(1) Contra the tapes
The Telepathy Tapes1 are a podcast series that showcase the telepathic abilities of non-speaking autistic children. A typical episode of the pod is as follows: a non-verbal autistic child is thought to be totally incapable of communication. At some point, the child learns a technique called Facilitated Communication (FC), and it is discovered that the child has a rich inner world previously unknown to their parents or teachers. Most surprisingly, it is found that the child harbors supernatural abilities: telepathy, remote viewing, access to psychic groupchats, etc
Despite attracting a cult following2, this podcast is widely dismissed as pseudoscience3. I initially found skeptics to be infuriating. They refused to engage with the stories presented, resorting to a priori reasoning for why the Tapes must be incorrect (or worse—dangerous). I reasoned that if the Tapes are fake, it would require an enormous effort—teachers, parents, assistants to the autistic kids; the creator of the podcast, Ky Dickens; videographers, editors—would all need to be in on the hoax.
I began to lurk parents of non-verbal autistics Facebook groups and youtube channels. Many of them really believed in the Tapes, and they corroborated them with their own experiences. You see, in the Tapes, it isn’t just a handful of kids and parents who report psychic phenomena. There are hundreds or thousands of kids across the world who seem to be independently reporting the same, eerily similar psychic experiences.
My metaphysics was split in two. In one world, we have telepathic kids, psychic phenomena, morphic resonance4—consciousness is not confined to the body, all life is connected, the universe is magical. What is the alternative? Boring scientific materialism. Hundreds of parents are delusional or even lying. Ky Dickens, misled by wishful thinking, has deceived herself and millions of listeners.
I was a bit horrified after I cashed out $10 for the paywalled videos on the Telepathy Tapes website. As promised, these supplemental videos show kids dutifully tapping out words that were hidden to them. But, as the critics claimed, there is some deep strangeness to these videos. Mothers make symbols with their fingers, visibly push limbs, and employ suspicious voice subvocalizations. Why are they doing all these things while their mind is being read?
The technique used in the Tapes that allows non-verbal autists to communicate is called Facilitated Communication (FC). Basically, an assistant (usually the mother of the autistic child) will hold the arm of the kid while the kid taps or points to letters. “Spelling”. The speller, lacking the fine motor skills for speaking or handwriting, relies on support at the arm, or the shoulder, or the head, in order to be able to spell out words. Critics of FC point out that the mother could be manipulating or cueing the kid to spell what she wants (just like a Ouijia board). There are seemingly damning studies that support this hypothesis, discrediting FC:
Message passing tests come in a few varieties, but in a prototypical case, the autistic person is shown one picture and the person assisting them is shown a different one. In studies using this test, the autistic person was usually (but not always) unable to report what they had seen (and sometimes they reported what the assistant had seen, demonstrating that the assistant can influence the person they are assisting).5
One particularly strong critic is the youtube channel FCIsNotScience who is a former Facilitated Communication assistant herself. In one video she showcases a study like the one mentioned above: the mother is shown a picture of shoes, the child is shown a cat, and “s-n-e-a-k-e-r” is spelled. Absolutely damning! The mother is the one doing all the actual spelling. Meanwhile, the kid is unable to spell what he was explicitly shown.
(2) An attempted defense
But if you believe in the Telepathy Tapes, you might see this as a powerful piece of evidence for the supernaturality of the kid. Why? He chose to spell what his mom saw, because he can read her mind! In fact, such a double blind experiment, where the mother is shown a different word than the child, is a perfect test testing for telepathy.
The Tapes claim that these autistic kids are not particularly embodied. They are unable to control their limbs well, and use their mother’s body as a sort of bridge to the natural world. One boy described himself as being mostly unaware that he even had arms and legs. Such behavior seems consistent with the often-flailing, uncoordinated movements of these non-speakers.
Imagine you’re a non-verbal autistic child and you’re not aware that you’ll be subjected to a deceitful experiment. You notice that you’re given an image of a cat, but you also see through your mother’s eyes, and you see she received an image of a shoe. What are you most likely to spell?
The children of the Telepathy Tapes consistently report that they simply don’t understand the concept of deceit, lies, secrets. Their abilities, they report, are governed by the physics of love; love is sincere6, and abhors concealment. Such a physics, which is based on the validity of the psyche—emotions, feelings, experience—is not easily measurable by materialist tools. A double-blind study simply may not be possible.
I am also skeptical that cueing, e.g. by the assistant, is capable of precisely spelling out words on behalf of the non-speaker. One reason for this is an appeal to information theory: a typical keyboard will have around 37 possible characters (letters, numbers, a space). To convey a specific letter you’ll need to cue around bits of information. There are examples of suspicious physical cues from mothers in the Telepathy Tapes bonus footage, but they seem too lossy—perhaps a few bits of information at most. When there are just minor physical cues and a couple seconds involved in letter selection, I am skeptical that 5-6 bits can be conveyed distinctly and accurately.
Moreover, the Tapes are rich with examples of psi phenomena besides tests for telepathy. There are stories of kids candidly describing what teachers bought the night before; or sensing when someone far away has died; or finding hidden objects in the house. Most strangely, there is a telepathic multiplayer chatroom called the Hill which apparently hundreds of non-speaking people tune into everyday. Dickens reports learning about the Hill from multiple parents independently across the world. One episode even features a relationship between non-speakers where they claim to primarily communicate telepathically. By themselves, these anecdotes do not constitute scientific study, but they hint toward deep strangeness that ought to be taken seriously.
(3) On two peaks
I oscillate between skepticism and embrace of the claims of the Tapes. It’s just all so murky. I don’t think I’m alone. The Tapes are one of a million datapoints that unfortunately fail to prove psi phenomena. In contrast, the material worldview has no need to prove itself. It is the natural perspective in our modern, scientific world. It does not easily budge. No study is rigorous enough, no religion survives its scrutiny, all faith wavers in its wake. It is one peak upon which I stand.
On the other hand, I remember that from no peak can one see the whole valley. Evidence bends to the interpretive lens of the observer. In my life I cannot help but feel the constant presence of synchronicity, divine patterns, hints of psi. On this peak magic is real and I feel powerful; so I let myself stand here as well.
Footnotes
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I found out about them through a JRE pod with their creator, Ky Dickens. ^
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e.g. by wikipedia, the atlantic, vice, the atlantic again, the times ^
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Morphic resonance. More in my sequel blog post blood from a stone. ^
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(from the Jaswal Lab, which claims to have demonstrated the validity of FC via eye tracking.) ^
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Romans 12:9. Disclaimer: I am not a Christian. ^
