Does this seem to you like evidence for the existence of psychic abilities in humans?

Maybe DavidM is in fact "leading" people to the answer through a series of multiple guesses.

Maybe? Maybe you need to reread that email conversation you posted.

One of the very first posts on the thread was her talking about her dream and saying "I think this has something to do with Notpron, but I don't know what". DavidM had to immediately remove the post so as not to give away the answer.

Every answer after that is contaminated.

However, on the other hand, DavidM really strongly believes in the conspiracy theory new age stuff and vigorously promotes it, so it seems unlikely that he would sabotage his own ideology like that.

It's not DavidM you should be worried about. Actually, I should rephrase that: given the long history of fraud in this area, it is DavidM you should be worried about, believing in it has nothing at all to do with whether you are willing to lie about it and is an excellent reason to lie about getting positive results (how many people lie to produce evidence against cherished beliefs? and is there any way you could ever produce a smoking gun which could backfire like you claim he might be worried about?), and it's also everyone else lying about it that you need to worry about (again, contamination).

(By the way, did you know 'boat' is a rather common object? eg 149m hits in Google, comparable with 'Obama' at 141m hits. In Ngram, 'boat' even beats' apple' but not 'table', funnily enough.)

So, given the above and this recent article from Slate Star Codex, I feel like I am forced to raise my credence level for remote viewing being real to somewhere between 50 and 60 percent.

The SSC article is most intriguing, but David's evidence is worthless.

Reading your conversation he's definitely leading you, probably not intentionally (and it didn't work this time). This seem similar to Ouija board, cold-reading, etc, where people are at least semi-consciously leading/being led.

Also if 50% of people really get it on the first try without being led it should be easy to reproduce this in a controlled experiment since the effect is far stronger than that allegedly found by psychic phenomenon researchers.

If you do update your p value that much through that experiment you might want to do your own experiment.

Ask DavidM for the contact addresses of those people who succeeded and draft them for two possible next round. Do one test to satisfy your own curiosity and to see whether it sort of works. If it does, you come back and we decide based on your data on an exact protocol for the next round.

After the protocol for that round is stable, the image get's picked by highly trusted LW person like Scott Alexander or gwern.

If that works we do more math and try to make the experiment powered enough to pass Randi's 10^{-6} standard.

I feel like I am forced to raise my credence level for remote viewing being real to somewhere between 50 and 60 percent.

A general note on this sort of situation without getting into the specifics of this case:

If something very unlikely ,say P, happens and you have something which would explain that, say A. You should increase your confidence in A and as you receive stronger evidence you continue increasing your confidence. However you should not keep increasing your confidence in A until it is almost 1:

Since your test isn't between A and not A but between P and not P. You should simply move probability from not P to P which would increase the probability of things in P, like A, but not change the relative probabilities of things in P.

So the only way the quote could be correct is if you had started out believing that Psi is as good an explanation as all others put together for the things that you have observed. This seems wrong to me since even everyone involved flat out lying seems much more probable than Psi being real.

Also an Abstruse Goose which involves this sort of situation.

Suppose humans do have psychic powers. Do you consequently change your decision policy, and if so, how? I think that being pragmatic about these things makes analysis more incisive and speculation more fun.

I believe that he thought your first attempt was close because of "Lake", perhaps he was thinking you meant something like "Ocean", and a shark is inside of the ocean. Makes sense right?

What was your prior probability? Unless it was already fairly high, I don't see how this could get it above 50%, or even into the single-digits. This doesn't seem like a lot of evidence to me, given that it didn't work for you, didn't work for one other who you've talked with about it, and you don't have any first-hand accounts of it from someone who experienced it.

Your post has raised my expectation that I will experience such a thing from very very small to very very small.

Yes, it seems like evidence of psychic abilities in humans, although not particularly weighty. Very casual setting.

You don't want give up your rigor even if you need to take into account that data point.

See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_O9Qiwqew

and notice how all the remarks on how it might be flawed are good points that need to be addressed and are addressed.

I'm not sure why David said that I was on track, I can't see any association between the shark and what I was guessing.

Me: I'm imagining palm trees by a lake at sunset.

This kind of tropical beach is usually the setting where shark fins appear in cartoons and such

Me: I'm picturing an elephant walking into a barn.

The target animal is grey also

Me: Is it a space shuttle?

Aerodynamic and round shape with fins

Me: It's a bee?

Doesn't strike a chord with me. It did get the most negative answer.

Yeah, for that one, I saw something sharp, bright yellow colors, symmetry, a noisy drone, and two colors in pattern.

Pointy teeth are a main feature of sharks and the picture. Bright yellow colors could be sun shining form above the animal although in the picture the effect isn't as pronounced as it could be, but it's not like it's a deep sea picture of shark (it's definitely near surface). Sharks have a coloring pattern of being lighter grey on the belly side (mostly because for lower contrast against dark seafloor and bright surface).

If it was leading it's not clear on what direction it was leading. It also seems he has a more semantic view on the viewing but you expect to see actual graphical pictures. It could have been more spoiler-free but I guess that reduces the entertainment value for the evaluator.

I have a hard time seeing how this could raise your probability assessment for psi, if you had any prior experience with psi research.

One pretty reliable takeaway from psi research: if you employ flimsy research protocols, positive results are a dime a dozen.

Positive results in tests much more stringent than this are already common. The fact that the phenomena are generally not accepted in the wider scientific community is due to the facts that a) no remotely plausible mechanisms are known, so the prior probability is low (this is not an unfair bias, it's something we all need to account for,) and b) the "much more stringent than this" tests are still generally unacceptably sloppy by the standards of other fields, or simply fail to replicate.

(For what it's worth, as someone who's confident psi is 'real': No, I don't think this story is evidence of remote viewing, or at least it's not nearly as strong of evidence as other stories out there that are much more compelling but that you've never heard of because they didn't involve you.)

David: Are you sure you aren't viewing the old solution? There was a helicopter involved.

Me: The boat?

Not sure if I understand the context correctly, but if the previous solution contained a boat, it is not so unlikely that many people would guess a boat in this one. Priming.