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Did You Know I Was Going To Make This Post? [Psychic-ness!]
An-D
EnthusiastAshevilleRegistered User regular
EnthusiastAshevilleRegistered User regular
Okay, I had a rather emotional discussion with someone (he was the one getting emotional) about the validity of psychic powers - like telepathy and telekinesis. He continuously made the point that telepathy and telekinesis had been scientifically proven...to which I logically raised the BS-flag on. I felt that if such a scientific discovery had been made, I (probably most people) would have heard of it and probably would've dropped out of college to develop such powers. I mean, seriously, that would be awesome. He insisted that it had been done.
And since I don't spend a lot of time looking up things I feel are crazy, I couldn't disprove him by bringing up an article or something. Also, given how much we're learning about the human brain, I felt that it was possible that this event could have occurred. And if it had occurred, had it been replicated? This was a major part of my argument and he claimed it couldn't be replicated because if one didn't believe in telepathy, they would block it out. That was the major logical roadblock that stopped the debate me. Disbelief shouldn't be a variable in real scientific experiments...in my opinions anyway.
Still, it got me thinking that I may be behind in my knowledge of this area of paranormal-ness. So I whisked up a thread.
So, what do you all think (or know)? Is the idea of psychic powers actually valid and plausible or is it just sci-fi/fantasy craziness?
And since I don't spend a lot of time looking up things I feel are crazy, I couldn't disprove him by bringing up an article or something. Also, given how much we're learning about the human brain, I felt that it was possible that this event could have occurred. And if it had occurred, had it been replicated? This was a major part of my argument and he claimed it couldn't be replicated because if one didn't believe in telepathy, they would block it out. That was the major logical roadblock that stopped the debate me. Disbelief shouldn't be a variable in real scientific experiments...in my opinions anyway.
Still, it got me thinking that I may be behind in my knowledge of this area of paranormal-ness. So I whisked up a thread.
So, what do you all think (or know)? Is the idea of psychic powers actually valid and plausible or is it just sci-fi/fantasy craziness?
An-D on
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One night, I was sitting in bed reading, when all of a sudden, I had a horrible premonition that my grandfather, who was in poor health at the time, had died. Mere seconds later, the phone rang. I hurried over to pick it up, expecting to hear the terrible news of my grandfather.
It was a telemarketer. I called my grandfather - he was fine. I then resolved to remember this incident and tell everyone I knew about it.
The point is that most people wouldn't. So-called "psychic" behavior or "premonitions" among everyday people can probably be chalked up to confirmation bias. "Psychic" behavior among professionals has been repeatedly debunked as fraudulent. It's just not out there, fun though it is to imagine.
I'm not saying its impossible, but i've yet to see a believable, reputable piece of evidence on the matter. You should have put the burden of proof on him much sooner in your argument.
Right now? Mostly bullshit.
Which is not to say that I don't believe it exists, just that it hasn't been proven in any capacity, and we don't get it, and a lot of people would disagree about the specifics.
I am pretty intuitive. I am really good at reading people's emotions. Maybe I've got a sense that hasn't been uncovered yet, or maybe I'm just naturally good at reading body language, intonation, and word choice and putting together logical scenarios.
I also practice something that is like faith healing (reiki), and doing that, I have given people comfort and, they say, helped them feel better. Science appears to be iffy on whether reiki works (there are some studies that support it, and prayer, as helping people with chronic conditions, but the studies have been critiqued justifiably as lacking hard data and control groups). It appears to help the people I use it on, but it's never something I'm going to try to convert someone into a true believer on, because until there's a bunch of science backing it up, it's more prayer than anything else, and I try not to evangelize.
Ultimately, whether I'm praying or trying to figure out what's going on in someone's life, I get the best results when I stick to the mantra, "You've got five senses, not six." I don't think there's a magic lightswitch that gets flicked on to turn somebody into Matt Parkman. I think that some people can use free association and intuition and observation and get some uncanny results, but it's no crazier, and also no more common, then the people who can orient to north naturally in a dark room based on direction sense alone.
Okay, flame on.
