Paranormal activity: science or fiction? - with Chris French
Вставка
- Опубліковано 8 лип 2024
- Paranormal experiences often appear perplexing, but are they genuinely legitimate phenomena?
Watch the Q&A here (exclusively for our UA-cam channel members): • Q&A: Paranormal activi...
Sign up as a UA-cam member here for early access and other perks: / @theroyalinstitution
Buy Chris's book 'The Science of Weird Shit' here: geni.us/Jx8w
This talk was recorded at the Ri on 22 April 2024.
Join Chris French, psychologist and expert on all things paranormal, as he reveals the cardinal truths behind everything from ghostly encounters and alien abductions, to UFO sightings and near-death experiences. By employing rigorous scientific methods, Chris will embark on a search for the truth behind these mystical occurrences.
Chris' intellectual journey carries us through the debunking of extrasensory perception (ESP), endeavours to communicate with the departed, and even accounts of alien abductions, among other curious occurrences. These phenomena also offer a profound insight into the intricacies of human cognition and consciousness, and should be systematically studied accordingly. By employing an academic, comprehensive, logical, and occasionally mathematical approach, Chris demystifies what once seemed beyond explanation. Allow yourself to discover the overlap between belief, the human mind, and the mysteries that continue to intrigue and perplex us.
00:00 Intro
1:29 What is anomalistic psychology?
3:33 Testing paranormal claims: baby psychic
10:40 Testing paranormal claims: dream detective
21:02 Testing paranormal claims: sensing the future
24:58 The replication problem in psychology
27:59 Why study paranormal psychology?
29:25 Demo: The unreliability of memory
32:20 Inattentional blindness of witnesses
37:44 Spoon bending and memory conformity
42:59 How false memories can be implanted
48:19 Alien experiences, sleep paralysis and hypnosis
54:28 Top down processing and pareidolia
---
Chris French is the Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a Patron of the British Humanist Association. He has published over 150 articles and chapters covering a wide range of topics. His main current area of research is the psychology of paranormal beliefs and anomalous experiences. He frequently appears on radio and television casting a sceptical eye over paranormal claims.
---
The Ri is on Twitter: / ri_science
and Facebook: / royalinstitution
and TikTok: / ri_science
Listen to the Ri podcast: podcasters.spotify.com/pod/sh...
Donate to the RI and help us bring you more lectures: www.rigb.org/support-us/donat...
Our editorial policy: www.rigb.org/editing-ri-talks...
Subscribe for the latest science videos: bit.ly/RiNewsletter
Product links on this page may be affiliate links which means it won't cost you any extra but we may earn a small commission if you decide to purchase through the link. - Наука та технологія
I keep forgetting that not all psychologist are clinical psychologists. I worked in nhs psychiatry for 37 years and it’s screwed my head. I get astounded that a psychologist can have a sense of humour as I thought they had it removed when they qualified but then I remember he’s not a clinical psychologist.
this is why counsellors need counsellors. It's what my stepfather set himself up as, some time ago.
Forget mind _reading,_ I have the power of *mind writing.* I can put words into other people's minds without even being in their presence. In fact, I'm doing it right now. To you.
Spaghetti.
Bolognese
What if I can't read?
Great lecture. Really enjoyed it!
I experienced sleep paralysis exactly once (that I recall) when I was 18 (over 30 yrs ago). Was associated with an out of body hallucination. Crazy.
I had hypnagogic hallucinations a few times in my life. Most extreme/vivid was hallucinating a giant spider coming down from the ceiling. I literally lept (over my wife) out of bed.
These are certainly exceptions. I generally have very enjoyable dreams.
paranormal activity is good for entertainment... I enjoy it much... Lord of the rings, Harry Potter, X files, and paranormal activity stories...
Fiction. Saved you all 1 hour 😊
Thank you
Watching your presentation now ❤️
Did you listen to it?Just curious
😂
That's not the point - the point is how you check that.
