Does True Randomness Actually Exist? ( ^&*#^%$&#% )

Perhaps the most famous modern-day psi-friendly psychologist is Daryl Bem, whose 2011 experiments inspired a crisis in his field. Some of his peers thought his paper was a hoax. Others took issue with his methods, which they admitted were technically correct — but if Bem could “prove” something so outlandish as psychic ability with accepted social-science methodology, they said, there had to be something wrong with accepted social-science methodology.

In his new paper, parapsychology researcher Etzel Cardeña analyzed psi-related research and came to the conclusion that Bem’s results might not have been so crazy after all. Cardeña writes that the strongest support for psi can be found in research which utilizes the “Ganzfeld procedure,” in which blindfolded subjects in a soundproofed room are asked to describe a film clip they have not seen, which they’re either shown after the fact, or which is played simultaneously in another room. If experimental judges can use these descriptions to choose the specified clip from other “distractor” clips, this is considered positive evidence for psi. Startlingly, meta-analyses of Ganzfeld procedure studies show statistically significant support for this psychic effect. (!!)

I definitely could have proved it in any situation when I was in my 20s and 30s because I could do all sorts of tricks on demand at that time and was very powerful. However, it comes at a cost. One cost is energy depletion, although that isn't significant when you're young. Another is that it opens you up to negative things. I don't mean to "bad vibes" so much as other people's illnesses and so on. I'm not sure about that but it's what I think. Therefore only do it every now and then for pleasure and don't ever get coerced into proving it unless it's decided it's worthwhile, so I would need to have respect for those I was trying to convince. No point trying to convince anyone you don't respect about anything unless it's a sort of life/death situation. Facebook, for instance, is full of people who ask for proofs on all sorts of things and it's best to make it clear that no proof is involved because  opinion is sufficient for the purposes of informal discussion.

What I am talking about and MustangMate is talking about and Axelson evidently knows something about is known to exist but, of course, to those who know it exists! People are already using it to try to heal the world and have been for centuries.

You say "convince demanding people" but these are the very LAST people who should be made aware of what we're discussing. In their hands it would inevitably turn into a very dark grey kind of magic. In order to get more power they would engage in all sorts of weird and archaic rituals like sacrificing experts in statistics on stone altars with flint knives. I'm sure that kind of thing is only attempted by people whose abilities are extremely weak and unfocussed.

At the time, when these psi effects were being revealed to me, I asked myself, "why me?" and the only conclusion I could reach is that there was a reason that I should be aware of these things. And it may be that the reason is coming to fruition, nearly 50 years later because this is the first time I've written in any detail about this for years and it seems to me that I now have awareness and clarity about how to express it. It is something that should be known about but only by the right people and, as the wrong people will inevitably dismiss it as bunkum, it would seem that this is the way to go. Softly softly.

Get lucky and you remember the situation and the mental feeling you had. That makes you far more likely to get it right next time and you go on a run of "luck". Inevitably there comes a time when your mind starts to trick you and reverse the indicators and this only happens when you've lost your awareness and are doing it by habit rather than according to your perceptions. Some people never find their way out of that because it can be an ego thing. It's been the ruin of a lot of gamblers. Don't do it for gain unless the gain is going to a very worthy cause and never do it as a habit. To do this, you actually have to be consciously aware of the unconscious workings of your mind. That's a conundrum to most people.

What happened? Opti made good sense. I actually completely read the last three posts! (except the copied part)
I’d even consider an “experiment” here at the CC forums! 📡

Since we are all chess players... a ready made control in place.

lol, go ahead and ask..  

Really not sure what an 'AR' is, but did you know that 'AR' is a valid Scrabble word?

1) Augmented Realitys?

2) Alternative Realities?

3) Assault Rifles?

4) Actionable Resources?       

5) Asocial Remembrance?

#22 hit close to home, I dig it. King has a tangent, oh no.. Time to break out Shakespeare. 

                       R

Stands for the fact that receiving is as necessary as giving. To graciously receive is an expression of the dignity of giving. Those who are unable to receive are actually incapable of giving. Giving and receiving are different aspects of the flow of energy in the universe.

Giving and receiving do not have to be in the form of material things. To graciously receive a compliment or admiration or respect also implies the ability to be able to give these to others. And absence of respect, courtesy, manners, or admiration creates a state of poverty irrespective of the amount of money you have in the bank.

@Optimissed, some relevant observations to your belief in your supernatural powers are:

1. I would love such powers to be real
2. I have seriously hypothesised such powers in myself in the (now quite distant past)
3. I have even claimed such powers on one occasion in a bar (although I was representing a false degree of confidence - in truth I was merely open to the possibility - because I was addressing a homeopathist who had previously been an actor, and have no doubt that homeopathy is pure snake oil with no value beyond placebo, and I thought back at you. He was actually another player at a chess club I attended at that time, so maybe there was an element of competing claims as well.
4. It because very clear to me over time that any evidence I believed I had for such powers was ephemeral, and the openness to conclude they existed was wishful thinking - the selection of conclusions based on their desirability. While I would still love it if such things were true, I am rather sure they are not, as this is far more consistent with the evidence

i wuz secretly hoping it'd be s/t about randomness. owell.

