Never Mind
Torsion Fields and Spin-Mediated Consciousness (2014)
(Pre-publication)
"Quantum Aspects of the Mind-Brain Problem" - SGJ
http://scigod.com/index.php/sgj/article/view/303/350
"Sub-quantum Phenomena and Mind-Brain Problem" - JCER
inherent bias
http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/the-trouble-with-scientists
Otto Geist
Capturing the observable processes, patterns and regularities of the elements of reality, relative to each other, is an empirical and scientific question. But pondering about the fundamental nature of these elements is not; it is a metaphysical question. The problem is that, in recent decades, scientists who have little or no understanding of philosophy have begun to believe that science can be a metaphysics.5 This dangerous combination of ignorance and hubris has done our culture an enormous disservice. Childishly emboldened by the technological success achieved by our civilization, many scientists have begun to believe that the scientific method suffices to provide us with a complete account of the nature of existence. In doing so, they have failed to see that they are simply assuming a certain metaphysics – namely, materialism – without giving it due thought. They have failed to see that the ability to predict how things behave with respect to one another says little about what things fundamentally are. http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/the-fairytale-of-materialism-how-fundamentalists-hijacked-science
"Hardly the metaphysical ideas are independent from the roots of their complex, and can therefore be outbreaks of disease, part of a 'syndrome archetypal'. For example, the materialism of certain natural science is perhaps not a philosophy of matriarchy in which the scientist, who want it or not,becomes a heroic son or priesthood? Vedanta with its transcendence of the matter does not reflect so perhaps a spirit trapped in the Great Mother of the world from having to rely on disciplined exercises to find liberation? In our metaphysics we declare our fantasies about the physical and its transcendence. A metaphysical statement can be seen as a fancy psychological fancy about the relationship between 'matter and spirit'. [...] The archetypal neuros is collective and affects all with the metaphysical affliction. Processing this affliction is individual, and this makes therapy a metaphysical commitment in which not only complexes but also feelings and ideas undergo to a process and a change ". - James Hillman, The great mother, her son, her hero and the puer.
"Hardly the metaphysical ideas are independent from the roots of their complex, and can therefore be outbreaks of disease, part of a 'syndrome archetypal'. For example, the materialism of certain natural science is perhaps not a philosophy of matriarchy in which the scientist, who want it or not,becomes a heroic son or priesthood? Vedanta with its transcendence of the matter does not reflect so perhaps a spirit trapped in the Great Mother of the world from having to rely on disciplined exercises to find liberation? In our metaphysics we declare our fantasies about the physical and its transcendence. A metaphysical statement can be seen as a fancy psychological fancy about the relationship between 'matter and spirit'. [...] The archetypal neuros is collective and affects all with the metaphysical affliction. Processing this affliction is individual, and this makes therapy a metaphysical commitment in which not only complexes but also feelings and ideas undergo to a process and a change ". - James Hillman, The great mother, her son, her hero and the puer.
Otto Rapp - Tangled Neurons
Never Mind
Master Narratives, Torsion Fields & Spin-Mediated Consciousness –
Quantum Brain or Torsion Field?
By Iona Miller, 2013
Master Narratives, Torsion Fields & Spin-Mediated Consciousness –
Quantum Brain or Torsion Field?
By Iona Miller, 2013
Abstract:
For decades researchers have attempted to describe the ground state of being in terms of quantum mind. The preferred pop term for the virtual vacuum has switched from scalar and zero point to torsion field, which has been correlated with Consciousness – the Holy Grail of the Quantum Quest. The torsion field is produced by the spin of virtual vacuum photons, which may be the energetic field underlying collective [entangled] and individual mind. This groundstate has "never been", yet is continuously emerging and may provide deeper insight into the transduction of collective or universal being to individual consciousness and experience. The collected inertia in a certain area of space from a spinning electromagnetic field creates observable mass.
The brain-mind problem was previously known as the mind-body problem and by extension mind-matter. How the mind relates to the brain has classically been discussed in terms of Monism and Dualism, that the mind and brain are one, or that the mind and brain are separate. It has long been suggested that the brain functions as a sort of transducer from the universal to the particular. If the "unconscious" is a magical powerhouse that speaks in symbols, our notion of the unconscious is also a symbol of the power of the atemporal primal field - absolute space, more fundamental than space-time. NeverMind is a euphemism for primordial non-conscious experience, dimensionless zero-point and its abstract motion or “spinergy,”.
For decades researchers have attempted to describe the ground state of being in terms of quantum mind. The preferred pop term for the virtual vacuum has switched from scalar and zero point to torsion field, which has been correlated with Consciousness – the Holy Grail of the Quantum Quest. The torsion field is produced by the spin of virtual vacuum photons, which may be the energetic field underlying collective [entangled] and individual mind. This groundstate has "never been", yet is continuously emerging and may provide deeper insight into the transduction of collective or universal being to individual consciousness and experience. The collected inertia in a certain area of space from a spinning electromagnetic field creates observable mass.
The brain-mind problem was previously known as the mind-body problem and by extension mind-matter. How the mind relates to the brain has classically been discussed in terms of Monism and Dualism, that the mind and brain are one, or that the mind and brain are separate. It has long been suggested that the brain functions as a sort of transducer from the universal to the particular. If the "unconscious" is a magical powerhouse that speaks in symbols, our notion of the unconscious is also a symbol of the power of the atemporal primal field - absolute space, more fundamental than space-time. NeverMind is a euphemism for primordial non-conscious experience, dimensionless zero-point and its abstract motion or “spinergy,”.
Keywords: Quantum brain, torsion field, scalar field, vacuum fluctuation, biophotons, nanomind, mind, brain, psycho-neuro-nano
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http://www.enterprisemission.com/Norway-Message3.htm
"It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of `equilibrium' that an organism appears so enigmatic....What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy." --Schrödinger's, What is Life?
“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” ―Erwin Schrödinger
“Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery. A mystery is a phenomenon that people don't know how to think about - yet. There have been other great mysteries: the mystery of the origin of the universe, the mystery of life and reproduction, the mystery of the design to be found in nature, the mysteries of time, space, and gravity. These were not just areas of scientific ignorance, but of utter bafflement and wonder. We do not yet have all the answers to any of the questions of cosmology and particle physics, molecular genetics and evolutionary theory, but we do know how to think about them .... With consciousness, however, we are still in a terrible muddle. Consciousness stands alone today as a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused. And, as with all of the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist -- and hope -- that there will never be a demystification of consciousness.” ―Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained
Beyond such critique, master narratives also offer a fruitful avenue to investigate dynamics involved in, and issuing from materializing cultural alterity in their framework.
There are transcendent and transcultural dimensions involved in establishing,
supporting and subverting master narratives which support, challenge or
displace scientific or religious identities, on their own or possibly also in synergy
with other forms of collective identity.
http://www.geiststaub.de/MD_PAN_Links.html
http://runningfather.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/panpsychism-panexperientialism-links-and-web-resources/
Harry T. Hunt, Department of Pychology, Brock University, St Catherine’s, Ontario, L2S 3A1 Canada http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs_8_9-10.html#Hunt
Some Perils of Quantum Consciousness. Epistemological Pan-experientialism
and the Emergence–Submergence of Consciousness
If consciousness emerges into ontological reality at some point in nature, as system complexity increases, then it also ‘submerges’ at some adjoining point, as structures simplify. This has led some to posit a ‘latent-consciousness’ in what Bohr saw as the consciousness-like spontaneity of quantum phenomena. Yet to move on this basis to Whitehead’s ontological pan-experientialism or to direct quantum explanations of consciousness (Hameroff and Penrose) faces serious epistemological limitations — perhaps being more unwittingly projective than genuinely explanatory. More reasonable would be an epistemological pan- experientialism in the sense of the later James. Consciousness, as the ultimate lens and medium of all knowledge, is inseparable from the physical reality it would know, especially at the very limits of empirical observation in microphysics. ‘Submerged’ consciousness is better understood in Jamesian pragmatic terms than via assumed but unprovable ontologies.
“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” ―Erwin Schrödinger
“Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery. A mystery is a phenomenon that people don't know how to think about - yet. There have been other great mysteries: the mystery of the origin of the universe, the mystery of life and reproduction, the mystery of the design to be found in nature, the mysteries of time, space, and gravity. These were not just areas of scientific ignorance, but of utter bafflement and wonder. We do not yet have all the answers to any of the questions of cosmology and particle physics, molecular genetics and evolutionary theory, but we do know how to think about them .... With consciousness, however, we are still in a terrible muddle. Consciousness stands alone today as a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused. And, as with all of the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist -- and hope -- that there will never be a demystification of consciousness.” ―Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained
Beyond such critique, master narratives also offer a fruitful avenue to investigate dynamics involved in, and issuing from materializing cultural alterity in their framework.
There are transcendent and transcultural dimensions involved in establishing,
supporting and subverting master narratives which support, challenge or
displace scientific or religious identities, on their own or possibly also in synergy
with other forms of collective identity.
http://www.geiststaub.de/MD_PAN_Links.html
http://runningfather.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/panpsychism-panexperientialism-links-and-web-resources/
Harry T. Hunt, Department of Pychology, Brock University, St Catherine’s, Ontario, L2S 3A1 Canada http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs_8_9-10.html#Hunt
Some Perils of Quantum Consciousness. Epistemological Pan-experientialism
and the Emergence–Submergence of Consciousness
If consciousness emerges into ontological reality at some point in nature, as system complexity increases, then it also ‘submerges’ at some adjoining point, as structures simplify. This has led some to posit a ‘latent-consciousness’ in what Bohr saw as the consciousness-like spontaneity of quantum phenomena. Yet to move on this basis to Whitehead’s ontological pan-experientialism or to direct quantum explanations of consciousness (Hameroff and Penrose) faces serious epistemological limitations — perhaps being more unwittingly projective than genuinely explanatory. More reasonable would be an epistemological pan- experientialism in the sense of the later James. Consciousness, as the ultimate lens and medium of all knowledge, is inseparable from the physical reality it would know, especially at the very limits of empirical observation in microphysics. ‘Submerged’ consciousness is better understood in Jamesian pragmatic terms than via assumed but unprovable ontologies.
Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery. A mystery is a phenomenon that people don't know how to think about - yet. There have been other great mysteries: the mystery of the origin of the universe, the mystery of life and reproduction, the mystery of the design to be found in nature, the mysteries of time, space, and gravity. These were not just areas of scientific ignorance, but of utter bafflement and wonder. We do not yet have all the answers to any of the questions of cosmology and particle physics, molecular genetics and evolutionary theory, but we do know how to think about them ...With consciousness, however, we are still in a terrible muddle. Consciousness stands alone today as a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused. And, as with all of the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist -- and hope -- that there will never be a demystification of consciousness. ―Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained
“The only reality we can ever truly know is that of our perceptions, our own consciousness, while that consciousness, and thus our entire reality, is made of nothing but signs and symbols. Nothing but language. Even God requires language before conceiving the Universe. See Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word.”
―Alan Moore, Promethea, Vol. 5
“The only reality we can ever truly know is that of our perceptions, our own consciousness, while that consciousness, and thus our entire reality, is made of nothing but signs and symbols. Nothing but language. Even God requires language before conceiving the Universe. See Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word.”
―Alan Moore, Promethea, Vol. 5
Introduction:
“The very best quantum-foundational effort,” says Christopher Fuchs of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, “will be the one that can write a story — literally a story, all in plain words — so compelling and so masterful in its imagery that the mathematics of quantum mechanics in all its exact technical detail will fall out as a matter of course”. http://www.nature.com/news/physics-quantum-quest-1.13711
"In our metaphysics we declare our fantasies about the physical and its transcendence. A metaphysical statement can be seen as a psychological fancy about the relationship between 'matter and spirit'. [...] The archetypal neuros is collective and affects all with the metaphysical affliction. Processing this affliction is individual, and this makes therapy a metaphysical commitment in which not only complexes but also feelings and ideas undergo a process and a change ". -- James Hillman, Senex and Puer
Dialogical Creativity and Dialogical Emergence
Scientific tales can be political or philosophical. Scientific and sound or hollow metaphysical ideas are not independent of their archetypal backgrounds which inform and shape them in the minds of their authors. Even a psychological fancy is a self-consistent coherence – like a poem or work of art – perhaps a stopgap on the way to more rational thought. To love such a psychological fancy requires a certain suspension of logic, disbelief, and even confirmation bias.
Master narratives provide collectivities with a coherent vision of their history and a sense of homogeneity. Heisenberg said, “Science is rooted in conversations,” and in doubt and uncertainty. In What is Life?, Schrödinger claimed organisms feed on negative entropy and that consciousness is absolutely fundamental.
Arguably, quantum brain is metaphysical in that it bears on Kant’s categories of God, freedom, and immortality – at least in its implications. He also suggests all human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds to concepts, and ends with ideas. All knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds toward understanding, and ends with reason.
Such arguments are summarized in philosophical notions of Panprotopsychism and Panexperientialism, which describe emergence of primal non-conscious processes. Panprotopsyhism suggests proto-consciousness may exist in the universe as a “fundamental property” without depending at all on anything physical.
This canon suggests, by focusing on experience rather than mentality, panexperientialism avoids some of the traditional objections to panpsychism. Absolute space is the noumenal source of phenomenal consciousness, a fundamental quality, and Mind is a higher order hyperspace field outside brain's EM field. Fundamental proto-consciousness finds more particular expression when matter comes together in a certain way.
Between Dialogue & Dogma
Real science can arise from individual or collective environments, distilling the essential from “absolute knowledge” of the unconscious. In that sense, we can hardly be optimistic that actual insight will result, yet somehow it has throughout the history of science, even though some solutions are provisional.
Meta-artist Roy Ascott describes the process: “Within the matrix that integrates questions of society, the self, materiality, and consciousness there is a kind of five axes involved in amplifying thought (concept development); sharing consciousness (collaborative processes); seeding structures (self-organising systems); making metaphors (knowledge navigation); constructing identities (self-creation).”
Metaphysical ideas are by definition ‘beyond physics’, but not separate from their roots in mind-dependent ideas and philosophy. Marie-Louise von Franz said, “There is therefore no concept fundamental to modern physics that is not in one degree or another a differentiated form of some primordial archetypal idea" ( Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology). Ideas about mind and consciousness are currently firmly entrenched in this category. What has been undemonstrable in the past may not remain so in the future.
Debriding the hidden forces of their archetypal projections remains a challenge at the leading edge. Essence, by its very nature, remains stubbornly intangible, unknown, and unseen. Form, on the other hand, requires only ingenuity, engineering, and due diligence. The concept of ‘quantum brain’ looks the part, but can it play the part? Is it coherent or incoherent?
Mantak Chia notes:
Consciousness defines our existence and reality. But how does the brain generate thoughts and feelings? Most explanations portray the brain as a computer, with nerve cells (“neurons”) and their synaptic connections acting as simple switches, or “bits” which interact in complex ways. In this view consciousness is said to “emerge” as a novel property of complex interactions among neurons, as hurricanes and candle flames emerge from complex interactions among gas and dust molecules. However this approach fails to explain why we have feelings and awareness, an “inner life”. So we don’t know how the brain produces consciousness.
We also don’t know if our conscious perceptions accurately portray the external world, or if we all have similar pictures of what lies outside our conscious minds. In fact, the fundamental nature of reality remains as mysterious as the mechanism for our conscious perceptions.
When narrative precedes the science skeptics will scoff and relegate it to the “nomenclature of belief” about ‘designer consciousness’. Or, though science is enamored with the physical brain, they ignore it entirely or relegate it to the heap of pop physics and consciousness books that few scientists take seriously.
If it continues building traction, it might rewrite the metanarrative of physics -- the Holy Grail of paradigm shift -- much to the chagrin of the old guard. Is it rising from a subcategory of theory and experimentation – ideas about ideas -- toward fundamental laws? We can paint broad strokes with narratives, which must ultimately be backed by hard science of experimental results. Yet, sometimes even concrete evidence is not recognized, or imply ignored, still labeled as dubious, delusional, and flawed. Such is the case for recent experiments to detect spin-mediated consciousness.
Specialization can differentiate the content of reality while not advancing the process of defining pre-form thingness. It can miss the essential penetration, activation and transformation of human awareness and experience, which even physics informs us is profoundly and irreversibly subjective. Knowledge begins with experience, but does not arise from it. Particularizing only helps us slice-and-dice the known. Critically, essentials, are not really touched in the process. Transformation is qualitative change.
Evolving a master narrative involving consciousness studies, quantum brain, torsion fields, or zero point takes place in a largely academic conditioned environment. No matter what we call it, there is a fundamental difference from consciousness that informs matter, or mind that emerges from dynamic physical form.
