Why not prove the existence of "extrasensory" communication: scientific opinion

Sometimes people want to believe that there really are supernatural phenomena in life. One of them is the so-called “extrasensory” communication, or the ability to communicate without using the usual sensory system of the human body.

The idea is extremely popular: on TV constantly twist obsessive TV shows about psychics and fortune-tellers, and in the book, under the yoke of consumer psychology, a whole regiment was taken to the esoteric. About psychic much talk, write and show, and often not that. As a person from the communications industry, I am interested in the following questions:

• How would “extrasensory” communication explain the theory of communication if it existed?
• Assuming its existence, then by what principles should it occur?
• What communication traps are waiting for the researchers of this phenomenon?
• Why are the signs inherent in other models of communication, applicable here, as a rule, bring down any faith in extrasensory perception and, if desired, help expose charlatans?
• And then marketing, and why is he more interested in selling the phenomenon, and not in evidence?

Let's find out all this, based on a scientific approach. We will mainly talk about the phenomenon through the prism of the theory of communication, plus a couple of words we will devote to psychology and marketing.

Working definitions

To begin with, we will outline the subject of reasoning, since each person has his own opinion on the subject of extrasensory perception.

Communication

By communication, we will further understand the transfer of information from one subject to another (doctrinal disputes of various schools are omitted here).

Extra-

The prefix “extra” means “extra, extra, extra, special” , and this differs from the prefix “para”, which means “beyond something”, “near”, “near” (cf. extralinguistic factors, paralinguistic factors) . And, putting in the title of the more popular version of "extrasensory", it should be said that perhaps it would be necessary to use the option of paracommunication , i.e. extending beyond the limits of the sensory system, and not “continuing” it as “extra-communication”. Well, okay, the use has already happened otherwise.

Sensory

In psychology and physiology, a “sensor” is not the fat screen of a smartphone from the fingers, but part of the body’s sensory system, namely, one of the sensory organs data: receptors, nerve pathways, cortical departments.

Extrasensory perception

Extrasensory perception (according to the morphology of the word, and not real) is the perception or generation of information perceived by the individual without or in addition to data from the sensory organs (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste) and other parts of the sensory system.

But even with the coolest psychic, the message will be fixed by the brain - the central part of the sensory system, even if bypassing the periphery: would it be more logical to talk about one of the new types of verbal or non-verbal communication (depending on the message being transmitted)? On the other hand, the incoming information can be recorded by other, non-sensory areas of the brain - for example, those that are responsible for thinking.

Psychic

A psychic is any person who, in general or only in this particular case, manifests an extrasensory perception perceived by him, and not only one who deals with such perceptions “professionally”.

Extrasensory communication

For me, the most important question is how to divide “extrasensory perception” as a whole and “extrasensory communication”. These concepts have almost the same content, but are they identical?

On the one hand, communication presupposes the presence of at least two living people (between them communication is established and information is exchanged in one or both directions and the communication itself). But in the case of the issue under investigation there are several controversial points:

• and what if the second subject does not realize that someone else is reading the information about him?
• and if the "psychic" receives information about the impending catastrophe, does he communicate with someone specific? But the aspects of establishing communication and obtaining information remain in force, and perhaps this information he receives, communicating with a certain environment, whatever we call it (and is this environment the subject?).

Proceeding from this, EK is the most interesting for me as communication between living beings.

It turns out that the first trap that EK researchers must face is a terminological misunderstanding.

Types of extrasensory communications

The few "evidence" and plot moves are the whole base on which we could build at least some typology.

