Explain this, you empiricists

[Rossiya]

Is that for our mind-reader?

 

[Birdjaguar]

We have already, we've explained why it is the most rational expnation countless, times from a perspective of probability. If you want the reasons simply look back through the thread.

I could bore you with statistical significance, and setting up a null hypothesis and z tests that determine wether there is a significance or that there is no statistical significance, or that a null hypothesis is consistent but I don't want to bore you with the maths.

I will go back and look, but I don't think what you say is there is really there.

Suffice to say since we only have 1 anecdotal peice of evidence we can't do this as the data pool is too small and the intangables too large, to do a significant z test we would need at least 30 pieces of data with which to estimate a mean and to have a standard deviation, now if as I suggested way back he took note of every dream he has from now on, and correllates them with real events then maybe we could talk about a test as it is there is no significance to 1 random occurence if weighed merely on the data we are given. Without it we have nothing statistically credible to work with.

So you cannot show that any single data point is actually a coincident and it is only in aggragate that you approach statistical reliability? Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought that in science, one works from the individual data points and colllects events that seem to be true and then make a generalization. You seem to be doing the opposite: no single data point can be shown to fit the rule, but collectively we can claim they all do.

What your asking is that we take this singular piece of evidence as a suggestion that it is a prescient event without any other reason to, we simply have to say that the most likely line of reasoning leads us, along with certain probabilities in the scenario, to say that it is most likely coincidence. We do not have enough data to come to any other conclusion.

No one has asked you to conclude that Bozos dream was prescient. I have asked for you to show me that it was coincident.

If we say it is evidence of psychic phenomina, people will inevitably ask what series of events lead us to this conclusion, is Bozo someone who often has such dreams, if so are they accurate, to what degree, how many people also have such dreams and in that pool is there a greater than chance occurence of said events. You see what we have to work with here?

Again, no one is asking for this.

If you were told that an airline was safe because 100 people had flown on 1 flight succesfully you'd say, nonsense right? If someone said that a particular car was safe, because no one had yet crashed in it, but it had only been driven a few hundred times you'd say, yeah right, pull the other one? If someone said, I say that I can read your mind and then told you what you were thinking once, would you say they were psychic? No you'd ask them to do it again. That's all we're asking because otherwise it's just too random to make significant judgements.

Three times in your post you keep coming back to "proving" BE's dream was something paranormal. Clearly you have missed the point.

This is how probability works, it is the foundation of a framework to investigate any statistical event, without it we're just making guesses and faking reality.

BEs dream was not a statistical event, it was a real event.

 

[Riffraff]

Ok what I think you want to hear is this:


If you look at one isolated incident, then statistics has absolutely nothing to say about it.



So if Bozo would be the only person dreaming for example, the idea that his dreams influenced reality would actually be quite valid and worthy of investigation

 

[Sidhe]

I will go back and look, but I don't think what you say is there is really there.

It is, it's just you don't understand the maths behind it

So you cannot show that any single data point is actually a coincident and it is only in aggragate that you approach statistical reliability?
Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought that in science, one works from the individual data points and colllects events that seem to be true and then make a generalization. You seem to be doing the opposite: no single data point can be shown to fit the rule, but collectively we can claim they all do.

You fail to understand probability, it's about a standard deviation, something is considered probable if it's not beyond the accepted means standard deviation.

No one has asked you to conclude that Bozos dream was prescient. I have asked for you to show me that it was coincident.

And as you know we can only show that it is the least likely to be right.

Three times in your post you keep coming back to "proving" BE's dream was something paranormal. Clearly you have missed the point.
BEs dream was not a statistical event, it was a real event.

And clearly you don't understand that statistical data is reliant on real events. Not arm waving suppostion. Data or stats are results of real experimentation.

It seems to me it's not me that is lacking an understanding, it is you who knows nothing about probability and the reasons why we accept events as statistically significant. All I'm saying is why should we believe a single anecdotal event over something significant in reality and statistically. I have no problem with your philosophy but it is based on a lack of understanding of the way we come to conclusions in science, therefore it's fairly easy to counter your arguments because you only speak from one side of the deal. It's simple arm waving with no logical basis.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Ultimately, there is no other useful way to work than to assume that anything that can't be proven beyond statistical probability doesn't exist. Otherwise you would be attributing occult significance to every time you flipped a coin 10 times and didn't get 5 tails 5 heads.

