Psychics

[WolfAU]

I just want to put forward an idea that I think few people entertain. It seems people argue either everything defined as psychic phenomenon is true, or everything is false. If there are any other people big into science fiction or studying future technology, there is little doubt that the potential for many abilities like ESP, telepathy, telekinesis etc are possible using technology or genetic enhancement.

Also the question is 'even if it does not exist now, did it ever exist in humans?' is not directly established. A valid question considering for some of the more plausable psychic abilities could have been due to incredibly rare and now genetically dormant sensory attributes.

Especially when we know so little about issues like spacetime. While 'remarkable claims require remarkable evidence', I am not prepared to rule out a human being capable of 'real time' sensory awareness in another place or time (when we could do this so easily using technology). Though the idea that such a thing occured through natural selection is almost impossible.

Keep in mind many animals have traits we would consider borderline psychic. Also many humans can have such honed senses or instincts that they can predict actions, sense anothers thoughts or emotions with incredible detail.

Largely though I suspect most of the claims about psychic phenonema are superstition. A good example is a child wishing someone would die and the next day they are in a car accident, the child will often feel great guilt, believing their will caused the car crash (and thus the idea that humans can influence their environment through willpower). Also as above, some people have incredible instincts, with some people being subconsciously aware of a stimulus and having a thought because of it which turns out to then com true (ie subconsciously noticing a person looks ill and therefore seemingly predicting them collapsing).

 

[Aught3]

As you said co-incidence explains most people's feeling that they may be psychic. The rest are active frauds who try and fleece people for their money.

I agree that some animals have extra sensitive perception but these abilities have rational explanations. I think once you explain these things scientifically the labels of 'psychic' and 'ESP' are no longer appropriate.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Befor solving a problem, you must first check if there is a problem in the first place.

There has been people telling very convincing storys of psy powers, however the truth is they are nothing more then anedotic storys that has been redone to make it look like there is something real when in fact there isn't, there never was a real case of psy powers.
If anyone claims otherwise they are either lying or fooling themselfs, and if you press them to much they will drop the act. Do you guys remember what hapened the user Witch_honor? He was very active user pounding on this subject and even claimed that he could read peoples minds, and he gave storys on how good he was at it. As soon as I devised a method to actualy test it and chalendge him to take the test, not another word has been heard of him ever since.

I agree that some animals have extra sensitive perception but these abilities have rational explanations.

And no, animals do not have "extra sensitive perception" they experience the world trough the senses just like us, some animals have diffrent senses from ours, but nothinge else.

One can claim that some times humans or animals seem to be able to "read minds" or predict what someone is going to do. But that is nothing out of normal, it is just that human minds tend to think alike, and we are more predictable then what meets the eye.

 

[Aught3]

And no, animals do not have "extra sensitive perception" they experience the world trough the senses just like us...

Relative to humans some animals do have better senses that allow them to perceive the world in extra detail. For example, hearing in bats, sight in eagles, sense of the electric fields in electric eels. This is what I was calling extra sensitive.

On reading my comment again I could have used a hyphen to make it less ambiguous (extra-sensitive perception) but I italicised 'sensitive' so I think you just misread my post. At the very least it's clear I was not advocating perception of the world through mechanisms other than the physical senses.

 

[Ozymandyus]

To say that no animals have 'extra sensitive perception' is silly. Of course they do. Dogs can hear and smell things that humans can't, their senses are more sensitive. Now, extra SENSORY perception.. thats a different question.

In a way, any ability to process sense information into useable predictions (whether it is, 'that car is going to keep coming this direction and hit us if we don't move', or that 'when we smash two particles together at 99% the speed of light we will get evidence for the higgs boson') is extra sensory perception of a sort. We are able to take in evidence and process it at non-sensory levels and we could certainly convince cavemen that we were psychic with our knowledge of the stars and such. There certainly is a possibility that someone could pick up on subtle facial queues, behavioral queues etc that the rest of us might miss, that someone might mistake for ESP. But it would be nothing supernatural... nothing like what psychics claim.

The variety of TV shows playing on this theme is quite varied if you would like to play around with the subject; Mentalist, Psych, all the Derren Brown shows, Lie to Me what have you.