According to social superstition, extrasensory communication occurs when:

• during personal contact, a person “removes” any information about the interlocutor, if this cannot be explained by increased unconscious attention to face micro- and macro-expressions, posture and voice (see the work of Paul Ekman), existing or following information, the effect of smells, true prejudice or simple bluff;
• the communicator thinks of the recipient, and the recipient feels it (interpersonal distance communication, known as telepathy );
• one relative suddenly realizes that the other is in trouble if such information has not been received;
• a person dreams of dead relatives, if we exclude the work of the unconscious;
• the pet feels the arrival of the host, if we exclude the conditioned reflex for a certain arrival time and the vibrations transmitted to the building from slamming by the entrance door (example from noanswer );
• the psychic touches the subject and instantly “recognizes the connections” between the preceding events.

As you have noticed, in this case it is easier to describe the situation itself than to name the species . This again points to the statistical small number of all the "evidence", and for each item there is a set of "if", "but" and "in the case." It is important that most hypothetical situations include a communication component.

Structure and factors of "extrasensory communication"

Modern communication theory has collected many different models describing the structure, characteristics, process and / or conditions of communication in general and its individual types. Here are a few examples:

• Lassuela model
• Model Schramm and Osgood
• Shannon-Weaver model
• Newcomb Model
• Model Aristotle
• AIDA model
• OSI model

EK could be disassembled for each of the above models of communication, but in our opinion this is not required: it will be much easier and quicker to illustrate several basic arguments against its existence, taking the most frequent signs found in all known models.

1. Communication tool (it’s a channel, it’s medium)
2. Subjects of communication
3. Message
4. Feedback

The fact that there is at least 1 critical objection for each structural criterion hinders proving EK.

Communication channel

As shown by the author’s past research in the field of media, the “medium” itself (the only correct pronunciation in units) is any means, intermediary, communication channel, as if “standing in the middle” between the sender and the recipient of the message (mass media only private manifestation).

In the case of E. K., the medium would literally be :

1. A certain “channel” of a certain “world information field” (and this is perhaps the main objection against the possibility of E. K.).
2. The individual himself as a channel of communication.
3. The psyche of the individual himself, who, according to this logic , sends or receives a message "through emptiness" (if the first paragraph is excluded).
4. Unknown before (how so?) Part of the sensory system of the body or the usual components, taking into account their hypothetical hitherto unknown functions.
5. Any material objects that allow a psychic to "get a message" about unknown connections.
6. Various combinations and levels of nesting of the previous paragraphs.

It is not easy to verify the existence of such communication channels, because we still have no way of fixing the facts of transmission and separation of these media.

Based on the information currently available, the communication characteristics of the communication channels would be as follows:

• uncertainty for both the sender and recipient;
• low bandwidth (even if the speed was instantaneous, it will take a few bits);
• Uncertain methods of transmission, synchronism, reliability, format and security of transmitted messages;
• low signal-to-noise ratio (there are more noise and obstacles than the useful signal);
• the impossibility of transferring the signal to other channels;
• inability to repeat messages.

Even in the case of the existence of EK, the communicator would have to increase its influence and try to get to test its assumptions verbally, but then there would be no point in EK itself. (what's the point in a non-autonomous channel?).

Who wants an unreliable, slow, incomprehensible and losing communication channel packages?) Yes, no one sure. Who wants to study the methodology of its study? Judging by the available information, there are too few people who want to isolate and test all these hypotheses.

Communicator and Recipient

The subjects of EK could be called the communicator itself (the sending side) and the recipient (the receiving side). However, if we are talking about one-way communication, here we have a subject and an object; if this is an “interactive form”, then both are already subjects.

In our opinion, for the effectiveness of E. K. would matter:

• Communicator's ideas about the phenomenon of E. K.
• faith communicator in your own strength
• mental abilities of the communicator
• degree of sensory development of the communicator
• Communicator's understanding of the goals of such an extraordinary way of conveying a message
• concentration on the task
• communicator knowledge of the recipient (the more information, the more successful the transfer)
• level of familiarity of subjects of communication and the degree of their attachment
• social characteristics of the communicator (gender, age, level of education, religious denomination)

However, most of these factors could have a negative effect on the efficiency of transmission:

• misconceptions about the phenomenon of E. K.
• undue faith in one's own strength
• overdeveloped thinking (consistency suppresses intuitive approaches)
• too much concentration on the task
• too close familiarity with the recipient (undue information and subjectivism)
• incorrect communication goals
• E.K. excluding social characteristics (for example, too deep an education; what if one of the sexes showed great abilities to E.K.?)

