Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality - Dean Radin #Review

In this exciting book, Radin shows how we know that psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis are real, based on scientific evidence from thousands of controlled lab tests (yes plenty of). Radin surveys the origins of this research and explores, among many topics, the collective premonitions of the September 11 incident. He reveals the physical reality behind our uncanny telepathic experiences and he debunks the skeptical myths surrounding them. Entangled Minds sets the stage for a rational, scientific understanding of psychic experience.

Everything is connected! The author asks: what's happening to loved ones thousands of miles away? Why are we sometimes certain of a caller's identity the instant the phone rings? Do intuitive hunches contain information about future events? Is it possible to perceive without the use of the ordinary senses?

Many people believe that such "psychic phenomena" are rare talents or divine gifts. Others don't believe they exist at all. But the latest scientific research shows that these phenomena are both real and widespread, and are an unavoidable consequence of the interconnected, entangled physical reality we live in.

Albert Einstein called entanglement "spooky action at a distance" -- the way two objects remain connected through time and space, without communicating in any conventional way, long after their initial interaction has taken place. Could a similar entanglement of minds explain our apparent psychic abilities?

Accordingly, Radin’s meta-analyses focus on telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, a sense of being stared at, and psychokinesis. Entangled Minds does not consider such phenomena as levitation, teleportation, metal bending, psychic surgery, apparitions, and OBEs.

In keeping with the receiving/influencing nature of psi, the long middle section in chapters 5–11 examines two basic types of experiments: those that deal with psi’s receiving function and others that test its ability to influence persons and objects at a distance. Most of these are collections of experiments, and very little of the original research discussed here is the author’s own; Also, he mainly discusses others’ studies—and replications of these studies—to statistical analysis.

The strategy is twofold: first, to present (sometimes corrected) statistical evidence to demonstrate the degree to which the experimental results point to psi by exceeding chance; and second, like Sherlock Holmes, to shore up these findings by eliminating alternative explanations. On the one hand, the odds against chance are—in Radin’s words—significant, amazing,
stupendous, staggering, shocking, and astronomical (in one case, 1 in 10 to the 96th power). On the other, he chips away at the alternatives. Chance, fraud, coincidence, experimental flaws, sensory cues, and recording error cannot account for the results.

A new thing called “filedrawer problem,” which means that researchers keep unfavorable results to themselves drew my attention. In the absence of suitable alternatives, he concludes that “these studies provide repeatable, scientifically valid evidence for psi.”

He is at pains to qualify his conclusions by saying that correlation is not necessarily causation, that all he has really proven is that the outcomes are not due to chance, and that the probability of psi does not validate everything paranormal (Elvis, Bigfoot, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle).

The author then moves on to examine both consciously and unconsciously mediated psychic phenomena. Consciously mediated psi is, for example, when a person consciously tries to send a telepathic message to someone else. Thus, we have a sender and a receiver, both of whom are trying to establish a psychic mental connection for the purpose of transferring information from one person to another. Unconsciously mediate psi typically refers to unconscious responses of a person's nervous system to distant mental influence, often as measure with respect to brain waves or skin resistance.

The study of psi also extends to the cosmological realm of time. Radin addresses the issue of time by examining something called "presentiment," and that is the ability of a person to respond consciously or unconsciously to a stimulus before the stimulus is applied. This is a highly complex area of research, but at its core is the simple idea that humans can react emotionally to certain things that are about to happen, even when they are given no prior physical information relating to this.

The great beauty in Dean Radin's book becomes most visible in his later chapters in which he proposes a connection between psychic phenomena and quantum mechanics. Here, readers can obtain one of the most comprehensive and approachable introductions into this area of physics in print. Radin summarizes much of the debate among physicists regarding the interpretation of quantum phenomena such as entanglement. Indeed, his exceptionally clear description of John Bell's famous theorem.

This is a kind of book every College student or caretaker might consider to read, because it explores the vast amount of research being conducted over 'psi' and its relationship to the quantum science. The vast number of references is mind boggling - never realizable that people might be working on this aspect in so large numbers.