Evidence for retrocausation in the field of psychophysical phenomena is to date questionable. Associated successful theoretical formulations would have to make accurate predictions and the purported evidence would have to be independently replicated. It is shown here that purported evidence for retrocausation within the field of psychophysical phenomena, such as the hypothesis of micro‐PK —that the statistical distributions of random processes are mean shifted by thought alone— can find more satisfactory descriptions. Those do not necessarily invoke transfer of information backward in time, while they provide mathematically structured formulations and allow for clear predictions. They refer to a two‐state Markovian process characterized by equal self‐transition probabilities, p=q>50%. This Markovian behavior introduces persistence and clustering of like binary states leading to a broadened scatter of statistical averages of individual micro‐PK tests about their theoretically expected mean, namely 50%, corresponding to that of an unbiased process. The origin of this broadening mechanism is currently unclear. It is, therefore, argued here that an established theory of mind‐matter interaction should precede the investigation of the validity of retrocausation within psychophysical phenomena. Thus the correct theory can be decided among alternatives.
Evidence for retrocausation in the field of psychophysical phenomena is to date questionable. Associated successful theoretical formulations would have to make accurate predictions and the purported evidence would have to be independently replicated. It is shown here that purported evidence for retrocausation within the field of psychophysical phenomena, such as the hypothesis of micro‐PK —that the statistical distributions of random processes are mean shifted by thought alone— can find more satisfactory descriptions. Those do not necessarily invoke transfer of information backward in time, while they provide mathematically structured formulations and allow for clear predictions. They refer to a two‐state Markovian process characterized by equal self‐transition probabilities, p=q>50%. This Markovian behavior introduces persistence and clustering of like binary states leading to a broadened scatter of statistical averages of individual micro‐PK tests about their theoretically expected mean, namely 50%, corresponding to that of an unbiased process. The origin of this broadening mechanism is currently unclear. It is, therefore, argued here that an established theory of mind‐matter interaction should precede the investigation of the validity of retrocausation within psychophysical phenomena. Thus the correct theory can be decided among alternatives.
Although experimental evidence for retrocausation exists, there are clearly subtleties to the phenomenon. The bilking paradox, in which one intervenes to eliminate a subsequent cause after a preceding effect has occurred, appears on the surface to show that retrocausation is logically impossible. In a previous paper, the second law of thermodynamics was invoked to show that the entropy in each process of a psi interaction (presentience, telepathy, remote perception, and psychokinesis) cannot decrease, prohibiting psi processes in which signals condense from background fluctuations. Here it is shown, perhaps contrary to one’s intuition, that reversible processes cannot be influenced through retrocausation, but irreversible processes can. The increase in thermodynamic entropy in irreversible processes — which are generally described by Newtonian mechanics but not Lagrangian dynamics and Hamilton’s Principle — is required for causation. Thermodynamically reversible processes cannot be causal and hence also cannot be retrocausal. The role of entropy in psi interactions is extended by using the bilking paradox to consider information transmission in retroactive psychokinesis (PK). PK efficiency, ηPK, is defined. A prediction of the analysis is that ηPK ⩽ H/H0, where H is the information uncertainty or entropy in the retro‐PK agent’s knowledge of the event that is to be influenced retrocausally. The information entropy can provide the necessary ingredient for non‐reversibility, and hence retrocausation. Noise and bandwidth limitations in the communication to the agent of the outcome of the event increase the maximum PK efficiency. Avoidance of the bilking paradox does not bar a subject from using the premonition of an event to prevent it from occurring. The necessity for large information entropy, which is the expected value of the surprisal, is likely to be essential for any successful PK process, not just retro‐PK processes. Hence uncertainty in the communication process appears to be a necessary component of retrocausation in particular, and of PK in general.
In 2011, Daryl Bem published a report of nine parapsychological experiments showing evidence of retrocausal information transfer. Earlier in 2016, the team of Bem, Tressoldi, Rabeyron, and Duggan published the results of a meta-analysis containing 81 independent replications of the original Bem experiments (total of 90 with the originals).[1] This much larger database continues to show positive results of generally comparable effect size, thus demonstrating that the effects claimed by Bem can be replicated by independent researchers and greatly strengthening the case for empirically observed retrocausation. Earlier (2011) work by this author showed how a modification of one of Bem’s original experiments could be used to test the mechanism implicitly proposed by Echeverria, Klinkhammer, and Thorne to explain how retrocausal phenomena can exist without any risk of self-contradictory event sequences (time paradoxes). In light of the new publication and new evidence, the current work generalizes the previous analysis which was restricted to only one of Bem’s experimental genres (precognitive approach and avoidance). The current analysis shows how minor modifications can be made in Bem’s other experimental genres of retroactive priming, retroactive habituation, and retroactive facilitation of recall to test the EKT anti-paradox mechanism. If the EKT hypothesis is correct, the modified experiments, while continuing to show replicable retrocausal phenomena, will also show a characteristic pattern of distortion in the statistics of the random selections used to drive the experiments.