From this follow exactly the opposite thoughts about which hypotheses need to be tested.

Separately, I want to dwell on the significance of the geographical position of communicants.

• On the one hand, being within sight should help the removal of information (but here the risk of taking unconscious perceptions of subtle signs out of extrasensory perception increases, although the latter is a useful and more or less developed skill in some people).
• On the other hand, if we even take the above option with the “world information field” and the synchronous channel, then the association of oneself with a specific point on the map should not have any meaning at all.

So, according to the “communicator / recipient” characteristic, we have at least 10 hypotheses that can explain the phenomenon in one way or another (but who would have undertaken such hard work?).

Message

There are 3 aspects of the transmitted message that would be relevant in the process of E. K:

• content
• message volume
• perception modality

Even ardent adherents EK would agree that with the help of such confused media it would be impossible to transmit a meaningful and voluminous message (much more likely a jerky, distorted and incomplete). Also under such conditions it would hardly be multimedia, i.e. aimed at perception in different perceptual modalities. Such a message is extremely difficult to verify in an experimental situation.

Feedback

Even if there is an opportunity to transmit a message outside the main senses, it would have been necessary to prove the possibility of more feedback, this integral part of many premium models.

• First, the ability to transmit and perceive messages is different functions in any communication model, and no one guarantees their simultaneous presence.
• Secondly, the subjects of "communication" would simply have different thresholds of perception.
• Thirdly, with the inevitable distortion of the message, there could be nothing to “answer”.

Well, what is the feedback here?

In general, all this is very interesting, but there are too many contradictory variables to check. But why does EK continue to exist in the mass consciousness?

EK in psychology, marketing and popular culture

Turning from the subject area of ​​communication theory to psychology, we summarize several psychological facts: people prefer simpler explanations to more complex ones, they more readily admit the existence of phenomena that coincide with their beliefs, and tend to take particular cases as general. All this, superimposed on other factors, explains the popularity of extrasensory topics in popular culture, but does not help in any way to clarify the truth. And who uses it and how?

Quite often in games, cinema and literature you can find heroes with abilities to psychic communication and perception: these are the Jedi with the Siths, Dr. Xavier, Harry Potter with Voldemort, and more crude crafts in the form of serials like "New Wang."

Such plots are universal, and their benefit to EK researchers is that they (at a minimum) reflect the ideas of large groups of people, which means that you can draw valuable conclusions from such sources if you wish. These conclusions are quite marketing: this is the marketing of the impossible, namely, the way of infinite generation of pattern plots, giving the scriptwriters of gaming and other studios a unique opportunity to inflame the ears, study the “preferences” and produce a suitable product (which they do). Therefore, despite the universal fame of extrasensory mythology, very few people are really interested in the possibility of testing hypotheses, because they can be sold without it.

Conclusion / research potential of E. K.

Above, we walked through the main components of communication models, which would be used to explain EK or to build new, but somewhat similar models. Each component is fraught with traps, rather disturbing, and not allowing to prove the existence of extrasensory communication and perception.

Obviously, the only way to deepen our understanding of E. K. would be objective, extensive, interdisciplinary and consistent research aimed at fixing the real cases of extrasensory perception of various kinds in different years and in different countries. It would be necessary to single out the possible variables of such communication (as the author tried to do here), and there are dozens of them, and checking each one individually is the potential of research.

Modern communication theory and psychology do not yet have scientific evidence of the reality of extrasensory information exchange, but here the view from other scientific positions is admissible, as well as unconfirmed hypotheses (as a brainstorming session), and besides, there are other : alternative scientific, religious and philosophical. All the above together leaves room for further evidence.

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