintuitive that humans would not have had this ability at least at some point in their evolution?
nagirrac wrote: » Are you familiar with the aboriginal term "dreamtime", this from a people who it is currently believed migrated to Australia 150,000 years ago. There is a wonderful book by Robert Lawlor (Awakening of the Aboriginal Dreamtime) which is fascinating in terms of what these early human cultures believed, and they migrated from Asia so go back much further in history.
nagirrac wrote: » I hate bringing up the quantum entanglement example because people seem to think I am connecting it to psi research which I am not. The "how" in quantum entanglement is understood by science, the "why" is not. What possible purpose does quantum entanglement serve unless it is core to our actual reality. The work of Amoroso, which is very compelling, describes an 8 dimensional universe. The mind boggles at what is possible in an 8 dimensional universe.
nagirrac wrote: » Science should not be bounded by what the majority of current researchers or those providing funding for research think should be studied.
mickrock wrote: » Oh right! And there I was thinking you were a microbiologist or something.
Zombrex wrote: » What evolutionary advantage would that have provided our ancestors who were confined to small areas of land?
nagirrac wrote: » Confined to small areas of land?? It is commonly accepted that that aboriginal people migrated from Asia to Australia at a time when the relevant land masses were connected. They travelled through what we know of today as Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. Its a bit of a long way on foot and yes it's speculation to say what migration mechanism they used but it's probably not that different to the migration mechanism aboriginal people exhibit and describe which allows them go walkabout.
nagirrac wrote: » How birds and other species navigate is known to utilize the earth's magnetic field, how they do it is another matter given how weak this field is. The latest research I have read suggests birds see magnetic fields and there is a nerological link between the eyes and a region in the brain to do with migration. I would imagine this brain region is also in humans given how much of our brain is evolved from earlier species.
nagirrac wrote: » Magnetoception has been observed in everything from bacteria to turtles, birds and fish, a better question surely is why would we not have it, even if we don't currently use it. Considering we were fish at some stage, we had it then clearly. Sounds like your understanding of how the brain evolved is not so spectacular.
Zombrex wrote: » Explain why evolution would continue to select a trait we don't use, in an evolutionary context (you are aware I assume that evolution is the selection of adaptations that prove advantageous to the organism in terms of surviving long enough to reproduce).
How birds and other species navigate is known to utilize the earth's magnetic field, how they do it is another matter given how weak this field is. The latest research I have read suggests birds see magnetic fields and there is a nerological link between the eyes and a region in the brain to do with migration. I would imagine this brain region is also in humans given how much of our brain is evolved from earlier species.
Magnetoception has been observed in everything from bacteria to turtles, birds and fish, a better question surely is why would we not have it, even if we don't currently use it. Considering we were fish at some stage, we had it then clearly. Sounds like your understanding of how the brain evolved is not so spectacular.
nagirrac wrote: » Way do we have an appendix then? It has no known advantage to us similar to other physical traits. What value has the coccyx other than sometimes being a pain in ths ass? I would assume we have had a coccyx as a species for a while, a million years perhaps.
nagirrac wrote: » As for Magnetoception, it is a relatively new field. The idea that animals migrate using the earth's magnetic field has gone from ridicule (pseudo-science) to well established fact (science) in less than one generation. There is no agreed established mechanism yet so its a bit early for conclusions.
nagirrac wrote: » I am not saying humans use the migrating section of their brain in modern times, but why is it so unreasonable it was not used say 10,000 or 50,000 years ago?
nagirrac wrote: » There are lots of areas of the brain that are evolved from prior species that we don't use.
nagirrac wrote: » Humans in many ways would be a much better species if we de-evolved some of the traits we currently have, but things seem to move very slowly in evolution.
kiffer wrote: » Insults aside... all species are transitional species... It's a nice sound bite but has one flaw. Some species are not transitional, some are dead ends, or rather run into dead ends. Like the dodo.
nagirrac wrote: » I am not saying humans use the migrating section of their brain in modern times, but why is it so unreasonable it was not used say 10,000 or 50,000 years ago? There are lots of areas of the brain that are evolved from prior species that we don't use. Humans in many ways would be a much better species if we de-evolved some of the traits we currently have, but things seem to move very slowly in evolution.
Zombrex wrote: » If we don't have it now, why suppose we had it at all back then? Evolution is the adaptation to the environment through the selection of advantageous traits. You cannot "de-evolve", you can only die without reproducing.
Improbable wrote: » Can we conclusively prove that no individual from a homo species has ever had magnetoception? No. But that does not mean that believing in human magnetoception is a reasonable position to take. Not until it is demonstrated scientifically. As for the portions of the brain that we don't use, I'm not quite sure what you mean. Could you elaborate by naming what parts of the brain you mean?
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