TEDx Brussels 2010 - Lynne McTaggart - Can collective intentions make things happen?

[GlobalWelcome]

Awesome Lynne - so glad you are out there! I love your work.

Yvonne Oswald - Award winning, best selling author of Every Word has Power

[dwkinney666]

I suggest people do a search for "ted quacks, lynne mctaggart quackometer" to get a grasp of not only how foolish but how dangerous this woman is.

[dwkinney666]

I didn't bother to return to TEDx in Brussels again because of the extremely poor judgment exhibited by having this dealer of pseudoscience speak. It is hard for me to understand how poor the vetting was to waste everybody's time with her when there are so many innovative people that could have been invited. 

[AnonOrange]

Let's all her Miss Complete NONSENSE, Ph. D.

Hey lady, James Randi want's to give you a MILLION bucks!

To TED administrators: Could you please vet your speakers a little better?!

[Blissentia]

@AnonOrange

I suggest you read "Randi's prize" by Robert McLuhan to discover how Randi is a little less than intellectually honest when dealing with the information he claims to be an "objective" analyzer of.

[ishootiscore04]

i took part in the "water into wine" experiment! :D

[cricketjam]

People aren't sure how to act if they believed in mind matter interaction, so they just act how their stubborn brains can, completely lacking in mental plasticity. Our brains are water based computers. They can possibly be able to affect other bodies of water. Humans have come up with tons of ways to send information and patterns of energy over space ( i.e. wi fi, phones, radio etc.) it only makes sense that there's already a subtle organic or physical matter interaction going on naturally.

[mayaclay]

The negative comments on here amaze me. I don't even know what to say to people who won't even do some research and keep an open mind.

[HansTheAtheist]

@mayaclay That's no research she's doing, that's looking at random numbers and trying to make out patterns. It's like finding animal figures in the clouds. Fun, but the patterns are formed in our head, they're not "out there". Not that I'm against the idea, it's just that you have to do it right. E.g. first get an estimate of the deviation from randomness, define the signal to noise ratio, and from that get the Hamming distance needed to get a message across. That would close the discussion.

[itsmedontusee]

@HansTheAtheist we can't read somebody's mind so you never really know why the environment reacts the way it does. That's why you don't get very accurate results.You think 60.000 thoughts a day. there is no way you yourself will be able to remember all that. I am just saying that you need to look a little bit closer.

[HansTheAtheist]

@itsmedontusee I think you're missing the point: one of her claims is that we can influence a random number generator with our mind. Let's assume that's true. Then it must also be true that we can take a computer, let it calculate deviations from the random number sequence and extract an error-free message from it, sent by ppl instructed to influence the signal. I think that won't work because the deviations are themselves random. I also think it will never take place because Lynn is a fraud.

[HansTheAtheist]

[cont] And with 'fraud' I mean someone who's making lots of money parasiting on people's hopes and despair, based on false claims. But that's just what I think. Feel free to spend your money on her, I'm not going to stop you. But I know one thing: if you take a random signal and go looking for some pattern - you'll find the pattern. That's how random works. Just study random functions for a few years and it will all become clear.

[itsmedontusee]

@HansTheAtheist Allright dude i have to honoustly say that i don't quite understand what you are talking about. English is not my first language. But i know very well that what she is talking about is true it works. This shit is real. And I know that it is hard to believe and that you probaly have very strong belief system beceause of the way you speak i think you are more of a left brain type of guy therefore you probaly have very strong beliefs.

[HansTheAtheist]

@itsmedontusee I'm open minded - if experiments show the effects are real that's a very interesting find. But the way she conducts the experiments is just crap. If they can get a computer to output a message transmitted by influencing a random number generator, that's a clear & positive result (and you CAN do that if the effect is real - even if it's tiny). Trying to influence a random number generator and then looking at the data to "see if you can find anything" is not science, that's woo-woo.

[625low]

@HansTheAtheist

Complete the experiment yourself and post it to Youtube instead of whining and moaning in the comments channel.

[Pienix]

Oh, wow, this is what's wrong with the world...

How is this on TED anyway?

