Anecdotal evidence of psychic abilities; any 'readers' out there?
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Thursday, September 22, 2005 21:54
VIEWED: 4733
PAGE 3 of 5
Shiny4004,
Thanks for the note.
Only a few seasons!?
Hehehe!
HAR!HAR!HAR!!
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Chris,
On the "Best Buffy" thread I was about to ask you to notice the music on "The Body" next time you watched it, but someone gave it away already.
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Chris,
I know someone with, hmm, abilities. He can drive without being able to see. Like through ZERO visibility blizzards. He can find places he doesn't know--without a map--he'll just know where to turn. There is the usual knowing who is calling without caller ID, and seeing stuff in dreams that come true. These things don't happen consistently, or even all that often. But I've personally seen them happen enough to think there is something there.
Interesting thread. You are just so creative.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky 
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When I was a little kid, I saw a Star Trek episode wherein Spock said, "Instruments register only that which they were designed to register, space still contains vast unknowns."
Ever since then I've been aware that in trying to measure and quantify and label, what we don't know far exceeds what we do.
And psychic phenomena is an area that science is almost afraid of, due to it's inability to examine under laboratory conditions.
Speaking of which, anyone ever see 'The Legend Of Hell House'?
What a movie on the subject!!!
Chrisisallpale
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Quote:As a scientist, I want to clarify that science is a method of obtaining knowledge, and therefore cannot be afraid of anything. Some fields are harder than others to examine using science, but I don't think it is fear that keeps scientists away. It is more lack of exposure and ignorance. Most scientists probably have never seen a psychic performance and haven't any clue how to study it.
Originally posted by chrisisall:
And psychic phenomena is an area that science is almost afraid of, due to it's inability to examine under laboratory conditions.
The problem with studying psychic ability is lack of consistency. I believe it is more like athletic talent (where homeruns are rare) than musical or intellectual talent (where you can pretty much perform on demand). But because psychic performance comes from the mind, people tend to expect it to be more on demand, like playing the piano or solving equations. When that doesn't happen, skeptics dismiss psychic phenomena as myths or hoaxes. Of course, it doesn't help that there ARE a lot of myths and hoaxes.
It is not science that fears psychic abilities, but society. Think X-Men. Society doesn't want people who can read minds or the future or control material objects in another room. I never believe anyone who has a TV show about talking to the dead, for example. If someone could really talk to the dead, they wouldn't go public about their ability to expose murderers.
I think the only way for a truly gifted psychic (who can perform consistently) to "come out"any to the public is to disguise psychic or telekinetic abilities as clever, entertaining magic tricks. When people think they're fake, it is not so scary anymore.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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Thanks for the sports analogy, CTS. That's a good one. It would be absurd for a baseball player to hit a ball out of the park when there's no game on and call it a home run, or to conclude because a game is called on account of rain that the players on the two teams involved have lost the ability to play. Problem is, the forces that define and determine the success or failure of a "psychic event" are every bit as unknown to science as the mechanism of psychic awareness itself. If there are enough "unknowns" in a system, things can't help looking pretty random. And as with athletic competition, psychic awareness is fundamentally an interaction--either between the minds of two people, or between the mind of the psychic and the latent consciousness of his surroundings.
For some reason, the idea that the entire universe is simply conscious, that there is awareness looking back at you no matter where you look is very hard for most people of European ancestry to fathom. I'm not talking about "God"--some supernatural individual who hides himself in the wind blowing through the reeds; some centralized authority in the sky, thinking up rules for us to break--I'm talking about simple conscious awareness in your cat, a rock, a sofa, a t.v. set or nitrogen atoms.
Then there's the false dichotomy of subjectivity/objectivity that most scientific thinkers take for granted. Consciousness is believed to define the "subjective" and the material world is said to define the "objective." In such a universe, science is the best way for the subjective to authentically encounter the objective. But if reality is fundamentally conscious, then so-called objective reality has habits and opinions and interests of its own that interfere with scientific inquiry at every turn. So, not only do people tend to see what they want to see, but the universe tends to show what it wants to show--and to whom.
