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Nicola Holt
You're sitting back with your eyes covered, blocking out the red light that illuminates the room. The white noise hissing in your ears further dulls your already deprived senses. Now your mind is open and ready to receive the telepathic message your friend is sending you from the next room.
This doesn't sound like a typical scientific experiment, but Nicola Holt isn't an ordinary scientist. She specialises in parapsychology, anomalous experiences and the role of altered states of consciousness in creativity. The above experiment was part of a post-doc research project, the results of which showed that people could pick out the message their friend was trying to send, out of four options available, significantly more often than would occur by chance.
"I've always been quite sceptical, but at the same time I've always been interested in the idea that there are other modes of cognition than we typically experience in everyday life," says Nicola. "This result wasn't enough to convince me that telepathy is a real phenomenon, but it was enough for me to think that this warranted more research."
So just what is an anomalous experience? "This can include meditative states, mystical experiences, paranormal experiences where someone might feel a telepathic connection with someone else, or lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences - anything out of the ordinary," Nicola explains. "My job is to design experiments to explore the mechanisms behind such experiences and their implications for how our brain works."
It's not easy working on the outer fringes of human consciousness, and since Nicola left the cosy bubble of her PhD department she has noticed that people in other psychology departments respond differently to what she does.
"It's usually regarded either with scepticism or curiosity," she says. Nicola's work is far from hocus pocus, however. From a clinical point of view, there is an interest in anomalous experiences as they could be symptomatic of an underlying disorder, such as schizophrenia.
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Have your say
here in New Scientist? Wasting all our time.
Agree. So is wireless phones, airplanes a and quantum physics.
It's better to just stick to what we 'know' already and close our eyes for things that don't agree with our make-up nature laws.
yes this is outrageous "black hole", did u know that some people also claim the earth is round? insanity!
Why Is This Rubbish
Sun Oct 25 14:42:07 GMT 2009 by Dennis
http://freetubetv.net
I call heresy on that.
We aren't ready for parapsychology.
Its not what we have, but what we do with it. And we've shown that we first use our abilities for harm.
Parapsychology may have too great an ability to do harm.
Monkeys are monkeys, and we are monkeys.
First lets become human.
Or... we can spend that time on figuring out how our brains work. Maybe then we'll have an idea on why we're not so "human"
What's more harmful; Harm through progress or fear of progress?
Exactly what the whole scientific physics community told Ludwig Boltzmann when he was blathering about his atom idea. While it was so clear that such inconceivable things couldn't exist according to his critics. Some people just don't listen, but keep on investigating. What's the matter with those people, right?
You didn't read this carefully and you obviously have not met enough crazy people. Read the book by Jon Robinson, now a movie (The Men Who Stare at Goats), if you don't think how people deal with their feeling that they have supernatural powers, is important. That stuff set national policies! If "rubbish" then the very thing YOU want is being studied here. Psychologist need to absolutely find out why people feel they have psychic powers. Is it a brain timing (faulty causality in the brain) problem?
Obviosly in using the term "crazy" you know I'm not in the health care profession. I have a friend who does triage for incoming crazy people and I've seen a couple people close to me go a little psychotic and one fully paranoid schizo.
This absolutely is a valid question to ask and research: What gives one the impression that they have psychic powers? We've all experienced odd things, but why do some people think this is something they "have" as some unusual personal attribute, like being tall or having extra digits.
Usually, people want to claim some avenue of research is "rubbish" because it takes away funds. "Rubbish," is not a scientific criticism, it is a budgetary critique. Is there a return on the investment. Your "gut" reaction says no. My experience with friends who've I've seen go over the edge, says it it very, very valuable. Every one of them would think they had some special perception or power; they are able to know the future, read minds... cause soda machines to mis-operate... and such.
Read the article about time perception as well. These can represent a timing and therefor a misperception of causality.
Many sane people have these impressions... I have at times you have at least once in your life wondered probably thought ESP was worth spending time in reading an article or book, because it "seems" it might be possible. You, like me, have decided it is either not true, lost interest, or found it intriguing but not reliable enough to be useful.
Educate yourself.
Absolutely, I think you should educate yourself. Start here:
http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/tai-presents-dr-harold-hal-puthoff
Think About Thought.
Thought seems a non-solid, intelligent and creative part of what we call being alive. You can converse with it. You can create images with it. All within yourself, that only you can see and hear. When you talk to yourself, thoughtwise, is it a sound within you, so quiet that only you can hear? Or is it something else? When you visualize a place or a face, what are you creating? You are not bringing those things to you and yet there they are. So what are these images and thought sounds, made of?
On the outside of your body, when things go wrong, like cuts, breaks and the likes, physical, do you heal them? Do you know how and why your little cells jump into repair mode and battle infections that invade and damage? A scratch on your back you have not noticed, will repair and heal without you knowing. Does this not indicate a duality? Maybe you are a thought being, driving around within a material vehicle you learn to control from birth? Could the brain be the control centre for the "non-solid" to drive the "solid" around the physical world, until the eventual wear out, all physicals have to endure? Learning and overcoming restraints are what we end up with in aged times in most cases. So....does any of this shape the non-solid thought part of you, which may continue, after physical wearout? I do see a "hard drive" or memory within the brain for the life and times of the now personality, but beyond that, a knowing seems to exist within a subconscious, that the conscious memory does not seem to be aware of.
I have reason, to believe in what this young researcher is researching. Ridicule is never a constructive reqirement. This is science. One of many in the fields. Possibly, of hyper importance.
I wish her success.
What are you lot blithering about?
Science is about everything. I'm guessing none of you have any serious philosophical or scientific ventures up your sleeve. Progress without progress? Sounds absurd to me.
I for one find nearly everything in science of at least some interest or use - you should too!
That friends are conditioned to pick similar options to each other, out of a choice of four, by virtue of being friends?
Agreed. I'd be impressed if she got the same results with sets of strangers.
lol, shows how much you've read - lots of ganzfeld participants are strangers, but that's beside the point, because everything's randomized anyway, so the experiment isn't even based on shared knowledge. maybe you should read more before you mouth off in a public forum
Hey, I haven't read the original paper, true, but my (and Hasham's) reaction was based on what NS reported, and they clearly stated "friend", not "randomly picked out stranger". If reading the original papers is required before being licensed to form an opinion on a NS post, few people here would comment at all, and what would be the purpose of reading NS?
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