Or did they change to Technology, Entertainment and occasional Dribble ?

[lotusalivelight]

Humanity is 'One Being'... as the ancient Chinese would have said, spiritually speaking, not necessarily 'materially / militarily' speaking: 'An 'army' of ONE.'

[Wildwrast]

wow all the negative comments to this, you people are clueless and part of what is wrong with the world. It's NOT all about YOU, it's about the WHOLE and until humanity starts to think that way, we will fail..hardcore.

[dkmasterluke]

@Wildwrast There was a time when I was just as ignorant as these negative commenters; and I don't mean the word ignorant as an insult. I only mean I can understand where they're coming from. It's difficult to have your entire world view shattered. People will either investigate for themselves and learn or they will try to delete, distort or generalize it to try to hold on to their current views and beliefs. Saying, "The earth revolves around the sun" would have had me hung at one time. :)

[aliekens]

This lady is the reason I am no longer going to TEDxBrussels. This talk is a complete disgrace.

[Kolliflauer]

it seems she is very deeply misunderstood.. but all advancement in science is misunderstood until it's not. copernicus was hated too <3

[glynmat]

This is not a serious person. Everything she said from beginning to end is complete horse manure.

[SpriteFeedback]

I really hate how she is listed on the TEDxBrussels site as 'controversial'. The only thing controversial about her is that she was invited to speak. I am still in a state of shock that this person was invited to speak at a TEDx conference. €100 to listen to this faith healing disguised behind pseudo science. Utter nonsense.

[Brendanoco]

@SpriteFeedback i love how people just call it pseudoscience without looking at the evidence she has. they think they are inteliigent but really they are idiots

[SpriteFeedback]

@Brendanoco The millions dollar Randi Prize, at least 1 noble prize, eternal fame along with Newton and Einstein, One of Tim Minchins legs, his wife and piano. These are just a small selection of the things that Ms McTaggart would be eligible if she had any actual evidence. Few things would give me more pleasure than than looking at any evidence that she has but I can't find anything. Remember you don't need to know why or how something works to test that it does work.

[Brendanoco]

@SpriteFeedback oh yes of course james randi did you know james randi backed out of a challange from a homepath interesting that he did it maybe he is scarred of him. also randi was a friend of stephen barrett another so called psuedoskeptic who lied about his credentials. james randi has also lied about testing people with his million dollar challange

[SpriteFeedback]

@Brendanoco none of these issues, even if they were true, changes the fact that if Ms Taggart and her ilk could actually prove any of this they they would deeply and profoundly our understanding of how the world works. Which I would find very exciting. However as they can't prove it I find it rather dull. Tim Minchin sums it all up far more eloquently than I in his video "Storm" (Not entirely safe for work.)

[chicksticks]

@SpriteFeedback When you say can't prove, have you read her book The Field? This contains examples of heavily scrutinized successful (and some not so successful) blind and double blind trials all fully referenced.

[cricketjam]

@chicksticks word!

[zassounotsukushi]

I have to be honest that I think this thinking is incorrect and possibly dangerous. For another commentator on youtube look for:

"Science and the taboo of psi"

I'll temper my comments for this comment, as do want TEDx videos to be appreciated for what they are. This represents what a large fraction of people believe, and that needs to be recognized and addressed.

The 'rebirth' happening at Baptist churches are very similar to this talk and appear to be effective. Complicated...

[1980albatros]

@zassounotsukushi I totally agree, as soon as i heard Lynne taggart I knew this was going to be difficult to watch. did you see that disastrous movie "what the bleep" utter nonsense

[zassounotsukushi]

@1980albatros I plan to, but have not watched it. I suggest that my recommendation "Science and the taboo of psi" is more valuable than the popularized account in the "what the bleep" documentary. The information is all the same and comes from a lab called PEARS. I've familiarized myself with their work and since it comes from intelligent people I would require a large amount of space to address what they did and didn't do. A shadow of research is enough for ppl like Lynne McTaggart.

[1980albatros]

@zassounotsukushi sorry for late response, looking up taboo of psi thanks }:)