Worse than inattention blindness is straight out denial of reality. Since watching many "idiots in cars" videos thanks to UA-cam I have noticed the occurrence of drivers who seem to ignore the reality of what their cars are doing. Many instances of drivers continuing to hold down the throttle pedal while their car crashes into other cars and buildings etc. are on UA-cam. I think these people are holding down the throttle while they intend to stop their car, thinking they are holding down the brake pedal. The fact that the car is still moving does not trigger the idea they are pressing on the WRONG pedal. So they press even harder on the throttle thinking they are NOT pressing hard enough on the brake pedal.
Yes, and look at MAGA people. A complete denial of reality because their leader AND news choice both tell them x which is opposite of reality and what they actually witnessed. Look how many MAGA believe that Jan 6th was Nancy Pelosi’s fault. This is not a political observation as much as it is how a repeated message can literally alter your perception of reality.
Liked and shared.
In my view, the internet is for broadening. And this lecture is certainly out of most folks' intellectual comfort zone.
The human susceptibility to suggestion was well demonstrated during the infamous Stanford Experiment. Zimbardo later realized that, in his search for truth, he'd traumatized folks who liked him . . . his Ted Ex is enlightening.
My takeaway was: a doctor without conscience is a worse monster than any dinosaur. Dispassion is not a quality anyone with credulous minds in his care should possess.
I put it like this:
Dispassion and passion are not antonyms.
The opposite of Dispassion is Compassion.
Back in the day, Yuri Geller was on television in the U.S. I remember my baby-sitter said some of her friends could bend spoons at home while watching Yuri on tv.
In the phrase "Fake Psychic" the word "Fake" is redundant. ESP and the rest of that malarkey have one thing in common: They ALL violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Here is what Arthur Eddington had to say on the subject:
“If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”
In what way do they violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
@@robinbrowne5419 Information transmission demands Free Energy, that is, energy that can be used for useful work. All messages can be converted into binary, a string of bits. The minimum energy required to transmit a bit of information is proportional to K*T where K is the Boltzmann constant and T is the absolute temperature. This K*T must be converted into heat at the time and place of reception of the information bit, over and above the energy required to transmit the information. The ONLY modality capable of reliable information over distance without accompanying transfer of massive particles is electromagnetism. This is readily detectable by ordinary equipment. Despite extreme attempts to detect electromagnetic information in alleged ESP experiments, none has ever been detected. Hence, ESP does not exist.
I can appreciate how fun/fascinating the paranormal can be; I wish more people could entertain the idea that the science can be fun/fascinating and also useful.
Don’t categorize this as hard science. No matter how you try to slice the bread. It is not.
Fascinating talk, thank you. I worked in higher education, and in such an institution i worked; they had ALZ (Active Learning Zones) or libraries for each department, and what i found most interesting was that in the SEN (Special Educational Needs) department, their ALZ had books on the paranormal, such has Ufology, ghosts, etc.... then the penny dropped!
2:55 how much could be attributed to other things such as conditioning/pavlovian response training, hypnosis, subconscious suggestion and signaling/gaslighting? The DSM manual indicates that any and all paranormal activities are a psychiatric disorder. Which does put Exorcists/Voodooeines/Revivalists/Seers etc. in an awkward position.
Very true. The main problem is most people believe either what they're told or what they want to believe, sometimes both. They will fight to the death for their particular ideas, without doing any research - though often, if they do, they'll only read research which agrees with their belief in the first place and say they've looked at all sides of the argument. They then declare they have made an 'informed choice'. Hmm.
Come across this a number of times with a number of subjects.
What a fascinating lecture. I particularly like Chris French's approach to these subjects. Keep an open mind, always think that you might be wrong. The difficulty must come after working for decades and finding rational explanations for all the strange things our minds do, and still cling onto that, 'but I might be wrong'.
I can think of many sectors of society who should watch this and realise that they are victims of themselves, but of course, they wouldn't as they are convinced that they are infallible. I would ask them to listen to Chris, and consider that they may be wrong.
Anyway, UA-cam is clearly part of the matrix and I must get back to finding the key to getting out of it!
I just love sceptics ... especially scientific ones 😊
More on Kanashibari.
