Randi doesn't really expose frauds in a dramatic way. He infers how such tricks could be done, sets up an experiment that will prevent such tricks, and then lets the frauds fall on their own sword.
They'll either "have a bad day" or decline. To date, no one has claimed the foundation's million dollar prize.
Penn & Teller can be surprisingly narrow-minded sometimes. I'd prefer someone with fewer preconceptions. Ideally a combo team of scientists and stage magicians.
Way more than "I don't think they disconnected the EKG because I bet we would have seen some electrical noise." The authors wanted to be fooled, else they had no article.
I disagree. I am a physician training to be an electrophysiologist (cardiologist that sub-specializes in the electrical conducting system of the heart). Without significant equipment it would be impossible to disconnect the leads of an EKG without causing enormous irregularities in the read out. Even small movements, like subtly shifting the body, causes blatantly obvious noise in the EKG baseline. If these baseline changes weren't present, as the authors state, then it is unreasonable to assume the yogi removed the leads.
> The straight line on the ECG persisted till the eighth morning. Then, to our astonishment, electrical activity returned about half an hour before the pit was scheduled to be opened. After some initial disturbance, a normal configuration appeared.
Sounds a bit like he disconnected and reconnected.
It's well-understood that if your heart stops for a few minutes, your brain dies. Since his brain didn't die, we can conclude that his heart never stopped.
A human cannot live without water for the length of time claimed. Therefore we can conclude that the yogi is a liar.
The letter prints out some of the EKGs, but declines to show the moment when the flatline occurs, and the moment when the heart is again detected.[1]
You now have four facts: (1) the yogi's heart did not stop, (2) the EKG lead showed no activity, (3) the yogi is a habitual deceiver and (4) the most important data is intentionally hidden from the reader
Do you still feel confident that the yogi did not disconnect the leads?
[1] An alternative explanation would be that this 1973-era EKG machine did not make continuous recordings, in which case it defies reason to claim that it was watched carefully enough to rule out irregularities during the transition to/from flatline.
You're making an awful lot of assumptions to arrive at your conclusion. You have exactly as much evidence as is provided in the article and therefore can't make the claim that he did not.
Of your points above, only point 1 is based in any sort of fact which relies on a current understanding of how a human heart functions. Therefore, the point you're making is that a human heart cannot be consciously stopped because a human heart cannot be consciously controlled.
With the current data you've been provided all you can do is conclude that the test was flawed, not that what the test suggested was true or false.
EKG machines have been capable of continuous read outs since before this research was published.
It is entirely reasonable to be mildly skeptical of research. But with a clear grounding for your bayesian priors, extreme skepticism becomes inimical to the search for truth.
That said, I would like to see the EKG during the "transition" periods.
Yes, being nearly frozen is an exception to the rule, but since there was no mention of a glacier or extensive snow in the report, I thought it reasonable to ignore that possibility.
Occam also suggests that there are little people living inside my tv and that everybody around me is a thoughtless automation merely imitating sentience.
I'm a practicing yogi and surprised myself recently in the hospital (I ate some bad food on a trip to South America). I was in a hospital bed attached to a heart rate monitor for a few hours, and I could, while conscious, consistently bring my heart rate under 50 bpm (which would set off an alarm at the nurse station). I believe I got down to 46. The alarm was appropriate, as this resting heart rate likely gets me to the high reaches of the 99th percentile [1].
I could do this by practicing a fairly technical breathing technique - basically opening up the channels of breath by joining inhalation and exhalation. Still, I was able to convince myself that by practicing a very specific relaxation technique, I could lower my heart rate enough to scare nurses. I'm standing while typing this and my thumb-to-wrist test has me right around normal (72bpm).
So, from my perspective, parts of this seem reasonable. I think a true master (I've only been doing this a few years) may well be able to continuously regulate his heart to quite low levels. I've often mused that yoga is a hack of some of your body's autonomic processes. A flatline seems unrealistic even to me, but I'm sure curious about what benefits there might be in this technique.
"Resting State" is a description of a normal, non-active person who is awake. The resting mind is still pretty active. Calming yourself down further is entirely possible, so it is not particularly noteworthy that you achieved 99% percentile.
This was 40+ years ago. If such things were actually possible, with the advance of information technology we should see more, not less, of these accomplishments recorded. We should see cellphone footage from every angle of yogis who can fly. We should have ground-penetrating radar and webcam thermal imaging of those burying themselves.
There is a line in the movie Close Encounters about how car accidents are real but had never been filmed (the point being that a lack of footage does not mean UFOs are not real). That was 1977. We now have millions more cameras and plenty of recorded car accidents because car accidents are in fact real. Conversely, bigfoot and UFO footage has all but disappeared with the increased numbers of cameras. Bigfoot is not real. Neither are these superhuman yogis. No doubt they can survive longer in harsh environments than the average person, but they cannot violate the laws of physics. If they could, we would rewrite those laws and hand them noble prizes for their work.