Science, by its nature, relies on a psychically empty, inanimate world on the other side of our five senses. Science may not be afraid, but psychic phenomena definitely threaten science as we know it at its core.
HKCavalier
Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
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Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
He can find places he doesn't know--without a map--he'll just know where to turn.
This is actually not that uncommon, humans do seem to have some level of the same 'homing instinct' that animals do, it's just that our reliance on technology has caused us to ignore and suppress it, so it's fairly atrophied in most people.
The slackerhood of having a GPS handy just makes it worse, I figure.. but yes, humans DO have that instinct, which probably works the same way it does in animals, so those studies could likely carry right over to our own species.
As far as 'abilities' ... I also think there's some crossover between keen understanding of human nature, specific people and pyschology that apply as well, but at the high end of it, there's likely some crossover between that and true talent, I think Rhine and Brown made notes about same, but never really investigated that end of things.
I also think ole Kirlian was on to more than he knew, but no one has ever carried forward his research either, as religion tends to get heavily in the way of studies like those.
Believing that such things MAY exist, is a lot more sensible than beliving utterly that they do not, because the evidence leans to the former.
-F
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Hi fellow Browncoats!
I just have to respond to this, because someone has to play Scully to you all's Mulder. The first thing I wanted to respond to was the idea that science is "frightened" of psychic phenomena. I can't think of anything that is further from the truth.
Scientists investigate strange and unusual phenomena all the time (such as the properties of subatomic particles, quantum physics, etc.). Saying that they would be hesitant or even scared of studying such an extremely interesting (and highly useful!) topic as psychic abilities gravely underestimates the willingness of scientists to explore new areas. This would open up an entirely new field of research, and whoever managed to do it would almost certainly will a nobel prize at some point.
The problem is that there isn't a phenomenon here to study. Nothing needs to be explained--take for example the anecdote of the ATV being flipped over on Knibblet's boss. First of all, anecdotes can't be used as evidence of anything. Second, even if they could, there's a problem here which is the fact that ATV's are very dangerous and everyone knows it. It doesn't quite take psychic abilities to be worried when someone you know goes out for a weekend excursion on one of those things. I don't know what the odds of breaking your neck are, but I think we can agree that they're much higher than the ATV manufacturer would like you to know. All that happened here was: Boss takes ATV on trip. Knibblet worries. Boss gets flipped over. Knibblet feels the worry was validated (and it was). Nothing psychic is happening here.
Most psychic "phenomena" are either a hoax or a misinterpretation of feelings or events. Science could make it it's business to investigate and disprove psyhcic claims (and other paranormal claims, for that matter), but being honest, it's not worth the time or the taxpayer's money. If there was a real phenomenon here, you can be sure that scientists would be investigating it.
There is a famous example of psychic abilities being disproved back in the 1800's (I think). The guy's name was Mesmer and he had this whole cult of people following him--he was famous enough that a group of prominent scientists (including Benjamin Franklin, if I remember right) got interested in him and his "abilities." Using the scientific method, he was exposed as a hoax and his following eventually disapeared. I'm sure the same could be done for any paranormal or psychic phenomenon you care to name.
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Quote:Hear, hear. Thank you.
Originally posted by CUnknown:
Saying that they would be hesitant or even scared of studying such an extremely interesting (and highly useful!) topic as psychic abilities gravely underestimates the willingness of scientists to explore new areas.
Quote:Science wouldn't categorically conclude that psychic phenomena do not exist, just because many past claims of "phenomena" can be explained to *some* scientists' satisfaction within our current paradigm.
The problem is that there isn't a phenomenon here to study.
Quote:First of all, why would they make it their goal to "disprove" it? A good scientist would apply the same amount of skepticism as he/she would to any other field, but would also be open to unexpected findings, whichever direction they might lie. Secondly, yes, there are scientists who specialize in investigating paranormal phenomena. http://www.parapsych.org/mission_statement.html
Science could make it it's business to investigate and disprove psyhcic claims (and other paranormal claims, for that matter), but being honest, it's not worth the time or the taxpayer's money. If there was a real phenomenon here, you can be sure that scientists would be investigating it.
