ESP
Extrasensory perception (ESP), also known as the sixth sense, refers to the claimed ability to acquire knowledge of external events or objects through mechanisms other than the conventional physical senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell.[1] This purported phenomenon encompasses subtypes such as telepathy (direct mind-to-mind communication), clairvoyance (perception of remote or hidden objects), precognition (foreknowledge of future events), and psychokinesis (influence over physical systems without physical interaction).[2] The concept gained prominence in the early 20th century through experimental parapsychology, notably the work of J.B. Rhine at Duke University, who coined the term "ESP" in 1934 and conducted card-guessing tests using Zener decks to detect anomalous cognition.[3] Despite claims of statistical anomalies in early studies, Rhine's experiments faced substantial criticism for inadequate controls, including potential sensory leakage (unintended cues), experimenter bias, and insufficient randomization, which undermined their validity.[4] Subsequent efforts in parapsychology, including meta-analyses of ganzfeld telepathy protocols and remote viewing trials, have reported small effect sizes suggesting psi effects, yet these findings suffer from replication failures, selective reporting, and the absence of a plausible causal mechanism consistent with established physics.[2][5] Rigorous independent replications, such as those attempting to verify precognition in controlled laboratory settings, have consistently yielded null results, highlighting issues like the file-drawer problem where negative outcomes remain unpublished.[6] The mainstream scientific consensus holds that ESP lacks empirical support and represents a pseudoscientific claim, as articulated in evaluations by bodies like the National Academy of Sciences, which found no credible evidence for parapsychological phenomena after reviewing decades of research.[7] This skepticism stems from the failure to demonstrate ESP under stringent, double-blind conditions free from confounds, coupled with violations of core principles like locality and causality in quantum mechanics and relativity, for which no mediating theory has emerged.[6] Belief in ESP persists culturally and correlates with cognitive factors like intuitive thinking over analytical reasoning, but it has produced no practical applications or predictive successes verifiable by third-party adjudication.[1]Parapsychology and pseudoscience
Extrasensory perception
Extrasensory perception (ESP) refers to the alleged ability to acquire information about an external world or internal states through means other than the known physical senses, such as sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell.[8] Proposed forms include telepathy (direct mind-to-mind communication), clairvoyance (perception of remote or hidden objects or events), precognition (foreknowledge of future events), and psychokinesis (influence over physical systems without physical interaction), though the latter is sometimes distinguished as a separate psi phenomenon.[9] These claims originated in 19th-century spiritualism and psychical research but gained structured scrutiny in the 20th century through experimental parapsychology.[10] The term "extrasensory perception" was coined in 1934 by Joseph Banks Rhine, a psychologist at Duke University, who conducted early laboratory tests using Zener cards—decks of 25 cards with five symbol types (circle, cross, waves, square, star)—to assess subjects' guessing accuracy beyond chance levels of 20%.[11] Rhine's experiments, detailed in his 1934 book Extra-Sensory Perception, reported hit rates up to 32% in some trials, suggesting statistical anomalies.[11] However, subsequent analyses revealed methodological weaknesses, including sensory leakage (cues from imperfect shielding), cheating by subjects or experimenters, selective reporting of favorable trials, and failure to account for multiple comparisons inflating significance.[4] Critics, including mathematician John Pratt in a 1957 reanalysis of Rhine's data, found that inconsistencies in results and disregard for negative sessions undermined claims, with full datasets aligning more closely with chance expectations.[12] Rhine's protocols also permitted loose controls, such as allowing experimenters' expectations to influence scoring, contributing to non-replication in stricter settings.[13][14] Later efforts, such as Ganzfeld experiments developed in the 1970s, aimed to test telepathy by isolating a "receiver" in sensory deprivation (ping-pong balls over eyes, white noise headphones) while a "sender" viewed images or videos, with the receiver later identifying targets from four options. Meta-analyses of Ganzfeld studies, including over 100 sessions from the 1980s to 2000s, have reported hit rates around 32-35%, exceeding the 25% chance baseline with odds against chance estimated at billions to one in some reviews.[15][9] Proponents, such as parapsychologist Charles Honorton, argued these reduced sensory cues and standardized procedures strengthened evidence for psi effects.[16] Yet, independent replications, including a 1999 multicenter trial by skeptics Daryl Bem and Charles Honorton collaborators, yielded non-significant results (28% hit rate), attributed to improved randomization and blinding.[17] Critics highlight the "file-drawer effect"—unpublished null studies biasing meta-analyses—poor inter-lab consistency, and alternative explanations like subconscious cueing or statistical artifacts from small sample sizes (typically 20-50 trials per study).[18] A 2010 meta-analysis of forced-choice ESP (including Ganzfeld variants) claimed persistent small effects (effect size ~0.01), but mainstream reviews dismiss these as insufficiently robust against Type I errors and lacking theoretical mechanisms grounded in physics or neuroscience.[19][20] The scientific consensus holds that no reproducible evidence supports ESP under controlled conditions that eliminate confounds like fraud, bias, or probability miscalculations.[6] Organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences and psychological associations have reviewed parapsychological claims, concluding they fail falsification tests and do not integrate with established causal models of perception rooted in neural and sensory processing.[21] While belief in ESP persists—surveys indicate 40-60% endorsement in general populations, often linked to cognitive biases like confirmation bias—empirical neuroscience attributes apparent psi experiences to Bayesian inference errors, memory distortions, or cold reading rather than anomalous cognition.[1] Parapsychological journals report occasional positive findings, but these derive from outlier labs with potential experimenter effects, and broader replication attempts, including prizes like the James Randi Educational Foundation's $1 million challenge (unclaimed since 1964), yield null outcomes.[22] Absent a viable physical or biological substrate—such as quantum entanglement misapplied to macroscopic minds—ESP remains unsubstantiated by causal realism, with research constrained to fringe venues amid institutional skepticism.[23][8]Automotive and vehicle safety