It spawns many essentially different ideas, despite their apparent kinship. Does conscious awareness naturally emerge from complex structure or does it arise a priori, emerging in a co-extensive way with matter? The former models quantum brain theory, while the later reflects the primordial nature of pre-spacetime.
In neuroscience, quantum brain dynamics (QBD) is a hypothesis to explain the function of the brain within the framework of quantum field theory. In The Quantum Brain (2002), Jeffrey Satinover reviews the convergence of brain science, biological computation and quantum physics, and what it implies about our minds, our selves, our future, even God. His is the world of neural nets, computing, cellular automata, genetic algorithms, artificial intelligence, neurobiology, artificial intelligence, and some basic philosophy of mind problems. He contends the brain amplifies quantum phenomena to produce free will.
Some narratives come from more credible sources than others. This area has come a long way from its origins in “ether physics” but sentiments within conservative academic communities remain skeptical. Because it has been labeled a ‘forbidden topic’ in some arenas has not deterred its exploration within frontier science. The aspects which withstand scrutiny may be embraced, while those that do not are relegated to the dustbin of failed ideas.
Faced with Mystery we tend to reach or overreach for answers to our existential dilemma – to fill in the blanks in the nature of reality. They are continually reiterated and stabilized constructions which tend to mask particularity and bias behind universalized representations of objective truth. They can have a homogenizing as well as exclusionary potential.
Preconscious Vacuum Potential
We're learning more and more about the pre-conscious nature of the medical and psychological unconscious, as well as the group mind of trends and -isms that go on beyond our normal background reality. How can we increase connectivity/coupling between the atom/molecule level reality and the vacuum level of reality?
This is a question posed by Tiller, among others who propose theories. He suggests we delve beneath the pop buzzword of zero-point field to the enormity of latent energy in the vacuum reality beyond normal reality. He suggests we are are "emotional, mental, and spiritual", echoing qabalistic and theosophical notions, as well as other wisdom traditions. Others, including physicist Claude Swanson, Gary Schwartz, and Leon Maurer echo these sentiments that non-consciousness is co-extensive with Absolute Space.
Is torsion beyond space and time, or is it simply twisted space-time? The answer is 'yes', depending on level of observation. Hu and Wu postulate a spin-mediated theory of consciousness in which "consciousness is intrinsically connected to quantum mechanical spin since said spin is embedded in the microscopic structure of spacetime and may be more fundamental than spacetime itself. Thus, we theorize that consciousness emerges quantum mechanically from the collective dynamics of "protopsychic" spins under the influence of spacetime dynamics. That is, spin is the "pixel" of mind. The unity of mind is achieved by quantum entanglement of the mind-pixels." The Persinger Group produced experiential evidence of such effects, published in Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, Vol. IV, Issue 1 (2013).
"Never Mind" becomes a euphemism for the one mind or (potential) proto-consciousness that seems to emanate from this timeless domain of absolute space. Researchers such as Swanson call such processes 'Life Force', and describe its dynamics in energetic terms of control and communication channels involving frequencies of radiation between DNA, molecules and cells. Mae-Wan Ho concurs. Coherent biophotons function in a laser-like manner to regulate mindbody coordination. Such work bears on notions of the nature of life and consciousness which have been persistently elusive in both biology and physics models.
There is a continuous shift in the languaging of notions about consciousness, the mindfield, quantum brain, holographic mind, and negentropy. Words, concepts and theories map the footprints of our crystallizing intuition, but descriptors come into and fall out of fashion. The dialogical edge has dropped down another level to the pre-quantum world, to a principle underlying those of quantum mechanics. First discovered by Tesla, what were called scalar waves are now known by their Russian label as torsion waves. Their spiraling nature is simply an impulse of momentum that travels through the medium of the aether/ZPE/physical vacuum, without electromagnetic qualities.
The all-pervasive sea of quantum energy, discovered in the 20th century, remains arguably the most exciting frontier of the 21st century, both in terms of pure science as well as energy extraction and engineering. The jiggling of subatomic particles is attributed to the zero point field, the virtual photon flux that occurs between the dipole and the vacuum. Virtual particles are not stable enough to remain in manifestation yet they have tangible effects -- a frictionless field of potentiality with spinning effects with emissions.
Randomly virtual photons jump back and forth between the zero point field and our physical world. They collide with and are absorbed by subatomic particles that will be excited into a higher energy state. After nanoseconds the energy is released again by means of another virtual photon that returns to the zero point field. The photon is called a virtual photon since it comes and goes from the zero point field and is ephemeral in the material world. It is only used in the energy exchange between the zero point field and the material world.
Photons and the variety of elementary particles seemingly come into our physical reality from nowhere at all. They make their appearance in our physical reality for only thousandths or millionths of a second to disappear once again into the void. These forms of ‘mystical’ particles were called virtual particles since they were not stable enough to stay around in our reality. The zero point field is a quantum foam of virtual particles and photons.
Such modeling may have implications for new computer brain language that allows computers to learn, and to read human thoughts by using brain-machine interface, and the ethical implications that raises. Our neural synapses will soon work as biochemical nano-devices to transfer information energy from electrical to biochemical signals.
The active vacuum is active spacetime. The vacuum potential is the pervasive source of all matter/energy or “massergy,” rooted in the cosmic acceleration. Its first observable manifestion is photonic and biophotonic light. A photon is composed of both spatial and time-energy, even though it is massless. The vacuum potential is raw, untranslated pre-spacetime. Massergy (dynamic structure) is rooted in the unfolding time-charged potential of electromagnetic fields.
The pure vacuum potential, without its zero-point fluctuations decomposes into a harmonic set of bidirectional longitudinal EM phase conjugate wave pairs. Thus EM energy flows between the imaginary plane of time domain and manifest 3-space when the four-fold symmetry is broken with any dipolarity or potential, such as logitudinal or scalar (time) polarization of the photon.
Engineering applications in zero-point energy extraction, torsion field generators, or antigravity are beyond the remit of this article, which focuses on the ontology and epistemology of the source field in relation to human energy systems. Separating legitimate theoretical ideas from pseudoscience requires stripping the theory down to bare bones and resisting wild speculations -- the imaginative from the purely fantastical. Shaking off the legacy of fanciful ether theory has not been easy in this research niche.
Negentropy
The information-theory term, negentropy is used less and less as a buzzword in favor of 'torsion field' models in energy medicine and consciousness studies. The unity of being that used to be attributed to notions of holographic reality and quantum processes is more and more assigned to the non-observable but inferred effects of the torsion field, previously known as the scalar field underlying virtual vacuum and virtual photon flux.
Leading theories of consciousness (Persinger group, 2013; Hu and Wu, 2013) now model spin as a generator of 'consciousness'. There seems to be an identity between that torque which leads to particle production and the fundamental nature of the torsion field. At least this is the hypothesis embraced within the segment of complementary medicine known as scientifically-based energy medicine. If DNA is a torsion-field antenna it functions as a transducer of that field, precipitating life through bioacoustics and biophotonics.
Matti Pikanin summarizes Persinger’s group reports related to EEG, magnetic fields, photon emission from the brain, and macroscopic quantum coherence. The findings provide support of Hu and Wu’s proposal that nerve pulse activity could induce spin flips of spin networks assignable to cell membranes. He further suggests that “lipids of the two layers of the cell membrane are accompanied by dark protons which arrange themselves to dark protonic strings defining a dark analog of DNA double strand.”
Entropy is a concept from thermodynamics and self-organizing complexity of coupled cycles in dissipative or coherent structures. Negentropy or negative entropy (also syntropy, extropy or entaxy) is defined in a living system as "the entropy that it exports to keep its own entropy low; it lies at the intersection of entropy and life." Schrödinger introduced the concept of 'negative entropy' in What is Life? (1944).
Léon Brillouin shortened the phrase to negentropy, to describe how a living system imports negentropy and stores it. Albert Szent-Györgyi (1974) suggested replacing that term with syntropy, working toward a unified theory of biology and physics. Buckminster Fuller tried to popularize this usage, but negentropy remains common, particularly in information theory and the cosmological holographic principle (Susskind).
Physics describes the interrelationship of chaos and order as field relationships, while chaos theory describes nature's own methods of creation and self-assembly. Entropy is the tendency for any closed part of the universe to expand at the expense of order. It is a measure of randomness and disorder -- chaos. Negentropy is the generative force of the universe. Negentropy (emergent order from chaos) is a nonlinear higher order system, a dynamically creative ordering information.
Negentropy, like art, is ‘in-form-ative.' It is related to mutual information exchange. Information is embodied in the fractal nature of imagery and symbols, which compress the informational content of the whole. Creativity is an emergent phenomenon patterned by strange attractors, which govern the complexity of information in dynamic flow.
Negentropy is the degree of order, or function of a state.
That which was formerly unmanifest comes into being. Negentropy governs the spontaneous transmission and direction of flow of information among systems. The qualities of that information are timeless. It is synergistic in that what was formerly unconnected becomes so, creating something wholly optimal and new – futuristic.
In cybernetics, a meaningful interpretation of negentropy is a measurement of the complexity of a physical structure in which quantities of energy are invested, e.g., buildings, works, technical devices, and organisms which become more complex by feeding not on energy but on negentropy.
Unconditioned Space
Information maps onto space as a higher order specification. Yet information is not static, but dynamic. Rotating torsion fields surround everything, up to planets, galaxies and black holes. Torsion fields interact with each other, changing and creating new torsion fields. The torsion field is imperceivable until disturbed. Life manifests from the continuous subtle interaction of the spinning waves of the torsion field.
Torsion fields are a huge flow of information to form a general boundless system, in which the instantaneous velocity of propagation, the concept of "time", does not exist. The information of torsion fields determines the sequence according to which matrix protein (RNA) builds an amino acid. Some research suggests that the unique properties of torsion fields actually generate consciousness and have compelling links to various nonlocal, psi or parapsychological phenomena, often attributed to entanglement.
In the vacuum, torsion fields are the quantum spin of empty space -- the large-scale coherent effects of the spin of the particles in the virtual sea. According to Murad, Matveeko claimed that the torsion field is identical to the transverse spin polarization of the physical vacuum and a gravitational field is identical to the longitudinal spin polarization of the physical vacuum.
The universal torsion field is a dynamic medium. From electrons to galaxies, torsion is produced by the spin of mass. Torsion fields influence spin states. Torsion waves emanate from all matter and all atoms are torsion wave generators. Torsion fields are scalar, operating independently of direction. They also have the nonlocal property of holographically operating throughout the entire universe irrespective of time or distance.
Information can be propagated and retrieved from the torsion field. The geometry of the physical vacuum is multi-dimensional. Information is a dimension in itself, related to consciousness. The torsion of the geometry of absolute parallelism generates torsion fields. This is not electromagnetic or gravitational energy, but a spiralling, non-hertzian, electromagnetic wave. The collected inertia in a certain area of space from a spinning electromagnetic field creates an effect that we observe as mass.
While ‘spin’ field is used synonymously with the term torsion much depends on the paradigm from which one approaches the virtual vacuum. Orthodox QM simply ignores and nullifies the effect. It has been modeled as a simple annihilation of matter-antimatter pairs as a bubbling foam in Dirac's quantum mechanics. Sakharov proposed that empty space was filled with virtual particles. It also has been modeled by the Russians and heterodox western scientists as a physical vacuum theory where the vacuum consists of spinors, a shorthand notation for tensors that possess an electric, magnetic, gravitic and spin field.
It helps to distinguish the zero-point field from the physical vacuum. The homogeneous vacuum displays inhomogenous anomalies and varies as a function of disturbances or the influence of ambient electric and magnetic fields. Some Russian physicists contend that only the spin or torsion field could support faster-than-light (FTL) phenomena and nonlocal interactions.
Torsion is different from these other three fields that could have spherical symmetry. Torsion could be right-handed or left-handed and is based upon a cylindrical field and can be created by large accumulations of electricity and rotation of a body that if above a certain speed, would enhance the torsion field. Torsion can lead to other phenomenon including frame dragging.
Murad describes how frame dragging occurs when a rod is inserted concentrically inside of a cylinder and has no physical contact with that body. If the rod is suddenly removed, the cylinder will also move or is dragged along with the rod. Other examples exist regarding rotational bodies that would also influence adjacent rotating bodies due to the interaction of one spin field interacting with another.
Tom Bearden described the fundamental torsion wave within the electromagnetic wave. This wave remains when two opposing electromagnetic fields interfere, cancelling out each other’s electrical and magnetic field components. The result is a longitudinal wave that vibrates in the same direction in which it travels.
Kozyrev noticed that all physical objects can absorb as well as emit torsion waves. By shaking physical objects, vibrating and altering them, through heating or cooling, they generate measurable torsion waves. Even displacing an object generates a measurable torsion wave. Every movement, from the vibrations of an atom to the orbit time of our planets, leaves its mark on the ether in the form of torsion waves.
These operations are characterized by a variety of behaviors which have been described conceptually, experimentally and mathematically as functions of spin polarity, angular momentum and weighted waveform vector velocities. For example, unlike electromagnetism, where analogous charges repel and opposite charges attract, in torsion fields spins polarized in the same direction attract, and spins polarized in the opposite direction repulse. The physical vacuum can manifest as three types of physical vacuum polarization, the charge, the mass, and the spin.
On the Nature of the Vacuum and Virtual Subspace Entities
Quantum field theory (QFT) presumes the vacuum ground state is not completely empty, but seethes with impermanent virtual particles and fields. There are at least two theories that describe the behavior and characteristics of the physical vacuum and the ZPE at the atomic or sub-atomic level, the quantum vacuum field:
QED: The quantum electrodynamics (QED) model of charged particles with the electromagnetic field is consistent with special relativity. At the atomic level, the QED model proposes that, because of the high inherent energy density within the vacuum, some of this energy can be temporarily converted to mass. The QED model maintains that the zero-point energy reveals its existence through the effects of sub-atomic virtual particles. ZPE permits short-lived particle/antiparticle pairs to form and almost immediately annihilate each other. These particle/antiparticle pairs are called virtual particles.
QED describes mathematically both interactions of light with matter and those of charged particles with one another. An atomic particle such as a proton or electron, even when entirely alone in a vacuum at absolute zero, is continually emitting and absorbing these virtual particles from the vacuum -- a virtual particle cloud. The absorption and emission of these virtual particles also causes the electron's "jitter motion" in a vacuum at absolute zero. As such, this jittering, or Zitterbewegung, as it is officially called, constitutes evidence for the existence of virtual particles and the ZPE of the vacuum.
There is a cloud of virtual particles around the "bare" electron interacting with it. When a full quantum increase in the vacuum energy density occurs, the strength of the charge increases. With a higher charge for the "point-like entity" of the electron, we expect that the size of the particle cloud increases because of stronger vacuum polarization and a more energetic Zitterbewegung.
SED: The stochastic electro-dynamics SED approach affirms that the ZPE exists as electromagnetic fields or waves whose effects explain the observed phenomena equally well. SED treats quantum field-particle interactions like classical dynamics (Puthoff, 1987). In the SED approach, the vacuum at the atomic or sub-atomic level may be considered inherently comprised of a turbulent sea of randomly fluctuating electro-magnetic fields or waves. Stochastic resonance is produced by random stimuli.
These waves exist at all wavelengths and are homogeneous and isotropic at the macro-level, which means they have the same properties uniformly in every direction throughout the whole cosmos. In the SED explanation, the Zitterbewegung is accounted for by the random fluctuations of the ZPF, or waves, as they impact upon the electron and jiggle it around.
Because light waves are an electromagnetic phenomenon, their motion through space is affected by the electric and magnetic properties of the vacuum, namely the permittivity and permeability. The effect of vacuum fluctuations on electron coherence is known: the time-varying electromagnetic field produces a time-varying Aharonov-Bohm phase, a phase-shift illustrated by interference experiments. If more than philosophical, it describes
The Copenhagen Interpretation (CI) is the standard model of quantum physics because of its ability to make predictions from a real-world experimental basis. In this theory, light is both a particle and a wave and so is everything else. Uncertainty rules supreme since we cannot simultaneously calculate both position and velocity of subatomic operators, but only probabilities.
Other coherent yet flawed theories have been less successful in this and other regards, some being entirely nontestable. All agree that light is a primary manifestation of the engine of the cosmos. Meanwhile, subatomic factors with many strange properties have proliferated into the “particle zoo.”
