Is there a justification for the nonempiricism of magic?

[mouse]

I wish you luck as you go to practice luck! Anyone can do it... I believe we always ARE doing it. I'd be curious to hear how it goes, though I think you know well enough to give it a good few tries before you call anything conclusive. Even if it works with astonishing accuracy for you on the first try, you're still gonna have doubts about it. Best to play it casual and have fun with it.

 

I decided to go and try this. As my motivation for wanting or against wanting a number, I used this thought process:

I live in the woods, and my job means I spend allot of time in the woods. I have spent many terrible nights without a fire for various reasons, and since it's possible to influence the world using the mind* I could learn to use this to make fires, and then I held on the the feeling of being secure knowing I could never lose my tinderbox, and the happy warm feeling of having a fire going. Therefore I associated that feeling with wanting evidence in favour that this would be possible and the increased safety and contentness it would mean.

 

*I thought if I thought "if this is possible" it would invalidate the results according to your model, so I went with believing and assuming it were a real effect.

 

I tried four rounds. Each round I tried, I generated 50 numbers. I tried focusing on something different each round, wanting or not wanting such and such number, and believing or not believing that the process would work.

 

Now, before you read my results, could you post your own? (And please label which rounds were successes or failures.) I used this randomiser: http://www.random.org/

 

Here are my results:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Attempt 1

3 2 4 1 4 3 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 1 3 1 4 3 4 2 2 1 3 3 3 2 3 4 4 2 1 3 4 2 2 1 3 1 1 4 1 4 2 1 2 1 3 3 3 4

Focus - wanting 1

Iterations - 50

Average - 2.42

Expected average - 2.5

Number of 1s - 15

Expected number of 1s - 12.5

In Favour

 

Attempt 2

4 4 2 4 1 3 2 2 1 3 2 3 1 3 3 2 2 1 3 1 4 4 3 1 2 4 4 2 1 1 3 4 4 1 4 4 2 3 3 2 1 3 1 2 4 4 1 2 3 1

Focus - wanting 3

Average - 2.58

Number of 3s - 12

Against Favour.

 

Attempt 3

1 1 1 3 1 3 1 1 4 1 4 1 1 1 2 3 4 1 2 1 3 4 3 2 4 3 4 1 3 3 3 3 1 2 4 4 3 2 1 1 , 4 1 1 3 1 4 4 2 3

Focus - hating 1

Average - 2.36

Number of 1 - 19

Against Favour.

 

Attempt 4

2 2 2 4 2 2 4 3 3 2 2 4 1 4 1 3 4 4 3 4 2 3 3 4 1 2 1 4 1 1 4 4 1 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 1 2 4 2 3 2 3 1 1 1

Focus - disbelieving it will work, thinking of number 1

Average - 2.62

Number of 1s - 11

Against Favour.

 

TOTAL Average - 2.515

TOTAL Number of 1s - 58

TOTAL Expected number of 1s - 50

[dillionchurchill]

You're right, it doesn't. It's not empirical evidence. Which is what the topic of this thread is.

 

Well, no, the topic of this thread is how metaphysics practitioners justify their belief in metaphysics without empirical evidence. Which means that what I was saying was exactly pertinent.

 

I'm also saying that I DO have empirical evidence through my experience. I was saying that although the number of accounts didn't prove anything, it made me curious enough to find out for myself, I which point I DID prove it to myself.

---

Focus - hating 1

 

Out of all of those results, the one where you focused on hating "1" [a highly charged negative emotion] put all your energy into making "1" happen. And that in turn gave you your most dramatic result of 19/50, or a 38% chance to get a 1, where statistical probability would expect 25%.

 

[The metaphysical implication of this effect is that hating something a lot actually attracts it to you, which you'll find in "law of attraction" style claims all over the place]

 

Interesting results all around, but a sample size of 200 isn't too awfully much, hm? Keep going! I'm interested in how this works for people who are just getting into it!

 

Also notable to me that the round where you consciously chose NOT to believe in it actually made that round's results very balanced in probability...

[Lacquer]

Something from the bowels of sunora.net :

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20101128102811/http://psipog.net/art-introduction-to-tk.html

 

Take a look at the results to the right. Although the person was trying to force 3, he did the total opposite. This might happen to you. You say "I want 3" and your subconscious thinks "Well, since this isn't going to work, there won't be a lot of 3's." Your negative subconscious thoughts are reflected onto the results. This is a GOOD sign . If you get something similar to this you should be able to convince your sub-conscious that TK does exist. How else can you explain the drastic change? Sure, the numbers will fluctuate a little, but that much? Eh, not likely.

[dillionchurchill]

^ Exactly.

[dillionchurchill]

Now, before you read my results, could you post your own?

 

Whoops! um... I completely missed that statement.

 

I did a similar experiment 3ish years ago. I just now tried to find the data from it but I could not.

 

I wrote a program that displays random numbers, and the use guesses which one is "correct". 75% of the time, it would display two numbers, giving you a 50/50 chance. The rest of the time, it would display anywhere between 3 and 10 numbers to choose from.

 

I used this to practice a lot, and later modified the program to record how many guesses were correct of each question type. In other words, it would store how many 50/50 questions you were correct on, how many 1 out of three questions you were correct on, how many 1 out of 4 questions you were correct on, etc etc. At the end of a user-entered number of trials, it would display total results.

 

To analyze results, I treated a correct 1 out of 2 question as 2 points, a correct 1 out of 3 question as 3 points, a correct 1 out of 4 question as 4 points, etc etc all the way to a 1 out of 10 question being 10 points. With this number system, no matter what question type is given, the statistical average outcome should be 1 point per trial. Meaning if I did 50 trials, the statistical average score should be 50 points.

 

The one time I made a point to truly examine my success rate with chance manipulation back then, I recorded 3 sessions. The first session was 200 trials, and my result was 219 points, or 10% higher than statistical average. My second session was 200 trials as well, and I scored a 223, or 11.5% higher than statistical average. My final session was longer: I ran 500 trials, scoring 553 points, or 10% higher than statistical average.

 

So, out of 900 trials I scored an astonishingly consistent 10% or so above statistical average. This data, of course, does not speak to emotional ups and downs within the sessions, and I remember there were both impressive success and loss streaks within each session, which are common due to emotional fluctuation. Nevertheless, the apparent consistency of 10% "luckier" than average made me very happy with the results.

 

I wish I could find the specific results document. These numbers I've given here are from memory and likely inaccurate. The document has even how many of each question type I got correct for each session... summaries I wrote of my emotional state prior to each session, my summary of how I felt I did BEFORE viewing my results, and a post-experiment summary after reviewing my results.

 

Consistency of 10% skew through 900 trials is no small figure. Once again, anyone can do this, it seems. I do believe it's heavily reliant on your subconscious acceptance of these principles, so results may vary.