The Random Element in Borderline Phenomena

The word stochastic, nowadays routinely used as a synonym for random, comes from the Greek root for the word “guess” or “aim.” Since guesses have a hit-and-miss character, the association with randomness is natural. In the realm of psychic powers—certainly one of the routes of access into the Borderzone—on-and-off performance is usual; moreover, even those who’ve learned to trust these abilities have major difficulties confirming them. Outer events must come to the aid of the experience. An example will make this plain. Suppose that you find yourself thinking of somebody you haven’t thought of in a while. If five minutes later the telephone rings and that person is on the other end of the line, saying: “It’s been a while,” the case for either telepathy or precognition may be inferred. But suppose that no one calls. In that case a telepathic contact may still have taken place—but there is no way to tell for sure.

In the world of paranormal research, it is common knowledge that a phenomenon of decay takes place. A particular test or procedure, say a remote viewing experiment, will have very good results at first, meaning statistically significant results above a chance distribution, but, with time, and often when more subjects are drawn into the experiment, results not only decay but may, in fact, develop a negative significance: they become worse than chance would predict. This phenomenon, along with the general rarity and weakness of psi phenomena, is presently at the forefront of some investigations in the paranormal field. A leading and very original figure is J.E. Kennedy. A link to Kennedy’s important papers is here; anyone wishing to delve into this subject in some depth might learn a great deal from the contents.

As Kennedy astutely notes, the very character of the psi phenomenon may be viewed in a positive way rather than as an obstacle by serving as an indicator of the nature of this phenomenon. We have to ask ourselves why it is that psi phenomena are weak, unreliable at times, stunningly accurate at others, and not only rare but on-again and off-again. Some hypothetical models of reality accommodate this phenomenon better than others. Therefore the missy or lossy character of the psychic is itself a kind of evidence.

It is also very exploitable—for gain. People use the paranormal to gain money and attention; some use it to attract those people who want to be stimulated, entertained, or reassured; others exploit the field as a target for debunking. The number of skeptical sites on the web is almost as large as the number of flaky or commercial promoters. This exploitive activity (it’s a free country, it’s a free market) makes it quite difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. Whether in the library or on the Internet, the same confusion reigns. Those who want to penetrate to the core of this matter in a genuine quest to understand are a tiny minority with very limited resources.


The Rorschach inkblots, used in psychiatric practices to induce spontaneous reactions from patients, viscerally demonstrate how the paranormal range of experiences can be used “for profit,” as it were. The inkblot shown (courtesy of Wikipedia, here) has a purely ambiguous meaning—if any. Similarly, psychic experiences, while they have an outer story and a meaning, are scientifically ambiguous precisely because they are subjective, stochastic and therefore resistant to repetition and experimental verification, and therefore uncertain. Such experiences are also, I must underline, opaque to the psychic as well in one sense: the psychic is no wiser about the regions from which visions or cognitions come than those who hear the psychic’s pronouncements. The field therefore serves as a general-purpose ink blot in which believers and skeptics both can see what they please.

My own approach is based on understanding the patterns of things. It is a structural approach. I am inclined to imagine how reality might be structured to accommodate all of the observable phenomena within it—not least the experiences of psychics but also those of the believers and the skeptics—and those of organic nature, of the inorganic, and so on. This preoccupation, entirely not-for-profit, is motivated by curiosity. What I get is useless knowledge, in the usual sense of the word. But it is useful to me—and in the public domain because others like me might find it equally…useless. In future posts I’ll go deeper into aspects of the paranormal from this perspective—trying to see where pieces of it might fit a pattern.