Still, the search for undiscovered particles or energies that could point toward unification continues. Many attempts have been made to fit all observations into one ‘container’ that describes everything from the macro- to the microcosmic, down into the virtualities of subspace. Abstract models, flawed inventions or approximations are not physical explanations. Clarity remains elusive and many alternative and idiosyncratic theories have arisen. Theories are often patched up with unnecessary complications.
In the 1960s, Buckminster Fuller proposed a geometric philosophy of a crystalline vacuum based on nature he called Synergetics. His notions of tensegrity have applications in classical and quantum physics, as well as biophysics. He described the crystalline vacuum of cosmic space with the pre-geometrical properties of Cosmic Zero in his model of the Vector Equilibrium Matrix.
Echoing Fuller, in 2013, physicists reported the discovery of a jewel-like geometric object at the heart of matter that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions. It challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality. They claim, “The new geometric version of quantum field theory could also facilitate the search for a theory of quantum gravity that would seamlessly connect the large- and small-scale pictures of the universe.” (Wolchover)
In keeping with this idea, the new geometric approach to particle interactions removes locality and unitarity from its starting assumptions. The amplituhedron is not built out of space-time and probabilities; these properties merely arise as consequences of the jewel’s geometry. The usual picture of space and time, and particles moving around in them, is a construct.
This model is tied to string theory, but, have they actually found it? As we understand it, the amplituhedron is a geometric consequence of solving Yang-Mills in 4-D, in lieu of adding an increasingly chaotic amount of Feynman diagrams, due to superconformal invariance, but they haven't seen it. Therefore, it remains a model at this point – a version of twistors. They hope to find another shape similar but more profound that does answer all things (including gravity and time).
The ‘80s ushered in the era of chaos theory, complexity, dynamics and self-organization, which may ultimately play into the final solutions. Every theory is based in certain fundamental assumptions and postulates about how nature works. They may be coherent within themselves, but not among themselves, where they can be mutually exclusive. But the Holy Grail theory remains hidden in the dealer’s hand.
Leading contenders in New Physics include the following: Bohm created a holographic concept, Susskind a ‘stringy’ Holographic Principle, Deutsch a variation on Many Worlds (MWI), and Cramer a Transactional Interpretation (TI). Sarfatti long ago proposed postquantum backaction, while Penrose proposes a twistor space. Pitkanin describes a TGY physics based on world sheets. Masreliez suggests a Scale Expanding Cosmos (SEC), with a uniform scale invariant expansion for the whole spacetime manifold of the universe.
Greene remains the main proponent of String Theory. It has lots of popular appeal but many theoretical inconsistencies, including a proliferation of dimensions and multiple solutions. Since it makes no testable predictions, it is accused of being more of a philosophy than a science. But Kanno et al (2002) describe how “quasi-scalar-tensor gravity works as a hologram at low energy in the sense that the bulk geometry can be reconstructed from the solution of quasi-scalar-tensor gravity.”
Witten unified the five solutions of strings in M-Theory. Still, answers about the true nature of Reality are unlikely to come from a new mathematical model. It should be the other way around: first find what you think might be the solution to a problem, then express it as a mathematical model, then test it. The coherent narrative should follow.
Nefediev uses QCD (quantum chromodynamics) bubbles to describe properties of the vacuum and propagation of quarks and mesonic states in two- and four-dimensional models. In QCD the vacuum is full of quark and gluon condensates with negative energy. Electrogravitics theory (Valone) is a way of modeling gravity as a matter of time with emergent energy science.
Thomas Bearden generated a great deal of interest in the field potential. Most quantum views of space pertain to a fixed instant of time, but Bearden brings [negative] time back into the equation in his experimental models and engineering of the vacuum.
QFT models the fabric of space as tiny oscillating fields interacting with one another, reconciling quantum mechanics with special relativity. Elementary particles, local excitations of the vacuum, are point-like objects of zero intrinsic size. They appear smeared over a region of space due to quantum effects, but their description is written as mathematical points. Together, space, time, and energy form a manifold of functional quantum space.
Comings and Miller (2005) have proposed the void is a plenum in the Creative Physics model. The nature of embodiment is light. Another viable model of the Bivacuum comes from Kaivarainen. The quantum vacuum is a dynamic massless scalar field. A scalar is a vector characterized by magnitude and time. Scalar waves (virtual particle flux wave) in the virtual state massless charge flux do not breach the quantum level to become observable, yet they are real. They are harmonic oscillations of the stress energy tensor of the vacuum. They cross the threshold of manifestation only briefly before they vanish. In the vacuum state everything is disintegrated, but highly dynamic.
The vacuum is not an emptiness filled with massless charge, rather, it IS identically massless charge (disintegrated dynamicism). Though no real particles are present, it is a plenum, not an emptiness. It is also pure, undifferentiated action. A curious thing has happened along the way to a Theory of Everything, which is that physics is taking a more and more mystical attitude in its descriptors of what remains essentially a great Mystery. This mystery is compounded when we attempt to apply physics theories to biological organisms, including ourselves – the realm of biophysics.
Cosmic Crystalline Vacuum
Buckminster Fuller spoke in quasi-mystical tones rhapsodizing about his sublime geometries, which bear a suspicious resemblance to zero-point. Jitterbugging Vector Equilibrium Matrix is not structure but a system, the prime nucleated system. V.E. makes conceptual models of 4th, 5th and 5th dimensional omniexperience possible, using tetrahedroning. A current example of this is CDT theory, a triangular universe of 4-dimensional tetrahedrons.
Equilibrium between + and is Zero. V.E. is the true zero reference of the energetic mathematics. It is cosmic zero.Zero pulsation in the V.E. is a metaphorm of eternity and God: the zero-phase of conceptual integrity inherent in the + and - asymmetries. V.E. is important because all the nuclear tendencies to implosion and explosion are reversible and always in exact balance. V.E. is the anywhere, anywhen, eternally regenerative, event inceptioning and evolutionary accomodation that is never seen in any experience.
This metaphorm (V.E.) represents the self's initial real-I-zation both inwardly and outwardly from the beginning of being "betweenness"; maximum inbetweenness. Push/pull; convergence/divergence; gravity/radiation.At zero-point, waves pass through waves without interfering with one another. Vectoral phase or zone of neutral resonance occurs between outwardly pushing wave propagation and inwardly pulling gravitational coherence.
Emptiness at the Center: all 4 planes of all 8 tetrahedra are congruent in the four visible planes passing through a common V.E. center, the cosmic terminal condition and nature's most economical lines of energy travel..The dynamic activity connected with the drive to know, to penetrate, to illumine, culminates in a stillness, silence, cessation of all effort which itself dissolves in the tranquility of total negation. 0 = 2. It is only by virtue of the fact that it is Naught. All form and power are latent in the Void. Haramein and Rauscher (2005) have employed this cuboctahdron to model all of creation.
The Crown of Creation
There is a virtual replica (VR) of all matter, including living organisms, in the vacuum. Resonance and oscillation is accompanied by modulation of virtual particle/antiparticle pressure waves. We come from, are sustained by and are returning to the light of our mass, radiant energy. It is the mass-free, force-free form that energy takes in space before its interaction with mass creates force.
The most we can say about our so-called physical existence is that we are standing wavefronts in spacetime. To truly live from that place is to identify ultimately with a superluminal massless body of light, the Diamond Body. That is the true nature of the vehicle of our consciousness, our essence.
Virtual particles are the unseen energetic medium, the dynamic energy matrix of the Universe, riddled with virtual pressure waves. Bidirectional EM wavepairs are the hidden scalar potential. These infolded electrodynamics describe subspace or higher dimensions, depending on how you model it mathematically.
Astrophysicist, Nikolai Kozyrev wrote his dynamic vacuum theory – an aether theory -- in the 1950s. Kozyrev described spinning or twisting “torsion fields” and/or “torsion waves” as the spiraling flow of “time energy. Lt. Col. Tom Bearden, calls them “scalar waves.” Their spiraling nature is simply an impulse of momentum that travels through the medium of the aether/ZPE/physical vacuum, without electromagnetic qualities.
Torsion fields, like gravity or electromagnetism, are capable of moving from one place to another in the Universe at “superluminal” speeds, meaning that they far exceed the speed of light. An impulse that moves directly through the “fabric of space-time”, travels at super-luminal velocities and is separate from gravity or electromagnetism, is a significant breakthrough in physics – one that demands that a “physical vacuum”, “zero-point energy” or “aether” must really exist.
The active vacuum is active spacetime. The vacuum potential is the pervasive source of all matter/energy or “massergy,” rooted in the cosmic acceleration. Its first observable manifestion is photonic and biophotonic Light. A photon is composed of both spatial and time-energy, even though it is massless. The vacuum potential is raw, untranslated spacetime. Massergy (dynamic structure) is rooted in the unfolding time-charged potential of electromagnetic fields.
The pure vacuum potential, without its zero-point fluctuations decomposes into a harmonic set of bidirectional longitudinal EM phase conjugate wave pairs. Thus EM energy flows between the imaginary plane of time domain and manifest 3-space when the four-fold symmetry is broken with any dipolarity or potential, such as logitudinal or scalar (time) polarization of the photon. http://virtualphysics.50megs.com/whats_new.html
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“The very best quantum-foundational effort,” says Christopher Fuchs of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, “will be the one that can write a story — literally a story, all in plain words — so compelling and so masterful in its imagery that the mathematics of quantum mechanics in all its exact technical detail will fall out as a matter of course”. http://www.nature.com/news/physics-quantum-quest-1.13711
"In our metaphysics we declare our fantasies about the physical and its transcendence. A metaphysical statement can be seen as a psychological fancy about the relationship between 'matter and spirit'. [...] The archetypal neuros is collective and affects all with the metaphysical affliction. Processing this affliction is individual, and this makes therapy a metaphysical commitment in which not only complexes but also feelings and ideas undergo a process and a change ". -- James Hillman, Senex and Puer
Dialogical Creativity and Dialogical Emergence
Scientific tales can be political or philosophical. Scientific and sound or hollow metaphysical ideas are not independent of their archetypal backgrounds which inform and shape them in the minds of their authors. Even a psychological fancy is a self-consistent coherence – like a poem or work of art – perhaps a stopgap on the way to more rational thought. To love such a psychological fancy requires a certain suspension of logic, disbelief, and even confirmation bias.
Master narratives provide collectivities with a coherent vision of their history and a sense of homogeneity. Heisenberg said, “Science is rooted in conversations,” and in doubt and uncertainty. In What is Life?, Schrödinger claimed organisms feed on negative entropy and that consciousness is absolutely fundamental.
Arguably, quantum brain is metaphysical in that it bears on Kant’s categories of God, freedom, and immortality – at least in its implications. He also suggests all human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds to concepts, and ends with ideas. All knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds toward understanding, and ends with reason.
Such arguments are summarized in philosophical notions of Panprotopsychism and Panexperientialism, which describe emergence of primal non-conscious processes. Panprotopsyhism suggests proto-consciousness may exist in the universe as a “fundamental property” without depending at all on anything physical.
This canon suggests, by focusing on experience rather than mentality, panexperientialism avoids some of the traditional objections to panpsychism. Absolute space is the noumenal source of phenomenal consciousness, a fundamental quality, and Mind is a higher order hyperspace field outside brain's EM field. Fundamental proto-consciousness finds more particular expression when matter comes together in a certain way.
Between Dialogue & Dogma
Real science can arise from individual or collective environments, distilling the essential from “absolute knowledge” of the unconscious. In that sense, we can hardly be optimistic that actual insight will result, yet somehow it has throughout the history of science, even though some solutions are provisional.
Meta-artist Roy Ascott describes the process: “Within the matrix that integrates questions of society, the self, materiality, and consciousness there is a kind of five axes involved in amplifying thought (concept development); sharing consciousness (collaborative processes); seeding structures (self-organising systems); making metaphors (knowledge navigation); constructing identities (self-creation).”
Metaphysical ideas are by definition ‘beyond physics’, but not separate from their roots in mind-dependent ideas and philosophy. Marie-Louise von Franz said, “There is therefore no concept fundamental to modern physics that is not in one degree or another a differentiated form of some primordial archetypal idea" ( Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology). Ideas about mind and consciousness are currently firmly entrenched in this category. What has been undemonstrable in the past may not remain so in the future.
Debriding the hidden forces of their archetypal projections remains a challenge at the leading edge. Essence, by its very nature, remains stubbornly intangible, unknown, and unseen. Form, on the other hand, requires only ingenuity, engineering, and due diligence. The concept of ‘quantum brain’ looks the part, but can it play the part? Is it coherent or incoherent?
Mantak Chia notes:
Consciousness defines our existence and reality. But how does the brain generate thoughts and feelings? Most explanations portray the brain as a computer, with nerve cells (“neurons”) and their synaptic connections acting as simple switches, or “bits” which interact in complex ways. In this view consciousness is said to “emerge” as a novel property of complex interactions among neurons, as hurricanes and candle flames emerge from complex interactions among gas and dust molecules. However this approach fails to explain why we have feelings and awareness, an “inner life”. So we don’t know how the brain produces consciousness.
We also don’t know if our conscious perceptions accurately portray the external world, or if we all have similar pictures of what lies outside our conscious minds. In fact, the fundamental nature of reality remains as mysterious as the mechanism for our conscious perceptions.
When narrative precedes the science skeptics will scoff and relegate it to the “nomenclature of belief” about ‘designer consciousness’. Or, though science is enamored with the physical brain, they ignore it entirely or relegate it to the heap of pop physics and consciousness books that few scientists take seriously.
If it continues building traction, it might rewrite the metanarrative of physics -- the Holy Grail of paradigm shift -- much to the chagrin of the old guard. Is it rising from a subcategory of theory and experimentation – ideas about ideas -- toward fundamental laws? We can paint broad strokes with narratives, which must ultimately be backed by hard science of experimental results. Yet, sometimes even concrete evidence is not recognized, or imply ignored, still labeled as dubious, delusional, and flawed. Such is the case for recent experiments to detect spin-mediated consciousness.
Specialization can differentiate the content of reality while not advancing the process of defining pre-form thingness. It can miss the essential penetration, activation and transformation of human awareness and experience, which even physics informs us is profoundly and irreversibly subjective. Knowledge begins with experience, but does not arise from it. Particularizing only helps us slice-and-dice the known. Critically, essentials, are not really touched in the process. Transformation is qualitative change.
Evolving a master narrative involving consciousness studies, quantum brain, torsion fields, or zero point takes place in a largely academic conditioned environment. No matter what we call it, there is a fundamental difference from consciousness that informs matter, or mind that emerges from dynamic physical form.
It spawns many essentially different ideas, despite their apparent kinship. Does conscious awareness naturally emerge from complex structure or does it arise a priori, emerging in a co-extensive way with matter? The former models quantum brain theory, while the later reflects the primordial nature of pre-spacetime.
In neuroscience, quantum brain dynamics (QBD) is a hypothesis to explain the function of the brain within the framework of quantum field theory. In The Quantum Brain (2002), Jeffrey Satinover reviews the convergence of brain science, biological computation and quantum physics, and what it implies about our minds, our selves, our future, even God. His is the world of neural nets, computing, cellular automata, genetic algorithms, artificial intelligence, neurobiology, artificial intelligence, and some basic philosophy of mind problems. He contends the brain amplifies quantum phenomena to produce free will.
Some narratives come from more credible sources than others. This area has come a long way from its origins in “ether physics” but sentiments within conservative academic communities remain skeptical. Because it has been labeled a ‘forbidden topic’ in some arenas has not deterred its exploration within frontier science. The aspects which withstand scrutiny may be embraced, while those that do not are relegated to the dustbin of failed ideas.
Faced with Mystery we tend to reach or overreach for answers to our existential dilemma – to fill in the blanks in the nature of reality. They are continually reiterated and stabilized constructions which tend to mask particularity and bias behind universalized representations of objective truth. They can have a homogenizing as well as exclusionary potential.
Preconscious Vacuum Potential
We're learning more and more about the pre-conscious nature of the medical and psychological unconscious, as well as the group mind of trends and -isms that go on beyond our normal background reality. How can we increase connectivity/coupling between the atom/molecule level reality and the vacuum level of reality?
This is a question posed by Tiller, among others who propose theories. He suggests we delve beneath the pop buzzword of zero-point field to the enormity of latent energy in the vacuum reality beyond normal reality. He suggests we are are "emotional, mental, and spiritual", echoing qabalistic and theosophical notions, as well as other wisdom traditions. Others, including physicist Claude Swanson, Gary Schwartz, and Leon Maurer echo these sentiments that non-consciousness is co-extensive with Absolute Space.