We can push this further and expect your "reality test" to become practically useless some time in the next 50 years. That is, when no matter how well you analyze a video/picture, you can not tell if it is CG or not.
What happens when, in the next 150 years say, one cannot identify with appreciable probability [1] whether someone is human or not?
Something standing in front of me that cannot be scientifically proven not to be human, would be a human. A robot that accurate down to the microscopic may be a synthetically-grown human but nevertheless still a human being.
CGI will always be behind the curve. Science requires repeatability by independent researchers. A CGI hoax cannot survive independent footage of the event. So CGI cannot survive scientific scrutiny. It can certainly survive fake scrutiny (see viral vids) but not real investigation by people looking for the hoax.
I think all our current systems (democracy, laws, courts, basic trust) rely on human level attackers who can't adapt quickly enough to beat the system every time. But I think that in the future many of these assumptions will be overturned and our systems will literally be fooled by AI. Your expectations of what AI will not be able to produce via "hacking" our systems and expectations will be far surpassed. And then what do we do?
Simple short term example: how do our current political systems prevent the proliferation of rogue drones programmed by completely anonymous individuals to wreak havoc? Or computer viruses? We are just relying on the absence of a capable adversary, same as with security by obscurity.
You're walking down the street and a small woman walks past you and stumbles. You help her up and she says thanks, then gets back on her way. How can you "scientifically" prove whether she was a human or not?
Of course you could put her on an operating table and cut her open... but she moves and breathes and feels everything as a human. How could you force that treatment upon her?
And then you'd have to do it for everybody else. How do you know the surgeon isn't a humanoid robot?
Consider than in 150 years there may be several hundred videos of something happening, from a variety of angles, where the devices are controlled by multiple, independent agents.
While one stream can be faked, it would require large-scale collusion or subversion to fake the large majority of videos.
I know little, but I thought I had read that yogic "flying" is just a misnomer - they're in the lotus position and kind of hop around on their knees (I've seen footage of that), but the word for it kind of roughly translates to flying. I haven't heard/seen claims of literal flying though.
> There are various stages of Yogic Flying. The initial stage is "hopping." The second stage is "floating," and the final stage is "flying." So far, no one practicing the Yogic Flying TM-Sidhi has been observed achieving a stage beyond hopping. Achieving the floating and flying stages is dependent upon the extent to which the practitioner is able to sustain his awareness at the level of the unified field, the level of transcendental consciousness. It is by maintaining one's awareness at this very fine level that one is able to influence the laws of nature to gain support of those laws whereby anything is possible. That is why the unified field is called the field of all possibilities; from that most fundamental and powerful level anything is possible. The author believes that eventually the final stage of levitation (flying) will be a common phenomenon.
This sort of flying comes out of Transcendental Mediation from the 1970s. You are right that this kind of hop is labeled "flying", even though it isn't flying.
> "I saw a yogi remain in the air, several feet above the ground, last night at a group meeting." My friend, Upendra Mohun Chowdhury, spoke impressively.
> ... "How does he remain in the air, defying the law of gravitation?"
> "A yogi's body loses its grossness after use of certain pranayamas. Then it will levitate or hop about like a leaping frog. Even saints who do not practice a formal yoga[4] have been known to levitate during a state of intense devotion to God."
> ... It is the law the governs the life of a yogi, (an equivalent to the Arian law of the Buddhits that governs the conducts of the Bodhisattvas) that forbid he yogi to demonstrate his paranormal and supernatural powers in the presence of savages and barbarians, before the public or in front of television cameras. Yet, I am the only living contemporary who ever levitated four feet off the ground in front of a camera. I shall, of course, refrain from ever levitating in public, as a matter of fundamental principle for that would be a sacrilege. Furthermore, like several of my Siddhies, levitation in [sic] an Involuntary occurrence that happens in rare moments of religious ecstasy, perhaps as few as one or two times per year. There was no known yogi in history who has been able to levitate at will and on demand.
That's two yogis who claim something that sounds more than kind of hopping. After all, hopping can be done at will and on demand.
There is a style of yoga that I have heard being referred to as 'flying'. It involves two people, and one lifts the other completely off the ground so that the second person can practice without being encumbered by a floor beneath them.
I think a fairly typical method of doing this involves the first person lying on their back with their feet straight up, and the other person would then put the grounded person's feet above their pelvis and gradually bring all their weight upon the grounded person's feet.
I've only done this style once, it was a great experience. I found it to be very much a team effort between me and my partner, we had to work to maintain balance from both positions. Very different from what I have experienced in regular yoga classes.
>with the advance of information technology we should see more, not less, of these accomplishments recorded
This is an over sophisticated way to say "no evidence, no thing". I don't intend to defend the existence of big foot (which I think is a silly comparison), but if asked about it I'd rather make no claims about it.
