General Question

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

Has this been researched in real life?

Asked by RedDeerGuy1 (24986points) September 18th, 2022

Ghostbusters – The effect of negative reinforcement on ESP ability

You don’t need to believe in it just point me to some research. I Googled it and didn’t find what I was looking for.

Real answers only please. No humor or calling the field B.S.

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10 Answers

LadyMarissa's avatar

Is this what you’re looking for??? I didn’t read it all because I’m NOT in your brain & don’t know what you’re looking to see, so I decided to share with you!!!

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

@LadyMarissa Thanks. The link gave me an useful explanation of the experiment. I will read it again, and again later. Also the reason that I could not find any acedemic papers on the subject is because it is unethical.

LadyMarissa's avatar

@RedDeerGuy1 I didn’t search for academic papers because I knew that I wouldn’t understand them IF I found them!!! Sometimes these small informative articles will link you to the academic side of things. PLUS, you have such a uniquely special way of looking at life so that I had NO clue what it was that you really wanted!! I hope you eventually locate the papers that you want to research!!!

EDIT: Is this any closer to what you’re looking for???

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

@LadyMarissa No, but was a good read. Thanks.

JLoon's avatar

No. It hasn’t.

I realize that you’re asking this question to be taken seriously, and you’re looking for real and credible research – but there isn’t any.

The issue of clairvoyance, precogition, and extrasenory perception in general, involves phenomena that so far cannot be reliably measured or proven by scientific methods.

Bill Murray’s bit in Ghostbusters is classic and still funny, but it’s just a joke.

Enjoy it for what it is.

gorillapaws's avatar

I agree with @JLoon on this. But just to be helpful, Bill Murray was not using negative reinforcement in that scene. He was using punishment. Negative reinforcement would be to constantly shock the person and to stop shocking them after they get a correct answer, then to start shocking them again until they get the next correct answer. In other words, with negative reinforcement the default state is pain (or something negative) and the reward state is temporary relief from the pain.

Zaku's avatar

@RedDeerGuy1 Do you get the joke in this scene. Here, the subject seems to be clairvoyant (from the one correct response shown, anyway), and Murray’s character is lying to him that he’s wrong, and then zapping him, and says it’s an experiment in the effect of negative reinforcement on ESP.

It’s a parody of various studies, particularly the ones that have been indifferently sadistic to their subjects, and done “just to see what would happen”, q.v. some of the studies the U.S. government has actually done.

Unless I’m forgetting and there’s more to the joke, there’s no reason anyone would do this research, except in a fantasy universe where someone knows there are people with reliable ESP, and they’re trying out a theory that zapping them when they get things right has some effect on their ESP. Which is funny in Ghostbusters because it does show a world where there’s all sorts of paranormal stuff, and the main characters know a lot about it, but also, as entirely appropriate for Bill Murray, we never know how much he’s just messing with people and/or the audience, and how much he actually knows what he’s talking about, or both.

You might be amused to try searching for something like “us government research secret psychic”. In Ecosia, I currently get such results as:

https://historycollection.com/project-stargate-10-facts-about-the-us-government-psychic-experiments/

https://thedailyguardian.com/revealed-secret-us-government-psychic-research-programmes/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/esp-inside-the-governments-secret-program-of-psychic-spies/

http://panhandleparanormal.com/psychic-phenomena-and-secret-government-research/

https://yogaesoteric.net/en/remote-viewing-the-u-s-governments-secret-history-of-psychic-research/

Inspired_2write's avatar

If a person was prficient in ESP etc, then we would suppose then that they would know it before hand and adjust or avoid the negative enforcement,

Inspired_2write's avatar

^ Re:
Everytime I type and then submit the letters change or add another character?

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