I see it as a valuable safety mechanism. You are prevented from acting until you are fully awake. Flailing around in a hypnogogic state is not personally wise . . . nor is it conducive to species survival.
21:18 I’m curious about how this inter correlates with consciousness. I have a theory about frequency waves, which you’d think would affect accuracy of predictions. Like radio waves - you can’t get every station at once.
"I just believe in me,
Yoko and me,
That's reality"
Being a skeptic at heart, I find his lecture lacking of substantial empirical evidence supporting his claims. Psychic powers have never been proven to any degree of satisfaction.
I am almost half away into the talk- he is a skeptic clearly. Besides, to use the lack of proper objective evidence of psychic powers to conclude that it’s not real is one step too far.
It could be that we don’t understand the objective reality behind psychic experiences. It is the claim of a supernatural phenomenon being a reason that needs to be rejected.
It merely means that there is no causation measured. But there is probably a genuine explanation for some people’s psychic experiences- neurological etc.
My point is- don’t negate the observations just because they don’t make sense. That would bias your own conclusions I think.
Wow this person just made up a whole other lecture to criticise huh
His claims are that paranormal claims are rubbish. Read the book title again.
@@anandhbalakrishnan3190 so test better. It's why Randi's tests are designed in conjunction with the person tested to make sure the tests are testing what's being tested. So, they /are/ testing what's in question.
Don't think they're right, get out and prove it.
Did you even watch the lecture? Also, I can move my hand with the power of my mind. And I can put these words into _your_ head.
NO Chris... and this is my key bugbear with this "test"
When you are given a directive (white letters hitting edge of screen) you are NOT asking us to observe ALL OTHER THINGS other than the white letters. In following the core requirements of the test, we purposefully disengage the function you say we exhibit.
Exactly. In the original test I think the observers were asked to count how many times the white shirted team touched the ball. So they switched the black shirted team out of the equation.
The 'gorilla' was black....on the monochrome film.
fiction; next question
Sorry, just had to Google roman numeral clocks for sale. The IIII and IV are 50/50- evidence based 😅
I did the same and got IIII being twice as likely as IV on a sample of around 30 images.
Everything is made up, we have proved it.
~Yours, science.
Paranormal or Coincidence? I dreamt that I hit my head with a huge concussion when I was sitting on the roof of a car on a street and I was awakened by the impact of my dream (frightened to the core)... the next day on the news: "an employee of the cleaning and garbage collection service dies of a blow to the head when he was sitting/standing on top of the truck due to the impact with a bridge above him". Same city of living.
I'm pretty sure that neither dreaming nor hitting heads on things counts as paranormal. One is normal biology, the other is physics. And standing on top of a bin lorry while driving under a bridge is just natural selection.
😮
There is no hard science backing “para” normal, hence, the question in video title is already answered. Are we lowering ourselves to Ted Talks now? Royal Institute?
Dr French I watched your presentation with interest and a smile and thought it was very informing. But I have to ask:
Have you ever forayed into religious claims? And applied the same mix of scrutiny and psychology to those? I would love to hear you talk about that!
paranormal is paranormal.
James Randi was the goat at exposing these frauds. RIP
Something that's jumped out to me as a possible explanation for (some/early) "alien abduction" experiences is the practice of "starlight tours". The name is deceptively innocent - the practice itself is of police (notably canadian police with indigenous victims) abducting people who are publicly intoxicated and driving them out to the middle of nowhere, effectively trying to use the cold night and open countryside as a murder weapon.
This very terrestrial practice would explain seeing lights (the lights on a police car), the experience of physical abduction, and the stereotype of a supposed abductee making that claim after shuffling in the worse for wear following a night's drinking or drug use. Even "being probed" is consistent with documented abuse by police.
I had this experience 5 weeks ago. I was working at my voluntary job in a retail shop. I went for my coffee break which I have in the storeroom. I selected a mug and put it on the table. I looked for the coffee (a large tin) and I couldn't find it. My colleague also went into the storeroom, I followed her, and she couldn't find it either. She gave me a small jar from the shelf to use. I went back into the storeroom and I immediately saw the tin of coffee on the table with its big white lid off, it was super obvious. No other person had gone into the room, and there would have been no reason for anybody to take the tin of coffee out when the kettle is in the storeroom. Bear in mind we had both seen the bare table. Explain that.
