Could Autistic Telepaths Lead Humanity Out of this Shitshow?

The ludicrous nature of this headline, and Betteridge’s Law, would suggest the answer is "No.” But what if I told you they could?

Images by 3D Animation Production Company and Pexels from Pixabay

Betteridge’s Law¹ — "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." — isn’t actually a law. It’s a headline that applies to journalism. Fortunately, this is not journalism. I’m simply not a fan of assertions. Could autistic telepaths be ushering in a more enlightened age? Read on.

Earlier this week, The Telepathy Tapes became the number one podcast on Apple and Spotify, displacing the Joe Rogan show. Predictably, there has been outrage. It has spawned headlines like this:

Which side has contempt for science?

Does the podcast have contempt for science? If you hold tightly to the materialist worldview, you will automatically assume so because of the word telepathy. Materialism dictates that reality is entirely composed of matter. The existence of non-physical things like thoughts and radio waves is due to energy’s relationship to matter, encoded by Einstein as e=mc². Radio waves can be measured at a distance; brain waves can’t. Thus, materialists don’t believe that brain waves can be transmitted, even though we know they pass through skulls (EEG skull caps can measure them), and we have known for several decades that we live in a quantum-entangled universe.

As a scientist-by-training, born of scientist parents, I prefer a genuinely scientific approach to unusual phenomena. Science is curiosity about those things in the world that we have yet to fully understand. It involves carefully designing and conducting experiments that rule out bias and other factors we would like to control for. Then conducting those experiments, collecting the data, and writing up our findings. Then submitting the findings to peer review to ensure we haven’t missed anything critical, and that our methods (and statistical analysis) stand up to scrutiny.

The podcast isn’t created by a scientist. It hasn’t been rigorously designed or peer-reviewed. It does follow the work of several scientists who have published peer-reviewed articles, but the experiments conducted on the podcast are not rigorous. If you haven’t already listened to it, this is the major claim:

Non-verbal autistic people can read the minds of people emotionally close to them with an accuracy of 95-100%.

The program goes much, much further, but let’s start here. This is obviously an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof.

What is unscientific about The Telepathy Tapes?

Many of the tests sound compelling in audio, but if you watch the short films available on the Telepathy Tapes website, most fall short scientifically. Jonathan Jarry’s criticism of the mothers holding spelling boards is completely valid. To be experimentally rigorous, the mothers should be nowhere near their children. They should not be touching them or looking at them, and they should definitely not hold the spelling boards or comment on what their child is typing on an iPad as it appears. This presents a problem since their severely autistic children depend on them for the safety and comfort they may need to do the tests at all. If mother-child telepathy is being tested, and the child needs physical assistance, it should be done by a carer the child trusts (who should not be able to see the word or number being telepathically communicated), not the mother.

Ideally, the mother would not even be in the same room; after Akhil’s mother writes “house”, she appears to say to her son across the room: “h…. h….. o” before Akhil comes up with “casa”. Maybe she doesn’t mean to meddle, and maybe she does, but if this were science, she wouldn’t be allowed to; the experiment would be designed to rule out any element of her influence beyond her thoughts. The word, complex number, or image for telepathic transmission should be generated randomly by someone other than the mother, and if ‘double-blind’ is really going to mean something, neither the subject nor the experimenter should see it until after the subject has produced the result. Scientists know this. Diane Hennacy Powell, whose work inspired the podcast, knows this. She warned Ky Dickens (the podcaster) as much.

What is valuable about The Telepathy Tapes?

Despite the non-rigorous tests, the underlying claim isn’t bogus. Jarry is mistaken in his other criticisms and particularly wrong to slander the scientist Diane Powell.³ Her response to his critique is linked here, and is well worth a read.

The podcaster Ky Dickens is not a scientist; she is a documentary maker, and that’s where her skills lie. But she has collected some valuable data, not the tests, but the powerful personal testimonies of those who know and work with these children and who, independently of each other, have discovered their thoughts have been read. If you can’t commit to the whole podcast right now, listen to the first ten minutes of Episode 7, interviewing the mother and various therapists and teachers who work with a ten-year-old girl called Amelia.

