Future directions in precognition research: more research can bridge the gap between skeptics and proponents

What if you could use future events to make decisions right now? That's the wild question this opinion piece tackles. The authors argue that precognition research — the study of whether people can somehow sense things before they happen — needs bolder, more practical experiments that could actually convince skeptics. They point out that no known law of physics actually forbids information traveling backward in time, citing real theoretical frameworks from quantum mechanics where time can run both directions equally well. The paper proposes two creative experiments. One would use a task where people practice something after making predictions, to see if that future practice somehow improves their earlier guesses — essentially trying to predict roulette outcomes using backward-flowing learning effects. The other involves hooking people up to brainwave monitors (EEG) to detect brain signals that pop up before a stimulus is even shown, potentially building what they call a "retrocausal brain-computer interface" — a device powered by the future. The authors are refreshingly honest about the field's problems: effect sizes are tiny, replications are hard to pull off, and they draw a pointed comparison to social priming research, which faced its own credibility crisis. What makes this piece notable is the pedigree — co-author Jonathan Schooler runs a well-respected mainstream psychology lab, lending unusual credibility. He later described his approach as "entertaining without endorsing" these ideas, which is a delightfully careful way to engage with something this far out.