We've seen that in this thread, where Bozo's attempt at "generating thoughtful speculation" has just resulted in a lot of Laputian woolgathering & no concrete results. Ironically produced by those who reject the empirical method as insufficient to fully describe the universe - i.e., they haven't described shizzit yet...

Probabilities work just fine with die rolls and clearly defined data sets, but when it comes to "softer" subjects statistics can be a very anbiguous tool and easy to mainpulate to meet predetermined goals.

I noticed that you have introduced "useful" into the discussion. Would we agree on what that means in this context?

I'll ask again: Is rolling three 6s in a row coincidence just like rolling ten of them? Is rolling a single 6 at a specific time of day a coincidence?

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

I noticed that you have introduced "useful" into the discussion. Would we agree on what that means in this context?

Oh, I don't mean in an applied sense, we could be talking about abstract concepts and “useful” would have the same meaning I mean useful in the sense that idle speculation is useless. It is not useful to say something is true unless I can show it is true. If the goal of thought is to discover what is true and show that it is true, then proof has to be involved somewhere, that's just basic!

Probabilities work just fine with die rolls and clearly defined data sets, but when it comes to "softer" subjects statistics can be a very anbiguous tool and easy to mainpulate to meet predetermined goals.

The current scientific worldview states that everything is materialistic. There's a lot to back this up. For example, if probabilities were influenced by "soft" or nonmaterialistic factors such as human involvement, that would clearly influence results. But it doesn't. When I roll a die, its average value remains the same as it does when you roll it, or when (insert paranormal claimant here) rolls it. If we can't show how your uber-brainwaves affect dice rolls, then I think it is safe to maintain that uber-brainwaves don't exist.

I'll ask again: Is rolling three 6s in a row coincidence just like rolling ten of them? Is rolling a single 6 at a specific time of day a coincidence?

If someone was capable of doing this, I would be very interested in investigating that.

But consider this, the chance of rolling all sixes on three dice is 0.46%. Thus if we took the population of my college - about 1800 - and gave each three dice to roll, we could reasonably expect eight people to accomplish that feat. Thus if seven, or nine, or even eleven people manage to do what you have described, I see no reason to infer special abilities or paranormal phenomena.

Now if they can do it REPEATEDLY that strongly indicates a nonrandom element. If they can't, then that - equally strongly - indicates that they got lucky.

 

[Birdjaguar]

It is, it's just you don't understand the maths behind it

You fail to understand probability, it's about a standard deviation, something is considered probable if it's not beyond the accepted means standard deviation.

And clearly you don't understand that statistical data is reliant on real events. Not arm waving suppostion. Data or stats are results of real experimentation.

It seems to me it's not me that is lacking an understanding, it is you who knows nothing about probability and the reasons why we accept events as statistically significant.

Hmm...that is an interesting conclusion: I disagree with you and therefore I am ignorant and can't understand what you are saying. The flipside is: if I understood probability and statistics, I would agree with you.

There could be other options:
1) You have stated your case poorly.
2) You are wrong.
3) You have stated you case well, but I am pigheaded.
4) There is no right answer.

All I'm saying is why should we believe a single anecdotal event over something significant in reality and statistically. I have no problem with your philosophy but it is based on a lack of understanding of the way we come to conclusions in science, therefore it's fairly easy to counter your arguments because you only speak from one side of the deal. It's simple arm waving with no logical basis.

Yes, I am so anti-science.

BTW, what is the data set or real experimentation that underlies calling BE dream a coincidencw?

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

BTW, what is the data set or real experimentation that underlies calling BE dream a coincidence?

One doesn't "call something a coincidence." Something is a coincidence until proven otherwise. A coincidence or correlation is not a concrete object, it is a relation between two data points (in this case 1 - BE's dream and 2 - an event in his dream that later happened in real life).

