Has Psychokinesis Met Science's Measure?

Jean E. Burns, Daniel P. Sheehan

Ken Steiglitz

Ana Borges Flores, Caroline A. Watt, Ian Tierney

Garret Moddel

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.

W. Helfrich

Abstract-Mean values of the z-scores of statistical psi effects in psychokinesis (PK) and extrasensory perception (ESP) are compiled. Under the influence of psi, the z-score distribution of experiments with binary random number generators (RNGs) at large numbers N of bits is known to be shifted and widened, but to remain indifferent to N. The mean z-score of binary one-trial experiments with dream psi is noted to be not much smaller than the mean z-score of these (presumably) mostly isolated many-trial experiments with RNGs. This could suggest that with two equivalent choices PK and ESP are equally effective, or very nearly so, and the mean z-scores are almost equal at all N down to N = 1. The widening is found to be attributable to a Gaussian distribution of the magnitude of the PK effect that causes the shift, provided the z-score distribution remains Gaussian. Formulas are proposed to compute from the values of shift and widening as observed with RNGs those of psi effects with more than two equivalent choices, such as falling dice. They are only partially confirmed by the (still rather scanty) datasets of such systems. Finally, psi-induced switching and mind-neuron interaction are revisited.Keywords: statistical parapsychology--mean values--relationships between mean values--psi effects--psychokinesis (PK)--extrasensory perception (ESP)--random number generators (RNGs)