CAN INTENTION, ATTENTION OR EXPECTATION AFFECT RANDOM PHYSICAL SYSTEMS?

 

In this episode we’re going to be exploring the subtleties of an odd phenomenon the Experimenter Effect, where the expectations of the scientist doing an experiment appear to affect the results measured. This is hugely important for the right practice of science, and for understanding why some experiments that seem watertight methodologically can only be reproduced by scientists who expect the same results and not by skeptics of the hypothesis. This phenomenon is hugely worrying for the collective scientific endeavour in general, but also has far reaching implications for the importance of expectation and intention in experiments; the research into which we’ll be looking at in more detail in the 2nd series.

 

Who better to discuss this with than a scientist who ran into this while trying to disprove the the influence of consciousness in a physical system, Professor Garret Moddel; Dr. Moddel is Professor of Electrical and Quantum engineering at Colorado University, specialising in Solar cells, metal-insulator technology and geometric diodes, and optoelectronics among other extraordinary technologies. He also runs a separate lab in a totally different field of research that we’ll get into later in the interview. He is also one of the former presidents of the groundbreaking research organisation the Society of Scientific Exploration. 

 

 

00:00 New Solar tech: Transforming the wavelength of light (10 to the power 14 Hz!) into a diode.

01:04 The Experimenter effect explained

01:06 The difference between the effect in Psychology and in Physics

01:07 The control experiment and double/triple blind solution 

01:09 Unrepeatibility due to statistical spread experiment results. Humans never do the exact same thing each time

13:30 P value: the odds against chance that what you’ve observed is due to the influence you’re testing as opposed to randomness

15:00 The hard sciences do not recognise expectation and intention as an influence in their physical experiments

17:00 The subtle influences of humans on other physical systems and other humans

18:00 PSI effects: knowing things in advance, clairvoyance, telepathy, psychokinesis

19:00 RNGs: Helmut Schmitt and atomic decay Random Number Generator experiments

25:00 1000’s of scientists in a data driven, peer reviewed field of science, in underground labs at top universities; totally unacknowledged by the rest of science

26:00 Dean Radin at IONS, Bob John and PEAR Lab at Princeton University 

27:30 Garrett didn’t believe it till he read the literature

28:00 Skin conductivity experiments in random events to test pre-response

29:00 Garret’s attempt to disprove psi by taking minds out of the picture and finding the same effect

40:00 The Society for Scientific Exploration: Why the public don’t know about this and why scientists have to do this in secret

45:00 Garret’s ‘Edges of Science’ critical thinking course at Colorado University, where students try remote viewing

49:00 Clairvoyance: Perceiving information without the senses, developed into the remote viewing method that avoids the mind projecting ideas

55:55 Standford Research Institute’s 1970’s-1990’s military psychic spy remote viewing lab

01:59:00 Double blind remote viewing experiements

01:01:00 Dick Mirman in Holland, FMRI brain scan study on Remote Viewers

01:03:30 Jessica Utts: The statistical analysis of SRI’s remote viewing research

01:05:30 The Society of Scientific Exploration - taking unexplained phenomena seriously 

 

PART 2

01:08:00 The Observer Effect: simply observing interacts with quantum systems

01:11:00 Wigner Von Neumann and the ‘collapse of the wave function’ 

01:13:00 Focussing on anything in any way has an intention and attention

01:15:00 Our intention does affect random phenomena, incontrovertibly in the literature

01:16:30 Helmut Schmitt and his seemingly retro-causation experiment

01:19:00 Shoedinger’s cat, and Schmitt’s undetermined ‘cat state’ recording 

01:22:00 Only the first observer can influence a new system

01:27:30 The Global Consciousness Project of Roger Nelson, Princeton PEAR Lab

10:30:00 Field Consciousness theory: Important world events like 9/11 lead to a deviation from randomness

10:34:00 Experimenter Effect criticism of Field Consciousness results

10:36:00 Garret’s Psibotics Experiments, taking humans out of the equation

10:39:00 The presence of sceptic observers leads to effects in the opposite non-random direction

01:41:00 Garret’s Zero-point/quantum vacuum energy research

01:42:00 Bernie Haisch, their zero-point patent and DARPA funding

01:48:00 Justified scepticism of the zero-point phenomenon?

 

References:

(please note the reported bias towards criticism over support on the wiki entries; the supporters try constantly to re-edit these entries to represent credible support, only for moderators to edit back. Why the need for such disproportional criticism?)

Schmidt, Helmut. Paper "Collapse of the state vector and psychokinetic effect." Foundations of Physics 12.6 (1982): 565-581.

The Society for Scientific Exploration

Dean Radin at IONS

Radin, Dean, et al. paper "Psychophysical interactions with a double-slit interference pattern: Exploratory evidence of a causal influence." Physics Essays 34.1 (2021): 79-88.

Robert Jahn, Dean of Engineering at Princeton and founder of PEAR Labs Princeton

Robert Jahn, Brenda Dunne paper, ”On the quantum mechanics of consciousness, with application to anomalous phenomena." Foundations of Physics 16.8 (1986): 721-772.

Roger Nelson, Director of PEAR Labs Princeton

Bernie Haisch’s and Garret Moddel’s Zero point energy patent

Garret Moddel et al paper on recent Zero-point research

 

Bob John’s question to the Dalai Lama, ‘Is this random number generator conscious?’. The Dalai Lama replied, ’If you want it to be, it’s conscious’