It is common to interpret random events in the real world (eg someone recovering from a disease) as caused directly by something they are not. As you surely know, this is a form of what psychologists call Attribution Bias (one of a very long list of cognitive biases that have been named!). I am reminded of Pareidolia as well.

some say u shouldnt try2use QM to predict macro events cuz u dont need to (not fully convinced as a die is comprised of sub-A particles) and that it probably wont affect its outcome anyway (im @ peace w/ that part). ok. no problem. lets not apply QM (but only as a probability) to determine if the die is gonna be a 1 or a 5 (tho we can tell our friends to try2impress them).

so. lets do two things. lets try2find a distinct line bwtn (love & hate ?  ) in wut is a macro event and wut isnt (iows wuts classical and wuts quantum). A-n-duh, lets identify whether its a bio-event or not. iows, is wut were laying this whole weird study on living or not ? not sure if we can apply adequate determinism to our apparent random stumbling thru life...as we know it lol !

(i can see myself screaming now...its alive its alive !!...if i wuz ever able to "make contact" w/a die2predict its future)

Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity, or neural plasticity, is the ability of the brain to undergo biological changes ranging from the cellular level (i.e., individual neurons) all the way to large-scale changes involving cortical remapping. These changes often happen as a result of psychological experiences.^[1][2][3] Examples of neuroplasticity include brain changes resulting from learning a new ability,^[1][4] changes resulting from sociocultural conditioning influences,^[5][6][7] as well as changes that can happen as a result of experiencing psychological stress.^{[5][8][9][10]}

Neuroplasticity was once thought to only occur during childhood,^[11] but research in the latter half of the 20th century showed that many aspects of the brain can be altered (or are "plastic") even through adulthood.^{[12][13][14][15]} However, the developing brain exhibits a higher degree of plasticity than the adult brain.^[16][17]:30 Activity-dependent plasticitycan have significant implications for healthy development, learning, memory, and recovery from brain damage.^{[18][19][20][21]}

The next moment in Time -

is fixed

It is impossible to predict

which is the nature of things

A conundrum? Not really. 

The explanation lies in the fact Time is-

seamless

There is no Gap between moments 

i think im safe to feel that no one u/s's time. but i believe that some ppl u/s it much much more than others cuzza their knowledge in the philosophies & sciences. gives them a running start. just me.

I don't mean this as a criticism of what you have written, in the slightest, Elroch, but to me, I wouldn't say they are "powers" and I don't like that kind of perception. I'm much more receptive to nomenclature like, maybe, "recognised ability" and I actually think of them rather like mental tricks, rather like the one I developed when I was nine which allowed me to do complex mental arithmetic very fast by performing two processes at once which was visually or imaginatively like a trapeze artiste (female) on a high wire and a swing. Also I read somewhere that someone had developed the ability to clear a portion of the mind on which you could write. So you use differently coloured chalks to write the number you arrived at in the first part of a calculation and then you could do another part or maybe do something quite disconnected and then look at the colour board in your mind and read off the number, and then use a piece of cloth to wipe it clean. It worked perfectly. However, the "magic think" is more or less by association .... each "thing" relates to a mental feeling and you can produce an outcome in the world by recognising the feelings and bringing them into conjunction with each other.

Actually, it's difficult to know whether you're reading future states of the world or altering it. Most people with these apparent abilities go for reading, which may be why Mustang goes for determinism. If you can read future states then determinism should be true. I veer away from that. To me it's a strange no-man's-land between "alter" and "read".

Regarding the rest of what you wrote, recognising it's dangerous in various ways, including the possibility of ridicule, draws many people who think they may have glimpsed it to rationalise it as wishful thinking and, of course, there is ego involved there, together with the recognition that the whole thing is so dangerous that a tiny bit of ego could bring disaster.

I think that a bit of ego in the wrong place could lead to thoughts that could be ultimately destructive. Many people who have recognised these "abilities" have been driven to insanity and, of course, that's compounded with the belief of a minority of people that such beliefs are a *sign* of insanity. Happily for the world, such people, although they can be very vocal online, are a small minority. Most people are open to the mysterious, thank .........

But when you are with someone who is in pain and you deliberately focus calming and healing thoughts on them and their pain stops and they become calm and able to breathe almost immediately, but they hadn't even known you were there maybe because you were behind them, and this happened over and over, time and time again, wouldn't it be insane to fall prey to the "attribution bias" that would have it that it's just a coincidence?

By and large, intelligent people are those who tend to doubt and suspect the idea of non-causal coincidence.

'lol, go ahead and ask..'

you mentioned the guys at the shooting range and i was thinking about the AR crowd never mind that..

elroch: 'I have seriously hypothesised such powers in myself in the (now quite distant past)'

and how do you feel about TR now?

A more sober assessment:

Ganzfeld experiments (wiki)

I wouldn't base any belief on such anecdotal evidence (which is similarly vague to my own once misinterpreted experiences).

What you have is the basis for a hypothesis. (cf the sort of evidence that is needed for a new drug to reach market, and the demonstrable fact that weaker testing would be unreliable).

As yours is a hypothesis that requires a radical change to established knowledge of how the real world works, the bar would need to be set appropriately high for testing it.