Is torsion beyond space and time, or is it simply twisted space-time? The answer is 'yes', depending on level of observation. Hu and Wu postulate a spin-mediated theory of consciousness in which "consciousness is intrinsically connected to quantum mechanical spin since said spin is embedded in the microscopic structure of spacetime and may be more fundamental than spacetime itself. Thus, we theorize that consciousness emerges quantum mechanically from the collective dynamics of "protopsychic" spins under the influence of spacetime dynamics. That is, spin is the "pixel" of mind. The unity of mind is achieved by quantum entanglement of the mind-pixels." The Persinger Group produced experiential evidence of such effects, published in Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, Vol. IV, Issue 1 (2013).
"Never Mind" becomes a euphemism for the one mind or (potential) proto-consciousness that seems to emanate from this timeless domain of absolute space. Researchers such as Swanson call such processes 'Life Force', and describe its dynamics in energetic terms of control and communication channels involving frequencies of radiation between DNA, molecules and cells. Mae-Wan Ho concurs. Coherent biophotons function in a laser-like manner to regulate mindbody coordination. Such work bears on notions of the nature of life and consciousness which have been persistently elusive in both biology and physics models.
There is a continuous shift in the languaging of notions about consciousness, the mindfield, quantum brain, holographic mind, and negentropy. Words, concepts and theories map the footprints of our crystallizing intuition, but descriptors come into and fall out of fashion. The dialogical edge has dropped down another level to the pre-quantum world, to a principle underlying those of quantum mechanics. First discovered by Tesla, what were called scalar waves are now known by their Russian label as torsion waves. Their spiraling nature is simply an impulse of momentum that travels through the medium of the aether/ZPE/physical vacuum, without electromagnetic qualities.
The all-pervasive sea of quantum energy, discovered in the 20th century, remains arguably the most exciting frontier of the 21st century, both in terms of pure science as well as energy extraction and engineering. The jiggling of subatomic particles is attributed to the zero point field, the virtual photon flux that occurs between the dipole and the vacuum. Virtual particles are not stable enough to remain in manifestation yet they have tangible effects -- a frictionless field of potentiality with spinning effects with emissions.
Randomly virtual photons jump back and forth between the zero point field and our physical world. They collide with and are absorbed by subatomic particles that will be excited into a higher energy state. After nanoseconds the energy is released again by means of another virtual photon that returns to the zero point field. The photon is called a virtual photon since it comes and goes from the zero point field and is ephemeral in the material world. It is only used in the energy exchange between the zero point field and the material world.
Photons and the variety of elementary particles seemingly come into our physical reality from nowhere at all. They make their appearance in our physical reality for only thousandths or millionths of a second to disappear once again into the void. These forms of ‘mystical’ particles were called virtual particles since they were not stable enough to stay around in our reality. The zero point field is a quantum foam of virtual particles and photons.
Such modeling may have implications for new computer brain language that allows computers to learn, and to read human thoughts by using brain-machine interface, and the ethical implications that raises. Our neural synapses will soon work as biochemical nano-devices to transfer information energy from electrical to biochemical signals.
The active vacuum is active spacetime. The vacuum potential is the pervasive source of all matter/energy or “massergy,” rooted in the cosmic acceleration. Its first observable manifestion is photonic and biophotonic light. A photon is composed of both spatial and time-energy, even though it is massless. The vacuum potential is raw, untranslated pre-spacetime. Massergy (dynamic structure) is rooted in the unfolding time-charged potential of electromagnetic fields.
The pure vacuum potential, without its zero-point fluctuations decomposes into a harmonic set of bidirectional longitudinal EM phase conjugate wave pairs. Thus EM energy flows between the imaginary plane of time domain and manifest 3-space when the four-fold symmetry is broken with any dipolarity or potential, such as logitudinal or scalar (time) polarization of the photon.
Engineering applications in zero-point energy extraction, torsion field generators, or antigravity are beyond the remit of this article, which focuses on the ontology and epistemology of the source field in relation to human energy systems. Separating legitimate theoretical ideas from pseudoscience requires stripping the theory down to bare bones and resisting wild speculations -- the imaginative from the purely fantastical. Shaking off the legacy of fanciful ether theory has not been easy in this research niche.
Negentropy
The information-theory term, negentropy is used less and less as a buzzword in favor of 'torsion field' models in energy medicine and consciousness studies. The unity of being that used to be attributed to notions of holographic reality and quantum processes is more and more assigned to the non-observable but inferred effects of the torsion field, previously known as the scalar field underlying virtual vacuum and virtual photon flux.
Leading theories of consciousness (Persinger group, 2013; Hu and Wu, 2013) now model spin as a generator of 'consciousness'. There seems to be an identity between that torque which leads to particle production and the fundamental nature of the torsion field. At least this is the hypothesis embraced within the segment of complementary medicine known as scientifically-based energy medicine. If DNA is a torsion-field antenna it functions as a transducer of that field, precipitating life through bioacoustics and biophotonics.
Matti Pikanin summarizes Persinger’s group reports related to EEG, magnetic fields, photon emission from the brain, and macroscopic quantum coherence. The findings provide support of Hu and Wu’s proposal that nerve pulse activity could induce spin flips of spin networks assignable to cell membranes. He further suggests that “lipids of the two layers of the cell membrane are accompanied by dark protons which arrange themselves to dark protonic strings defining a dark analog of DNA double strand.”
Entropy is a concept from thermodynamics and self-organizing complexity of coupled cycles in dissipative or coherent structures. Negentropy or negative entropy (also syntropy, extropy or entaxy) is defined in a living system as "the entropy that it exports to keep its own entropy low; it lies at the intersection of entropy and life." Schrödinger introduced the concept of 'negative entropy' in What is Life? (1944).
Léon Brillouin shortened the phrase to negentropy, to describe how a living system imports negentropy and stores it. Albert Szent-Györgyi (1974) suggested replacing that term with syntropy, working toward a unified theory of biology and physics. Buckminster Fuller tried to popularize this usage, but negentropy remains common, particularly in information theory and the cosmological holographic principle (Susskind).
Physics describes the interrelationship of chaos and order as field relationships, while chaos theory describes nature's own methods of creation and self-assembly. Entropy is the tendency for any closed part of the universe to expand at the expense of order. It is a measure of randomness and disorder -- chaos. Negentropy is the generative force of the universe. Negentropy (emergent order from chaos) is a nonlinear higher order system, a dynamically creative ordering information.
Negentropy, like art, is ‘in-form-ative.' It is related to mutual information exchange. Information is embodied in the fractal nature of imagery and symbols, which compress the informational content of the whole. Creativity is an emergent phenomenon patterned by strange attractors, which govern the complexity of information in dynamic flow.
Negentropy is the degree of order, or function of a state.
That which was formerly unmanifest comes into being. Negentropy governs the spontaneous transmission and direction of flow of information among systems. The qualities of that information are timeless. It is synergistic in that what was formerly unconnected becomes so, creating something wholly optimal and new – futuristic.
In cybernetics, a meaningful interpretation of negentropy is a measurement of the complexity of a physical structure in which quantities of energy are invested, e.g., buildings, works, technical devices, and organisms which become more complex by feeding not on energy but on negentropy.
Unconditioned Space
Information maps onto space as a higher order specification. Yet information is not static, but dynamic. Rotating torsion fields surround everything, up to planets, galaxies and black holes. Torsion fields interact with each other, changing and creating new torsion fields. The torsion field is imperceivable until disturbed. Life manifests from the continuous subtle interaction of the spinning waves of the torsion field.
Torsion fields are a huge flow of information to form a general boundless system, in which the instantaneous velocity of propagation, the concept of "time", does not exist. The information of torsion fields determines the sequence according to which matrix protein (RNA) builds an amino acid. Some research suggests that the unique properties of torsion fields actually generate consciousness and have compelling links to various nonlocal, psi or parapsychological phenomena, often attributed to entanglement.
In the vacuum, torsion fields are the quantum spin of empty space -- the large-scale coherent effects of the spin of the particles in the virtual sea. According to Murad, Matveeko claimed that the torsion field is identical to the transverse spin polarization of the physical vacuum and a gravitational field is identical to the longitudinal spin polarization of the physical vacuum.
The universal torsion field is a dynamic medium. From electrons to galaxies, torsion is produced by the spin of mass. Torsion fields influence spin states. Torsion waves emanate from all matter and all atoms are torsion wave generators. Torsion fields are scalar, operating independently of direction. They also have the nonlocal property of holographically operating throughout the entire universe irrespective of time or distance.
Information can be propagated and retrieved from the torsion field. The geometry of the physical vacuum is multi-dimensional. Information is a dimension in itself, related to consciousness. The torsion of the geometry of absolute parallelism generates torsion fields. This is not electromagnetic or gravitational energy, but a spiralling, non-hertzian, electromagnetic wave. The collected inertia in a certain area of space from a spinning electromagnetic field creates an effect that we observe as mass.
While ‘spin’ field is used synonymously with the term torsion much depends on the paradigm from which one approaches the virtual vacuum. Orthodox QM simply ignores and nullifies the effect. It has been modeled as a simple annihilation of matter-antimatter pairs as a bubbling foam in Dirac's quantum mechanics. Sakharov proposed that empty space was filled with virtual particles. It also has been modeled by the Russians and heterodox western scientists as a physical vacuum theory where the vacuum consists of spinors, a shorthand notation for tensors that possess an electric, magnetic, gravitic and spin field.
It helps to distinguish the zero-point field from the physical vacuum. The homogeneous vacuum displays inhomogenous anomalies and varies as a function of disturbances or the influence of ambient electric and magnetic fields. Some Russian physicists contend that only the spin or torsion field could support faster-than-light (FTL) phenomena and nonlocal interactions.
Torsion is different from these other three fields that could have spherical symmetry. Torsion could be right-handed or left-handed and is based upon a cylindrical field and can be created by large accumulations of electricity and rotation of a body that if above a certain speed, would enhance the torsion field. Torsion can lead to other phenomenon including frame dragging.
Murad describes how frame dragging occurs when a rod is inserted concentrically inside of a cylinder and has no physical contact with that body. If the rod is suddenly removed, the cylinder will also move or is dragged along with the rod. Other examples exist regarding rotational bodies that would also influence adjacent rotating bodies due to the interaction of one spin field interacting with another.
Tom Bearden described the fundamental torsion wave within the electromagnetic wave. This wave remains when two opposing electromagnetic fields interfere, cancelling out each other’s electrical and magnetic field components. The result is a longitudinal wave that vibrates in the same direction in which it travels.
Kozyrev noticed that all physical objects can absorb as well as emit torsion waves. By shaking physical objects, vibrating and altering them, through heating or cooling, they generate measurable torsion waves. Even displacing an object generates a measurable torsion wave. Every movement, from the vibrations of an atom to the orbit time of our planets, leaves its mark on the ether in the form of torsion waves.
These operations are characterized by a variety of behaviors which have been described conceptually, experimentally and mathematically as functions of spin polarity, angular momentum and weighted waveform vector velocities. For example, unlike electromagnetism, where analogous charges repel and opposite charges attract, in torsion fields spins polarized in the same direction attract, and spins polarized in the opposite direction repulse. The physical vacuum can manifest as three types of physical vacuum polarization, the charge, the mass, and the spin.
On the Nature of the Vacuum and Virtual Subspace Entities
Quantum field theory (QFT) presumes the vacuum ground state is not completely empty, but seethes with impermanent virtual particles and fields. There are at least two theories that describe the behavior and characteristics of the physical vacuum and the ZPE at the atomic or sub-atomic level, the quantum vacuum field:
QED: The quantum electrodynamics (QED) model of charged particles with the electromagnetic field is consistent with special relativity. At the atomic level, the QED model proposes that, because of the high inherent energy density within the vacuum, some of this energy can be temporarily converted to mass. The QED model maintains that the zero-point energy reveals its existence through the effects of sub-atomic virtual particles. ZPE permits short-lived particle/antiparticle pairs to form and almost immediately annihilate each other. These particle/antiparticle pairs are called virtual particles.
QED describes mathematically both interactions of light with matter and those of charged particles with one another. An atomic particle such as a proton or electron, even when entirely alone in a vacuum at absolute zero, is continually emitting and absorbing these virtual particles from the vacuum -- a virtual particle cloud. The absorption and emission of these virtual particles also causes the electron's "jitter motion" in a vacuum at absolute zero. As such, this jittering, or Zitterbewegung, as it is officially called, constitutes evidence for the existence of virtual particles and the ZPE of the vacuum.
There is a cloud of virtual particles around the "bare" electron interacting with it. When a full quantum increase in the vacuum energy density occurs, the strength of the charge increases. With a higher charge for the "point-like entity" of the electron, we expect that the size of the particle cloud increases because of stronger vacuum polarization and a more energetic Zitterbewegung.
SED: The stochastic electro-dynamics SED approach affirms that the ZPE exists as electromagnetic fields or waves whose effects explain the observed phenomena equally well. SED treats quantum field-particle interactions like classical dynamics (Puthoff, 1987). In the SED approach, the vacuum at the atomic or sub-atomic level may be considered inherently comprised of a turbulent sea of randomly fluctuating electro-magnetic fields or waves. Stochastic resonance is produced by random stimuli.
These waves exist at all wavelengths and are homogeneous and isotropic at the macro-level, which means they have the same properties uniformly in every direction throughout the whole cosmos. In the SED explanation, the Zitterbewegung is accounted for by the random fluctuations of the ZPF, or waves, as they impact upon the electron and jiggle it around.
Because light waves are an electromagnetic phenomenon, their motion through space is affected by the electric and magnetic properties of the vacuum, namely the permittivity and permeability. The effect of vacuum fluctuations on electron coherence is known: the time-varying electromagnetic field produces a time-varying Aharonov-Bohm phase, a phase-shift illustrated by interference experiments. If more than philosophical, it describes
- whether potentials are "physical" or just a convenient tool for calculating force fields;
- whether action principles are fundamental;
- the principle of locality.
The Copenhagen Interpretation (CI) is the standard model of quantum physics because of its ability to make predictions from a real-world experimental basis. In this theory, light is both a particle and a wave and so is everything else. Uncertainty rules supreme since we cannot simultaneously calculate both position and velocity of subatomic operators, but only probabilities.
Other coherent yet flawed theories have been less successful in this and other regards, some being entirely nontestable. All agree that light is a primary manifestation of the engine of the cosmos. Meanwhile, subatomic factors with many strange properties have proliferated into the “particle zoo.”
Still, the search for undiscovered particles or energies that could point toward unification continues. Many attempts have been made to fit all observations into one ‘container’ that describes everything from the macro- to the microcosmic, down into the virtualities of subspace. Abstract models, flawed inventions or approximations are not physical explanations. Clarity remains elusive and many alternative and idiosyncratic theories have arisen. Theories are often patched up with unnecessary complications.
In the 1960s, Buckminster Fuller proposed a geometric philosophy of a crystalline vacuum based on nature he called Synergetics. His notions of tensegrity have applications in classical and quantum physics, as well as biophysics. He described the crystalline vacuum of cosmic space with the pre-geometrical properties of Cosmic Zero in his model of the Vector Equilibrium Matrix.
Echoing Fuller, in 2013, physicists reported the discovery of a jewel-like geometric object at the heart of matter that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions. It challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality. They claim, “The new geometric version of quantum field theory could also facilitate the search for a theory of quantum gravity that would seamlessly connect the large- and small-scale pictures of the universe.” (Wolchover)
In keeping with this idea, the new geometric approach to particle interactions removes locality and unitarity from its starting assumptions. The amplituhedron is not built out of space-time and probabilities; these properties merely arise as consequences of the jewel’s geometry. The usual picture of space and time, and particles moving around in them, is a construct.
This model is tied to string theory, but, have they actually found it? As we understand it, the amplituhedron is a geometric consequence of solving Yang-Mills in 4-D, in lieu of adding an increasingly chaotic amount of Feynman diagrams, due to superconformal invariance, but they haven't seen it. Therefore, it remains a model at this point – a version of twistors. They hope to find another shape similar but more profound that does answer all things (including gravity and time).
The ‘80s ushered in the era of chaos theory, complexity, dynamics and self-organization, which may ultimately play into the final solutions. Every theory is based in certain fundamental assumptions and postulates about how nature works. They may be coherent within themselves, but not among themselves, where they can be mutually exclusive. But the Holy Grail theory remains hidden in the dealer’s hand.
Leading contenders in New Physics include the following: Bohm created a holographic concept, Susskind a ‘stringy’ Holographic Principle, Deutsch a variation on Many Worlds (MWI), and Cramer a Transactional Interpretation (TI). Sarfatti long ago proposed postquantum backaction, while Penrose proposes a twistor space. Pitkanin describes a TGY physics based on world sheets. Masreliez suggests a Scale Expanding Cosmos (SEC), with a uniform scale invariant expansion for the whole spacetime manifold of the universe.