Electronic stability program
The Electronic Stability Program (ESP), also known as Electronic Stability Control (ESC), is a computerized vehicle safety technology that detects and mitigates loss of traction by selectively applying brakes to individual wheels and modulating engine power to maintain directional control during skids or oversteer/understeer conditions.[24] It integrates with existing antilock braking systems (ABS) and traction control, using sensors to continuously monitor vehicle dynamics up to 25 times per second.[25] ESP originated from research into yaw control systems in the late 1980s, with Bosch engineers, led by Anton van Zanten, developing the core concept after initial tests in 1994 at their Renningen facility.[25] In collaboration with Daimler-Benz, Bosch introduced the first production ESP system in the Mercedes-Benz S-Class (W140) in August 1995, marking the debut of yaw-rate sensing in consumer vehicles derived from aerospace technology.[25] Widespread adoption accelerated after the 1997 "elk test" failure of the Mercedes A-Class highlighted stability vulnerabilities, leading to ESP's integration in that model by 1998.[25] Core components include a yaw-rate sensor measuring rotational speed around the vertical axis, a lateral acceleration sensor detecting side-to-side forces, a steering wheel angle sensor tracking driver input, wheel speed sensors from the ABS system, and an electronic control unit (ECU) that processes data to compute the intended versus actual vehicle path.[24] If divergence is detected—such as rear-wheel skidding (oversteer) or front-wheel plowing (understeer)—the ECU independently brakes the affected wheel(s) to generate counter-yaw torque while reducing throttle via engine management, without driver override except for temporary deactivation in off-road scenarios.[24] Empirical data from real-world crash analyses demonstrate ESP's effectiveness in reducing severe incidents. A U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study of 2001–2004 data found ESC-equipped passenger cars experienced 14% fewer fatal crashes overall and 31% fewer in single-vehicle scenarios, while sport utility vehicles (SUVs) saw 28% overall and 50% single-vehicle reductions.[26] Another NHTSA evaluation reported 35% fewer fatal crashes for cars and 67% for SUVs with the technology.[27] In Europe, Bosch estimates ESP has prevented approximately 750,000 injury accidents and saved over 22,000 lives from 1995 to 2025 across the EU and UK, based on supplied systems exceeding 350 million units globally.[25] Regulatory mandates have driven universal adoption. In the United States, NHTSA's Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 126 required ESC on all new passenger vehicles, phased in from 2008 for 50% of production and fully effective by September 2012.[28] In the European Union, ESC became compulsory for new car and light commercial vehicle models from November 2011, extending to all new vehicles by November 2014.[29] These requirements specify performance thresholds, such as maintaining 70% of maximum speed during understeer/oversteer maneuvers on low-friction surfaces.[30]Computing and information technology
Encapsulating Security Payload
The Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) is a member of the Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) protocol suite, designed to provide a combination of security services for Internet Protocol (IP) packets, including confidentiality through encryption, data origin authentication, connectionless integrity, protection against replay attacks, and limited traffic flow confidentiality.[31] It operates at the IP layer and supports both IPv4 and IPv6, using IP protocol number 50.[31] ESP implementations must support integrity protection and combined confidentiality with integrity, while confidentiality-only mode is optional.[31] ESP originated in the mid-1990s as part of early IPsec development efforts led by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), which contributed to the protocol's architecture for secure IPv6 implementations funded by DARPA.[32] The initial specification appeared in RFC 1827 in August 1995, providing basic confidentiality and optional authentication mechanisms.[33] This evolved into RFC 2406 in November 1998, which integrated authentication processing and anti-replay features more comprehensively while obsoleting the earlier version.[34] The current standard, RFC 4303 published in December 2005 by author Stephen Kent of BBN Technologies, obsoletes RFC 2406 and introduces enhancements such as extended sequence numbers (ESN) for improved anti-replay protection, support for combined-mode algorithms, and explicit handling of traffic flow confidentiality padding.[31][34] ESP supports two primary modes of operation: transport mode, which secures the payload and upper-layer protocols by inserting the ESP header after the original IP header, and tunnel mode, which encapsulates the entire original IP packet within a new IP header for protection, commonly used in virtual private networks (VPNs).[31] In both modes, ESP applies cryptographic algorithms for encryption (e.g., AES in block or stream modes) and integrity (e.g., HMAC-SHA), with NULL algorithms permitted as options but not recommended for production without justification.[31] Anti-replay protection is mandatory when integrity is selected, employing a 64-bit ESN (with only the low-order 32 bits transmitted) and a sliding window mechanism defaulting to 64 packets to detect and discard duplicate packets.[31] The ESP packet structure consists of a header, encrypted payload data, optional padding for block alignment or traffic flow obfuscation, and a trailer with an integrity check value (ICV).[31] The header includes a 32-bit Security Parameters Index (SPI) to identify the security association and a 32-bit sequence number.[31] The ICV, computed over the entire ESP packet excluding itself in some cases, ensures integrity and authentication.[31]| Field | Size (bytes) | Description |
|---|---|---|
| SPI | 4 | Identifies the security association for the receiver. |
| Sequence Number | 4 | Monotonic counter for anti-replay; low-order bits of ESN. |
| Payload Data | Variable | Encrypted original data, possibly including initialization vector (IV). |
| Padding | 0-255 | Aligns data to encryption block size or provides traffic flow confidentiality. |
| Pad Length | 1 | Indicates padding length. |
| Next Header | 1 | Identifies the encapsulated protocol (e.g., TCP, ICMP). |
| ICV | Variable (e.g., 12-16) | Integrity Check Value for authentication and integrity. |