Recently I started watching My Little Pony: Friendship as Magic on the recommendation of numerous friends. It has been entertaining for the most part, but in episode 15, I hit a problem.
The main character, Twilight Sparkle, is an avid intellectual, who is constantly reading and learning about the magic of the world. In episode 15, a friend of hers, Pinkie Pie, reveals a strange talent for divination: When something is about to fall, her tail twitches. Various other manifestations also exist, in excruciating detail.
Twilight Sparkle is very unhappy with this "unscientific" state of affairs. She attempts (to my delight) to do Science to Pinkie Pie, however her attempts to do Science are frustratingly foiled; in large part because her experiments ignore the nature of the phenomenon.
After watching and being frustrated by this episode, I decided that it would be more fun to come up with better experiments that would cut to the core of the issue and really investigate the subject.
My first idea was, if Pinkie Pie's tail twitches when something falls, place Pinkie Pie in a room. In a room next to her, drop things, and have someone else record her responses and timing.
Once you can reliably predict and cause tail twitches, try holding her tail still. See if, say, the rest of her body starts shaking, or the thing stops falling. See if the twitches return if she is asleep. See how far away you can make something fall and still get a reaction.
The list could continue forever! What ideas do you have? You're welcome to seek out and watch the episode, and give experiments that would apply well to Pinkie Pie in particular, or just consider the idea that someone claims that their arm twitches noticeably when something is about to fall, and has used their twitchy arm to accurately predict several falling objects for you, in an uncontrolled setting. How would you Do Science to them (assuming their full cooperation)?
EDIT: it occurred to me immediately after submitting that "Experimental design" would have been a better title beginning that "Rationality exercise," but assuming the RSS issues are unresolved I will not change it.
[Note: I have not watched this show, but I have a horrible feeling I'm going to]
The first step would be to carry out a preliminary study to properly identify the nature of Pinky Pie's claim, and make sure it's not trivially explainable. If the claim is that her tail twitches whenever anything in the world is dropped, and Pinky Pie has early-onset Parkinson's Disease, we can all go home early.
We should compile all anecdotal accounts of Pinky Pie's precognitive tail twitches. Given the prevalence of falling objects in the world, there is presumably some limiting factor and factors distinguishing falling objects she can predict and falling objects she can't. I would hypothesise the two most important factors are mass and distance.
We would need to then devise a mechanism for recording the time, and if possible the geolocation, of every tail twitch Pinky Pie experiences. It would also be useful to ascertain whether the tail twitch is a binary state or if there are different magnitudes of twitch. A good initial experiment would be to introduce Pinky Pie to a) an environment with lots of falling objects, and b) an environment where there are no objects to fall, using her natural habitat as a control environment, to see if the frequency of her tail twitches corresponds with what I will term "ambient fallyness".
Assuming this establishes the veracity of her claim, we would need to establish a more precise description of the trigger event in order to determine the nature of the phenomenon, as well as in order to reliably reproduce it in experimental circumstances. Will objects induced to fall artificially still trigger the tail twitch, or does it exclusively happen with "natural" falling objects? The latter strikes me as a less likely trigger for an acausal physiological response in a talking pony, simply because it relies on the ability to determine volition, whereas the former could have a straightforward mechanical anticause.
Working on the assumption that artificial falls can trigger the twitch, once we've arrived at this juncture, it becomes important to distinguish whether or not the trigger is the subjectively observed event of an object falling or the mechanical event of an object being accelerated by gravity. To this extent, Pinky Pie must be made to observe objects in her own inertial frame of reference while subject to a parabolic flight path, while in free fall, and while having achieved terminal velocity.
I hope she likes heights.
She has a hot-air balloon and has voluntarily traveled to a pegasus community where all the surfaces on which she could stand were clouds, so I think it is safe to assume that she does.