PK experiments with prerecorded targets (Schmidt, 1976) are interesting because they suggest a variety of new test arrangements to study the basic PK mechanism. In addition, they permit the inclusion of independent observers who, with little time investment, can obtain first-hand evidence of any anomalous effects that may occur. Four such experiments with different independent observers, different subject populations, and minor variations have been performed previously (Schmidt & Braud, 1993; Schmidt, Morris, & Hardin, 1990; Schmidt, Morris, & Rudolph, 1986; Schmidt & Schlitz, 1988) with the first author as main experimenter and the other one or two authors acting as independent observers. The results of PK experiments with prerecorded random events appear most interesting and most puzzling because the subject's mental effort is made long after the random events to be affected have occurred. One tentative viewpoint (Schmidt, 1978; Walker, 1979) is that the subject's mental effort could act backward to the time when the random events were generated and recorded. This would imply a noncausal mechanism in the sense that the effect (the biasing of the random events) occurs before the cause (the mental effort). It might be this element of noncausality that makes psychic phenomena so intuitively implausible and at odds with the known principles of physics. Another viewpoint (Schmidt, 1982) is based on the quantum theoretical notion that there is no if there is no observer. Thus, the decisions of the random generator might become reality only when the subject observes the outcome during the test session. The subject's effort would not have to act into the past because the decision on the outcome would not yet be made until the subject received feedback during the PK test session. In this case, a preobservation of the recorded events should inhibit the subject's success, because the preobservation would make the random decisions real so that the subject's subsequent mental effort would come too late. For this reason it seemed particularly interesting to conduct an experiment in which half of the prerecorded random events had been preinspected so that one could compare the possible PK effects on the preobserved and not-observed events. One previous study (Schmidt, 1985) has indicated an inhibition of the PK effect by preobservation. In view of the central role of the question, however, further studies of the preobservation effect seem most important. In this and the four previous studies, the question of highest priority was whether a PK effect could be demonstrated under tightly controlled conditions. Because preobservation might inhibit the PK effect, we decided in advance to base the possible evidence for the existence of PK only on the results from the not-preobserved events. Although the independent observer was somewhat skeptical about the existence of PK, he was very interested in a possible preobservation effect because of its possible implications for quantum theory. Our subject pool consisted primarily of martial arts students as a matter of practical convenience. This population was relatively easily accessible and one that the experimenter had not yet explored. No attempt was made, however, to compare martial arts training and skill with PK performance systematically. METHOD The study was structured into 20 units such that a unit could be considered as a mini-experiment. Each unit was subdivided into 100 blocks of binary data. The sequence of binary data in each block determined two partial results, an even result and an odd result, arising from the even- or odd-numbered bits in the sequence. The partial results were defined so that by inverting the bits in the sequence (interchanging 1s and 0s) the signs of the partial results were inverted. In following the procedure for each unit, the experimenter used a true random generator to record the random bit-sequences for the 100 blocks on floppy disk. …
MICHAEL IBISON [1] ABSTRACT: This paper presents a theory of statistical psychokinesis that explains observed statistical anomalies with a minimal assumption about the influence of an agent upon a random process. The theory attributes the agent with an ability to accept or reject the immanent outcome of a random frail: if the immanent outcome is deemed unfavorable, the agent is attributed with the ability to choose again from the same distribution. From this very simple in-going assumption, it is deduced that the PK effect at the run level is maximized when the variance of the underlying random process is maximal. The theory thereby gains support from the modern view of psychokinesis as an essentially statistical phenomenon. This theory of Pit gives rise to a mathematical specification of the trial level influence that is identical to that of a classical model due to Schmidt. At the trial-level specification, and the run-level prediction, acceptance-rejection theory conflicts with decision augmentation theory and a mean-shift model. Suggestions are made for an experimental test between these three competing models. BACKGROUND PK as a Statistical Anomaly The modern view of PK is that it is an essentially statistical phenomenon, that determinism precludes, and randomicity favors, PK. Consequently, one is led to speculate that the origin of PK will be found to lie in quantum mechanics (QM), possibly as a component of the mysterious process of wave function collapse (Walker, 1975; Schmidt, 1982). Though even without a detailed physical model of the modality of PK at the quantum level, one can confidently specify some characteristics demanded of a classical statistical level description. Specifically: if the manifestation of PK requires noise, then an anomalous PK-induced effect at the