Greene remains the main proponent of String Theory. It has lots of popular appeal but many theoretical inconsistencies, including a proliferation of dimensions and multiple solutions. Since it makes no testable predictions, it is accused of being more of a philosophy than a science. But Kanno et al (2002) describe how “quasi-scalar-tensor gravity works as a hologram at low energy in the sense that the bulk geometry can be reconstructed from the solution of quasi-scalar-tensor gravity.”
Witten unified the five solutions of strings in M-Theory. Still, answers about the true nature of Reality are unlikely to come from a new mathematical model. It should be the other way around: first find what you think might be the solution to a problem, then express it as a mathematical model, then test it. The coherent narrative should follow.
Nefediev uses QCD (quantum chromodynamics) bubbles to describe properties of the vacuum and propagation of quarks and mesonic states in two- and four-dimensional models. In QCD the vacuum is full of quark and gluon condensates with negative energy. Electrogravitics theory (Valone) is a way of modeling gravity as a matter of time with emergent energy science.
Thomas Bearden generated a great deal of interest in the field potential. Most quantum views of space pertain to a fixed instant of time, but Bearden brings [negative] time back into the equation in his experimental models and engineering of the vacuum.
QFT models the fabric of space as tiny oscillating fields interacting with one another, reconciling quantum mechanics with special relativity. Elementary particles, local excitations of the vacuum, are point-like objects of zero intrinsic size. They appear smeared over a region of space due to quantum effects, but their description is written as mathematical points. Together, space, time, and energy form a manifold of functional quantum space.
Comings and Miller (2005) have proposed the void is a plenum in the Creative Physics model. The nature of embodiment is light. Another viable model of the Bivacuum comes from Kaivarainen. The quantum vacuum is a dynamic massless scalar field. A scalar is a vector characterized by magnitude and time. Scalar waves (virtual particle flux wave) in the virtual state massless charge flux do not breach the quantum level to become observable, yet they are real. They are harmonic oscillations of the stress energy tensor of the vacuum. They cross the threshold of manifestation only briefly before they vanish. In the vacuum state everything is disintegrated, but highly dynamic.
The vacuum is not an emptiness filled with massless charge, rather, it IS identically massless charge (disintegrated dynamicism). Though no real particles are present, it is a plenum, not an emptiness. It is also pure, undifferentiated action. A curious thing has happened along the way to a Theory of Everything, which is that physics is taking a more and more mystical attitude in its descriptors of what remains essentially a great Mystery. This mystery is compounded when we attempt to apply physics theories to biological organisms, including ourselves – the realm of biophysics.
Cosmic Crystalline Vacuum
Buckminster Fuller spoke in quasi-mystical tones rhapsodizing about his sublime geometries, which bear a suspicious resemblance to zero-point. Jitterbugging Vector Equilibrium Matrix is not structure but a system, the prime nucleated system. V.E. makes conceptual models of 4th, 5th and 5th dimensional omniexperience possible, using tetrahedroning. A current example of this is CDT theory, a triangular universe of 4-dimensional tetrahedrons.
Equilibrium between + and is Zero. V.E. is the true zero reference of the energetic mathematics. It is cosmic zero.Zero pulsation in the V.E. is a metaphorm of eternity and God: the zero-phase of conceptual integrity inherent in the + and - asymmetries. V.E. is important because all the nuclear tendencies to implosion and explosion are reversible and always in exact balance. V.E. is the anywhere, anywhen, eternally regenerative, event inceptioning and evolutionary accomodation that is never seen in any experience.
This metaphorm (V.E.) represents the self's initial real-I-zation both inwardly and outwardly from the beginning of being "betweenness"; maximum inbetweenness. Push/pull; convergence/divergence; gravity/radiation.At zero-point, waves pass through waves without interfering with one another. Vectoral phase or zone of neutral resonance occurs between outwardly pushing wave propagation and inwardly pulling gravitational coherence.
Emptiness at the Center: all 4 planes of all 8 tetrahedra are congruent in the four visible planes passing through a common V.E. center, the cosmic terminal condition and nature's most economical lines of energy travel..The dynamic activity connected with the drive to know, to penetrate, to illumine, culminates in a stillness, silence, cessation of all effort which itself dissolves in the tranquility of total negation. 0 = 2. It is only by virtue of the fact that it is Naught. All form and power are latent in the Void. Haramein and Rauscher (2005) have employed this cuboctahdron to model all of creation.
The Crown of Creation
There is a virtual replica (VR) of all matter, including living organisms, in the vacuum. Resonance and oscillation is accompanied by modulation of virtual particle/antiparticle pressure waves. We come from, are sustained by and are returning to the light of our mass, radiant energy. It is the mass-free, force-free form that energy takes in space before its interaction with mass creates force.
The most we can say about our so-called physical existence is that we are standing wavefronts in spacetime. To truly live from that place is to identify ultimately with a superluminal massless body of light, the Diamond Body. That is the true nature of the vehicle of our consciousness, our essence.
Virtual particles are the unseen energetic medium, the dynamic energy matrix of the Universe, riddled with virtual pressure waves. Bidirectional EM wavepairs are the hidden scalar potential. These infolded electrodynamics describe subspace or higher dimensions, depending on how you model it mathematically.
Astrophysicist, Nikolai Kozyrev wrote his dynamic vacuum theory – an aether theory -- in the 1950s. Kozyrev described spinning or twisting “torsion fields” and/or “torsion waves” as the spiraling flow of “time energy. Lt. Col. Tom Bearden, calls them “scalar waves.” Their spiraling nature is simply an impulse of momentum that travels through the medium of the aether/ZPE/physical vacuum, without electromagnetic qualities.
Torsion fields, like gravity or electromagnetism, are capable of moving from one place to another in the Universe at “superluminal” speeds, meaning that they far exceed the speed of light. An impulse that moves directly through the “fabric of space-time”, travels at super-luminal velocities and is separate from gravity or electromagnetism, is a significant breakthrough in physics – one that demands that a “physical vacuum”, “zero-point energy” or “aether” must really exist.
The active vacuum is active spacetime. The vacuum potential is the pervasive source of all matter/energy or “massergy,” rooted in the cosmic acceleration. Its first observable manifestion is photonic and biophotonic Light. A photon is composed of both spatial and time-energy, even though it is massless. The vacuum potential is raw, untranslated spacetime. Massergy (dynamic structure) is rooted in the unfolding time-charged potential of electromagnetic fields.
The pure vacuum potential, without its zero-point fluctuations decomposes into a harmonic set of bidirectional longitudinal EM phase conjugate wave pairs. Thus EM energy flows between the imaginary plane of time domain and manifest 3-space when the four-fold symmetry is broken with any dipolarity or potential, such as logitudinal or scalar (time) polarization of the photon. http://virtualphysics.50megs.com/whats_new.html
REFERENCES:
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Ho, M. W., The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms, World Scientific, Singapore, 1993.
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N. A. Kozyrev: Properties of Time
133 http://www.aw-verlag.ch/Others/Kozyrev_ExperimentalStudyProperiesTime.pdf 302 Found
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83 http://www.amasci.com/freenrg/tors/ 200 OK
Vacuum Spin Fields
84 http://www.centurytel.net/tjs11/hist/shipov.htm 302 Found
Torsion Fields
85 http://www.univer.omsk.su/omsk/Sci/Kozyrev/vsp1.htm 200 OK
Kozyrev's Papers
86 http://www.univer.omsk.su/omsk/Sci/Kozyrev/paper1a.txt 200 OK
LASZLO, Ervin, (2004/2007), SCIENCE & THE AKASHIC FIELD: An Integral Theory of Everything, Richester, Vermont; Inner Traditions.
Maurer, Leon,
Murad, Paul,
http://www.americanantigravity.com/files/articles/Murad-on-Torsion.pdf
Susskind, Holographic Principle
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What is (Schrödinger's) Negentropy? Bioelectrodynamics Laboratory, Open University
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N. A. Kozyrev: Properties of Time
133 http://www.aw-verlag.ch/Others/Kozyrev_ExperimentalStudyProperiesTime.pdf 302 Found
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83 http://www.amasci.com/freenrg/tors/ 200 OK
Vacuum Spin Fields
84 http://www.centurytel.net/tjs11/hist/shipov.htm 302 Found
Torsion Fields
85 http://www.univer.omsk.su/omsk/Sci/Kozyrev/vsp1.htm 200 OK
Kozyrev's Papers
86 http://www.univer.omsk.su/omsk/Sci/Kozyrev/paper1a.txt 200 OK
Kozyrev's Papers
Experimenting with Time
87 http://www.padrak.com/ine/NEN_6_1_6.html 200 OK
http://mindcontroleurope.wordpress.com/tag/magnus-olsson-nano-brain/
http://www.synthetictelepathy.net/nano-technology/nanotechnology-coming-to-a-brain-near-you/
http://photonichuman.weebly.com/
http://consciouslifenews.com/junk-dna-interdimensional-doorway-transformation/1161710/
Ho, Mae-Wan, What is (Schrödinger's) Negentropy? , Modern Trends in BioThermoKinetics 3, 50-61, 1994.
What is (Schrödinger's) Negentropy? Bioelectrodynamics Laboratory, Open University
http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/MaeWanHo/negentr.html
Pribram, Karl, Brain and quantum holography", No Matter, Never Mind: Proceedings of Toward a Science of Consciousness ... 2001,, edited by Kunio Yasue, Mari Jibu, Tarcisio Della Senta
http://books.google.com/books?id=eRkooap_j-YC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Ho, M. W., The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms, World Scientific, Singapore, 1993.
Murad, Paul,
http://www.americanantigravity.com/files/articles/Murad-on-Torsion.pdf
http://mindscapemagazine.com/2012/05/torsion-the-key-to-a-theory-of-everything-including-consciousness/
N. A. Kozyrev: Properties of Time
133 http://www.aw-verlag.ch/Others/Kozyrev_ExperimentalStudyProperiesTime.pdf 302 Found
Kozyrev Documentation: Research:
83 http://www.amasci.com/freenrg/tors/ 200 OK
Vacuum Spin Fields
84 http://www.centurytel.net/tjs11/hist/shipov.htm 302 Found
Torsion Fields
85 http://www.univer.omsk.su/omsk/Sci/Kozyrev/vsp1.htm 200 OK
Kozyrev's Papers
86 http://www.univer.omsk.su/omsk/Sci/Kozyrev/paper1a.txt 200 OK
Kozyrev's Papers
Experimenting with Time
87 http://www.padrak.com/ine/NEN_6_1_6.html 200 OK
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Social psychologists have identified two tendencies in the way people seek or interpret information about themselves. Self-verification is the drive to reinforce the existing self-image and self-enhancement is the drive to seek positive feedback. Both are served by confirmation biases.[127] In experiments where people are given feedback that conflicts with their self-image, they are less likely to attend to it or remember it than when given self-verifying feedback.[128][129][130] They reduce the impact of such information by interpreting it as unreliable.[128][131][132] Similar experiments have found a preference for positive feedback, and the people who give it, over negative feedback.
Bacon, in the Novum Organum, wrote, The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion ... draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects or despises, or else by some distinction sets aside or rejects[.][64]
Bacon said that biased assessment of evidence drove "all superstitions, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments or the like".[64] In his essay "What Is Art?", Tolstoy wrote,
I know that most men—not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever, and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic problems—can very seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as to oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty—conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.[65]
Bacon, in the Novum Organum, wrote, The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion ... draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects or despises, or else by some distinction sets aside or rejects[.][64]
Bacon said that biased assessment of evidence drove "all superstitions, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments or the like".[64] In his essay "What Is Art?", Tolstoy wrote,
I know that most men—not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever, and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic problems—can very seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as to oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty—conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.[65]
Confirmation bias
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.[Note 1][1] People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).
A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.
Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in political and organizational contexts.
Types Confirmation biases are effects in information processing. They differ from the behavioral confirmation effect, also called "self-fulfilling prophecy", in which behavior, influenced by expectations, causes those expectations to come true.[2] Some psychologists use "confirmation bias" to refer to the tendency to avoid rejecting beliefs, while searching for evidence, interpreting it, or recalling it from memory. Other psychologists restrict the term to selective collection of evidence.[3][Note 2]
Biased search for information Confirmation bias has been described as an internal "yes man", echoing back a person's beliefs like Charles Dickens' character Uriah Heep.[4] Experiments have found repeatedly that people tend to test hypotheses in a one-sided way, by searching for evidence consistent with their current hypothesis.[5][6] Rather than searching through all the relevant evidence, they phrase questions to receive an affirmative answer that supports their hypothesis.[7] They look for the consequences that they would expect if their hypothesis were true, rather than what would happen if it were false.[7] For example, someone using yes/no questions to find a number he or she suspects to be the number 3 might ask, "Is it an odd number?" People prefer this type of question, called a "positive test", even when a negative test such as "Is it an even number?" would yield the exact same information.[8] However, this does not mean that people seek tests that guarantee a positive answer. In studies where subjects could select either such pseudo-tests or genuinely diagnostic ones, they favored the genuinely diagnostic.[9][10]
The preference for positive tests in itself is not a bias, since positive tests can be highly informative.[11] However, in combination with other effects, this strategy can confirm existing beliefs or assumptions, independently of whether they are true.[12] In real-world situations, evidence is often complex and mixed. For example, various contradictory ideas about someone could each be supported by concentrating on one aspect of his or her behavior.[6] Thus any search for evidence in favor of a hypothesis is likely to succeed.[12] One illustration of this is the way the phrasing of a question can significantly change the answer.[6] For example, people who are asked, "Are you happy with your social life?" report greater satisfaction than those asked, "Are you unhappy with your social life?"[13]
Even a small change in a question's wording can affect how people search through available information, and hence the conclusions they reach. This was shown using a fictional child custody case.[14] Participants read that Parent A was moderately suitable to be the guardian in multiple ways. Parent B had a mix of salient positive and negative qualities: a close relationship with the child but a job that would take him or her away for long periods of time. When asked, "Which parent should have custody of the child?" the majority of participants chose Parent B, looking mainly for positive attributes. However, when asked, "Which parent should be denied custody of the child?" they looked for negative attributes and the majority answered that Parent B should be denied custody, implying that Parent A should have custody.[14]
Similar studies have demonstrated how people engage in a biased search for information, but also that this phenomenon may be limited by a preference for genuine diagnostic tests. In an initial experiment, participants rated another person on the introversion–extroversion personality dimension on the basis of an interview. They chose the interview questions from a given list. When the interviewee was introduced as an introvert, the participants chose questions that presumed introversion, such as, "What do you find unpleasant about noisy parties?" When the interviewee was described as extroverted, almost all the questions presumed extroversion, such as, "What would you do to liven up a dull party?" These loaded questions gave the interviewees little or no opportunity to falsify the hypothesis about them.[15] A later version of the experiment gave the participants less presumptive questions to choose from, such as, "Do you shy away from social interactions?"[16] Participants preferred to ask these more diagnostic questions, showing only a weak bias towards positive tests. This pattern, of a main preference for diagnostic tests and a weaker preference for positive tests, has been replicated in other studies.[16]
Personality traits influence and interact with biased search processes.[17] Individuals vary in their abilities to defend their attitudes from external attacks in relation to selective exposure. Selective exposure occurs when individuals search for information that is consistent, rather than inconsistent, with their personal beliefs.[18] An experiment examined the extent to which individuals could refute arguments that contradicted their personal beliefs.[17] People with high confidence levels more readily seek out contradictory information to their personal position to form an argument. Individuals with low confidence levels do not seek out contradictory information and prefer information that supports their personal position. People generate and evaluate evidence in arguments that are biased towards their own beliefs and opinions.[19] Heightened confidence levels decrease preference for information that supports individuals’ personal beliefs.
Another experiment gave participants a complex rule-discovery task that involved moving objects simulated by a computer.[20] Objects on the computer screen followed specific laws, which the participants had to figure out. So, participants could "fire" objects across the screen to test their hypotheses. Despite making many attempts over a ten-hour session, none of the participants figured out the rules of the system. They typically attempted to confirm rather than falsify their hypotheses, and were reluctant to consider alternatives. Even after seeing objective evidence that refuted their working hypotheses, they frequently continued doing the same tests. Some of the participants were taught proper hypothesis-testing, but these instructions had almost no effect.[20]
Biased interpretation "Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons."
--Michael Shermer[21] Confirmation biases are not limited to the collection of evidence. Even if two individuals have the same information, the way they interpret it can be biased.
