Belief in ESP?

Question

Belief in ESP: Why do people believe so strongly in ESP despite any clear empirical support for its existence? I need a clear and complete answer, please. Thank you.

Answer 1

You're right that there isn't clear empirical evidence to justify belief in ESP. So far the results seem very nebulous and are mired in debate and controversy. Nothing significant has seemed to survive scientific scrutiny so far. I don't pretend to know the answer to your question, but I can offer an opinion. I think that many in the public (non-scientists) can be easily bamboozled into accepting bad science as factual, be impressed by someone with a PhD after their name, or be fooled into buying into flim-flam which uses scientific-sounding words and phrases to promote belief. We can't discount the impact of the media, with all these paranormal TV shows now (Ghost Hunters, Medium, etc.) Add to that the internet and how easy it is to communicate and spread misinformation, and the common dream of having "superpowers", and there you have the recipe for strong belief.

In contrast, scientists are better trained to ignore the window dressing and get down to the raw data to determine if a hypothesis is supported or not. For example, among scientists in the National Academy of Sciences, 96% described themselves as "skeptical" of ESP, although 2% believed in psi and 10% felt that parapsychological research should be encouraged.

I linked to an CSICOP article which discusses the 2000 NSF report on belief in the paranormal and scientific illiteracy, which you might find useful.

Answer 2

It's absolutely real. And there's plenty of proof to support this. All government have their people specifically for reason of measures to find out about enemies.

It's been used over and over for so many yrs. And it works well. I've had it myself and of course can't prove it, but it's real anyway.

Answer 3

Dear friend,

Yes I believe in ESP and it exists...it is similar to we believe in air and various components in it though we can not see them with naked eyes....

Yes but we do know it's existence when we breath....Similarly when individual progresses spiritually he develops sixth sense....that is Extra Sensory Perception (ESP)...

Following web link have very interesting article....please browse through this link and I am sure that it will answer all your doubts with regards to ESP.

http://www.spiritualresearchfoundation.o...

With Warm regards,

sevika

Answer 4

I believe in it because it happened to me for 10 years...over and over and over. I didn't really realize that was what it was. I would think something..then somebody would say it. I would write something...then they would say it  at church...ALL THE TIME.  Maybe THEY were the ones with the ESP.I just know it happend. I try not to pay any attention to it anymore. I used to think it meant you had a special connection to that person. I found out that the main person it was happening with was a really evil person. I don't want any connection with them. You have to be careful with ESP. You need to control your mouth..or you'll speak THEIR thoughts out loud...and if they're not good thoughts..you'll pay the penalty for them. That's what duct tape is for (for Southerners..it's called duck tape).

Answer 5

Mainly because of all of the intangibles and the personal, subjective experiences/interpretations involved in assessing it.

For example, pretend someone dreams about swimming one night and the next day he finds out a friend drowned.  If this happened to me I would see no connection.  But if this person already believes in the power of ESP and fails to give any serious consideration to the possibility of coincidence, then this experience will reaffirm this belief in the supernatural.

As I see it almost every single case of supposed ESP can be explained through confirmation bias or coincidence.

Answer 6

Do you ever make people uncomfortable by starring at them?  Do they look around or suddenly look in your direction for no reason?

Answer 7

Help me to understand the question do you have any clear empirical support that it doesn't exist? You want a clear and concise answer, I would try to answer but what part about it don't you believe in?

Answer 8

People believe in things because of their personal experiences. Some of those experiences may be interpreted incorrectly, but given that there is substantial scientific evidence for ESP, some of the experiences leading to belief are probably what they appear to be -- genuine ESP.

Articles describing this evidence can be found in many scientific journals, ranging from Neuroscience Letters, to Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Psychological Bulletin, Foundations of Physics, American Psychologist, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Lancet, Science, Nature, and so on. It takes some library work to find these articles, but the same is true for any specialty topic.

For a comprehensive answer, I recommend my book "Entangled Minds" (2006, Simon & Schuster), or Damien Broderick's "Outside the Gates of Science" (2007, Thunder's Mouth Press). There are many other good, recent books that survey the evidence, which cumulatively is persuasively strong.

Answer 9

Speaking only for myself, I believe in ESP because of one experience that lasted about a minute. I’m kind of like a guy who didn’t believe in bulls and then met one face to face. I had to figure out what I believed later.

I had what some people call a flash vision. I was cruising with some friends and began to feel weird. I closed my eyes and it was like walking into a movie. It was much more intense than “real life”. We were still in my friend’s car on the wrong side of the road with flashing red lights ahead and something going on up a hill to our left. The experience was not subtle.

I recovered “real time” and explained to my friends what happened. They told me not to worry about it. Less than an hour later we were there. Out in the middle of nowhere police were directing us to the wrong side of the road to get around all the emergency vehicles that were there because there was a house on fire up a hill to our left. My friends were shocked and so was I. This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before or after this experience, and since it wasn’t exactly fun, that may be for the best.

Maybe I don’t so much believe as accept. I certainly can’t deny that phenomena occur. There is no fraud or trick or game, and if delusion is somehow the cause, then delusion is highly underrated.

Answer 10

The first thing that popped into my head is M. Lamar Keene.

“The true-believer syndrome merits study by science. What is it that compels a person, past all reason, to believe the unbelievable? How can an otherwise sane individual become so enamored of a fantasy, an imposture, that even after it's exposed in the bright light of day he still clings to it--indeed, clings to it all the harder?”

Keene was a medium that got rich off his BS and later admit he was full of BS.

Answer 11

People choose to believe or not believe based on many factors including personality traits, upbringing, world view, etc. This is true of both believers and skeptics.

There is clear empirical supporting evidence for the existence of ESP (this does not mean proof) that meets the standards of evidence in science for statistical significance and accepted methodology by the criteria established for any other area of science outside of parapsychology.

If one believes or not or chooses to accept or not the standards of science for claims that go against their beliefs is a different matter.

"Rosenthal, after considering the possible influence of various flaws upon study outcome, concluded that the overall hit rate of the studies could be estimated to be 33 percent, whereas chance expectancy was 25 percent."

(link below)

"Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud."

(link below)

Thanks for the great question and the opportunity to dispel the common myth so often repeated in the media and here on YA that there is not empirical supporting evidence for ESP.

Psi