run level should probably be a monotonic function of the variance of the underlying random process. Earlier Work Schmidt (1975) has given a classical statistical level model with this property. Though the model presented here is framed rather more psychologically than statistically or physically, it is nonetheless identical at the statistical level to Schmidt's model: both models exhibit the same (arguably) desirable relationship between a PK-induced run-level effect and the underlying variance. To date, there has been no focused experimental test of this particular statistical relationship. Comparative tests have been performed involving two systems in which, in some component, the data has a different variance (Schmidt, 1974; Ibison, 1998). In these experiments, however, in order to blind the operator to the origin, the variance of the displayed data is the same for both systems. Cognizant of these efforts, and in order to minimize the ambiguity of its predictions, acceptance-rejection theory (ART) is conservatively presented here as applicable only when the variance of a binary random process is also the variance of the observed data. Consequently, the lack of uniformity (of the variance) throughout the system disqualifies these experiments as tests of the theory. Schmidt's 1976 Experiment Schmidt (1976) performed an experiment particularly relevant to the theory in this paper. He compared the PK-susceptibility of two machines that were designed to give different probabilities to the high outcome of a binary trial. In these, binary trials were generated with high (= hit) outcome probability p = 1/8 (low probability p = 7/8) from a difficult machine, and with high (= hit) probability p= 7/8 (low probability q = 1/8) from an easy machine. Which of these two machines was responsible for the trial value presented to the PK agent was decided by a prerecorded look-up-table (LUT), whose entries were the output of another random process with p = q = 1/2. The agent was blinded to the value of this decision variable. (The LUT is present to test a feature of Schmidt's model that is peripheral to the issue of concern here. …
The classical physical theories that prevailed in science from the time of Isaac Newton until the dawn of the twentieth century were empirically based on human experience and made predictions about our mental experiences, yet excluded from the dynamics all mental properties. But how can one rationally get mental things out if no mental elements are put in? The key step in the creation of quantum mechanics during 1925 by Heisenberg and his colleagues was to recognize and emphasize the essential dynamical role of mental properties in the creation of our mental empirical findings. This basic feature of quantum mechanics was cast into rigorous mathematical form by John von Neumann, and was made a central feature of contemporary relativistic quantum field theory by the work of Tomonaga and Schwinger. That theory is causally strictly forward in time. But it is explained here how it can nevertheless accommodate the seeming backward-in-time causal effects reported by D.J. Bem, and many others, by means of a slight biasing of the famous Born Rule. The purpose of this communication is to explain how those reported retrocausal findings can be explained by a strictly forward-in-time and nearly orthodox causal dynamics that, however, permits the Born Rule to be slightly biased under certain conditions. A feasible experiment is proposed that, if it gives the outcomes predicted by the proposed theory, will provide evidence in favor of this causally forward-in-time and nearly orthodox explanation of the reported retrocausal effects.
The debate on whether the future is predetermined (fixed) or probabilistic (uncertain) dates back to ancient times but is still ongoing. An essential basis in this paper is the view that a conclusive answer can neither be drawn exclusively from physics nor additionally from philosophical modes of argumentation. It is considered necessary to take a transtemporal process of cognition, which is in parapsychology termed precognition, into account. This brings in the new aspect that predictability no longer needs to be synonymous with computability and the analytic describability of causal event chains, which also has an impact on the meaning of the terms that are used. Furthermore, this allows a superior timeless perspective that invalidates the logic from the present-time perspective and extends the concept of observability and reality. Since both subjects are interrelated and cannot be considered independently of each other, a psychophysical hypothesis about how precognition interacts with the future is an integral part of this proposal, its experimental verification is described. This encompasses explanations of how logical paradoxes, which are often attributed to precognition, do not exist and how intelligible information can be consistently shared between the present and the future in four-dimensional spacetime. The argumentation for a non-probabilistic, fixed future comprises the physical point of view, referencing special relativity theory and quantum theory, but considers the nonphysical aspects of the mind with the same matter-of-factness. A similar conclusion that the future is deterministic is not asserted since this term combines causality and predictability in an inscrutable way by making complex assumptions that are not precisely and uniformly defined. A closer description of the problem reveals that the frequently used keywords “deterministic” and “probabilistic” lose their usual meaning if the frame of reference given here is acknowledged. Therefore, many reservations that consider only a probabilistic future as reasonable might be unnecessary.