Now I'm not familiar with their research and quality of their publications, but the point is, there are scholars using the scientific method to explore this field.
Quote:See, I have a problem with being so sure about dismissing an entire field in the name of science. The science I know is careful about not jumping to conclusions.
I'm sure the same could be done for any paranormal or psychic phenomenon you care to name.
Is there a dearth of dramatic psychic anomalies that defy conventional explanation? Yes, I agree with you that there isn't a lot out there to investigate. You can assume it is because it just isn't there. I believe it is because it is well hidden.
Take my friend who can drive through blizzards. He has other more dramatic "psychic" experiences. But he doesn't want folks to know. For that matter, he doesn't really want people to know he drives through blizzards either. He doesn't understand or like his abilities. Though he'll use them in a pinch, most of the time he likes to forget about them and just be a normal guy. He doesn't go out there volunteering for psychic studies or whatnot. I wonder how many others like him are out there.
I'm not trying to persuade you to acknowledge that psychic phenomena exist. I don't know if they do. I simply know that science is a lot more open to possibilities than dismissing all "phenomena" categorically.
Can't Take My Gorram Sky
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Ah, CUnknown, you prolly think you're being helpful, or at least sensible. You're prolly unaware that your arguments are shot through with prejudice. You're prolly unaware that blithely discounting other people's experiences hurts them as surely as a slap. After all, most humans grow up having their experiences discounted and many eventually learn to accept it. Many learn to discount their own experiences and call it "objectivity."
It makes me so angry that ignorance like yours is the norm in the western world; that you can waltz in here with your false certainty and label someone like Knibblet a charlatan or a fool and not realize that you're simply carrying on the work of Popes and inquisitors and despots throughout history.
Interesting that you should pick Scully as your model. Over the course of years of encountering "the paranormal" Scully eventually had to credit the stuff as actually going on, not because she did a bunch of double blind tests and published in a peer reviewed journal, but because it was happening to her. This is the way most of us determine what is real and what isn't. Of course, in the meantime, fans of the show had to watch her season after season "debunking" and explaining away things that we all knew were happening to her week after week. Welcome to my world! LOL
The first thing a "scientist" like you will do with a story like Knibblet's is discount the emotional experience at the center of the event. She did not describe a case of simple "worry," she described an overwhelming and debilitating experience which I'm sure she would differentiate from ordinary worry. The nature of her reaction cues her to its psychic significance. Similar to Scully in the latter seasons of the X-files, Knibblet's husband has come to accept the validity of these psychic experiences to which he's been witness.
By removing its extraordinary context (witnessed by her husband), you destroy the meaning of Knibblet's experience. That kind of behavior just makes you look bad.
Quote:
Originally posted by CUnknown:
Using the scientific method, he was exposed as a hoax and his following eventually disapeared. I'm sure the same could be done for any paranormal or psychic phenomenon you care to name.
There is so much of life that we can't use the scientific method to authenticate. And we don't have to. I don't have to lock a child in a box to know that it will make the child crazy, but scientists will spend plenty of money on such research. Love is the most important force in the universe and science has jack to say about it so far.
On the other hand, the scientific method has been used to support plenty of evil nonsense; people have concluded that animals don't feel pain, that women do not have a sex drive and native Africans have smaller brains than Europeans. Eventually these theories, formed by prejudice and cultural malice, are discredited by science, even though millions of lay people knew this stuff was b.s. to begin with.
You will be similarly disproved, CUnknown. I just know it.
P.S: Sorry, to come off all harsh like this, but I'd really like you to think twice before you post this kind of insensitive and ignorant attack in the future. My intent is not that you censor yourself, but that you be mindful of the emotional violence you may commit and post without reflexively discounting highly personal information people have been generous enough to share with you.
HKCavalier
Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
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