FrumiousBandersnatch

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Who knows, but the number of people thinking its valid or invalid does not make it valid or invalid.

I do not suppose its hard to repeat the experiment, so I am looking forward to see the results of others. But I am afraid it will be simply dismissed as "too spooky" without that.
Dean Radin has been attempting to demonstrate various forms of parapsychology by experiment for many years, and claiming success for many years. One would think that scientists, for whom anomalous results are the most exciting (it's been said that "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny …”"), would jump at the opportunity to open a new field and make name for themselves, but they don't.

The problem is that Radin's work, in general, is considered to be poor quality and biased towards the outcomes he seeks, and the results tend to be marginal. Attempts have been made to replicate some of his work with the usual level of success of paranormal replications, i.e. the more rigorous and well-controlled the experiment, the lower the significance of the results obtained. The consensus seems to be that if there was anything of merit in his claims, it would have become clear by now.
 
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trophy33

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Dean Radin has been attempting to demonstrate various forms of parapsychology by experiment for many years, and claiming success for many years. One would think that scientists, for whom anomalous results are the most exciting (it's been said that "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny …”"), would jump at the opportunity to open a new field and make name for themselves, but they don't.

The problem is that Radin's work, in general, is considered to be poor quality and biased towards the outcomes he seeks, and the results tend to be marginal. Attempts have been made to replicate some of his work with the usual level of success of paranormal replications, i.e. the more rigorous and well-controlled the experiment, the lower the significance of the results obtained. The consensus seems to be that if there was anything of merit in his claims, it would have become clear by now.
I do not know him and I do not think that its important, experiment is published as is and you can talk about it specifically, if you like.

I do not care about his personal beliefs or activities, thats not how science is supposed to work. As far as I know there have been just four scientific experiments regarding conciousness and the wave function collapse, two did not find anything significant and two did. We need more to make some firm conclusions.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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I like Descartes.
He had some important ideas. But Princess Elisabeth (of Bohemia) stumped him with the conceptual problem of interaction in his substance dualism.

With this I could agree. The problem can be with the interpretation of facts, because it seems that many atheists reduce reality to only what it seems to be right now & right here. Or to materialism.
Atheism apart, science can only address testable hypotheses, and (all other things being equal) will preferentially select those that best satisfy objective criteria for a good explanation (inference to the best explanation).

Unfortunately, the God hypothesis (and the supernatural in general) satisfies none of the criteria for a good explanation - I've many times asked on these forums if someone can justify it, using agreed objective criteria, as a better explanation than "It's magic!" (not really an explanation at all), and no one has yet taken it on.

The criteria I have in mind are things like: tested or testable; makes fruitful predictions; has specificity; provides insight into and understanding of what we've observed; has unifying scope; is parsimonious; is not inconsistent with our existing knowledgebase, etc. There are others, and I wouldn't expect all to be accepted (e.g. the last).
 
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trophy33

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He had some important ideas. But Princess Elisabeth (of Bohemia) stumped him with the conceptual problem of interaction in his substance dualism.
I do not know many details form his life, just his Meditations. But my favorite author of the rationalism era would be Leibniz.

Atheism apart, science can only address testable hypotheses, and (all other things being equal) will preferentially select those that best satisfy objective criteria for a good explanation (inference to the best explanation).

Unfortunately, the God hypothesis (and the supernatural in general) satisfies none of the criteria for a good explanation - I've many times asked on these forums if someone can justify it, using agreed objective criteria, as a better explanation than "It's magic!" (not really an explanation at all), and no one has yet taken it on.

The criteria I have in mind are things like: tested or testable; makes fruitful predictions; has specificity; provides insight into and understanding of what we've observed; has unifying scope; is parsimonious; is not inconsistent with our existing knowledgebase, etc. There are others, and I wouldn't expect all to be accepted (e.g. the last).
I will let science to do what it can do, there is no disagreement between us.

I do not claim that God can be tested/proved in some experiment, I cannot imagine what it would be.
Indeed God, mind and generally anything behind the physical universe cannot be scientifically verified. At least not with our current knowledge and with our current tools (which are physical). Usage of physical tools to detect spiritual things is obviously impossible.

But the conclusion cannot be "therefore there is nothing more". It worked for atheism during the Soviet Union era, but in our current science we know that there is much more behind the matter. The String Theory being the most prominent theory in physics, now. With many, many more that are totally "crazy" for a common sense and are not so known, but serious scientists debate them like the emergent universe, simulation hypothesis, many worlds interpretation of QM, hollographic universe, universe without a beginning etc.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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I do not know him and I do not think that its important, experiment is published as is and you can talk about it specifically, if you like.
Given his past record, I would like to see independent replication of it before spending time on that.

I do not care about his personal beliefs or activities, thats not how science is supposed to work.
Agreed.

As far as I know there have been just four scientific experiments regarding conciousness and the wave function collapse, two did not find anything significant and two did. We need more to make some firm conclusions.
Apart from Radin's questionable claims, I don't know which experiments you're referring to, but it's worth saying that the Von Neumann-Wigner interpretation (conscious collapse of the wavefunction) was examined at great length in the middle of the last century and judged to be unsubstantiated and partly the result of mistakenly treating conscious observers as classical rather than quantum systems (Wigner himself changed his mind), and partly because it presupposed interactionist dualism and its core concept was terminally ill-defined (i.e. what counts as a conscious observation?).
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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... the conclusion cannot be "therefore there is nothing more". It worked for atheism during the Soviet Union era, but in our current science we know that there is much more behind the matter. The String Theory being the most prominent theory in physics, now. With many, many more that are totally "crazy" for a common sense and are not so known, but serious scientists debate them like the emergent universe, simulation hypothesis, many worlds interpretation of QM, hollographic universe, universe without a beginning etc.
Sure, we know our current models are incomplete in various ways, and we're always looking for new discoveries - led by the evidence and predictions/implications of those current models.
 
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SkyWriting

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These are the standards I go by:

1. Bible says x, Science says x = go with x
2. Bible says x, Science says y = go with x
3. Bible says x, Science says ø = go with x
4. Bible says ø, Science says x = go with x
5. Bible says ø, Science says ø = free to speculate on your own

Prime Directive: Under no circumstances whatsoever is the Bible to be contradicted.


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