Refraining from connecting two data points does not require proof, because it is not a positive claim, it is a negative claim. It does NOT state that these two events are utterly unrelated - that would be as positive a claim as to say that the first caused the second. Instead it states that we MUST ASSUME that they are unrelated UNLESS someone can show us how they are.

If we took it on faith that everything that looked like a correlation or causation was one, then no one would have ever discovered anything. There is not a surplus of data in the world, but a surplus of explanations. I can say that my car runs on gremlins if I want. Or I could say that people get cancer because God is punishing them for not going to church enough. In a world where positivist claims are granted the same credence as negativist claims, these are both perfectly valid statements. But in the real word, THEY'RE NOT.

 

[Sidhe]

Hmm...that is an interesting conclusion: I disagree with you and therefore I am ignorant and can't understand what you are saying. The flipside is: if I understood probability and statistics, I would agree with you.

There could be other options:
1) You have stated your case poorly.
2) You are wrong.
3) You have stated you case well, but I am pigheaded.
4) There is no right answer.

4) there is no right answer only probability. Are we suposed to say that some event is more likely than another because you say it is? Or can we show that one event is more unlikely if we show a statistical pool of real events?

Yes, I am so anti-science.

BTW, what is the data set or real experimentation that underlies calling BE dream a coincidencw?

I never said that, all I said is that you fail to understand why science comes to it's conclusions.

I explained why having a single event is unrealistic arm waving, if you don't want to deal with the fact that we cannot deal with anecdotal evidence or a single event as being evident of reality, or that we consider it invalid that's up to you. I have shown that if you say one event means that you are right then you have some way to go in understanding. If I say a plane crashes on it's first flight is indicative that the plane is unsafe, I am talking nonsense. I fail to see where this thread is going anyway? I'm not chastising you just asking you to take account of probability...

 

[Birdjaguar]

Oh, I don't mean in an applied sense, we could be talking about abstract concepts and “useful” would have the same meaning I mean useful in the sense that idle speculation is useless. It is not useful to say something is true unless I can show it is true. If the goal of thought is to discover what is true and show that it is true, then proof has to be involved somewhere, that's just basic!

If... I'm not sure that is the goal of thought or if thought has a goal. I see thought as a tool that enables us to do other things.

The current scientific worldview states that everything is materialistic. There's a lot to back this up. For example, if probabilities were influenced by "soft" or nonmaterialistic factors such as human involvement, that would clearly influence results. But it doesn't. When I roll a die, its average value remains the same as it does when you roll it, or when (insert paranormal claimant here) rolls it. If we can't show how your uber-brainwaves affect dice rolls, then I think it is safe to maintain that uber-brainwaves don't exist.

We've had discussions about materialism and determinism here before, and I'm not going to open that can of worms here.

But consider this, the chance of rolling all sixes on three dice is 0.46%. Thus if we took the population of my college - about 1800 - and gave each three dice to roll, we could reasonably expect eight people to accomplish that feat. Thus if seven, or nine, or even eleven people manage to do what you have described, I see no reason to infer special abilities or paranormal phenomena.

Now if they can do it REPEATEDLY that strongly indicates a nonrandom element. If they can't, then that - equally strongly - indicates that they got lucky.

We don't disagree about die rolling and how probabilities work in that arena. I suspect that the probability of a dream event and real world event happening in proximity (both time and space) is a bit more complicated to illustrate.

Back to my questions. Is rolling three 6s in a row a coincidence just like rolling ten of them in a row? If it is noon and I roll a six on a single die, is it a coincidence?[/quote]

 

[mdwh]

And the word "magic" means, essentially, "related to any powers or substances that I don't believe exist". So I could refer to any "supernatural (another meaningless word!) elements within any religion other than my own as "magic". All that it says is that the speaker disapproves of something.

No, that's not how I was using the word, and that's not what the word means (many people believe in magic, and they call it this).

But I'll rephrase just for you: "Surely their belief is just as valid as say, belief that unknown causes give us dreams which tell us the future?"