Quick, while the challenge is still running!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
We got two more years :P
So the general consensus is that the stories we hear about psychics today are mostly bullshit? I kind of assumed that, but part of me kind of hoped for someone to throw up a scientific journal about something being proven (I can't find a reputable source anywhere). I mean...that would be sweet. But really...its pretty much what I assumed. BS.
The dude was making some pretty intense claims that he claimed came from him being empathic (knowing something was wrong with a girl when she was acting normal...and it turned out her mom had died etc), and to me it just seemed like maybe he was good at reading body language or other things that takyris pointed out. Most "psychic" abilities that involve that kind of stuff can mostly be drawn up to those things...or just coincidence.
Others are at least somewhat plausible, such as things involving control over one's body and faith healing or whatever, because their is precedant with the placaebo effect and people who for whatever reason concsciously control muscle the rest of us can't. Mind over body isn't anything magical, but neither is it without basis in reality or applicability.
Intuition is a good example because it is at least plausible to consider that the brain is a very advanced, very efficient data processing system honed by millenia of evolution. It is concievable that one can process information and arrive at conclusions on a sub-concious level, and these conclusions manifest in the concious mind as intuition, visions, etc.
If you listen to their analyses then the 2.3% (or some small percentage) deviation from chance is of significance.
If I rememebr correctly their statistical methods were flawed and would count a wild lack of success as "negative powers" and things like that.
The trick is "significant" doesn't mean "important".
It's only worthwhile if they replicate it with a small sample. That amount of trials basically amounts to never having done it at all. Your chance of a false rejection of null just goes through the roof and you can't say anything anymore.
So, basically, throw that experiment out with the trash and anything they ever said about it.
If I get some time I can provide references to some papers that have support and refute psychic phenomena (actually if you have university access you can just go to PubMed or PsychInfo and search for things like clairvoyance, remote viewing, whatever). The problem is that many of them have not been replicated, so they stand as very shaky evidence.
Still has yet to be claimed.
edit:Beat...by a lot
The real question is, can I go to the psychic on the corner and convince them to admit that, hey, we're all adults here, you're just scamming suckers, right? I can work with that. Just admit it. Just give me that.
Or do they actually believe they have powers?
The brain does emit radiation, which is why applying electrodes to your head can let people read your brain waves. It's theoretically possible, at least, that something in your brain could be able to interpret the radiation given off by someone else's brain as feelings or thoughts or something. I mean, not bloody likely, but there's at least a possible mechanism.
Shit like pyrokinesis and telekinesis and the like is clearly impossible, though.
Some folks are con artists, some folks genuinely believe they have special abilities.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The energy emitted by your brain is so weak and so short-ranged that you'd have to apply electrodes or some other physical, proximal mechanism to do so.
The only manner in which human telepathy could function is by holding heads together, or similar.
Yes, that's right.
Mind-meld.
Regarding the Aristotelian idea of there being five senses:
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
there was an interesting article about how senses can act as plug-ins for other kinds of input, as well. for example, blind people can receive taste sensation to help them navigate a room, and it can be almost as effective as sight; the body quickly adapts and creates conceptual three dimensional spaces based on taste. there was also a belt made of cell-phone vibrators, always vibrating north, that a guy wore; he never got lost, found it much easier to navigate the city, and was disoriented and confused when the belt was removed.
She always says she has dreams about things that happen later, but this is the only one I can recall.
Coincidence probably, but a spooky one.
This should be a top priority! Once we master getting stemcells to differentiate into brain cells consistently we just drill a hole in each of your skulls and bridge the gap! So who wants to fund my research? C'mon don't be shy!
This is genious. Have you got a source on this somewhere?
Cell phone vibrator belt yields nothing obvious and I'm a bit wary of googling vibrator belt at work.
What the hell Eljeffe?
Maybe you are thinking of fmri and cat scans which put a slightly radioactive substance into the blood (not enough to hurt) so it can read changes in blood flow to the brain.
Straight "brain wave" scanning like you are thinking of is electromagnetic. I mean maybe you could think of it as radiation but it's a pretty lazy way to do so and...