Unfortunately all the paranormal experiences I have had are unique and random and are therefore not in any way open to scientific scrutiny.
Something being unique or random doesn't mean it isn't open to scientific scrutiny. You didn't see the coffee, that's all.
@@iseriver3982 Or some other colleague was playing a practical joke.
@@phillee2814 such a reasonable assumption to make, no need for supernatural nonsense that literally makes no sense.
@@iseriver3982 In this case you don't even need another colleague. It happens so often that I don't find something, ask my wife and then she finds it in plain sight where I've just looked for it. Yet, I do not share your overall denial of things that are not explainable by present-day science.
@@iseriver3982 It does preclude scrutiny when it can't be repeated. Repetition is crucial to scientific validation. And as I explained the coffee on the table when it was there was extremely obvious, there was absolutely no way it could have not been seen. You don't look at the position of a large known object and only see the bare surface underneath it. It was a 500g tin of coffee with its white lid off doubling its area covered.
Paranormal is a contradiction in terms as it applies to science.
If it is part of the natural world (which circumscribes social constructs of concepts such as “normality” in any meaningful sense of the word) - then it can be an object of study and there is nothing “para” about it, because it is a phenomenon that can be accounted for or reliably predicted using current positive knowledge.
If it is not part of the natural and social world - then it is beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, (as well as being horribly short on evidence and meaningful definition) pending proper evidence and reasons to think that something aside from the natural world is even possible.
But … the word normal is a problem to begin with since the word “paranormal” suggests some ontology of what resides ”outside the normal” but normality is simply a social construct, as a concept and as a cultural reality and a messy and certainly not ontologically singular concept at that. On that view “paranormal” simply comes to mean something like “para-sociolingustic”, which I am sure does not have quite the mystique that some people crave as it would apply to all other naturally occurring phenonema.
Well what then if we reduce it to psychology of experience then? Surely then we can speak of experiences outside the normal? Well - you still have the problem of pinning down “the normal” and a loose reference to “the mundane & quotidian” or some proposed pattern of averages won’t resolve that. Now we are talking about extrapolating from subjective experience with all the troubles that entails, notably the fact that subjective experience is fully capable of delivering experiences that feel very real while in fact only being “real experiences” at the level of the individual brain.
Well what about observations that cant be currently explained? They are simply that. Observations that can’t be currently explained. The vast majority of such obervations are answered over time one way or the other. Meanwhile, why jump to conclusions about them? Especially seeing as such proposed observations usually seem to never really transcend the level of subjective experience in terms of evidence, there is usually always some human middle man whose account we have to trust on its own, with no access to independent verification, which puts us right back with that problem.
But. What is science 👻
I am not given to belief in paranormal events, nor am I a complete skeptic based on a vivid dream of my mothers death 3 months before it happened when I was 14 years of age. There was no prior illness which suggested her likely demise and the contents of the dream were replicated in precise detail in the events on the day she died, so clearly in January 1971 long before I had ever experienced a video recording. I knew as the events unfolded that I had seen this in the dream and who arrive. I have mentioned this to very few people in the 53 years intervening. It is the only time I have ever seen future events and I don't need anyone to tell me it was real or otherwise.
The study of false memories is very important to understanding how victims of childhood abuse are distinguished from are, for whatever reason, faking. Criminal abusers first defence these days is "False memory syndrome" and a failure to convict for a lack of supportable evidence is preventing cases coming to court and protecting abusers.
_"Paranormal activity: science or fiction?"_
*Fiction.*
👻 👽 🛸 🤔 💭
Psychology, Perhaps the most useful subject.
The subject with least replication
Not really,not anymore.
Rupert Shedrake and Deepak Chopra were not mentioned.
can't take the time to name all the tens of thousands of fakes
@@thekaxmax Well Rupert Sheldrake is a special case in the sense that he claims to be a scientist who talks about telepathic morphic (I don't even know what that means) fields and so on.