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

Is rolling three 6s in a row a coincidence just like rolling ten of them in a row?

Rolling ten is less likely than rolling 3; that doesn't attribute significance to it though.

If it is noon and I roll a six on a single die, is it a coincidence?

Definitely. There's a one in six chance.

If you named a 4-digit number, and then rolled four ten sided dice and got that number, that's what it would take to get me interested in your claims.

 

[mdwh]

Is rolling 9 sixes in a row a coincidence? How about 8 or 7 or 6? At what point does rolling sixes not become a coincidence? Could rolling a single six be a coincidence? And if it is not a coincidence, what is it?

Something isn't a coincidence if there is a connection between the events. It has nothing to do with how likely it is or isn't. Indeed, I would ask these questions to you: If nothing can be a coincidence, then does this mean there is some magic - sorry, hidden - meaning everytime I roll a 6 on a die? What if I roll a 4?

How do you show this plausibility?

We can try to work out how likely an event is.

Yes I am mocking their beliefs and that without any plausible explanation, claiming dreams tell us the future is worthy of mocking too.

I'm glad we agree

Right, possible for birds to fly. The few who speculated that one day men would fly were ridiculed by the vast majority of people.

There was never a scientific theory that said men could not fly.

Furthermore, there's a difference between "This is possible now" and "One day it will be possible with sufficient technology". If 1,000s of years ago a man claimed he could fly - but strangely never was able to show any evidence was - then yes, it would be right to ridicule him. That we now have flying machines is irrelevant.

 

[Birdjaguar]

One doesn't "call something a coincidence." Something is a coincidence until proven otherwise. A coincidence or correlation is not a concrete object, it is a relation between two data points (in this case 1 - BE's dream and 2 - an event in his dream that later happened in real life).

Thank you, thank you, thank you. That is the point I've been trying to make.

As I said earlier, I think that "coincidence " is merely a catch all bucket where empiricists sweep everything they cannot explain and pretend that probability supports them. The bonus they get by establishing anecdotes as coincidence is that all statements to the contrary now have to proven. Which they usually can't. Coincidence is a holding area for the unexplained that protects the soft underbelly of science.

Refraining from connecting two data points does not require proof, because it is not a positive claim, it is a negative claim. It does NOT state that these two events are utterly unrelated - that would be as positive a claim as to say that the first caused the second. Instead it states that we MUST ASSUME that they are unrelated UNLESS someone can show us how they are.

It would appear that the mandatory assumption that they unrelated is based on a more fundamental assumption that no events or data are related unless they can be show to be related. Would you agree?

If we took it on faith that everything that looked like a correlation or causation was one, then no one would have ever discovered anything. There is not a surplus of data in the world, but a surplus of explanations. I can say that my car runs on gremlins if I want. Or I could say that people get cancer because God is punishing them for not going to church enough. In a world where positivist claims are granted the same credence as negativist claims, these are both perfectly valid statements. But in the real word, THEY'RE NOT.

I don't disagree, but you choose an easy example. Things get trickier if I say that wishing will cure cancer. (I am not making that claim, BTW).

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

It would appear that the mandatory assumption that they unrelated is based on a more fundamental assumption that no events or data are related unless they can be show to be related. Would you agree?

Yes, absolutely.

As I said earlier, that base assumption is valid, practical and necessary because we must be parsimonious in our explanations. We know little, therefore we must have a sure footing for what we do claim to know. Accepting that which is unsupported drastically increases our chances of heading off in the wrong direction altogether.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Something isn't a coincidence if there is a connection between the events. It has nothing to do with how likely it is or isn't. Indeed, I would ask these questions to you: If nothing can be a coincidence, then does this mean there is some magic - sorry, hidden - meaning everytime I roll a 6 on a die? What if I roll a 4?

So would you agree that most events that happen in the world are coincidence or is it that since some events are caused that one chain of events will influence other chains of events and therefore most things that happen are not coincidence?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Yes, absolutely.

As I said earlier, that base assumption is valid, practical and necessary because we must be parsimonious in our explanations. We know little, therefore we must have a sure footing for what we do claim to know. Accepting that which is unsupported drastically increases our chances of heading off in the wrong direction altogether.

