psychic drift - The Skeptic's Dictionary (original) (raw)

From Abracadabra to Zombies | View All

• a
• b
• c
• d
• e
• f
• g
• h
• i
• j
• k
• l
• m
• n
• o
• p
• q
• r
• s
• t
• u
• v
• w
• x
• y
• z

Psychic drift is the entry of unintended non-target data into the psychic transmission or reception path during apsi experiment.

It is assumed by most parapsychologists when doing psi experiments that either there is no such thing as psychic drift or psychic drift exists but the concentration of the sender and the receiver or some other crossover interference of competing drifts nullifies its effect. Or, perhaps there is an Invisible Hand that guides unwanted psychic transmissions away from the pathways or psychic meridians being used by subjects in psi experiments.

Psychic drift may account for some telepathic subjects guessing the wrong card, photo, video clip, etc. They're getting information inadvertently sent from a card game in Las Vegas, a psi experiment in Edinburgh, or a television program from an apartment in Moscow. Or, psychic drift could be another ad hoc hypothesis used by parapsychologists to explain away psi failure.

See also displacement, psi-focus assumption, and psi-missing.

Last updated 27-Oct-2015