A team at Stanford University conducted an experiment involving participants who felt strongly about capital punishment, with half in favor and half against it.[22][23] Each participant read descriptions of two studies: a comparison of U.S. states with and without the death penalty, and a comparison of murder rates in a state before and after the introduction of the death penalty. After reading a quick description of each study, the participants were asked whether their opinions had changed. Then, they read a more detailed account of each study's procedure and had to rate whether the research was well-conducted and convincing.[22] In fact, the studies were fictional. Half the participants were told that one kind of study supported the deterrent effect and the other undermined it, while for other participants the conclusions were swapped.[22][23]
The participants, whether supporters or opponents, reported shifting their attitudes slightly in the direction of the first study they read. Once they read the more detailed descriptions of the two studies, they almost all returned to their original belief regardless of the evidence provided, pointing to details that supported their viewpoint and disregarding anything contrary. Participants described studies supporting their pre-existing view as superior to those that contradicted it, in detailed and specific ways.[22][24] Writing about a study that seemed to undermine the deterrence effect, a death penalty proponent wrote, "The research didn't cover a long enough period of time", while an opponent's comment on the same study said, "No strong evidence to contradict the researchers has been presented".[22] The results illustrated that people set higher standards of evidence for hypotheses that go against their current expectations. This effect, known as "disconfirmation bias", has been supported by other experiments.[25]
An MRI scanner allowed researchers to examine how the human brain deals with unwelcome information. Another study of biased interpretation occurred during the 2004 US presidential election and involved participants who reported having strong feelings about the candidates. They were shown apparently contradictory pairs of statements, either from Republican candidate George W. Bush, Democratic candidate John Kerry or a politically neutral public figure. They were also given further statements that made the apparent contradiction seem reasonable. From these three pieces of information, they had to decide whether or not each individual's statements were inconsistent. There were strong differences in these evaluations, with participants much more likely to interpret statements from the candidate they opposed as contradictory.[26]
In this experiment, the participants made their judgments while in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner which monitored their brain activity. As participants evaluated contradictory statements by their favored candidate, emotional centers of their brains were aroused. This did not happen with the statements by the other figures. The experimenters inferred that the different responses to the statements were not due to passive reasoning errors. Instead, the participants were actively reducing the cognitive dissonance induced by reading about their favored candidate's irrational or hypocritical behavior.[26]
Biases in belief interpretation are persistent, regardless of intelligence level. Participants in an experiment took the SAT test (a college admissions test used in the United States) to assess their intelligence levels. They then read information regarding safety concerns for vehicles, and the experimenters manipulated the national origin of the car. American participants provided their opinion if the car should be banned on a six point scale, where one indicated “definitely yes” and six indicated “definitely no.” Participants firstly evaluated if they would allow a dangerous German car on American streets and a dangerous American car on German streets. Participants believed that the dangerous German car on American streets should be banned more quickly than the dangerous American car on German streets. There was no difference among intelligence levels at the rate participants would ban a car.[19]
Biased interpretation is not restricted to emotionally significant topics. In another experiment, participants were told a story about a theft. They had to rate the evidential importance of statements arguing either for or against a particular character being responsible. When they hypothesized that character's guilt, they rated statements supporting that hypothesis as more important than conflicting statements.[27]
Biased memory Even if people gather and interpret evidence in a neutral manner, they may still remember it selectively to reinforce their expectations. This effect is called "selective recall", "confirmatory memory" or "access-biased memory".[28] Psychological theories differ in their predictions about selective recall. Schema theory predicts that information matching prior expectations will be more easily stored and recalled than information that does not match.[29] Some alternative approaches say that surprising information stands out and so is memorable.[29] Predictions from both these theories have been confirmed in different experimental contexts, with no theory winning outright.[30]
In one study, participants read a profile of a woman which described a mix of introverted and extroverted behaviors.[31] They later had to recall examples of her introversion and extroversion. One group was told this was to assess the woman for a job as a librarian, while a second group were told it was for a job in real estate sales. There was a significant difference between what these two groups recalled, with the "librarian" group recalling more examples of introversion and the "sales" groups recalling more extroverted behavior.[31] A selective memory effect has also been shown in experiments that manipulate the desirability of personality types.[29][32] In one of these, a group of participants were shown evidence that extroverted people are more successful than introverts. Another group were told the opposite. In a subsequent, apparently unrelated, study, they were asked to recall events from their lives in which they had been either introverted or extroverted. Each group of participants provided more memories connecting themselves with the more desirable personality type, and recalled those memories more quickly.[33]
Changes in emotional states can also influence memory recall.[34][35] Participants rated how they felt when they had first learned that O.J. Simpson had been acquitted of murder charges.[34] They described their emotional reactions and confidence regarding the verdict one week, two months, and one year after the trial. Results indicated that participants’ assessments for Simpson’s guilt changed over time. The more that participants’ opinion of the verdict had changed, the less stable were the participant’s memories regarding their initial emotional reactions. When participants recalled their initial emotional reactions two months and a year later, past appraisals closely resembled current appraisals of emotion. People demonstrate sizable myside bias when discussing their opinions on controversial topics.[19] Memory recall and construction of experiences undergo revision in relation to corresponding emotional states.
Myside bias has been shown to influence the accuracy of memory recall.[35] In an experiment, widows and widowers rated the intensity of their experienced grief six months and five years after the deaths of their spouses. Participants noted a higher experience of grief at six months rather than at five years. Yet, when the participants were asked after five years how they had felt six months after the death of their significant other, the intensity of grief participants recalled was highly correlated with their current level of grief. Individuals appear to utilize their current emotional states to analyze how they must have felt when experiencing past events.[34] Emotional memories are reconstructed by current emotional states.
One study showed how selective memory can maintain belief in extrasensory perception (ESP).[36] Believers and disbelievers were each shown descriptions of ESP experiments. Half of each group were told that the experimental results supported the existence of ESP, while the others were told they did not. In a subsequent test, participants recalled the material accurately, apart from believers who had read the non-supportive evidence. This group remembered significantly less information and some of them incorrectly remembered the results as supporting ESP.[36]
Related effects Polarization of opinion Main article: Attitude polarization When people with opposing views interpret new information in a biased way, their views can move even further apart. This is called "attitude polarization".[37] The effect was demonstrated by an experiment that involved drawing a series of red and black balls from one of two concealed "bingo baskets". Participants knew that one basket contained 60% black and 40% red balls; the other, 40% black and 60% red. The experimenters looked at what happened when balls of alternating color were drawn in turn, a sequence that does not favor either basket. After each ball was drawn, participants in one group were asked to state out loud their judgments of the probability that the balls were being drawn from one or the other basket. These participants tended to grow more confident with each successive draw—whether they initially thought the basket with 60% black balls or the one with 60% red balls was the more likely source, their estimate of the probability increased. Another group of participants were asked to state probability estimates only at the end of a sequence of drawn balls, rather than after each ball. They did not show the polarization effect, suggesting that it does not necessarily occur when people simply hold opposing positions, but rather when they openly commit to them.[38]
Strong opinions on an issue such as gun ownership can bias how someone interprets new evidence. A less abstract study was the Stanford biased interpretation experiment in which participants with strong opinions about the death penalty read about mixed experimental evidence. Twenty-three percent of the participants reported that their views had become more extreme, and this self-reported shift correlated strongly with their initial attitudes.[22] In later experiments, participants also reported their opinions becoming more extreme in response to ambiguous information. However, comparisons of their attitudes before and after the new evidence showed no significant change, suggesting that the self-reported changes might not be real.[25][37][39] Based on these experiments, Deanna Kuhn and Joseph Lao concluded that polarization is a real phenomenon but far from inevitable, only happening in a small minority of cases. They found that it was prompted not only by considering mixed evidence, but by merely thinking about the topic.[37]
Charles Taber and Milton Lodge argued that the Stanford team's result had been hard to replicate because the arguments used in later experiments were too abstract or confusing to evoke an emotional response. The Taber and Lodge study used the emotionally charged topics of gun control and affirmative action.[25] They measured the attitudes of their participants towards these issues before and after reading arguments on each side of the debate. Two groups of participants showed attitude polarization: those with strong prior opinions and those who were politically knowledgeable. In part of this study, participants chose which information sources to read, from a list prepared by the experimenters. For example they could read the National Rifle Association's and the Brady Anti-Handgun Coalition's arguments on gun control. Even when instructed to be even-handed, participants were more likely to read arguments that supported their existing attitudes than arguments that did not. This biased search for information correlated well with the polarization effect.[25]
The "backfire effect" is a name for the finding that, given evidence against their beliefs, people can reject the evidence and believe even more strongly.[40][41] The phrase was first coined by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler.[42]
Persistence of discredited beliefs "[B]eliefs can survive potent logical or empirical challenges. They can survive and even be bolstered by evidence that most uncommitted observers would agree logically demands some weakening of such beliefs. They can even survive the total destruction of their original evidential bases."
—Lee Ross and Craig Anderson[43] Confirmation biases can be used to explain why some beliefs persist when the initial evidence for them is removed.[44] This belief perseverance effect has been shown by a series of experiments using what is called the "debriefing paradigm": participants read fake evidence for a hypothesis, their attitude change is measured, then the fakery is exposed in detail. Their attitudes are then measured once more to see if their belief returns to its previous level.[43]
A common finding is that at least some of the initial belief remains even after a full debrief.[45] In one experiment, participants had to distinguish between real and fake suicide notes. The feedback was random: some were told they had done well while others were told they had performed badly. Even after being fully debriefed, participants were still influenced by the feedback. They still thought they were better or worse than average at that kind of task, depending on what they had initially been told.[46]
In another study, participants read job performance ratings of two firefighters, along with their responses to a risk aversion test.[43] This fictional data was arranged to show either a negative or positive association: some participants were told that a risk-taking firefighter did better, while others were told they did less well than a risk-averse colleague.[47] Even if these two case studies were true, they would have been scientifically poor evidence for a conclusion about firefighters in general. However, the participants found them subjectively persuasive.[47] When the case studies were shown to be fictional, participants' belief in a link diminished, but around half of the original effect remained.[43] Follow-up interviews established that the participants had understood the debriefing and taken it seriously. Participants seemed to trust the debriefing, but regarded the discredited information as irrelevant to their personal belief.[47]
Preference for early information Experiments have shown that information is weighted more strongly when it appears early in a series, even when the order is unimportant. For example, people form a more positive impression of someone described as "intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious" than when they are given the same words in reverse order.[48] This irrational primacy effect is independent of the primacy effect in memory in which the earlier items in a series leave a stronger memory trace.[48] Biased interpretation offers an explanation for this effect: seeing the initial evidence, people form a working hypothesis that affects how they interpret the rest of the information.[44]
One demonstration of irrational primacy used colored chips supposedly drawn from two urns. Participants were told the color distributions of the urns, and had to estimate the probability of a chip being drawn from one of them.[48] In fact, the colors appeared in a pre-arranged order. The first thirty draws favored one urn and the next thirty favored the other.[44] The series as a whole was neutral, so rationally, the two urns were equally likely. However, after sixty draws, participants favored the urn suggested by the initial thirty.[48]
Another experiment involved a slide show of a single object, seen as just a blur at first and in slightly better focus with each succeeding slide.[48] After each slide, participants had to state their best guess of what the object was. Participants whose early guesses were wrong persisted with those guesses, even when the picture was sufficiently in focus that the object was readily recognizable to other people.[44]
Illusory association between events Main article: Illusory correlation Illusory correlation is the tendency to see non-existent correlations in a set of data.[49] This tendency was first demonstrated in a series of experiments in the late 1960s.[50] In one experiment, participants read a set of psychiatric case studies, including responses to the Rorschach inkblot test. They reported that the homosexual men in the set were more likely to report seeing buttocks, anuses or sexually ambiguous figures in the inkblots. In fact the case studies were fictional and, in one version of the experiment, had been constructed so that the homosexual men were less likely to report this imagery.[49] In a survey, a group of experienced psychoanalysts reported the same set of illusory associations with homosexuality.[49][50]
Another study recorded the symptoms experienced by arthritic patients, along with weather conditions over a 15-month period. Nearly all the patients reported that their pains were correlated with weather conditions, although the real correlation was zero.[51]
This effect is a kind of biased interpretation, in that objectively neutral or unfavorable evidence is interpreted to support existing beliefs. It is also related to biases in hypothesis-testing behavior.[52] In judging whether two events, such as illness and bad weather, are correlated, people rely heavily on the number of positive-positive cases: in this example, instances of both pain and bad weather. They pay relatively little attention to the other kinds of observation (of no pain and/or good weather).[53] This parallels the reliance on positive tests in hypothesis testing.[52] It may also reflect selective recall, in that people may have a sense that two events are correlated because it is easier to recall times when they happened together.[52]
Example Days Rain No rain Arthritis 14 6 No arthritis 7 2 In the above fictional example, arthritic symptoms are more likely on days with no rain. However, people are likely to focus on the relatively large number of days which have both rain and symptoms. By concentrating on one cell of the table rather than all four, people can misperceive the relationship, in this case associating rain with arthritic symptoms.[54]
Individual differences Until recently,[when?] myside bias was once believed to be associated with greater intelligence; however, studies have shown that myside bias can be more influenced by ability to rationally think as oppose to amount of intelligence.[55] Myside bias can cause an inability to effectively and logically evaluate the opposite side of an argument. Studies have stated that myside bias is an absence of “active open-mindedness,” meaning the active search for why an initial idea may by wrong.[56] Typically, myside bias is operationalized in empirical studies as the quantity of evidence used in support of their side in comparison to the opposite side.[57]
A study has found individual differences in myside bias. This study investigates individual differences that are acquired through learning in a cultural context and are mutable. The researcher found important individual difference in argumentation. Studies have suggested that individual differences such as deductive reasoning ability, ability to overcome belief bias, epistemological understanding, and thinking disposition are a significant predictors of the reasoning and generating arguments, counterarguments, and rebuttals.[58][59][60]
A study by Christopher Wolfe and Anne Britt also investigated how participants' views of “what makes a good argument?” can be a source of myside bias that influence the way a person creates their own arguments.[57] The study investigated individual differences of argumentation schema and asked participants to write essays. The participants were randomly assigned to write essays either for or against their side of the argument they preferred and given balanced or unrestricted research instructions. The balanced research instructions instructed participants to create a balanced argument that included both pros and cons and the unrestricted research instruction did not give any particular instructions on how to create the argument.