Oh oops, Aught made his point already so I'm just repeating.. ah well.

Edit: Oh I wanted to add, I very much doubt we will ever be able to do things like telekinesis or True mind reading with genetic engineering alone. What we can APPEAR to do with technology is basically limitless, but again, that is nothing like what psychics claim.

 

[WolfAU]

I believe though that alot of frauds arose when these abilities were popularised by people with seemingly psychic abilities...

These days there is essentially 'lore' about psychics. Example, if I was to declare myself a vampire, you would automatically assume that means I cannot go out in daylight and am immortal. If I declared myself to be psychic in the same way alot of people will automatically assume alot of the lore about psychics is true.

I'll give you a quick eg. Say a human in the past developed the subconscious ability to see into the infra red spectrum, essentially giving them the ability to sense body heat. This could give them instincts in detecting if people are lying or sensing people in dark areas.

If there is any truth to psychic phenomena, odds are most of the claims about it are false, and most people who claim abilities are mistaken/frauds.

While I do not treat anecdotal evidence as compelling, we have to accept that many things now accepted as truth started off as just that.

I agree that some animals have extra sensitive perception but these abilities have rational explanations. I think once you explain these things scientifically the labels of 'psychic' and 'ESP' are no longer appropriate.

Perhaps, humans traditionally define ESP as something beyond the 5 traditional senses (sight, smell, sound, taste, touch), however we do have a sixth sense called 'proprioception', our ability to instinctively know the location of ourselves and our limbs in space. Perhaps there are others, especially considering what a small proportion of our bodies systems we can exert conscious control over (ie is our gut reaction due to some sensory information beyond the 5-6 senses?)

 

[orpiment99]

I wonder if part of the reason that people assume it is real (other than a desire to believe in something) is that humans seem very good at making causal assumptions, regardless of validity. It might be an evolutionary trait, but I think most humans jump to a conclusion then rethink it later. The child wishing someone dead and then it happening is a good example and it is probably the source for many superstitions, such as breaking a mirror causing seven years of bad luck.

Besides, most humans also tend towards absolving themselves of blame, so if they can blame a mirror... Psychics and magicians feed off of that tendency, though magicians are honest about doing so.

 

[Aught3]

we do have a sixth sense called 'proprioception'

And we have a sense of balance, can sense electric fields and magnetic fields. So together we're up to nine senses but now we know how they work they are no longer extra-sensory. Thus falling outside the realm of ESP.

Five senses is something you learn in primary school, like seven colours in a rainbow.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Before solving a problem, you must first check if there is a problem in the first place.

That was exactly what I'm going to say. Instead of trying to figure out how psychic ability might work, isn't it more important to first show that this ability exists at all?

Further, It seems like close to a giant waste of time to speculate about all sorts of "what ifs" when there is no current foundation for believing that any of it is even remotely possible. I mean, if you are just a science fiction/fantasy fan and you like daydreaming about it, more power to you. It is all good fun, as long as you don't start to take it too seriously.

 

[Aught3]

I wonder if part of the reason that people assume it is real (other than a desire to believe in something) is that humans seem very good at making causal assumptions, regardless of validity. It might be an evolutionary trait, but I think most humans jump to a conclusion then rethink it later.

Bingo, Richard Dawkins has a good discussion of this in Unweaving the Rainbow. Basically all animals have to survive by making judgments about the environment; there simply isn't enough time to evaluate all the data. All animals walk the middle ground between committing all false positive or all false negative errors. If they made all of only one type of error they simply couldn't survive. Attributing psychic phenomenon to a co-incidence is a false positive, and science is the business of making as few false positive errors as possible.

I recommend a reading of the book if you're interested.

 

[WolfAU]

Its interesting viewing the results of this type of causal response in animals.

Example when driving I've noticed alot of birds seem to recognise that being on the road is dangerous, and being on the sidewalk is safe, to the point that alot of birds simply make a dive for the sidewalk they see an incoming car rather than flying away, even if the car will pass right next to them. They seem to realise the car is not a predator and is not trying to eat/harm it, and tends to stick to certain paths, yet an impact with it would kill them.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Relative to humans some animals do have better senses that allow them to perceive the world in extra detail. For example, hearing in bats, sight in eagles, sense of the electric fields in electric eels. This is what I was calling extra sensitive.

