Psychic abilities
- gali
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Psychic abilities
Pronouns: She/Her
"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you." (Mortimer J. Adler)
- katiesquilts
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That being said, my mom has some stories of when I was little and would "talk" with our next-door neighbor, who had passed away several months before.
- Heidi M Simone
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Back in high school, one of my closest friends was curious about this ability and she found a place where a woman claimed she was able to read into the future (a bit different than Sheila's ability). I agreed to go with my friend, so she didn't have to go alone. To be honest, the woman's evaluation of my friend's future could have been said to any female teenager. I obviously didn't need to be told the same thing, so we left before the woman tried to talk me into getting a reading. This probably doesn't help me in believing.
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- gali
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Pronouns: She/Her
"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you." (Mortimer J. Adler)
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- Scott
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Longer answer: I certainly don't believe it in the strong extra-supernatural sense of someone talking to ghosts and such. However, even as a matter of pure technology and science, there are already devices one can wear on one's head to control a remote control helicopter with their thoughts alone, for example.
There's really nothing inherently supernatural about a creature existing that has the same natural machinery in their body or brain that exists an everyday old radio, for example, namely such as creatures being able to communicate silently through telepathy or such. It's not any harder for me to imagine creatures evolving that capacity anymore than evolving to communicate with sound-waves or see electomagnatic waves (light).
"Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco." Virgil, The Aeneid
- katiesquilts
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The man specialized in palm-reading and the place was very business-like, with cubicles instead of hanging beads and cushions. The only things we were asked were our names and ages. My own fortune was a bit boring, basically I will go through life without any major ups or downs, but if I really want to succeed in my career I have to focus on just one specialization. (Which is hard for me, because I often imagine switching jobs just to change my lifestyle.)
For my boyfriend, however, the talk was more in-depth. The man said that my boyfriend would have trouble finding a job at first, and that even after finding one he would quickly switch jobs. He would be able to work in that job for many years, but trouble would come again when he tries to retire. The interesting part is that my boyfriend failed many entrance exams for the government job that he wanted (different exams for each city that he applied to) and after failing he decided to look for outside jobs and joined a real estate agency. He had already started training for the job when he got a positive result back from the last exam he took, so in the end he became a government employee.
Obviously we haven't gotten to the retirement part yet, but everything has come true so far... And the most interesting part was that when I said something along the lines of, "Everything is going just as the fortune teller said!" he couldn't even remember going to the fortune teller.
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I work with a small group of developmentally disabled adults and one individual has a habit of sitting up from where he was curled on the couch chatting with himself and declaring "someone's here" before falling back into avoiding eye contact or conversation. Almost every time another staff is either pulling into the parking lot or walks in the door five minutes later. If he knows which staff went out for an errand he will name that staff five minutes before the get back.
If it really is a psychic power of some sort it's very minimal precognition. Now that I'm thinking about it, if that's possible, what else might be?
- MrsCatInTheHat
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I feel like I could end it there, but imma gonna keep going.
Did you know that James Randi, along with other organizations in the US, Europe, and Australia (there are probably more, I just know about these for sure) will pay you one million dollars if you can show you have psychic abilities?
Seriously.
And here is the thing: You can choose the parameters!
If you talk to dead people, great!
If you can guess a card, great!
If you can make a cat jump on a table slightly more than average, great! (This is actually an example of someone's claim.)
All you have to do is tell them what you can do because of psychic powers, and then do it!
If you can perform better than chance, you get the money!
There are some limitations here ("I knew it" you say!).
You have to agree to some controls (they will present these to you for approval before you try for the million though.)
For example: If you claim you can talk to dead relatives of audience members, then you have to talk to one of the dead relatives of a group chosen by the foundation (BTW, the group can be as big as you need.)
They will do everything in their power to set you up for success.
And you want to know why? Because all of us what magic to be real!!! Holy crap, wouldn't that be cool?!?!
Wanna know how many people have ever won this money?
None. Ever.
Thousands have tried. And again, let me repeat. Before these people arrived to demonstrate their abilities, every single one of them was been informed (and in many cases, allowed to change in order to better fit their needs) of the controls and exactly what was going to happen. They were asked if they still believed they were able to fully demonstrate their abilities. They all agreed that they could.
And they have always failed.
My final point isn't that there are fakers out there. We all know that the dude reading tarot card by the river is full of it and just looking to hustle a few bucks. That isn't news.
My point is that those people who actually believe that they are psychic (and these people completely exist) aren't. And they don't even know it.
They use:
cold reading techniques (which can be done unintentionally and intuitively)
confirmation bias (remembering the times they were right and forgetting the times they weren't)
general suggestiveness ("you look sick, are you feeling sick. you really look sick")
And they do it unconsciously!
Someone who is aware of these techniques and uses them intentionally has identical results.
Wow, are you bored yet?
Are you even still reading?
Ha!
Ciao!