Re: Pioneering psycho-responsive device unveiled

On 2006-08-02, Scott <swilber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers wrote:
On 2006-07-31, Tim <jukebox.moneyhoney.reactive@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://cognews.com/1154200065

"Machine-Enhanced Anomalous Cognition"

They want to build a machine to detect &/or amplify ESP. If someone offers
to pay for the project, that would be depressing. But sadly not
surprising.

--

Whiskers,

I am curious as to why you are so sure that such a thing is not
possible. There are hundreds of published papers that span the last 50
years describing research in the area of directly affecting random
number generators by mental intention, including long standing programs
such as at Princeton University.

All with no conclusive proof of anything. The research goes back much
longer than 50 years; there was a lot going on in the 19th century, and
the concepts of 'mind reading' and 'remote influence' are pretty ancient.

If you Google Quantum Consciousness,
you will find almost 6,000,000 posts.

Put the term in quotes so as to get only references for that term, rather
than for all pages that contain either word, and the number of 'hits' is
somewhat moderated, to about 52,200. Ask.com is even more selective,
reporting about 7,640.

Google finds about 491,000 results for the word psychokinesis.

Web-search hits prove only that people write about it, of course, not that
it happens. [1]

My scepticism doesn't prevent me from trying to use will-power to make
reluctant cars start, or traffic-lights change, of course <G>

We have simply carried the research to the next level. If you are
actually interested in the topic of Mind-Machine Interaction, there is
some technical material on our website, http://Psigenics.com, as well
as links to other related research organizations and websites.

Psigenics Corporation

I'm mostly interested in the mind-machine interactions that are known to
work - ie using the body's muscles to manipulate the machine, or using
electrical signals from nerve cells to do it. Those are quite good enough
for any practical purpose, and are well worth trying to improve.

The nature of thought and consciousness are not understood, and I don't
object to efforts towards trying to at least explain what they are and how
they work. Quantum effects may be involved in the operation of our brains
or minds - but such effects are so small that detectors outside the skull
won't detect anything (let alone interpret it), and realistic attempts to
detect quantum-level processes within the brain will inevitably destroy
the very thing being sought - by disrupting the organs involved, quite
apart from the effects described as 'uncertainty' in Heisenberg's theories.
Statistical inference is the only way any quantum effect can be
determined.

'Quantum entanglement' certainly looks like 'remote influence' - and
faster than light and perhaps even working with time in reverse - but for
a mind to influence a machine by means of quantum entanglement, would seem
to require firstly that entangled photon pairs be created and placed
'appropriately', and secondly some way of having the mind influence
it's half of the pair, and thirdly some way for the behaviour of the
entangled photon in the target system to have the desired effect there.
Those do not seem to be trivial requirements, or even achievable with our
current technology - supposing that quantum entanglement doesn't turn out
to be a red herring anyway.


[1] For comparison, "Alien abduction" scores 125,900 on Ask.com and
2,080,000 on Google. "Demon possession" gets 25,200 and 133,000.
"Military intelligence" gets 533,800 and 8,830,000. "Lizard conspiracy"
is clearly way out on a limb - it only gets 187 and 760. "Quantum
custard" gets one hit on Google. (Probaby two after I post this).

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~
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