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From: sphinx@world.std.com (SPHINX Technologies)
Subject: Re: Stapp, PK & Physics Today
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Organization: SPHINX Technologies, Inc., Wellesley Hills, MA
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Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 02:36:53 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.physics:134961 sci.math:114586 sci.skeptic:121272 comp.ai:32554

In article <40ql7f$j11@cnn.Princeton.EDU>,
York H. Dobyns <ydobyns@flagstaff.princeton.edu> wrote:

>"telepathy", I will limit myself to citing the January 1994
>_Psychological Bulletin_ article by Daryl Bem and Charles Honorton. 
> ... strongly significant effect nevertheless persisted. (About a 33% hit
>rate, with 25% being expected by chance, over several hundred trials.)

OUTSTANDING!  Thanks for pointing this out.  Now, according to "Shannon
Theory" - so named after its inventor, Claude E. Shannon, of MIT's EE Dept
(emeritus, tho), such a hit rate and a (presumably nonbinary or "q-ary")
symbol alphabet together determine a CHANNEL CAPACITY for information
transmission over a telepathy channel.  And acc. to Shannon's pioneering
and very counterintuitive results, as long as you are willing to send data
at a rate below that channel capacity, you can REDUCE THE ERROR RATE
to AS LOW A VALUE epsilon as you choose, by constructing a suitable
error-correcting code!!!!

OK, skeptics, here is the test.  YOU want to show it's a crock.  So
YOU go round up a few (few hundred? ... watch out, I'm setting you up for
a "light bulb" joke...) coding theorists and have them agree on a code
which should provide ABSOLUTELY DEAD RELIABLE TRANSMISSION, say probability
of error less than 10 to the -6 or -9 or pick your figure, over the channel
the PSI freaks claim is there.  Give them a message to transmit.  Set up
ANY SAFEGUARDS YOU LIKE to prevent fraud.  Let 'em go to work transmitting
the message over their alleged "channel".  If they are right, a rock-solid
copy of the original message should emerge from your own decoding process,
using the selected ECC.  If they are wrong, you will have the pleasure of
showing them up royally for all to see.  How 'bout it, folks?  

Skeptics, YOU pick the code, based on the stated error rate and symbol
alphabet.  ESP Believers, YOU review the chosen code parameters to verify
that it should give the desired error probability after decoding.  Then do
the experiment publicly, with the media present.  Bring "Randi" along, too,
if you wish.

If you like, you could even hook up a light switch at one end and use it
to control, via the ESP channel, a light bulb at the other end.  With
suitable error-control coding for the error statistics of the raw channel,
the light bulb should go on and off, after a predictable delay for coding
and decoding, just as reliably as the one over your front porch.  Unless
of course the light bulb failed and you didn't have enough coding theorists
(or skeptics) to replace it.  Or unless the skeptics are RIGHT and there
really isn't anything to the claimed communication path.

C'mon, skeptics.  There's an experimental demonstration here that either
will work -- like the light switch/light bulb setup described above --
and PROVE that there's a channel there, or WON'T work, and will prove
there is NOT a channel there.  What do you have to lose, if you are an
honest skeptic?

-John Sangster
 Wellesley Hills, MA USA

>Honest skeptics must be willing to question *their own* beliefs, as
>well as those of people with whom they disagree.

I couldn't agree more.
