User talk:AvantiShri

October 2021

Thank you for your contributions. Please mark your edits, such as your recent edits to Timnit Gebru, as "minor" only if they are minor edits. In accordance with Help:Minor edit, a minor edit is one that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. Minor edits consist of things such as typographical corrections, formatting changes or rearrangement of text without modification of content. Additionally, the reversion of clear-cut vandalism and test edits may be labeled "minor". Thank you. WesGeek (talk) 22:05, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Now 22

Your recent editing history shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war; read about how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you do not violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.Slatersteven (talk) 12:24, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Welcome!

Hello, AvantiShri, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, your edit to Pam Reynolds case does not conform to Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy (NPOV). Wikipedia articles should refer only to facts and interpretations that have been stated in print or on reputable websites or other forms of media.

There's a page about the NPOV policy that has tips on how to effectively write about disparate points of view without compromising the NPOV status of the article as a whole. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the Questions page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, to ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Below are a few other good links for newcomers:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Questions or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  jps (talk) 16:01, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

What is your basis for asserting that the Journal of Near Death studies does not count as "print"? Even if you claim that their peer review is flawed, the statement I objected to the removal of was that that this was the perspective of researchers of near-death phenomena. Wikipedia's own policy regarding peer review states that even when you have doubts about a journal's peer review, the journal is reliable for showing "the views of the groups represented by those journals". AvantiShri (talk) 05:14, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

JNDS is a so-called "pocket journal". You are correct that it promotes the perspective of credulous researchers of near-death phenomena (that is, they do not accommodate skeptics, for example, as the organization that runs the journal does not admit that the skeptical approach is valid). The only way we can include the opinions of such is if they have been noticed by third-party sources who are independent of the community of believers. This is because there is no other way for us to decide what is a prominent or notable claim that the near-death believers make and what is one that is so out-of-the-way that it is has been essentially ignored. To do otherwise would be a different approach: a "credulipedia" that would "accept all comers". It's just not what the consensus rules for this website are. jps (talk) 11:10, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I have brought this up in other places, but to repeat it here for anyone else reading this: Wikipedia's policy states that "views held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views (such as the flat Earth)". Even if one believes that flat earth claims are in the same category as the idea that the formation of awareness (a long-standing open problem in physics) is linked to a phenomenon that involves distortions in spacetime (literally all that you'd need to postulate to allow for an explanation of these events; no need to involve the "paranormal", physics at very large and very small scales is weird enough to make room for this), wikipedia's own policy states that you should make room for those views in articles devoted to those claims. AvantiShri (talk) 07:29, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

It's pretty clear that you have a soft spot for poorly considered research that makes a variety of paranormal claims. That's fine, Wikipedia covers that, but only to the extent that third parties have considered such research. You have yet to demonstrate that anyone who is an expert in, say, physics, takes your claims about a physical model for awareness seriously and using this as a motivation for editing Wikipedia is a classic issue we encounter here when WP:PROFRINGE editing happens. This is what I think you are running afoul of here. jps (talk) 11:23, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm actually quite surprised you are making the claim that experts in physics don't take these claims seriously. Many of those at the forefront of parapsychology research are in fact physicists (off the top of my head: Helmut Schmidt, Peter Bancel, Alex Gomez-Marin and Edwin May).

I had stepped away from Wikipedia for the sake of my temper, but over the past year and a half I have had more time to delve into this research, and have only become more convinced of the strength of the evidence (and also convinced that Wikipedia has played a major role in holding back awareness of this evidence; case in point: I suspect you will look up the Wikipedia pages of Schmidt and May and conclude that they are not trustworthy, but if you actually dug into the controversy without a pseudoskeptical bias you would likely conclude, as I did, that their Wikipedia pages do not fairly represent their research and many other parapsychology findings...know that scientists like me often reference Wikipedia for an overview of a new field, so if Wikipedia distorts the evidence, this will prevent scientists from looking further). Are you aware that it is literally an open problem in quantum mechanics whether that which is modeled as "random" truly is random, or is in fact determined by "hidden variables" that are yet to be discovered?

Some references:

1. Published in 2018 in the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association: "The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena: A review". Non paywalled version here: https://github.com/AvantiShri/paperstorage/blob/main/APA_Cardena_2018.pdf (click the download symbol to download) - it concludes that "The evidence provides cumulative support for the reality of psi, which cannot be readily explained away by the quality of the studies, fraud, selective reporting, experimental or analytical incompetence, or other frequent criticisms". The only refutation I am aware of was one written by other psychologists and literally did not consider the data; it simply argued that it was impossible based on what Alex Gomez-Marin described to me as "pop theoretical physics". Case in point, the refutation did not even consider the mechanism by which these phenomena work via hidden variables, i.e. by creating deviations from what we have assumed in physics is "random". I'm honestly sickened by the state of the scientific institution that that refutation was considered publication worthy.

2. Published in 2023 in Biosystems: "Quantum aspects of the brain-mind relationship: A hypothesis with supporting evidence". Non paywalled version here: https://github.com/AvantiShri/paperstorage/blob/main/Kauffman_and_Radin_Biosystems_2023.pdf - basically argues that the evidence strongly indicates these phenomena most likely work by creating deviations from what we have modeled as "random".

3. Published in April of this year in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience: "Brain functional connectivity correlates of anomalous interaction between sensorily isolated monozygotic twins" - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2024.1388049/full

Finally, consider this statement from the 2016 President of the American Statistical Association (source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01621459.2016.1250592 )

"""

Parapsychology is concerned with the scientific investigation of potential skills that are commonly known as psychic abilities, such as precognition, telepathy, and so on. For many years I have worked with researchers doing very careful work in this area, including a year I spent working on a classified project for the United States government, to see if we could use these abilities for intelligence gathering during the Cold War. This 20-year project is described in the recent book ESP Wars East and West by physicist Edwin May, the lead scientist on the project, with input from his Soviet counterparts.

At the end of that project I wrote a report for Congress, stating what I still think is true. The data in support of precognition and possibly other related phenomena are quite strong statistically, and would be widely accepted if they pertained to something more mundane. Yet, most scientists reject the possible reality of these abilities without ever looking at data! And on the other extreme, there are true believers who base their belief solely on anecdotes and personal experience. I have asked the debunkers if there is any amount of data that could convince them, and they generally have responded by saying, “probably not.” I ask them what original research they have read, and they mostly admit that they haven't read any! Now there is a definition of pseudo-science—basing conclusions on belief, rather than data!

"""

Mechanistically, the evidence points to the following: the state of consciousness affects what has been historically modeled as "random", and the brain is not the only thing capable of creating signals in our conscious experience (it is unclear why we assumed otherwise in the first place, since we know we are conscious before we know about brains; in fact, the argument that brains are the only object capable of creating signals in our conscious experience is easily the most poorly considered argument of all, because it is based on the finding that when we alter regions of the brain, we observe alterations in consciousness assocated with those regions - however, if you damage a virtual reality headset that someone is glued to, they will report alterations in those signals originating from the headset, but this does not mean signals in their conscious experience can ONLY originate from the headset).

I have summarised the evidence in more detail in this article: https://avshrikumar.medium.com/the-global-princeton-experiment-that-found-trillion-to-1-odds-that-a-collective-consciousness-e94c911f79f8 - I found it deeply cringeworthy that (last I checked) the wikipedia page for the Global Consciousness Project does not even report the odds ratio achieved across all the events, and presents a post-hoc reanalaysis of one of the GCP experiements as though it consistutes a refutation of the overall finding. AvantiShri (talk) 01:20, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Notice of Fringe Theories Noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. jps (talk) 15:02, 4 November 2022 (UTC)