OK. Great. Do you also agree that the coincidence bucket is a catch-all for unproven relationships and that await dispositon?

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

OK. Great. Do you also agree that the coincidence bucket is a catch-all for unproven relationships and that await dispositon?

Sure, if you call that bucket "No known relationships to anything." The bucket doesn't contain relationships, it contains data points. For example it contains the data point that I cut my hair in September of 2006 and the data point that President Bush was reelected in November of 2004... the lack of correlation between these events doesn't constitute a relationship, even a negative relationship

My point being - we start with just data, then we investigate possible relationships between data pts.

Minor nitpick, but let's continue... you clearly are heading somewhere

 

[Eiba]

Sorry for the delay:

Eiba correct me if Im wrong but I dont think that Ive completely ruled out the possibility of coincidence at all in this thread. What Ive been attempting to do is introduce the possibility of something other than coincidence, and met stiff resistance.

The possibility cannot be denied, however your idea is about as possible as Last Thursdayism... You're meeting resistance when you claim a reasonable possibility.

As far as logic is concerned, I think its highly illogical to believe that one understands human consciousness, Time, and the functioning of the brain on the quantum level sufficiently to whip up some calculations to definitively prove that cases of precognition are always mere meaningless coincidence.

However we have at least a vague understanding of time and consciousness. Our understanding leads us to suppose that the most reasonable explanation is coincidence... To claim that what you experienced it a coincidence is not to say that we have proof that it wasn't precognition, however there's still no logical reason whatsoever to claim that it was precognition.

No, not my idea. Whats harmful to progress is when people believe that everything is known, so nobody should even raise questions about prevailing assumptions.

And you were accusing people of dismissing your idea in that way, no? (This is generally what I thought you meant and what I was rebuking.)

Um, Ive been responding to that possibility for 9 pages. I dont think anythings being weeded out. Its not like many of you were ever open to the possibility that it might not be a coincidence, and have subsequently been persuaded otherwise.

Again, you haven't responded with anything more convincing than arguments for Last Thursdayism (i.e. technical possibility). You've said nothing that makes it more possibly precognition than coincidence... Unless I missed something you never even tried. Therefore people continue to claim it's coincidence.

If after 9 pages of discussion you arent able to figure out what Im talking about, chances are, you just arent able to, and never will.

I’m sorry you think so lowly of me... You could do a lot to help me realize my inability if you gave a more specific outline of your ideas...

Eiba, you may choose to not trust your senses, and instead rely on mathematical equations, but thats not how most human beings experience life.

It's not how I experience life, but the knowledge of the discrepancies between perception and truth lead me to experience life with skepticism.

Youre saying I should dismiss the input of my own senses, including my own intuition and feelings, and embrace this instead?

p = (1 - (1/60,000))^2,000,000) = 3.34 * 10 ^(-13) % or 0.000000000000334 %

Um, no thanks, I'll pass on that. Maybe in 500 years when Im a cyborg

...
Umm. I really don’t know what to say... Are you denying the validity of statistics?
(Riffraff’s response to this is no different from what mine would be.)

[M]y purpose isnt to prove anything, its to ask questions and stimulate thought about something which is a relatively common occurence.

Here’s my thought about this "relatively common occurrence": It's overwhelmingly likely to be a coincidence. There's no reason I can see to believe in precognition. Objections? If you want any more discussion than that then I'll need some evidence...

If youre acting as spokeman for the coincidence camp, then its you guys who are changing your tune. Go back and check, but to the best of my recollection, none of you have said that it 'may' be coincidence, youve said that it 'is'.

For the record I totally back Taliesin’s explanation of 'is'. Really, by saying it is a sunny day, you're not ruling out that your actually in a Truman Show-esque studio with huge stage lights in the ceiling... But it's just plain silly to mention the possibility every time you want to comment on what appears to be a sunny day...

 

[Birdjaguar]

Are you denying the validity of statistics?

Are saying statistics are true representations of reality?