It's not that simple. I'm talking about phenomena for which we have lots of evidence. There is lots of evidence for Bigfoot and UFOs, but amount does not equate to quality or proof. My point is that with the increased number and quality of cameras and lower burden of creating footage we should see exponentially more footage over time rather than less.
The recording of real phenomena should be directly related to the number and quality of cameras or other recording devices (see rogue waves, shark attacks). Phenomena that seem inversely related or at least disconnected from the spread of cameras (Bigfoot, UFOs etc) become less likely to be real over time. We still get occasional new footage or other evidence, but it doesn't fit the curve followed by known real phenomena.
I would be curious to know if you can actually state nonstrawmen arguments in support of UFO's. What is the strongest case that can be made for UFO's? Do you know what it is? If you do, can you reasonably refute it?
The absence of evidence is evidence of absence in the case where you would expect there to be evidence.
The fact that we don't have video footage of Egyptian Pharos is in no way evidence for them not existing, since they are purported to have existed prior to the invention of the video camera.
Things that are purported to happen today should have good quality recordings of them if they are at all common.
The general point you make is reasonable but it doesn't really apply to this specific situation. How often are people looking for behaviors like this? There are many occasions where we don't see things because we don't look for them.
Your point probably works for bigfoot, but it isn't applicable to whether some obscure meditation practice can stop the heart.
My wife suggested another explanation for this: his heart rate sped up so much that it overwhelmed the ECG sensors. This is consistent with the later diagnosis of hypothermia. (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15617296).
I have a cousin who nearly died from a bleeding ulcer. He likes to tell the story of how he would mess with the nurses on call by ramping his heart rate when they left the room to make the alarms go off and then ramping it back down when they all came running. Could be a big fish story, but to tell you the truth until someone does good science on this the jury is out.
55 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadThey'll either "have a bad day" or decline. To date, no one has claimed the foundation's million dollar prize.
Is there a culture that doesn't fall for mystical cons?
Sounds a bit like he disconnected and reconnected.
A human cannot live without water for the length of time claimed. Therefore we can conclude that the yogi is a liar.
The letter prints out some of the EKGs, but declines to show the moment when the flatline occurs, and the moment when the heart is again detected.[1]
You now have four facts: (1) the yogi's heart did not stop, (2) the EKG lead showed no activity, (3) the yogi is a habitual deceiver and (4) the most important data is intentionally hidden from the reader
Do you still feel confident that the yogi did not disconnect the leads?
[1] An alternative explanation would be that this 1973-era EKG machine did not make continuous recordings, in which case it defies reason to claim that it was watched carefully enough to rule out irregularities during the transition to/from flatline.
Of your points above, only point 1 is based in any sort of fact which relies on a current understanding of how a human heart functions. Therefore, the point you're making is that a human heart cannot be consciously stopped because a human heart cannot be consciously controlled.
With the current data you've been provided all you can do is conclude that the test was flawed, not that what the test suggested was true or false.
This does not appear to be accurate, based on a few minutes on Google. It's unlikely but possible for humans to live more than a week with no water.
This is factually incorrect. We know of people who have survived longer without water.
> Therefore we can conclude that the yogi is a liar.
Therefore I can conclude you are a liar?
Your third point is just assumed, not proven.
People have survived at least 40 minutes with circulatory arrest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_B%C3%A5genholm
EKG machines have been capable of continuous read outs since before this research was published.
It is entirely reasonable to be mildly skeptical of research. But with a clear grounding for your bayesian priors, extreme skepticism becomes inimical to the search for truth.
That said, I would like to see the EKG during the "transition" periods.
What you are citing sounds more like convention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prahlad_Jani
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prahlad_Jani
I could do this by practicing a fairly technical breathing technique - basically opening up the channels of breath by joining inhalation and exhalation. Still, I was able to convince myself that by practicing a very specific relaxation technique, I could lower my heart rate enough to scare nurses. I'm standing while typing this and my thumb-to-wrist test has me right around normal (72bpm).
So, from my perspective, parts of this seem reasonable. I think a true master (I've only been doing this a few years) may well be able to continuously regulate his heart to quite low levels. I've often mused that yoga is a hack of some of your body's autonomic processes. A flatline seems unrealistic even to me, but I'm sure curious about what benefits there might be in this technique.
[1]: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr041.pdf
There is a line in the movie Close Encounters about how car accidents are real but had never been filmed (the point being that a lack of footage does not mean UFOs are not real). That was 1977. We now have millions more cameras and plenty of recorded car accidents because car accidents are in fact real. Conversely, bigfoot and UFO footage has all but disappeared with the increased numbers of cameras. Bigfoot is not real. Neither are these superhuman yogis. No doubt they can survive longer in harsh environments than the average person, but they cannot violate the laws of physics. If they could, we would rewrite those laws and hand them noble prizes for their work.
