Ariel...
POSTED BY: freelancertex
UPDATED: Monday, January 7, 2008 15:01
VIEWED: 11057
PAGE 6 of 7
Quote:Um... he was referring to River before she went to the Academy. She was good at physics and ballet and whatever else - that was clearly what he meant. There is no reason to assume he was referring to extra special abilities. We see none of that in her in the flashbacks.
Originally posted by Lacyflyer:
Simon said that, as gifited as he was (top 3% of his med school class) River made him look like an idiot.
Quote:Why? In the early bits of the River Tam sessions, she's quite normal seeming. A healthy, normal, very very smart and talented girl. The instability pretty clearly comes along gradually, as they train her and cut into her head. If you want to argue that she was pre-disposed to it, that's something else. But to say she had it already... I'm not seeing itisall.
I think that even if she had not been messed up by the Alliance people playing with her brain she probably would have been pretty mentally unstable.
Oh - and welcome to the site Lacy Flyer! Debating Firefly is fun.
Freelancertex: "except that she is a precog..as has been stated by more than one character."
Really? Where? Seriously, I missed that.
JSF: "Not sure how that gonna work. She's absorbing all the extra sensor input, but when she gets future data, she thinks, "oh, golly, that's the pre-cog stuff I'm gonna filter out, and not process because Joss doesn't understand ESP a bunch"
Man oh man. Where are you getting all these ESP rules? I had no idea that it was so well established and mapped out!
- Seriously Doubting Mal4prez
-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
How do you think Extra Sensory input is percieved? It comes in with some time stamp in the corner of the datastream?
How do you determine that any of your senses are current, or in chronological order, or in linear time format, or in compressed or refracted deviation, or in dream?
Most psychics who are greatly certain of their time reference are incomplete, that is they can only Extra Sense forward (future) or back (past) or current - their abilities are limited to one or very few parameters, so they have learned from experience where their focus lies.
If more than one timeframe is possible, the sensor must determine which direction in time the input is from.
How else did you think they could tell? Like watching a TV or video playback or something?
During testing/experimenting, the subjects can only learn when the researchers are careful to use time-specific criteria and not cross time references, so the direction of time as well as the distance into that time vector can be evaluated.
Nostradomus looked centuries into the future - how could he determine when it was, other than be viewing calendars or newspaper datelines.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Mal4prez, you sound unfamiliar with the practices and/or [rotocols.
Perhaps this would be a helpful intro, pay attention to the parts about "precognition."
http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/CIA-InitiatedRV.html
and maybe this one:
http://www.firedocs.com/remoteviewing/
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:OK - I was soooo wrong about this! I just watched the R Tam sessions, and River does make the point, in Session 1, that she's always been very intuitive. She always knows who Simon likes and stuff like that.
Originally posted by mal4prez:
There is no reason to assume he was referring to extra special abilities. We see none of that in her in the flashbacks.
Still, I take this to be a pre-existing tendency, and not a full-blown ability. Certainly her innate sensing abilities are greatly expanded at the Academy, and she becomes crazy because of what they do to her.
JSF: I looked those sites over. I only saw two mentions of precognition in the first, and both were in passing. Now, I'll admit straight up that I don't think ESP is real, and a few vague studies don't convince me. I could be wrong. Maybe ESP does exist. But I've never seen it and never seen anything to make me think it's a proven thing, and especially I've never seen anything to convince me that the process behind it is as well known and defined as you say.
Whatever. What I do get out of the CIA papers is that even if ESP is real, no one knows how it works. There is absolutely no reason why mind-reading and knowing the future happen in the same mechanism. In fact, I think it'd be damned unlikely that they do. A brain is a physical, chemical structure, one that exists in the here and now, and a person's thoughts, memories, and emotional state are written there. The future... well, now you're talking a whole different deal. The future doesn't exist. Precog is a lot harder to pass off as sci-fi.
For that reason, I think Joss is making sense to not have precog. And again, I see no sign of it in the series. The only thing close is Peteline going into labor, but that doesn't have to be precog at all. River spoke up a second before Petaline did, but that doesn't mean Petaline didn't know. Most likely, Petaline felt the contraction and breathed off the pain for a second before she could speak. Check the timing and look at Petaline's expression in the episode - it fits.
-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
There is absolutely no reason why mind-reading and knowing the future happen in the same mechanism. In fact, I think it'd be damned unlikely that they do. A brain is a physical, chemical structure, one that exists in the here and now, and a person's thoughts, memories, and emotional state are written there. The future... well, now you're talking a whole different deal. The future doesn't exist. Precog is a lot harder to pass off as sci-fi.
-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
OK, I see where you're splitting up. You are differentiating between proximity mind reading and remote sensing, and you seem to consider one to exist and the other to not exist, and they are seperate skillsets or talents, and are not related to each other - if I understand you correctly.
So, you seem to consider the possibility of proximity mind reading to be less outrageous, and more likiely than the other to exist. This may or may not include reading the memory, so you could effectively understand seeing the past, as long as it was experienced by the person being read, thus in their memory. This type of reading (if I understand you) would not include reading, sensing, or communicating with the dead or with spirits.