Actually no wait keep thinking that it's amusing to imagine peoples heads being mini fusion reactors or something.
Carry on.
Plus I think that even if 1% of professional mediums/psychics are for real, the vast majority are evil and manipulative, playing on people's emotions like that for money. In no other industry can you get away with such lies (eg. advertising products - you can't say it'll make you live forever or something).
Except that you're strange and eager to disprove the existence of psychic abilities. Oh snap!
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
I'd love one of them - add a GPS widget that increased the vibration as you got closer to your intended destination, and it'd be like having your own Crazy Taxi-style floating arrow.
http://mobiquitous.com/active-belt-e.html
actually pager vibrators apparently.
i'm trying to find the article about sense-substitution/plug-ins right now.
Okay.
But I am.
Not psychic. But better at reading people than the average person.
Just like 49% of the world is.
What is it?
If I'm bored during the day, and a random episode of *favorite TV show* starts playing in the background of my mind, I will see that episode on the TV that night.
congratulations! your psychic power is:
confirmation bias
Those are all filed under "somatosensation", which is what most people are thinking of when they say "touch".
You've got five senses: vision, audition, gustation, olfactation, and somatosensation.
I knew you would say that.
that's a hell of a lot of stuff under a broad umbrella.
i don't think there's any real reason to classify balance under the same umbrella as touch.
I didn't see "balance" up there, I read a little quickly. But isn't that in your inner ear?
Pain? Heat? Yeah, that's under "touch". I don't classify "tasting sugars" and "tasting acids" as two separate senses. "Seeing red wavelengths" and "seeing blue wavelengths" aren't two separate senses, even though some people only have one or the other. "Feeling heat" and "feeling pressure" are not two separate senses.
Anyway it's completely explainable and not a mysteeeeerious sense. In the end it uses nerves to connect to the brain like all the rest.
edit: Vestibular system! Hah.
I didn't remember it I looked up my notes. :oops:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_system
I'm really goddam embarrassed actually because I found this fascinating when I learnt it but I've forgotten all the terms and only know how it works.
Basically up down head motions is measured by these tricky little cells on "plates" in your ear that are affected by gravity and thus fire off (or don't fire off) nerve impulses depending on how you move it. (Freefall sickness experienced by astronaughts is due to, you know, no sense of up or down head movement anymore cos no gravity!
Left right (circular stuff) is by fluid moving around horizontally through the circular tubes, it passes a little sensory hair cell that fires when its moving one way and doesn't when it's going the other.
Now you might think wait how can it measure not firing? Simple the nerves are checked by the other ear. Because of the way the fluid moves the other one will be firing if one isn't, so it works by a sequence of feedback cancelling, and when it doesn't cancel, the brain interprets a movement.
Incidentally if you cripple one of the vestibular systems in one ear completely, like total trauma and loss of function, you can feel like you are spinning all the time.
Oh and this stuff is connected to the eyes, we use the vestibular system to know where the eye has to go when moving the head and looking at someting. Man I'd dig into my notes proper but I got no time right now, the wiki should have most stuff I think (I haven't checked).
Very fascinating and fully explainable system. No spooky here, move along.
Spooky.
I wasn't claiming balance to be spooky, just that some entirely natural things might be considered to be outside the realm of the traditional five senses. From what you say balance certainly sounds different enough from hearing to be considered a seperate sense. Just because it largely rests in the same organ as hearing doesn't mean it's the same sense. The fact that taste also needs touch doesn't mean we don't consider them discrete. I would also argue that touch, as defined by Daedalus, is very broad and lumps together a bunch of stuff that could, quite logically, be considered discrete phenomena.
I have zero belief in psychic phenomena, btw. Except the raw, primal and supernatural power of my sexiness.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
I can't find the youtube video where the push-attack thing is done to the reporter, but it was hilariously ridiculous. I hope you all know what I'm talking about. Would you all call that a paranormal skill? Martial artists can do some pretty crazy things...
If only that worked with Radon.
EDIT: (The not believing so it doesn't work part)