What happens when, in the next 150 years say, one cannot identify with appreciable probability [1] whether someone is human or not?
[1]: À la Turing test, but with a humanoid robot.
CGI will always be behind the curve. Science requires repeatability by independent researchers. A CGI hoax cannot survive independent footage of the event. So CGI cannot survive scientific scrutiny. It can certainly survive fake scrutiny (see viral vids) but not real investigation by people looking for the hoax.
Simple short term example: how do our current political systems prevent the proliferation of rogue drones programmed by completely anonymous individuals to wreak havoc? Or computer viruses? We are just relying on the absence of a capable adversary, same as with security by obscurity.
You're walking down the street and a small woman walks past you and stumbles. You help her up and she says thanks, then gets back on her way. How can you "scientifically" prove whether she was a human or not?
Of course you could put her on an operating table and cut her open... but she moves and breathes and feels everything as a human. How could you force that treatment upon her?
And then you'd have to do it for everybody else. How do you know the surgeon isn't a humanoid robot?
How do you know you're not a robot yourself?
While one stream can be faked, it would require large-scale collusion or subversion to fake the large majority of videos.
> There are various stages of Yogic Flying. The initial stage is "hopping." The second stage is "floating," and the final stage is "flying." So far, no one practicing the Yogic Flying TM-Sidhi has been observed achieving a stage beyond hopping. Achieving the floating and flying stages is dependent upon the extent to which the practitioner is able to sustain his awareness at the level of the unified field, the level of transcendental consciousness. It is by maintaining one's awareness at this very fine level that one is able to influence the laws of nature to gain support of those laws whereby anything is possible. That is why the unified field is called the field of all possibilities; from that most fundamental and powerful level anything is possible. The author believes that eventually the final stage of levitation (flying) will be a common phenomenon.
This sort of flying comes out of Transcendental Mediation from the 1970s. You are right that this kind of hop is labeled "flying", even though it isn't flying.
However, I think sandworm101's comment of "yogis who can fly" should be read more generally to include levitation. For example, quoting from "Autobiography of a Yogi" at http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/chap7.php (and also mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_and_levitation ):
> "I saw a yogi remain in the air, several feet above the ground, last night at a group meeting." My friend, Upendra Mohun Chowdhury, spoke impressively.
> ... "How does he remain in the air, defying the law of gravitation?"
> "A yogi's body loses its grossness after use of certain pranayamas. Then it will levitate or hop about like a leaping frog. Even saints who do not practice a formal yoga[4] have been known to levitate during a state of intense devotion to God."
The footnote 4 mentions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_%C3%81vila , who was "said to have been observed levitating during Mass on more than one occasion".
Then there's https://books.google.com/books?id=mSpQAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT26&dq=yo... ("The Autobiography of the Maha Yogi")
> ... It is the law the governs the life of a yogi, (an equivalent to the Arian law of the Buddhits that governs the conducts of the Bodhisattvas) that forbid he yogi to demonstrate his paranormal and supernatural powers in the presence of savages and barbarians, before the public or in front of television cameras. Yet, I am the only living contemporary who ever levitated four feet off the ground in front of a camera. I shall, of course, refrain from ever levitating in public, as a matter of fundamental principle for that would be a sacrilege. Furthermore, like several of my Siddhies, levitation in [sic] an Involuntary occurrence that happens in rare moments of religious ecstasy, perhaps as few as one or two times per year. There was no known yogi in history who has been able to levitate at will and on demand.
That's two yogis who claim something that sounds more than kind of hopping. After all, hopping can be done at will and on demand.
I've only done this style once, it was a great experience. I found it to be very much a team effort between me and my partner, we had to work to maintain balance from both positions. Very different from what I have experienced in regular yoga classes.
Except the most anyone has managed to achieve is lotus-position hopping.
This is an over sophisticated way to say "no evidence, no thing". I don't intend to defend the existence of big foot (which I think is a silly comparison), but if asked about it I'd rather make no claims about it.
The answer to whether it happened or not is moo.
The recording of real phenomena should be directly related to the number and quality of cameras or other recording devices (see rogue waves, shark attacks). Phenomena that seem inversely related or at least disconnected from the spread of cameras (Bigfoot, UFOs etc) become less likely to be real over time. We still get occasional new footage or other evidence, but it doesn't fit the curve followed by known real phenomena.
The fact that we don't have video footage of Egyptian Pharos is in no way evidence for them not existing, since they are purported to have existed prior to the invention of the video camera.
Things that are purported to happen today should have good quality recordings of them if they are at all common.
Your point probably works for bigfoot, but it isn't applicable to whether some obscure meditation practice can stop the heart.
so, he sped his heart up somehow to the point where he could disconnect the leads without any disruption?
Also, how would someone go about faking tachycardia?