She wanted a video one afternoon at school, and then she kept reaching for my computer rather than hers, and I said ‘Do you know my password?’ and she said ‘Yes’ and I’m like ‘Prove it’ and sure enough, she knew my password… There’d be times, in a busy classroom, that I would think of a question for her, and she would be able to answer it without me actually talking out loud…

—Katy, Amelia’s Paraprofessional.

The podcast contains dozens of parents, teachers, carers and other professionals — including an initially very sceptical military father and a pastor who was formerly a trial lawyer — attesting to the telepathic gifts of these individuals. Listen to the podcast, and you’ll hear interview after interview with people who have had their previous materialist worldviews swept away by their contact with these non-verbal autistic children.

If you want to write it off, you have to explain how dozens of parents, carers and teachers have come to the same conclusions despite not knowing that anyone else was having similar experiences. You have to explain how their children — who report gathering together in a liminal space to hang out with each other telepathically — use the same name for that space: The Hill. You have to explain how some of these kids can talk about the content of a book they haven’t read.

The proper scientific response is not to dismiss a podcast for being a podcast, but to use public interest as a cue to start conducting — with an open mind — proper, rigorous experiments. “Open mind” is obviously a bit of a challenge, given the existence (in all of us) of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. We already know the power of belief: the placebo effect is so real that every new drug must be tested against its baseline. You won’t see what you don’t believe to be possible and the kids themselves speak of the difficulty of reaching the right state in the presence of sceptics. The expectation of the experimenter reliably decides the outcome of the double-slit experiment in quantum physics, so frankly, we shouldn’t be surprised.

It would benefit all those wishing to dismiss The Telepathy Tapes out of hand to re-read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and recognise that materialism is a paradigm; is what Kuhn calls “Normal Science”. Results that don’t fit the dominant paradigm are ignored or treated with contempt until they accumulate sufficiently to overturn it. Consider the work of Jonathan Fugelsang and Kevin Dunbar, demonstrating that across the world, in numerous labs, scientists discard or “explain away” results that don’t fit into the experimenter’s pre-existing beliefs.⁴

Germ theory was once beyond the pale, too. Invisible, unseeable disease-producing particles? What, wash my hands between performing an autopsy and delivering a woman's baby? Despite the clear evidence of a hugely lowered death rate when Ignaz Semmelweis enforced hand-washing on his ward, his ideas didn’t fit the dominant paradigm. He was mocked, opposed, and, at the age of 47, committed to an insane asylum. In his attempt to resist this, he was assaulted in a manner that led to his death from gangrene, which is — ironically — caused by “invisible” germs.

The history of science is littered with science’s resistance to actual progress. Galileo’s heliocentric observations so upset the Church (then holders of the dominant ‘scientific’ paradigm) that he died under house arrest. Alfred Wegener’s theory of Plate Tectonics was ridiculed and resisted for decades; proposed in 1915, it wasn’t accepted until 1968, 38 years after his death.

Materialist science isn’t as bulletproof as many people think. Reliable scientific experiments should be replicable and produce the same results. Unfortunately, a huge amount of current science isn’t reproducible: see The Replication Crisis. According to a study published in top journal Nature, “More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own.”⁵

One explanation for why so much supposedly ‘solid’ science can’t be replicated and why there are so many human experiences we can’t actually explain under materialism is that we have the paradigm wrong. As Dean Radin of IONS says on the podcast, the idea is not that we ditch materialism but that we enfold it within a larger paradigm that does not discard those experiences materialists find so uncomfortable. Good scientists examine their own biases and should be open to changing their minds.

The Telepathy Tapes brings to public attention some very real problems with dogmatic materialism. But it’s also extremely timely. At this particular point in humanity’s journey, we are facing a unique combination of crises, some of them existential. The findings made public by The Telepathy Tapes offer real hope of accelerating progress towards a more enlightened era. I will explain, but first, cards on the table.