On reading my comment again I could have used a hyphen to make it less ambiguous (extra-sensitive perception) but I italicised 'sensitive' so I think you just misread my post. At the very least it's clear I was not advocating perception of the world through mechanisms other than the physical senses.

I probably misunderstood the meaning of "extra", "extra" not aplied to preception (i.e. other preceptions then the sensitive) but aplied to sensitive (i.e. other senses).

That was exactly what I'm going to say. Instead of trying to figure out how psychic ability might work, isn't it more important to first show that this ability exists at all?

I wouldn't go exactly to the "if there is something at all" part, but to the if there is any testable observable event that needs an explenation before we go arround trying to figure out what exactly is hapening in order to determine if it is psychic event or not. Because generaly we only know what they are by what they do, and not the other way arround.
And storys of phenomena doesn't tell us if there realy is a phenomena or it is just a story.

 

[WolfAU]

That was exactly what I'm going to say. Instead of trying to figure out how psychic ability might work, isn't it more important to first show that this ability exists at all?

Further, It seems like close to a giant waste of time to speculate about all sorts of "what ifs" when there is no current foundation for believing that any of it is even remotely possible. I mean, if you are just a science fiction/fantasy fan and you like daydreaming about it, more power to you. It is all good fun, as long as you don't start to take it too seriously.

Well, I'm something of an amateur writer, and while doing research on the topic I became a bit dissatisfied with how polar the opposing stances were. As I said in the beginning, the arguments seem to be either 'It's all true' or 'none of it is true'.

The main reason I'm interested in it is more about possible future technologies (ie Technology based Telekinesis in games like Mass Effect).

 

[Whisperelmwood]

The main reason I'm interested in it is more about possible future technologies (ie Technology based Telekinesis in games like Mass Effect).

I think the problem is that you are not making that distinction, the distinction between technological advances and ESP.

ESP I am unwilling to accept - as there is no way the human mind can leave it's physical presence and interact in the physical world, or the mind of another.

However - advanced technology may be able to simulate what ESP is the fantasy of.

Like the TK in Mass Effect - this is nothing to do with the fantasy of ESP, (where the human mind somehow interacts with the physical world, bypassing the need for the body) and everything to do with the technology (where actual scientific understanding uses real world means to move objects without the need of reaching out and doing it with your hand).

You seriously need to keep the distinction in mind.

 

[WolfAU]

Well firstly it depends what you define as ESP. By that I assume you mean remote viewing or genuine out of body experiences (percieved dissociated out of body experiences are common in psychology, especially in hypnosis).

Again, I make the statement that 'remarkable claims require remarkable evidence', I consider myself to be a skeptic, and by no means claim to have proof that not only are CERTAIN psychic abilities possible (ie having discovered new quantum mechanics which explain it), and have existed in humans, but exist to this day.

As with most topics embraced by the uninformed masses, pseudoscience has tarnished any means for respectable science to investigate these claims. Wanting to keep this response short I'll just say I cannot catagorically dismiss it all as false when; a) so little is known about quantum mechanics and the human mind, and b) technology to achieve things like telepathy or telekinesis would be relatively easy to achieve, especially once we learn to translate neural impulses.

Again I make no claim to this stuff being true, I merely see arguments that there is no truth to it as arrogance and usually hear people state why as 'self evident' and 'common sense'. I mean something like sensitivity to things like as graviton like particle or fluctuations in dark energy could easily explain alot of this phenonema as true (again, alot of scientific truth started off as anecdotal evidence and speculation). This is pure speculation however.

 

[Th1sWasATriumph]

there is little doubt that the potential for many abilities like ESP, telepathy, telekinesis etc are possible using technology or genetic enhancement.

Sources please.

Keep in mind many animals have traits we would consider borderline psychic.

Dogs have a sense of smell some orders of magnitude beyond our own; will you attribute that to some extra power? Animals have many traits that we either don't possess at all, or have rudimentary development of\control over. I wouldn't consider such traits borderline psychic in the slightest.

