GoogleTechTalks`Rupert Sheldrake`
The Extended Mind[the mind beyond the brain]:
Recent Experimental Evidence
co.yt:
Rupert Sheldrake at GoogleTechTalks!
(partial transcript [and comments])
why is there a taboo against telepathy?
[ he didn't mention that a lot can go wrong:
if everybody agrees telepathy can be real
then when someone has a paranoid delusion
what can we do but say "who are we to know
whether this guy can read minds,
maybe he has indeed outed his enemies
by policing their thoughts."
. schiz'ics often complain of feeling alienated
because people are reading their minds;
or a devil is starting fights telepathically,
inserting and broadcasting thoughts;
it's just a lot easier to deny telepathy is possible;
you have telepathy? you get an antipsychotic med
for all the times telepathy caused us trouble.]
. minds have a field beyond brains,
like the magnetic field extends beyond a magnet;
. the model of vision,
where eye images are turned into brain images
has 2 problems:
# there's no explanation as to why you should be conscious;
# and this is supposed to be happening inside your brain,
[but I missed the evidence against that;
did he skip it?. 8.15:
. from the evidence of he gives I'm still theorizing
consciousness uses the brain to get images;
and consciousness uses morphic fields to
interact telepathically with what it's looking at;
I'm predicting that even if
you couldn't see someone but could hear them,
the morphic field could still allow telepathy with them;
so it's not just about what your vision touches.]
. when you see something
the image is located at where it seems to be
(so everything you can see is part of your mind
which extends far beyond your brain).
. so vision is a 2-step process:
light coming in, and the outward projection of images.
. this happens through a perceptual field,
which is a kind of morphic field
(part of his morphic resonance theory).
. your mind reaches out to touch what you're looking at;
your image of it is superimposed on what's really there.
exceptions are mirror images and hallucinations.
[what's the point of that vision theory
with such counter examples;
(I like everything else he says,
including the idea that the mind extends beyond the brain.]
. you can affect things just by looking at them;
this happens when people have the sense of being stared at.
. electrical measures of arousal are triggered
when people are being stared at,
and there is a statistically significant effect
of people being able to tell when being stared at.
. most often it is women who can sense this,
and most often when men are staring at them.
. a security guard trained by the FBI
was told if you see something on the tv,
just stare hard at the person,
and they are likely to stop what they're doing.
. notice the way social animals are
coordinated with each other;
when you see huge flocks of birds flying together,
some of it is happening too fast to be from
just watching the leader;
[it must be there is some form of shared mind
telling them to change direction at the same time.]
these fast-flying flocks of birds are linked through
morphic fields of the social group.
. telepathy is not supernatural, it's natural:
a part of the group's morphic field:
normal communication between members of a social unit.
[8.15:
morphic fields are natural not supernatural?
. the way you tell a gravity field
is that it has an effect on objects;
if that effect is linear and predictable,
then we say there is no
willful program determining the field
and thus it is part of nature.
. but if it is unpredictable, and not just random,
then it could be determined by a willful program
and should then be classified as supernatural.
. it seems then that morphic fields are
in the realm of the supernatural
giving telepathy a way to escape predictability:
. the reason we don't have perfect control of telepathy
is that it's partially an act of god,
or something in the realm of the supernatural.]
. consider quantum entanglement,
you heard of a book called "intangled minds"
when people become close, their minds become intangled,
so a change in one is reflected by a change in another.
good psi data from Dean Radin PhD:
Entangled Minds:
Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality;
The Conscious Universe:
The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena.
. cats become entangled with their owners,
such that they know when the owner is
planning to take them to the vet:
when the time for the appointment comes
the cats are often hiding.
. many pets who are mammals or birds
seem to know when their owner is coming home.
. he's done scientific studies of this,
and some dogs will start waiting at the door
at the moment their owner intends to go home.
. many people around the world believe
they've experienced telepathy;
skeptics say many are prone to delusion;
as a biologist, he looked at
when this was most likely to happen:
. mothers often feel changes in their breasts
that tell them that their baby needs them:
they are often right;
there might be an evolutionary advantage
to being able to communicate like this.
. many people have phone telepathy,
they think of a person just before that person calls.
. he did scientific studies of this too:
guess which of 4 close ones is calling;
so just random guessing gives 25% right;
but they were right 45% of the time;
the chance of that being random is 1/10^12 .
. when they try to guess unfamiliar callers
there is no telepathic effect
(they are right about 25% of the time).
. other science studies he's done:
tell when someone special is looking at your picture;
tell when someone special is looking at
the same picture you are looking at.
. James Randi is one of these
idealogically motivated skeptics
(not a reasonable, scientific skeptic)
who promotes the belief that psi is impossible;
he will give a $million for proof of psi,
but he controls all the publicity of your study after that.
Randi also lied to discredit Rupert Sheldrake.
. a skeptic says:
there's a subtle difference between science study
and statistical study;
science has to include a falsifiable theory
of how this works.
. not all science requires a theory
no one knew until recently how aspirin worked;
we still don't know how gravity works:
it's based on gravitons that no one has ever detected.
. phenomena can be recognized as such without a theory;
however, he does have a theory "morphic resonance"
discussed in 2 of his books:
New Science of Life
and The Presence of the Past:
Morphic Resonance and the Memory of Nature.
. it makes a number of predictions
that the data in today's talk supports:
telepathy should happen much more with
people you know well than with people you don't;
it should happen independent of distance.
. there are also
quantum entanglement theories of telepathy;
so there are statistical studies and theories,
making it a truly valid field of study.
. telepathy seems important to survival
providing evolutionary advantages;
why do you suppose we are not better at it?
. he points out there is an effort to
suppress the belief in telepathy;
so, you will hear only about street smarts,
not telepathy.
[ I suspect it is a gift of the god;
the devil is in the details;
for instance,
how do you know when your spouse is cheating?
it could save you from a cancer-causing infection,
or you could ruin your marriage with paranoia:
is your intuition or your spouse lying? ]
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