Overall, the results revealed that balance research instruction significantly increased the use of participants adding opposing information to their argument. These data also reveal that personal belief is not a source of myside bias. Furthermore, participants who believed that good arguments were based on facts were more likely to exhibit myside bias than participants who did not agree with this statement. This evidence is consistent with the claims proposed in Baron's article that people's opinions about good thinking can influence how arguments are generated.[citation needed]
History Francis Bacon Informal observation Before psychological research on confirmation bias, the phenomenon had been observed anecdotally by writers, including the Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460 BC – c. 395 BC), Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon (1561–1626),[61] and Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). Thucydides, in The Peloponnesian War wrote: "…for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy."[62] In the Divine Comedy, St. Thomas Aquinas cautions Dante when they meet in Paradise, "opinion—hasty—often can incline to the wrong side, and then affection for one's own opinion binds, confines the mind."[63] Bacon, in the Novum Organum, wrote,
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion ... draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects or despises, or else by some distinction sets aside or rejects[.][64]
Bacon said that biased assessment of evidence drove "all superstitions, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments or the like".[64] In his essay "What Is Art?", Tolstoy wrote,
I know that most men—not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever, and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic problems—can very seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as to oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty—conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.[65]
Wason's research on hypothesis-testing The term "confirmation bias" was coined by English psychologist Peter Wason.[66] For an experiment published in 1960, he challenged participants to identify a rule applying to triples of numbers. At the outset, they were told that (2,4,6) fits the rule. Participants could generate their own triples and the experimenter told them whether or not each triple conformed to the rule.[67][68]
While the actual rule was simply "any ascending sequence", the participants had a great deal of difficulty in finding it, often announcing rules that were far more specific, such as "the middle number is the average of the first and last".[67] The participants seemed to test only positive examples—triples that obeyed their hypothesized rule. For example, if they thought the rule was, "Each number is two greater than its predecessor", they would offer a triple that fit this rule, such as (11,13,15) rather than a triple that violates it, such as (11,12,19).[69]
Wason accepted falsificationism, according to which a scientific test of a hypothesis is a serious attempt to falsify it. He interpreted his results as showing a preference for confirmation over falsification, hence the term "confirmation bias".[Note 3][70] Wason also used confirmation bias to explain the results of his selection task experiment.[71] In this task, participants are given partial information about a set of objects, and have to specify what further information they would need to tell whether or not a conditional rule ("If A, then B") applies. It has been found repeatedly that people perform badly on various forms of this test, in most cases ignoring information that could potentially refute the rule.[72][73]
Klayman and Ha's critique A 1987 paper by Joshua Klayman and Young-Won Ha argued that the Wason experiments had not actually demonstrated a bias towards confirmation. Instead, Klayman and Ha interpreted the results in terms of a tendency to make tests that are consistent with the working hypothesis.[74] They called this the "positive test strategy".[6] This strategy is an example of a heuristic: a reasoning shortcut that is imperfect but easy to compute.[1] Klayman and Ha used Bayesian probability and information theory as their standard of hypothesis-testing, rather than the falsificationism used by Wason. According to these ideas, each answer to a question yields a different amount of information, which depends on the person's prior beliefs. Thus a scientific test of a hypothesis is one that is expected to produce the most information. Since the information content depends on initial probabilities, a positive test can either be highly informative or uninformative. Klayman and Ha argued that when people think about realistic problems, they are looking for a specific answer with a small initial probability. In this case, positive tests are usually more informative than negative tests.[11] However, in Wason's rule discovery task the answer—three numbers in ascending order—is very broad, so positive tests are unlikely to yield informative answers. Klayman and Ha supported their analysis by citing an experiment that used the labels "DAX" and "MED" in place of "fits the rule" and "doesn't fit the rule". This avoided implying that the aim was to find a low-probability rule. Participants had much more success with this version of the experiment.[75][76]
If the true rule (T) encompasses the current hypothesis (H), then positive tests (examining an H to see if it is T) will not show that the hypothesis is false. If the true rule (T) overlaps the current hypothesis (H), then either a negative test or a positive test can potentially falsify H. When the working hypothesis (H) includes the true rule (T) then positive tests are the only way to falsify H. In light of this and other critiques, the focus of research moved away from confirmation versus falsification to examine whether people test hypotheses in an informative way, or an uninformative but positive way. The search for "true" confirmation bias led psychologists to look at a wider range of effects in how people process information.[77]
Explanations Confirmation bias is often described as a result of automatic, unintentional strategies rather than deliberate deception.[12][78] According to Robert Maccoun, most biased evidence processing occurs through a combination of both "cold" (cognitive) and "hot" (motivated) mechanisms.[79]
Cognitive explanations for confirmation bias are based on limitations in people's ability to handle complex tasks, and the shortcuts, called heuristics, that they use.[80] For example, people may judge the reliability of evidence by using the availability heuristic, i.e. how readily a particular idea comes to mind.[81] It is also possible that people can only focus on one thought at a time, so find it difficult to test alternative hypotheses in parallel.[82] Another heuristic is the positive test strategy identified by Klayman and Ha, in which people test a hypothesis by examining cases where they expect a property or event to occur. This heuristic avoids the difficult or impossible task of working out how diagnostic each possible question will be. However, it is not universally reliable, so people can overlook challenges to their existing beliefs.[11][83]
Motivational explanations involve an effect of desire on belief, sometimes called "wishful thinking".[84][85] It is known that people prefer pleasant thoughts over unpleasant ones in a number of ways: this is called the "Pollyanna principle".[86] Applied to arguments or sources of evidence, this could explain why desired conclusions are more likely to be believed true.[84] According to experiments that manipulate the desirability of the conclusion, people demand a high standard of evidence for unpalatable ideas and a low standard for preferred ideas. In other words, they ask, "Can I believe this?" for some suggestions and, "Must I believe this?" for others.[87][88] Although consistency is a desirable feature of attitudes, an excessive drive for consistency is another potential source of bias because it may prevent people from neutrally evaluating new, surprising information.[84] Social psychologist Ziva Kunda combines the cognitive and motivational theories, arguing that motivation creates the bias, but cognitive factors determine the size of the effect.[89]
Explanations in terms of cost-benefit analysis assume that people do not just test hypotheses in a disinterested way, but assess the costs of different errors.[90] Using ideas from evolutionary psychology, James Friedrich suggests that people do not primarily aim at truth in testing hypotheses, but try to avoid the most costly errors. For example, employers might ask one-sided questions in job interviews because they are focused on weeding out unsuitable candidates.[91] Yaacov Trope and Akiva Liberman's refinement of this theory assumes that people compare the two different kinds of error: accepting a false hypothesis or rejecting a true hypothesis. For instance, someone who underestimates a friend's honesty might treat him or her suspiciously and so undermine the friendship. Overestimating the friend's honesty may also be costly, but less so. In this case, it would be rational to seek, evaluate or remember evidence of their honesty in a biased way.[92] When someone gives an initial impression of being introverted or extroverted, questions that match that impression come across as more empathic.[93] This suggests that when talking to someone who seems to be an introvert, it is a sign of better social skills to ask, "Do you feel awkward in social situations?" rather than, "Do you like noisy parties?" The connection between confirmation bias and social skills was corroborated by a study of how college students get to know other people. Highly self-monitoring students, who are more sensitive to their environment and to social norms, asked more matching questions when interviewing a high-status staff member than when getting to know fellow students.[93]
Psychologists Jennifer Lerner and Philip Tetlock distinguish two different kinds of thinking process. Exploratory thought neutrally considers multiple points of view and tries to anticipate all possible objections to a particular position, while confirmatory thought seeks to justify a specific point of view. Lerner and Tetlock say that when people expect to justify their position to others whose views they already know, they will tend to adopt a similar position to those people, and then use confirmatory thought to bolster their own credibility. However, if the external parties are overly aggressive or critical, people will disengage from thought altogether, and simply assert their personal opinions without justification.[94] Lerner and Tetlock say that people only push themselves to think critically and logically when they know in advance they will need to explain themselves to others who are well-informed, genuinely interested in the truth, and whose views they don't already know.[95] Because those conditions rarely exist, they argue, most people are using confirmatory thought most of the time
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.[Note 1][1] People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).
A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.
Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in political and organizational contexts.
Types Confirmation biases are effects in information processing. They differ from the behavioral confirmation effect, also called "self-fulfilling prophecy", in which behavior, influenced by expectations, causes those expectations to come true.[2] Some psychologists use "confirmation bias" to refer to the tendency to avoid rejecting beliefs, while searching for evidence, interpreting it, or recalling it from memory. Other psychologists restrict the term to selective collection of evidence.[3][Note 2]
Biased search for information Confirmation bias has been described as an internal "yes man", echoing back a person's beliefs like Charles Dickens' character Uriah Heep.[4] Experiments have found repeatedly that people tend to test hypotheses in a one-sided way, by searching for evidence consistent with their current hypothesis.[5][6] Rather than searching through all the relevant evidence, they phrase questions to receive an affirmative answer that supports their hypothesis.[7] They look for the consequences that they would expect if their hypothesis were true, rather than what would happen if it were false.[7] For example, someone using yes/no questions to find a number he or she suspects to be the number 3 might ask, "Is it an odd number?" People prefer this type of question, called a "positive test", even when a negative test such as "Is it an even number?" would yield the exact same information.[8] However, this does not mean that people seek tests that guarantee a positive answer. In studies where subjects could select either such pseudo-tests or genuinely diagnostic ones, they favored the genuinely diagnostic.[9][10]
The preference for positive tests in itself is not a bias, since positive tests can be highly informative.[11] However, in combination with other effects, this strategy can confirm existing beliefs or assumptions, independently of whether they are true.[12] In real-world situations, evidence is often complex and mixed. For example, various contradictory ideas about someone could each be supported by concentrating on one aspect of his or her behavior.[6] Thus any search for evidence in favor of a hypothesis is likely to succeed.[12] One illustration of this is the way the phrasing of a question can significantly change the answer.[6] For example, people who are asked, "Are you happy with your social life?" report greater satisfaction than those asked, "Are you unhappy with your social life?"[13]
Even a small change in a question's wording can affect how people search through available information, and hence the conclusions they reach. This was shown using a fictional child custody case.[14] Participants read that Parent A was moderately suitable to be the guardian in multiple ways. Parent B had a mix of salient positive and negative qualities: a close relationship with the child but a job that would take him or her away for long periods of time. When asked, "Which parent should have custody of the child?" the majority of participants chose Parent B, looking mainly for positive attributes. However, when asked, "Which parent should be denied custody of the child?" they looked for negative attributes and the majority answered that Parent B should be denied custody, implying that Parent A should have custody.[14]
Similar studies have demonstrated how people engage in a biased search for information, but also that this phenomenon may be limited by a preference for genuine diagnostic tests. In an initial experiment, participants rated another person on the introversion–extroversion personality dimension on the basis of an interview. They chose the interview questions from a given list. When the interviewee was introduced as an introvert, the participants chose questions that presumed introversion, such as, "What do you find unpleasant about noisy parties?" When the interviewee was described as extroverted, almost all the questions presumed extroversion, such as, "What would you do to liven up a dull party?" These loaded questions gave the interviewees little or no opportunity to falsify the hypothesis about them.[15] A later version of the experiment gave the participants less presumptive questions to choose from, such as, "Do you shy away from social interactions?"[16] Participants preferred to ask these more diagnostic questions, showing only a weak bias towards positive tests. This pattern, of a main preference for diagnostic tests and a weaker preference for positive tests, has been replicated in other studies.[16]
Personality traits influence and interact with biased search processes.[17] Individuals vary in their abilities to defend their attitudes from external attacks in relation to selective exposure. Selective exposure occurs when individuals search for information that is consistent, rather than inconsistent, with their personal beliefs.[18] An experiment examined the extent to which individuals could refute arguments that contradicted their personal beliefs.[17] People with high confidence levels more readily seek out contradictory information to their personal position to form an argument. Individuals with low confidence levels do not seek out contradictory information and prefer information that supports their personal position. People generate and evaluate evidence in arguments that are biased towards their own beliefs and opinions.[19] Heightened confidence levels decrease preference for information that supports individuals’ personal beliefs.
Another experiment gave participants a complex rule-discovery task that involved moving objects simulated by a computer.[20] Objects on the computer screen followed specific laws, which the participants had to figure out. So, participants could "fire" objects across the screen to test their hypotheses. Despite making many attempts over a ten-hour session, none of the participants figured out the rules of the system. They typically attempted to confirm rather than falsify their hypotheses, and were reluctant to consider alternatives. Even after seeing objective evidence that refuted their working hypotheses, they frequently continued doing the same tests. Some of the participants were taught proper hypothesis-testing, but these instructions had almost no effect.[20]
Biased interpretation "Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons."
--Michael Shermer[21] Confirmation biases are not limited to the collection of evidence. Even if two individuals have the same information, the way they interpret it can be biased.
A team at Stanford University conducted an experiment involving participants who felt strongly about capital punishment, with half in favor and half against it.[22][23] Each participant read descriptions of two studies: a comparison of U.S. states with and without the death penalty, and a comparison of murder rates in a state before and after the introduction of the death penalty. After reading a quick description of each study, the participants were asked whether their opinions had changed. Then, they read a more detailed account of each study's procedure and had to rate whether the research was well-conducted and convincing.[22] In fact, the studies were fictional. Half the participants were told that one kind of study supported the deterrent effect and the other undermined it, while for other participants the conclusions were swapped.[22][23]
The participants, whether supporters or opponents, reported shifting their attitudes slightly in the direction of the first study they read. Once they read the more detailed descriptions of the two studies, they almost all returned to their original belief regardless of the evidence provided, pointing to details that supported their viewpoint and disregarding anything contrary. Participants described studies supporting their pre-existing view as superior to those that contradicted it, in detailed and specific ways.[22][24] Writing about a study that seemed to undermine the deterrence effect, a death penalty proponent wrote, "The research didn't cover a long enough period of time", while an opponent's comment on the same study said, "No strong evidence to contradict the researchers has been presented".[22] The results illustrated that people set higher standards of evidence for hypotheses that go against their current expectations. This effect, known as "disconfirmation bias", has been supported by other experiments.[25]
An MRI scanner allowed researchers to examine how the human brain deals with unwelcome information. Another study of biased interpretation occurred during the 2004 US presidential election and involved participants who reported having strong feelings about the candidates. They were shown apparently contradictory pairs of statements, either from Republican candidate George W. Bush, Democratic candidate John Kerry or a politically neutral public figure. They were also given further statements that made the apparent contradiction seem reasonable. From these three pieces of information, they had to decide whether or not each individual's statements were inconsistent. There were strong differences in these evaluations, with participants much more likely to interpret statements from the candidate they opposed as contradictory.[26]
In this experiment, the participants made their judgments while in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner which monitored their brain activity. As participants evaluated contradictory statements by their favored candidate, emotional centers of their brains were aroused. This did not happen with the statements by the other figures. The experimenters inferred that the different responses to the statements were not due to passive reasoning errors. Instead, the participants were actively reducing the cognitive dissonance induced by reading about their favored candidate's irrational or hypocritical behavior.[26]
Biases in belief interpretation are persistent, regardless of intelligence level. Participants in an experiment took the SAT test (a college admissions test used in the United States) to assess their intelligence levels. They then read information regarding safety concerns for vehicles, and the experimenters manipulated the national origin of the car. American participants provided their opinion if the car should be banned on a six point scale, where one indicated “definitely yes” and six indicated “definitely no.” Participants firstly evaluated if they would allow a dangerous German car on American streets and a dangerous American car on German streets. Participants believed that the dangerous German car on American streets should be banned more quickly than the dangerous American car on German streets. There was no difference among intelligence levels at the rate participants would ban a car.[19]
Biased interpretation is not restricted to emotionally significant topics. In another experiment, participants were told a story about a theft. They had to rate the evidential importance of statements arguing either for or against a particular character being responsible. When they hypothesized that character's guilt, they rated statements supporting that hypothesis as more important than conflicting statements.[27]
Biased memory Even if people gather and interpret evidence in a neutral manner, they may still remember it selectively to reinforce their expectations. This effect is called "selective recall", "confirmatory memory" or "access-biased memory".[28] Psychological theories differ in their predictions about selective recall. Schema theory predicts that information matching prior expectations will be more easily stored and recalled than information that does not match.[29] Some alternative approaches say that surprising information stands out and so is memorable.[29] Predictions from both these theories have been confirmed in different experimental contexts, with no theory winning outright.[30]
In one study, participants read a profile of a woman which described a mix of introverted and extroverted behaviors.[31] They later had to recall examples of her introversion and extroversion. One group was told this was to assess the woman for a job as a librarian, while a second group were told it was for a job in real estate sales. There was a significant difference between what these two groups recalled, with the "librarian" group recalling more examples of introversion and the "sales" groups recalling more extroverted behavior.[31] A selective memory effect has also been shown in experiments that manipulate the desirability of personality types.[29][32] In one of these, a group of participants were shown evidence that extroverted people are more successful than introverts. Another group were told the opposite. In a subsequent, apparently unrelated, study, they were asked to recall events from their lives in which they had been either introverted or extroverted. Each group of participants provided more memories connecting themselves with the more desirable personality type, and recalled those memories more quickly.[33]
Changes in emotional states can also influence memory recall.[34][35] Participants rated how they felt when they had first learned that O.J. Simpson had been acquitted of murder charges.[34] They described their emotional reactions and confidence regarding the verdict one week, two months, and one year after the trial. Results indicated that participants’ assessments for Simpson’s guilt changed over time. The more that participants’ opinion of the verdict had changed, the less stable were the participant’s memories regarding their initial emotional reactions. When participants recalled their initial emotional reactions two months and a year later, past appraisals closely resembled current appraisals of emotion. People demonstrate sizable myside bias when discussing their opinions on controversial topics.[19] Memory recall and construction of experiences undergo revision in relation to corresponding emotional states.
Myside bias has been shown to influence the accuracy of memory recall.[35] In an experiment, widows and widowers rated the intensity of their experienced grief six months and five years after the deaths of their spouses. Participants noted a higher experience of grief at six months rather than at five years. Yet, when the participants were asked after five years how they had felt six months after the death of their significant other, the intensity of grief participants recalled was highly correlated with their current level of grief. Individuals appear to utilize their current emotional states to analyze how they must have felt when experiencing past events.[34] Emotional memories are reconstructed by current emotional states.