What changed my mind on Materialism

I was once a materialist. My Dad (a very well respected physicist) was a Materials Scientist; a materialist to his deathbed. But by the time I was sitting by that deathbed, I wasn’t a materialist anymore. No one could have argued me out of materialism. What converted me to a broader view was a series of direct, personal experiences. Here’s how I described one of them a few years later.

Three miles away, I feel the letter hit the mat. I almost don’t go home, as if turning tail could make the truth untrue. The bus limps through the traffic and the rain, mops up the loose pedestrians on the street. Closer now, that letter’s almost a shout. It’s not a gift to taste, in my mouth, the envelope’s cold blue. To clench like the stiffened fist that held the pen and scratched my name. To know it is from you.

These lines, extracted from the poem ‘Helping the Police With Their Enquiries’,⁶ describe a real event. Aged twenty-one, I was on a bus back from campus when I sensed a blue envelope waiting for me on the doormat of my lodgings. I also sensed who had dropped it there. I had absolutely no explicable ‘mechanism’ for sensing either of these things.

Sure enough, when I got back to my lodgings, there was a blue envelope waiting on the mat. As I already knew, it had been dropped there by Pete Sinden, the bass player of my band, The Honey Guide. Inside was a letter whose contents upset me.

In The Flip, Jeffrey Kripal gathers numerous accounts of scientists who have experienced similar phenomena: knowing what, in the materialist paradigm, we are not supposed to be able to know. As he details, these ‘psychic’ instances are invariably linked to strong emotion, suggesting that emotion gives a signal boost for more effective transmission of thought.

While studying for my BSc degree, many decades before The Flip was written, I became intensely interested in all the things that current science was incapable of explaining. The one that obsessed me as a first-year undergraduate was the sense of being stared at. Probably because, as a completely hot (but also hyper-sensitive) 18-year-old, I was getting a lot of stares as I walked around the science buildings. As one fresher memorably said to me, You don’t look like a biochemist.

The point was, I could tell exactly where the stare was coming from. I’d feel it behind me, wheel round, and pinpoint the gazer. What could explain it? Elizabethans believed in “eye beams”, but we didn’t. Yet Aristotle’s five physical senses didn’t cover it. (Scientists now know we don’t have five senses; they have named more than twenty.) What mechanism could explain it? What aspect of materialism could I cling to? No aspect at all. And yet, you could see how knowing you were being stared at (and from where, by whom) was a trait that might be favoured by evolutionary processes. And whether I could explain it or not, I had this “sixth” (or perhaps twenty-sixth) sense.

It would be another couple of decades before Rupert Sheldrake’s book The Sense of Being Stared At was published; finally, scientists were getting into the questions that fascinated me in my teens.

Why our theory of consciousness matters

I have never stopped being interested in the nature of consciousness, and once it began to develop, consciousness studies. The hard problem of consciousness cannot be solved without letting go of our insecure grip on materialism. Here is the alternative paradigm:

Though we mostly experience the limited transmission of what feels like our own individual consciousness, we are swimming in a sea of Consciousness that extends far beyond us (just as our brain waves do not stop at the boundaries of our skulls). We are transmitter-receiver units. I have written about this before, both in my 2015 novel Devotion, and in quantum-biology posts like this one.

I appreciate why this causes massive cognitive dissonance for devoted materialists. I also appreciate it has very uncomfortable ramifications. But the more people who embrace it as a possibility, the more swiftly we can move towards a future where humans, as a species, treat each other with respect and kindness.

People always say that these kids have disabilities. And that’s funny, because it’s actually us that has the disability. They have these abilities that we don’t have.

— The Telepathy Tapes, Episode 7.

Yes, we will have to account for our cruelty to people we have been considering “disabled”. And surely, we will start treating them with more respect. But there are other positive outcomes that will benefit all of us.

The theory of consciousness that accounts for telepathy confirms that we are all deeply connected. What appears to happen in these cases is not so much “mind-reading” in the comic-book sense but a merging of individual consciousness into the shared Consciousness that links us always. The more aware we are of this shared consciousness and our interconnectedness, the harder it will be, I think, to cause harm to each other. If you knew that your thoughts were being broadcast, would you not make efforts to improve what you think? And would there not be a benefit to that, for yourself and for others?

