“P(psi|QFT) is higher than Sean Carroll thinks it is”—in which case Jack would need to account somehow for Carroll being mistaken in his analysis.
This is basically my position. ETA: I may assign a high probability to “not all of the hypotheses that make up QFT are true” a position I believe I can hold while not disputing the experimental evidence supporting QFT (though such evidence does decrease the probability of any part of QFT being wrong).
I don’t think Carroll’s analysis comes close to showing that P(psi|QFT) is 1 in a billion. He took one case, a psychokinesis claim that no one in parapsychology endorses and showed how it was impossible given one interpretation of what the claim might mean. We can’t look at his analysis and take it as convincing evidence that the claims of parapsychologists aren’t consistent with QFT since Carroll doesn’t once mention any of the claims made by parapsychologists!
Now there are some studies purporting to show psychokinesis (though they are less convincing than the precognition studies and actually might just be a kind of precognition). Even in these cases no one in parapsychology thinks the perturbations are the result of EM or gravitational fields; Carroll pointing out that they can’t shouldn’t result in us updating on anything.
I actually think a physicist might be able to write a convincing case for why the claims of parapsychologists can’t be right. I think there is a good chance I don’t grasp just how inconsistent these claims are with known physics—and that is one of the reasons why fraud/methodology problems/publication bias still dominate my probability space regarding parapsychology. But Carroll hasn’t come close to writing such a case. I think the reason you think he has is that you’re not familiar with a) the actual claims of parapsychologists or b) the various but inconclusive attempts to explain parapsychology results without contradicting the experimental evidence confirming QFT.
The worked example he provides is what physics would require to exist (a new force that is somehow of at least comparable strength to electromagnetism but that has somehow never been detected by experiments so sensitive that they would detect any new force more than a billionth the strength of gravity) for telekinesis to exist at all. And there are indeed parapsychologists who claim telekinesis is worth investigating.
It is not unreasonable for Carroll, having given a worked example of applying extremely well-understood physics to the question, to then expect parapsychologists to then apply extremely well-understood physics to their other questions. His point (as he states in the article) is that they keep starting from an assumption that science knows nothing relevant to the questions parapsychologists are asking, rather than starting from an assumption that known science could be used to make testable, falsifiable predictions.
He doesn’t have to do the worked example for every phenomenon that parapsychology claims is worth serious investigation to make his point valid. Ignoring the existence of relevant known science is one reason parapsychology is a pseudoscience (a partial imitation) rather than science.
I could be wrong, but I think you added to this comment since I replied. Since all of my comments on the topic are getting downvoted without explanation I’ll be short.
And there are indeed parapsychologists who claim telekinesis is worth investigating.
But not spoon bending so much. In any case, being concerned about force fields is only worth while if you assume what is going on is a cause and effect, which many, maybe most of the attempts at explanation don’t.
This is really getting away from what Komponisto and I were talking about. I’m not really disputing the claim that parapsychology is a pseudo-science. I’m disputing the claim that Carroll’s analysis shows that the claims of parapsychology are fundamentally ruled out by current physics. I haven’t really thought about delineation issues regarding parapsychology.
His point is that they keep starting from an assumption that science knows nothing relevant to the questions parapsychologists are asking, rather than starting from an assumption that known science could be used to make testable, falsifiable predictions.
But he gives no evidence that parapsychologists start from this assumption. Plenty of parapsychologists know that no force fields produced by the brain could be responsible for the effects they think they’ve found. Thats sort of their point actually.
There are lots of silly people in the field who think the results imply dualism of course—but thats precisely why it would be nice to have materialists tackle the questions.
There are no significant results from parapsychologists who are aware of physics. Instead, we have results from parapsychologists that claim statistical significance that have obviously defective experimental design and/or (usually and) turn out to be unreplicable.
That is, you describe sophisticated parapsychologists but the prominent results are from unsophisticated ones.
This is basically my position. ETA: I may assign a high probability to “not all of the hypotheses that make up QFT are true” a position I believe I can hold while not disputing the experimental evidence supporting QFT (though such evidence does decrease the probability of any part of QFT being wrong).
I don’t think Carroll’s analysis comes close to showing that P(psi|QFT) is 1 in a billion. He took one case, a psychokinesis claim that no one in parapsychology endorses and showed how it was impossible given one interpretation of what the claim might mean. We can’t look at his analysis and take it as convincing evidence that the claims of parapsychologists aren’t consistent with QFT since Carroll doesn’t once mention any of the claims made by parapsychologists!
Now there are some studies purporting to show psychokinesis (though they are less convincing than the precognition studies and actually might just be a kind of precognition). Even in these cases no one in parapsychology thinks the perturbations are the result of EM or gravitational fields; Carroll pointing out that they can’t shouldn’t result in us updating on anything.
I actually think a physicist might be able to write a convincing case for why the claims of parapsychologists can’t be right. I think there is a good chance I don’t grasp just how inconsistent these claims are with known physics—and that is one of the reasons why fraud/methodology problems/publication bias still dominate my probability space regarding parapsychology. But Carroll hasn’t come close to writing such a case. I think the reason you think he has is that you’re not familiar with a) the actual claims of parapsychologists or b) the various but inconclusive attempts to explain parapsychology results without contradicting the experimental evidence confirming QFT.
The worked example he provides is what physics would require to exist (a new force that is somehow of at least comparable strength to electromagnetism but that has somehow never been detected by experiments so sensitive that they would detect any new force more than a billionth the strength of gravity) for telekinesis to exist at all. And there are indeed parapsychologists who claim telekinesis is worth investigating.
It is not unreasonable for Carroll, having given a worked example of applying extremely well-understood physics to the question, to then expect parapsychologists to then apply extremely well-understood physics to their other questions. His point (as he states in the article) is that they keep starting from an assumption that science knows nothing relevant to the questions parapsychologists are asking, rather than starting from an assumption that known science could be used to make testable, falsifiable predictions.
He doesn’t have to do the worked example for every phenomenon that parapsychology claims is worth serious investigation to make his point valid. Ignoring the existence of relevant known science is one reason parapsychology is a pseudoscience (a partial imitation) rather than science.
I could be wrong, but I think you added to this comment since I replied. Since all of my comments on the topic are getting downvoted without explanation I’ll be short.
But not spoon bending so much. In any case, being concerned about force fields is only worth while if you assume what is going on is a cause and effect, which many, maybe most of the attempts at explanation don’t.
This is really getting away from what Komponisto and I were talking about. I’m not really disputing the claim that parapsychology is a pseudo-science. I’m disputing the claim that Carroll’s analysis shows that the claims of parapsychology are fundamentally ruled out by current physics. I haven’t really thought about delineation issues regarding parapsychology.
But he gives no evidence that parapsychologists start from this assumption. Plenty of parapsychologists know that no force fields produced by the brain could be responsible for the effects they think they’ve found. Thats sort of their point actually.
There are lots of silly people in the field who think the results imply dualism of course—but thats precisely why it would be nice to have materialists tackle the questions.
There are no significant results from parapsychologists who are aware of physics. Instead, we have results from parapsychologists that claim statistical significance that have obviously defective experimental design and/or (usually and) turn out to be unreplicable.
That is, you describe sophisticated parapsychologists but the prominent results are from unsophisticated ones.
Cite?
ETA: Bem, for example, whose study initiated this discussion has a BA and did graduate work in physics.