“After a century of increasingly sophisticated investigations and more than a thousand controlled studies with combined odds against chance of 10 to the 104th power to 1, there is now strong evidence that psi phenomena exist.  While this is an impressive statistic, all it means is that the outcomes of these experiments are definitely not due to coincidence.  We’ve considered other common explanations like selective reporting and variations in experimental quality, and while those factors do moderate the overall results, there can be no little doubt that overall something interesting is going on.  It seems increasingly likely that as physics continues to redefine our understanding of the fabric of reality, a theoretical outlook for a rational explanation for psi will eventually be established.”

[Physicist Henry Stapp of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.]

            “How does the mid/brain cause one particular line of thought, or decision, to be sustained over another?  Stapp offers an intriguing speculation based on the Quantum Zeno Effect.  This refers to a prediction (since confirmed by experiments) that  the act of rapidly observing a quantum system forces that system to remain in its wavelike, indeterminate state, rather than to collapse into a particular, determined state.  As Stapp says,

            ‘Taken to the extreme, observing continuously whether an atom is in a certain state keeps it in that state forever.  For this reason, the Quantum Zeno Effect is also known as the watched pot effect.  The mere act of rapidly asking questions of a quantum system freezes it in a particular state, preventing it from evolving as it would if we weren’t peeking.  Simply observing a quantum system suppresses certain of its transitions to other states.’”