When a person envisages themselves as just a strand of a larger Consciousness, all of which connects to them and is aware of what they are thinking, feeling and doing, will they still be able to piss in the swimming pool? Swindle an elderly neighbour? Torture their dog? Will they, knowing they are connected into this network, still beat their girlfriend behind closed doors? Rape that woman they fancy? Will they still be happy to wage war and murder civilians? To make business decisions that condemn other humans to starve?

The pushback will be strong on this one for obvious reasons. But it feels like a door has been kicked down that will never fully close, giving us hope at a time when we desperately need it. I, for one, am excited for all of us.

Listen to the Telepathy Tapes by clicking through to your favourite podcast app from their website.

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Your turn to tell me what you think!

But with a proviso: if you’re ready to mock The Telepathy Tapes, don’t do it out of hand: listen all the way through with as open a mind as you can muster, and make notes on both sides of the argument (for/against). Also, respectful discourse only!

For everyone else:

• Have you had the common “I was just thinking of you” phone call experience?

• Have you had experiences that felt telepathic? (Do tell if you want to!)

• Have you had other hard-to-explain experiences? I would love to hear them

• What were your impressions of The Telepathy Tapes when you listened?

• Do you think The Telepathy Tapes has the power to start turning the tide on dogmatic Materialism?

Post-it Notes

This week, I have:

• Written approximately 10,000 words of freewriting towards my next novel

• Pitched to a podcast

• developed a nasty skin infection requiring antibiotics as the result of wearing a novelty Christmas earring

Reminder: Writing Home Starts on Tuesday!

The most compelling stories of all? Surely, the stories that made you who you are! The first instalment of Writing Home will drop into your inbox on Tuesday if you are subscribed. If you want to learn more about yourself, gain insights, find positive reframes for bad experiences and/or write a memoir, this is perfect for you, and I hope you’ll join us. The first one is free. I can’t wait!

1. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

2. I’ve added this footnote to get the ‘squared’ subscript. But might as well as add the detail that Materialism asserts that these measurable, energetic forms of matter (brain waves and radio waves), are generated by physical processes.

3. As I know from my experience in other “taboo” (i.e. outside the dominant paradigm) areas of research, ad hominem attacks are the main tool used against them. Discredit the researcher, knock down one or two straw man arguments, and you barely have to engage with the actual research.

4. Fugelsang, J. A., Stein, C. B., Green, A. E. and Dunbar, K. N. (2004). "Theory and Data Interactions of the Scientific Mind: Evidence from the Molecular and the Cognitive Laboratory." Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 86-95. Read an accessible summary of their research here: Lehrer, J. (2009). "Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up." Wired Magazine.

5. For more detail: https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a

6. The poem, written in the mid-1990s, was published in How Things Are On Thursday (2004). The rest of this poem is fictional: I have never helped the police find a missing person.

Helping the Police With Their Enquiries
Ros Barber

Three miles away, I feel the letter hit the mat. 
It’s been this way since I grew up.
For years I fought my senses,
tried not to see the monsters in the cup,

an accident lolling in milk, or in the sink
my father’s cut whiskers and slub of foam 
casually doodling the shape he would make
when his heart shut down.  I almost don’t go home,  

as if turning tail could make the truth untrue.
The bus limps through the traffic and the rain,
mops up the loose pedestrians on the street,
as raindrops conspire into patterns, the same

dumb show.  The way the girl’s face 
sprinkled itself on my windowsill,
made all of dust, and when I tried to rub her out
I ached like someone taken ill.

Over a week, she fell to me in swaths.
A daughter’s name called empty in a park.
The egg-yellow insides of a shockless van.
The scent of rope and linseed in the dark. 

It’s all they’ve got to go on.
The van’s ex-Telecom, they say. 
I tell them I sense a wood, a railway line.
Her breath, marshmallow white, stopped yesterday. 

Closer now, that letter’s almost a shout. It’s not a gift.
To taste, in my mouth, the envelope’s cold blue,
to clench like the stiffened fist that held the pen
and scratched my name, to know it is from you.