Neither were any respected figures who took such phenomena seriously in the past - CG Jung for one.
@@user-zc4yd9ss7h ...respected _despite_ their ideas about the non-existent, of course.
Neither was I
Despite working as a researcher in stem, I'm entirely convinced that certain things that are conventionally referred to as paranormal do exist. The problem is that the tests described here are not in any degree fit to elucidate those, and people possessing those are very different from the "psychic celebrities" described here. One of those things, a less interesting one but illustrative of the problem of testing, is related to dreams. There is a couple of specific vivid themes in my dreams that I see before specific charged events in my life. In this case, I am open to the possibility that these are just coincidences, however there were no misses since I noticed the correlation some years ago and started to observe carefully. The events are rare, random and unlikely to occur within the framework of tests described here, such as a grant approval. How do you even build a test around that? The other things are yet less testable and not related to myself, but of one piece of "weird shit" I have become entirely convinced...
Randi's tests are designed in conjunction with the person tested to make sure the tests are testing what's being tested. So, they are testing what's in question.
@@thekaxmax Yes. But those are not the most difficult cases to test. It is easy to test the claim that every image in one's dream foretells an event in their future. Even more so because I think that most public psychics are swindlers. Now, if the claim is that some images foretell certain events, say a sudden death of a close one, it becomes quite challenging to test it. Furthermore, if people with true abilities exist, they would not necessarily go public and thus would not necessarily be findable by people who would want to test their abilities. The individual of whose abilities I have become convinced is not public and does not seek publicity. None of the debunks that I have seen for public psychics claiming similar abilities work here.
@@iampdv That's why Randi had that lovely enticing million dollars out and, so far, 100% unclaimed.
Got evidence otherwise, demonstrate it.
@@thekaxmax That's a fallacious claim that someone with real abilities would necessarily want to try to get that million dollars. Or that I would want to demonstrate something. In fact, I actually avoid interacting with the individual I mentioned above because of having become convinced of their abilities. Just saying that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, especially when the evidence is collected the way it is.
@@iampdv so demonstrate in a better way. And it can't be fallacious considering the number of people who've tried for it.
I had dreams of future events, and people i had not yet met when i was a child, for many years, and then met those peoople years later in real life. So i know for a fact that there are odd phenomenon that are real. When i was around 10 years old i was wondering why and how i could dream of something, some place or a conversation, and it manifesting in the future. Then i watched a short 5 min introduction of einstein that a kid channel had with cool graphics and cartoons, and in there, they explained how according to him, the past, the present and the future, all exist and reside on the same membrane, which he dubbed "space-ttime".
Since that day, i assume the reason i, and many other have been able to percive future events as kids, is that for some reason, when something happen, weither in the past, the present, or the future, it can ripple outward on the space-time membrane, and be picked up in the past, present or future, by people sensitive to those ripples.
But i never thought it was "supernatural", since that day, i really assume it is some sort of quantum phenomena.
The point is, premonition is real, remote-viewing is real, and probable a host of other weird phenomenas. And they all probably have a scientific explanation in the quantum realm.
Paranormal activity: science or fiction? why phase this as a choice? just call it Science-Fiction that leans more to the fiction side.
leave science out of it. It's all just made up, as he covers.
Dr John Mack of Harvard did not find anything psychologically anomalous in his hundreds of alien abduction experiencers. He maintained they were healthy regular people from all walks of life, having extraordinary and often baffling experience, such as missing time. However, more recently Dr Garry Nolan of Stamford has found consistently enlarged differences in size in the brain caudate and putamen, through MRI studies of experiencers.
The jury isn't still out, all claims of alien abduction are false.
No, it isn’t! 😹
There's no way anyone has ever been abducted by aliens. The only reason people think different is because they're either liars or ignorant.
If you listened, he pointed out that there are a number of mental characteristics that are common among people who think they've been abducted but not common among people who don't think aliens exist. So yes, he did find psychologically anomalous characteristics in those people. And there are non-alien explanations for their experiences.
Fiction
Did you even listen to what he says say
@@crazywileycoyote Watching now, however by definition it cannot be science.