Also many humans can have such honed senses or instincts that they can predict actions, sense anothers thoughts or emotions with incredible detail.

Check out Derren Brown. The techniques to read thoughts or emotions are hardly a secret. As for predicting actions - sources?

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

If any one claims pshychic powers, mind reading abilitys or what not.
I still have a test that you can all take to prove (or most liekly disprove) your point.

There isn't any money involved (sory) but the possiblility to make a complete fool out of me (or yourself).
If anayone wants in, just let me know.

 

[felixthecoach]

One of the original ideas of the thread was the use of technology in the future to simulate psychic interaction between people. Sure why not? We can hook electrodes to the right part of the brain and people can move a mouse on a computer by thinking about it. What's to stop some tech guru from taking a step where you can create text?

The next step would be sending that information to another computer. Eventually, with the right understanding of the brain and technology, you could have the information converted into electrochemical signals in the brain and you would "hear" or "see" the text that someone else sent.

The next step might be simply thinking what you want someone else to hear, and your implant projects the information to their implant that then transforms the information into an electrochemical signal that they hear, process, and reply to.

Other advances might be controlling vehicles, appliances, and maybe even trained animals with implants of their own. It's very sci fi, but I think technically possible once we understand how our brain sends and receives signals.

 

[WolfAU]

Re Th1sWasATriumph: I consider such a statement about tech based psychic abilities largely self evident. Some examples however.

- Telepathy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepathy#Technologically_enabled_telepathy
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-computer_interface
- Also things like allowing human senses to pick up things like radio frequencies.
- ESP: depends how you define it, I seem to use it in a more 'magnetotaxis' sense of the word (ie giving humans another intuitive sense) rather than crazy-ass stuff like sensing ghosts.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetotaxis
- Telekinesis could be things like inducing/altering magnetic fields or gravity, which I know very little about (ie cutting edge research).

I think a problem is how poorly define these terms are, the example I gave before about a human with the ability to unconsciously sense beyond the visable spectrum, giving them seemingly superhuman abilities to sense things like disease. I DO NOT believe people can communicate with the dead, I do not believe people can see the future beyond incredibly trained intuition and I do not believe people can influence the future or manifest things into existance through willpower.

Many combatants learn to subconsciously predict their opponants moves through a mixture of empathy (what are their goals, what are they thinking) and various 'tells' (ie shifting their weight). I doubt these are truly revolutionary ideas to you, but my point is that masters of them can predict events with incredible detail without conscious awareness of the specific data (ie they are not consciously aware of the tells, they are simply trusting their gut). I also doubt you consider anything paranormal about them, I'm simply pointing out the line between normal (but impressive) intuition and abilities one may argue border on pre-cognition is quite vague, how would one go about testing the difference between them?

Re Master_Ghost_Knight: I'm interested in hearing what it is, though I suspect it is long...

Other advances might be controlling vehicles, appliances, and maybe even trained animals with implants of their own. It's very sci fi, but I think technically possible once we understand how our brain sends and receives signals.

I agree, and hope to see some research on that occur in my lifetime (though there are obviously huge risks associated with the technology, ie brain-washing technology, 'hacking' someones mind).

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

My chalendge is simple, I will upload a picture to a server whit a traceable autenticity (rapidshare), and then provide a link to the people atempting the chalendge and to a neutral moderator. The content of the link can not be downloaded whitout my green light.
If the content of the link is downloaded permaturly i will know.

Then the chalenger will have 48h to describe the contents of the picture.
It must provide at least 85% of the content acurratly in order to be considered sucessfull.
Points are given for acurrate hits on:
Object (car, house, bike, a dog, a cat, a horse, etc.)
Direction (going left, facing right, upside down, etc.)
Color (green, yellow, red, blue, etc.)
Relative location (in the top left corner, in the botom right, right, center, etc.)

Points are detracted for each miss:
Object that isn't there or missing details (if there is a guy using glassess you can't say glasses, if there is a word you can't say word, you have to spell it, if there is a dog holding a bone, you can't say bone)
wrong color
wrong direction
wrong location

Calculations are made adding up the hits and subtracting the misses dividing by total points possible.