One study showed how selective memory can maintain belief in extrasensory perception (ESP).[36] Believers and disbelievers were each shown descriptions of ESP experiments. Half of each group were told that the experimental results supported the existence of ESP, while the others were told they did not. In a subsequent test, participants recalled the material accurately, apart from believers who had read the non-supportive evidence. This group remembered significantly less information and some of them incorrectly remembered the results as supporting ESP.[36]
Related effects Polarization of opinion Main article: Attitude polarization When people with opposing views interpret new information in a biased way, their views can move even further apart. This is called "attitude polarization".[37] The effect was demonstrated by an experiment that involved drawing a series of red and black balls from one of two concealed "bingo baskets". Participants knew that one basket contained 60% black and 40% red balls; the other, 40% black and 60% red. The experimenters looked at what happened when balls of alternating color were drawn in turn, a sequence that does not favor either basket. After each ball was drawn, participants in one group were asked to state out loud their judgments of the probability that the balls were being drawn from one or the other basket. These participants tended to grow more confident with each successive draw—whether they initially thought the basket with 60% black balls or the one with 60% red balls was the more likely source, their estimate of the probability increased. Another group of participants were asked to state probability estimates only at the end of a sequence of drawn balls, rather than after each ball. They did not show the polarization effect, suggesting that it does not necessarily occur when people simply hold opposing positions, but rather when they openly commit to them.[38]
Strong opinions on an issue such as gun ownership can bias how someone interprets new evidence. A less abstract study was the Stanford biased interpretation experiment in which participants with strong opinions about the death penalty read about mixed experimental evidence. Twenty-three percent of the participants reported that their views had become more extreme, and this self-reported shift correlated strongly with their initial attitudes.[22] In later experiments, participants also reported their opinions becoming more extreme in response to ambiguous information. However, comparisons of their attitudes before and after the new evidence showed no significant change, suggesting that the self-reported changes might not be real.[25][37][39] Based on these experiments, Deanna Kuhn and Joseph Lao concluded that polarization is a real phenomenon but far from inevitable, only happening in a small minority of cases. They found that it was prompted not only by considering mixed evidence, but by merely thinking about the topic.[37]
Charles Taber and Milton Lodge argued that the Stanford team's result had been hard to replicate because the arguments used in later experiments were too abstract or confusing to evoke an emotional response. The Taber and Lodge study used the emotionally charged topics of gun control and affirmative action.[25] They measured the attitudes of their participants towards these issues before and after reading arguments on each side of the debate. Two groups of participants showed attitude polarization: those with strong prior opinions and those who were politically knowledgeable. In part of this study, participants chose which information sources to read, from a list prepared by the experimenters. For example they could read the National Rifle Association's and the Brady Anti-Handgun Coalition's arguments on gun control. Even when instructed to be even-handed, participants were more likely to read arguments that supported their existing attitudes than arguments that did not. This biased search for information correlated well with the polarization effect.[25]
The "backfire effect" is a name for the finding that, given evidence against their beliefs, people can reject the evidence and believe even more strongly.[40][41] The phrase was first coined by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler.[42]
Persistence of discredited beliefs "[B]eliefs can survive potent logical or empirical challenges. They can survive and even be bolstered by evidence that most uncommitted observers would agree logically demands some weakening of such beliefs. They can even survive the total destruction of their original evidential bases."
—Lee Ross and Craig Anderson[43] Confirmation biases can be used to explain why some beliefs persist when the initial evidence for them is removed.[44] This belief perseverance effect has been shown by a series of experiments using what is called the "debriefing paradigm": participants read fake evidence for a hypothesis, their attitude change is measured, then the fakery is exposed in detail. Their attitudes are then measured once more to see if their belief returns to its previous level.[43]
A common finding is that at least some of the initial belief remains even after a full debrief.[45] In one experiment, participants had to distinguish between real and fake suicide notes. The feedback was random: some were told they had done well while others were told they had performed badly. Even after being fully debriefed, participants were still influenced by the feedback. They still thought they were better or worse than average at that kind of task, depending on what they had initially been told.[46]
In another study, participants read job performance ratings of two firefighters, along with their responses to a risk aversion test.[43] This fictional data was arranged to show either a negative or positive association: some participants were told that a risk-taking firefighter did better, while others were told they did less well than a risk-averse colleague.[47] Even if these two case studies were true, they would have been scientifically poor evidence for a conclusion about firefighters in general. However, the participants found them subjectively persuasive.[47] When the case studies were shown to be fictional, participants' belief in a link diminished, but around half of the original effect remained.[43] Follow-up interviews established that the participants had understood the debriefing and taken it seriously. Participants seemed to trust the debriefing, but regarded the discredited information as irrelevant to their personal belief.[47]
Preference for early information Experiments have shown that information is weighted more strongly when it appears early in a series, even when the order is unimportant. For example, people form a more positive impression of someone described as "intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious" than when they are given the same words in reverse order.[48] This irrational primacy effect is independent of the primacy effect in memory in which the earlier items in a series leave a stronger memory trace.[48] Biased interpretation offers an explanation for this effect: seeing the initial evidence, people form a working hypothesis that affects how they interpret the rest of the information.[44]
One demonstration of irrational primacy used colored chips supposedly drawn from two urns. Participants were told the color distributions of the urns, and had to estimate the probability of a chip being drawn from one of them.[48] In fact, the colors appeared in a pre-arranged order. The first thirty draws favored one urn and the next thirty favored the other.[44] The series as a whole was neutral, so rationally, the two urns were equally likely. However, after sixty draws, participants favored the urn suggested by the initial thirty.[48]
Another experiment involved a slide show of a single object, seen as just a blur at first and in slightly better focus with each succeeding slide.[48] After each slide, participants had to state their best guess of what the object was. Participants whose early guesses were wrong persisted with those guesses, even when the picture was sufficiently in focus that the object was readily recognizable to other people.[44]
Illusory association between events Main article: Illusory correlation Illusory correlation is the tendency to see non-existent correlations in a set of data.[49] This tendency was first demonstrated in a series of experiments in the late 1960s.[50] In one experiment, participants read a set of psychiatric case studies, including responses to the Rorschach inkblot test. They reported that the homosexual men in the set were more likely to report seeing buttocks, anuses or sexually ambiguous figures in the inkblots. In fact the case studies were fictional and, in one version of the experiment, had been constructed so that the homosexual men were less likely to report this imagery.[49] In a survey, a group of experienced psychoanalysts reported the same set of illusory associations with homosexuality.[49][50]
Another study recorded the symptoms experienced by arthritic patients, along with weather conditions over a 15-month period. Nearly all the patients reported that their pains were correlated with weather conditions, although the real correlation was zero.[51]
This effect is a kind of biased interpretation, in that objectively neutral or unfavorable evidence is interpreted to support existing beliefs. It is also related to biases in hypothesis-testing behavior.[52] In judging whether two events, such as illness and bad weather, are correlated, people rely heavily on the number of positive-positive cases: in this example, instances of both pain and bad weather. They pay relatively little attention to the other kinds of observation (of no pain and/or good weather).[53] This parallels the reliance on positive tests in hypothesis testing.[52] It may also reflect selective recall, in that people may have a sense that two events are correlated because it is easier to recall times when they happened together.[52]
Example Days Rain No rain Arthritis 14 6 No arthritis 7 2 In the above fictional example, arthritic symptoms are more likely on days with no rain. However, people are likely to focus on the relatively large number of days which have both rain and symptoms. By concentrating on one cell of the table rather than all four, people can misperceive the relationship, in this case associating rain with arthritic symptoms.[54]
Individual differences Until recently,[when?] myside bias was once believed to be associated with greater intelligence; however, studies have shown that myside bias can be more influenced by ability to rationally think as oppose to amount of intelligence.[55] Myside bias can cause an inability to effectively and logically evaluate the opposite side of an argument. Studies have stated that myside bias is an absence of “active open-mindedness,” meaning the active search for why an initial idea may by wrong.[56] Typically, myside bias is operationalized in empirical studies as the quantity of evidence used in support of their side in comparison to the opposite side.[57]
A study has found individual differences in myside bias. This study investigates individual differences that are acquired through learning in a cultural context and are mutable. The researcher found important individual difference in argumentation. Studies have suggested that individual differences such as deductive reasoning ability, ability to overcome belief bias, epistemological understanding, and thinking disposition are a significant predictors of the reasoning and generating arguments, counterarguments, and rebuttals.[58][59][60]
A study by Christopher Wolfe and Anne Britt also investigated how participants' views of “what makes a good argument?” can be a source of myside bias that influence the way a person creates their own arguments.[57] The study investigated individual differences of argumentation schema and asked participants to write essays. The participants were randomly assigned to write essays either for or against their side of the argument they preferred and given balanced or unrestricted research instructions. The balanced research instructions instructed participants to create a balanced argument that included both pros and cons and the unrestricted research instruction did not give any particular instructions on how to create the argument.
Overall, the results revealed that balance research instruction significantly increased the use of participants adding opposing information to their argument. These data also reveal that personal belief is not a source of myside bias. Furthermore, participants who believed that good arguments were based on facts were more likely to exhibit myside bias than participants who did not agree with this statement. This evidence is consistent with the claims proposed in Baron's article that people's opinions about good thinking can influence how arguments are generated.[citation needed]
History Francis Bacon Informal observation Before psychological research on confirmation bias, the phenomenon had been observed anecdotally by writers, including the Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460 BC – c. 395 BC), Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon (1561–1626),[61] and Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). Thucydides, in The Peloponnesian War wrote: "…for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy."[62] In the Divine Comedy, St. Thomas Aquinas cautions Dante when they meet in Paradise, "opinion—hasty—often can incline to the wrong side, and then affection for one's own opinion binds, confines the mind."[63] Bacon, in the Novum Organum, wrote,
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion ... draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects or despises, or else by some distinction sets aside or rejects[.][64]
Bacon said that biased assessment of evidence drove "all superstitions, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments or the like".[64] In his essay "What Is Art?", Tolstoy wrote,
I know that most men—not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever, and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic problems—can very seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as to oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty—conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.[65]
Wason's research on hypothesis-testing The term "confirmation bias" was coined by English psychologist Peter Wason.[66] For an experiment published in 1960, he challenged participants to identify a rule applying to triples of numbers. At the outset, they were told that (2,4,6) fits the rule. Participants could generate their own triples and the experimenter told them whether or not each triple conformed to the rule.[67][68]
While the actual rule was simply "any ascending sequence", the participants had a great deal of difficulty in finding it, often announcing rules that were far more specific, such as "the middle number is the average of the first and last".[67] The participants seemed to test only positive examples—triples that obeyed their hypothesized rule. For example, if they thought the rule was, "Each number is two greater than its predecessor", they would offer a triple that fit this rule, such as (11,13,15) rather than a triple that violates it, such as (11,12,19).[69]
Wason accepted falsificationism, according to which a scientific test of a hypothesis is a serious attempt to falsify it. He interpreted his results as showing a preference for confirmation over falsification, hence the term "confirmation bias".[Note 3][70] Wason also used confirmation bias to explain the results of his selection task experiment.[71] In this task, participants are given partial information about a set of objects, and have to specify what further information they would need to tell whether or not a conditional rule ("If A, then B") applies. It has been found repeatedly that people perform badly on various forms of this test, in most cases ignoring information that could potentially refute the rule.[72][73]
Klayman and Ha's critique A 1987 paper by Joshua Klayman and Young-Won Ha argued that the Wason experiments had not actually demonstrated a bias towards confirmation. Instead, Klayman and Ha interpreted the results in terms of a tendency to make tests that are consistent with the working hypothesis.[74] They called this the "positive test strategy".[6] This strategy is an example of a heuristic: a reasoning shortcut that is imperfect but easy to compute.[1] Klayman and Ha used Bayesian probability and information theory as their standard of hypothesis-testing, rather than the falsificationism used by Wason. According to these ideas, each answer to a question yields a different amount of information, which depends on the person's prior beliefs. Thus a scientific test of a hypothesis is one that is expected to produce the most information. Since the information content depends on initial probabilities, a positive test can either be highly informative or uninformative. Klayman and Ha argued that when people think about realistic problems, they are looking for a specific answer with a small initial probability. In this case, positive tests are usually more informative than negative tests.[11] However, in Wason's rule discovery task the answer—three numbers in ascending order—is very broad, so positive tests are unlikely to yield informative answers. Klayman and Ha supported their analysis by citing an experiment that used the labels "DAX" and "MED" in place of "fits the rule" and "doesn't fit the rule". This avoided implying that the aim was to find a low-probability rule. Participants had much more success with this version of the experiment.[75][76]
If the true rule (T) encompasses the current hypothesis (H), then positive tests (examining an H to see if it is T) will not show that the hypothesis is false. If the true rule (T) overlaps the current hypothesis (H), then either a negative test or a positive test can potentially falsify H. When the working hypothesis (H) includes the true rule (T) then positive tests are the only way to falsify H. In light of this and other critiques, the focus of research moved away from confirmation versus falsification to examine whether people test hypotheses in an informative way, or an uninformative but positive way. The search for "true" confirmation bias led psychologists to look at a wider range of effects in how people process information.[77]
Explanations Confirmation bias is often described as a result of automatic, unintentional strategies rather than deliberate deception.[12][78] According to Robert Maccoun, most biased evidence processing occurs through a combination of both "cold" (cognitive) and "hot" (motivated) mechanisms.[79]
Cognitive explanations for confirmation bias are based on limitations in people's ability to handle complex tasks, and the shortcuts, called heuristics, that they use.[80] For example, people may judge the reliability of evidence by using the availability heuristic, i.e. how readily a particular idea comes to mind.[81] It is also possible that people can only focus on one thought at a time, so find it difficult to test alternative hypotheses in parallel.[82] Another heuristic is the positive test strategy identified by Klayman and Ha, in which people test a hypothesis by examining cases where they expect a property or event to occur. This heuristic avoids the difficult or impossible task of working out how diagnostic each possible question will be. However, it is not universally reliable, so people can overlook challenges to their existing beliefs.[11][83]
Motivational explanations involve an effect of desire on belief, sometimes called "wishful thinking".[84][85] It is known that people prefer pleasant thoughts over unpleasant ones in a number of ways: this is called the "Pollyanna principle".[86] Applied to arguments or sources of evidence, this could explain why desired conclusions are more likely to be believed true.[84] According to experiments that manipulate the desirability of the conclusion, people demand a high standard of evidence for unpalatable ideas and a low standard for preferred ideas. In other words, they ask, "Can I believe this?" for some suggestions and, "Must I believe this?" for others.[87][88] Although consistency is a desirable feature of attitudes, an excessive drive for consistency is another potential source of bias because it may prevent people from neutrally evaluating new, surprising information.[84] Social psychologist Ziva Kunda combines the cognitive and motivational theories, arguing that motivation creates the bias, but cognitive factors determine the size of the effect.[89]
Explanations in terms of cost-benefit analysis assume that people do not just test hypotheses in a disinterested way, but assess the costs of different errors.[90] Using ideas from evolutionary psychology, James Friedrich suggests that people do not primarily aim at truth in testing hypotheses, but try to avoid the most costly errors. For example, employers might ask one-sided questions in job interviews because they are focused on weeding out unsuitable candidates.[91] Yaacov Trope and Akiva Liberman's refinement of this theory assumes that people compare the two different kinds of error: accepting a false hypothesis or rejecting a true hypothesis. For instance, someone who underestimates a friend's honesty might treat him or her suspiciously and so undermine the friendship. Overestimating the friend's honesty may also be costly, but less so. In this case, it would be rational to seek, evaluate or remember evidence of their honesty in a biased way.[92] When someone gives an initial impression of being introverted or extroverted, questions that match that impression come across as more empathic.[93] This suggests that when talking to someone who seems to be an introvert, it is a sign of better social skills to ask, "Do you feel awkward in social situations?" rather than, "Do you like noisy parties?" The connection between confirmation bias and social skills was corroborated by a study of how college students get to know other people. Highly self-monitoring students, who are more sensitive to their environment and to social norms, asked more matching questions when interviewing a high-status staff member than when getting to know fellow students.[93]
Psychologists Jennifer Lerner and Philip Tetlock distinguish two different kinds of thinking process. Exploratory thought neutrally considers multiple points of view and tries to anticipate all possible objections to a particular position, while confirmatory thought seeks to justify a specific point of view. Lerner and Tetlock say that when people expect to justify their position to others whose views they already know, they will tend to adopt a similar position to those people, and then use confirmatory thought to bolster their own credibility. However, if the external parties are overly aggressive or critical, people will disengage from thought altogether, and simply assert their personal opinions without justification.[94] Lerner and Tetlock say that people only push themselves to think critically and logically when they know in advance they will need to explain themselves to others who are well-informed, genuinely interested in the truth, and whose views they don't already know.[95] Because those conditions rarely exist, they argue, most people are using confirmatory thought most of the time
Walter Bruneel, 2013, Mandala