@@johncarter1150 nope Philosophy is word games and psychology is almost a science, However paranormal activity is Psudo-science, Not real.
Hi Chris, excellent presentation and story-evidence-narrative. What do you think of the CIA’s Project Stargate saga? Would you accept logically that as we don’t know the nature nor possibly origin of consciousness that sleep paralysis, just as an example might be a consequence of something that is happening in another dimension of reality? There’s also lots of things other than sleep paralysis that can be investigated in the same style to provide more clarity. Please reach out to me and we could write a paper maybe?
Paranormal
Are Fact , I’ve experienced several
😊🏴☠️
prove it
Well one day my Arse was on Fire for No apparent reason
Explain that
😊🏴☠️
@@alanchriston6806vindaloo
Balderdash or poppycock?🤔
Psicologia e afins é só preconceito.. Quando na história isso deu certo?
evidence?
I think all activity is normal and emerges due to us being of and within the quantum field. We can sense fear and joy. Then we let our imaginations go wild and make up supernatural stories.
What I find fascinating is the phenomena of young children remembering past lives. Some of their descriptions turn out to be real if the videos I’ve seen are to be believed
No they're not 'remembering' anything. :)
'Anomalistic psychology'....a wonderful tool for soaking up academic funding which would otherwise fund parapsychology.
I love French's use of 'suppressio veri'....James Randi the Great Skeptic. Yet another uncritical exposition of his 'Million dollar challenge' as proof of the non-existence of ''Paranormal forces'.
Will the debate ever move to a state where it's discussed honestly?
Apparently not in the RI....
I had a real paranormal event when 2 friends and me decided to use a Ouija board .. it happened it was real and I'm not interested in ever trying to replicate it but there really was not a natural or scientific explanation
Repeat it without touching the planchette. While one or more people are touching the planchette the result are inadmissable because you cannot exclude operator interference from the results. If a spirit can move your arm it can certainly move a lightweight planchette without an issue.
FIRST COMMENTTTTTT
You must be parabnormal
Psychic!
Cringe-bot beta v0.1.1
@@johncarter1150 no just a cringebot 😅
It's amazing how so many are so quick to dismiss 'paranormal activity' as fraudulent. But just remember...science cannot explain a single moment of you. There does not exist any science anywhere anyhow that can explain how I produced a single letter of a single word of a single sentence out of this entire post. And that is a simple fact (anyone who wants to dispute this claim is entirely free to produce the evidence [it doesn't exist]). That does not mean that every subjective experience of any kind is legitimate...but don't use the excuse that science can somehow explain it. It cannot. Not ANY of it. Period.
This lecture looks at a lot of things that have been described as paranormal and explains them with science. It is not trying to say that everything that has ever been reported as paranormal is false. The phrase ‘single moment of you’ is meaningless word salad.
@@AL-YT-comment There's nothing vague about it. You exist. Take a single moment of you (right now....for example)...and find me someone, anyone, who can even begin to definitively explain what is going on. Not only can nobody accomplish such a thing...nobody can come within light years of accomplishing such a thing. And yet...you are happening. This moment is happening...and somehow (nobody knows how) you do not self destruct or go crazy.
Allah created Jinns. Get with the program and stop wasting your time. Stop the invocation of Jinns and stop wasting your time. Get with the program. You are better than that.
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Happily collecting obvious strawmen and bashing onto those. Perpetuating stereotypes. Short-sightedness and presumptuousness. Some scientismic sleepwalking to make the audience feel comfortable, I guess.
32 secs since it's posted. I'M QUUICKKKK
You can now go back to sleep!
Thats what she said
His roman numeral clock is not quite accurate. This example was popular in the 70s and I did a report in high school about it. Clocks are both IIII and IV and in terms of actual use by ruins found from Roman times, IIII and IV were used the same amount approx. In fact the addition method (IIII) is used just as often as the subtractive method (IV) in artifacts.
Ben?
What about modern clocks? Have two in my house and never noticed before and actually went to see after having them for many years and watching this video. I was surprised that both of mine were IIII.