The concept of remote sensing, even in real time (reading the mind -or sensing the vision - of somebody in another State or another continent), you consider seperate and you consider it not possible, it doesn't exist. Therefore, if you do not feel current time remote sensing is possible, then remote sensing in different times (forward or backward) also would not be included as possibility.
Is that correct?
To summarize in pop-culture terms, you would consider the Ghost Whisperer to be fantasy because the communication is with non-living entities, so mind reading (sensing the chemical reactions and interactions in a nearby brain) would not apply to the dead. And you also consider "Next" to be fantasy because you do not feel remote sensing is possible, even if it were in real time (although the Next protagonist is severely limited to future-only sensing).
i only linked to those as an intro to the concepts for you, they are not full descriptions.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Not quite. I don't think any of this actually exists, I'm just pondering what makes sense in the context of Joss's fictional universe, and wondering the average viewer/reader will believe in their sci-fi.
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
OK, I see where you're splitting up. You are differentiating between proximity mind reading and remote sensing, and you seem to consider one to exist and the other to not exist, and they are seperate skillsets or talents, and are not related to each other - if I understand you correctly.
Quote:Yes. One sci-fi book I read explained mind-reading based on quantum physics - that the state of things in one's neurons sets up a standing field that another person might be able to sense. In that way, whatever is in one person's mind can be read by another. This would include their memory, so in some sense the past, but only as the first person experienced and remembers it.
So, you seem to consider the possibility of proximity mind reading to be less outrageous, and more likiely than the other to exist.
The idea being: you are able to access your own thoughts and memories and emotions through some (somewhat mysterious) system of electrical and chemical signals. So these things in your mind exist in physical reality. Perhaps there are ways that other people can access these things as well.
Again, I don't really believe it's possible for someone to stand next to you and read your mind - there's too much background noise to pick up that small a signal. But I can be convinced to believe it if I'm being told a fun story.
I can be convinced to believe a lot more too, for the sake of entertainment.
But I don't think this "remote sensing" or "precog" fits what I've seen of Joss's Firefly verse. It fit Buffy and Angel, but not Firefly.Quote:Those things are not physically written in the brain. They do not exist in the material realm. To me - in the context of story-telling - they are solidly fantasy rather than sci-fi (I'm overlapping threads LOL!) You know... unless some clever writer comes up with good pseudo-science to explain it. The Matrix did a bit of this. Vampires and deja vu and such.
This type of reading (if I understand you) would not include reading, sensing, or communicating with the dead or with spirits.
Quote:Hey, that all may be possible, but I've seen nothing to convince me of it, and there's no plce for it in the laws of physics as they're currently written.
The concept of remote sensing, even in real time (reading the mind -or sensing the vision - of somebody in another State or another continent), you consider seperate and you consider it not possible, it doesn't exist. Therefore, if you do not feel current time remote sensing is possible, then remote sensing in different times (forward or backward) also would not be included as possibility.
Of course, Joss isn't huge on the laws of physics, so even all these ESP things were real with solid, proven laws behind them, there's no reason to suppose he'd pay attention LOL!
Quote:Sorry - I know neither of these!
the Ghost Whisperer .... Next protagonist ...
-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The Ghost Whisperer was a TV show in the last few years starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, IIRC. Haven't seen the show, but read the synopsis and understood she communicates with the dead, and much of the technical consultanting was with psychics of this specialty. The demonstration type shows that the real practitioners have had are difficult to sell because TV shows can produce fiction in the stead of documentary reporting, so it might be an easier sell on Tv to just pretend it's fiction/fantasy.
Next was a film from last summer, starring Nicholas Cage and Jessica Biel. He was a remote senser who was limited to solely future readings, I don't recall he could do present time readings or past readings - or perhaps he trained himself to only concentrate on future sensing.
I really should have also mentioned Suspect Zero, which was one of the best films I've seen regarding remote sensing. Not knowing much about it in advance, I was well into the movie before I realized what it was about (or, the background of the protagonist, played by Benn Kingsley). It also starred Aaron Eckhart and Carrie Anne Moss, although that was one of her most dissapointing roles I've seen her in. I was also disapointed in the ending, but it still provided great exposure and fantastic understanding of the practice. It did still have too much "hollywood" crud added in, to make it more "exciting" and hyped up.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
>I haven't quite figured out why she cuts Jayne - just because he was rude to Simon?
Popular opinion is because he is wearing a Blue Sun t-shirt and they were the financial backers or some such in the Academy . . . or some of the 'secrets' she gleaned were about Blue Sun's less than legal activities. . .
"A government is a body of people usually notably ungoverned."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I see the difference here. I see sci-fi movies and books as entertainment and possible social/political statements, not as opportunities to market and educate the general public as to the practical aspects of ESP. But then, I don't believe in ESP.
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
I was also disapointed in the ending, but it still provided great exposure and fantastic understanding of the practice. It did still have too much "hollywood" crud added in, to make it more "exciting" and hyped up.
Hey, to each his/her own!
-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Agreed, Mal4Prez.
Take National Treasure 2 for example. Great, entertaining movie. Not in any way plausible.
I wouldn't look to a movie to provide accurate information.
"A government is a body of people usually notably ungoverned."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME