Abstract

The concept of redundancy, defined as multiple or repeated transmission of the same information, underlies most technical methods that have been proposed to increase the reliability of psi. However, if psi is independent of task complexity, as hypothesized in the concept that psi is a goal-oriented process, the redundancy methods may not generally increase the reliability of psi effects; they may only be adding complexity to the task and thus be irrelevant to the overall psi effect. The internal analysis of data from experiments using majority-vote procedures is the best way to investigate these ideas. A previous survey of psychokinesis (PK) experiments gave evidence favoring the hypothesis that psi is goal oriented. The present paper extends the investigation to the ESP literature. Only 1 majority-vote ESP experiment has been published in sufficient detail (R. M. Brier and W. V. Tyminksi; see record 1970-11550 -001) to enable the needed internal analyses to be carried out. Results are in line with the goal-oriented hypothesis and confirm the suggestion from the PK literature that psi achieves its goals in an efficient manner. (3 p ref)