• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

I wonder if i might be psychic

Keith&Co.

Contributor
Joined
Mar 31, 2006
Messages
22,444
Location
Far Western Mass
Gender
Here.
Basic Beliefs
I'm here...
Last weekend, for no apparent reason, i found myself trying to remember the name of JD, the character from Scrubs. And today, someone was recalling a scene with Dr. Cox, and was unable to remember JD's name. I was able to pop up and supply tgat fact with no delay.

Two weeks, again without any apparent reason, i felt the urge to listen to Kung Fu Fighting. Days later, someone had a question about the lyrics... not of the version i listened to, but the Kung Fu Panda version, but i was able to adapt quickly.

Thre weeks ago i thought of a dirty joke, and just today, someone asked, what's that joke with the punchline what does the closed sign on a whorehouse say?
I was right here to say, that's not the punchline, you moron, the punchline is 'Beat it. We're closed.'

Kind of amazing, really, how my mind is so well-rehearsed to let me be the Johnny-on-the-spot with the answers so often, so regularly.

Now, just waiting for the reveal of the reasons for the 30 thousand additional odd thoughts and random trivia that's been dredged up over the last three weeks, like the purchase price of Illinois Ave., the atomic weight of Lunarium ( a fantasy element in a book i cannot recall the title or author of, but there was a topless woman on the cover), the name of a Starfleet ship that got destroyed, what was the dollar/pound conversion that month we drove to Bath, all the ranks of the surgeons on M*A*S*H, the dates for implementing leap seconds into coordinated universal time, how ghoti is pronounced fish, who sat behind me in sixth grade, who drove me to the emergency room that time i got food poisoning, the three things we align the four gimbals to on spinning up a D-5 missile, power supply to the Lithium Bromide plant on a Ben Franklin class sub, was it Melissa or Melyssa Ford...?
 
Every morning when I wake up, I remember things....swear to god...
 
Lunarium's atomic mass is 200.

Mercury has a stable isotope with an atomic mass of 200.

Gold has an isotope with an atomic mass of 200, and a half-life of 48.3 minutes; Thallium has an isotope with the same mass, and a half-life of about 1 day. Both decay to 200Hg.

Brick Bradford seriously lacked an education in atomic physics.
 
Memory failures are the key to beliefs in psychic abilities.

If we constantly recalled every thought we ever have, then it would obvious to us that 99.999% of our thoughts do not anticipate any future random events. Thus, the notion that we have some kind of special psychics powers would seem obviously false.
But instead, we fail to recall almost every thought we have ever had, and only in the rare instances when a random future event does correspond to a thought is the past experience of the thought recalled. Thus, the future events determine the biased sample of thoughts recalled making it subjectively seem that many of our past thoughts anticipate the future.

I like to use this illustration to my research methods classes, both to discourage belief in psychic ability, but more to illustrate why anecdotes are useless and not evidence of anything and why systematic observation is the key to the power of science. IF there were a scientist there to systematically record every thought, then every thought would be recalled and could be compared to future events. Then, the instances of thoughts anticipating random future events would be revealed for the extremely rare coincidences that they are.
 
Memory failures are the key to beliefs in psychic abilities.

If we constantly recalled every thought we ever have, then it would obvious to us that 99.999% of our thoughts do not anticipate any future random events. Thus, the notion that we have some kind of special psychics powers would seem obviously false.
But instead, we fail to recall almost every thought we have ever had, and only in the rare instances when a random future event does correspond to a thought is the past experience of the thought recalled. Thus, the future events determine the biased sample of thoughts recalled making it subjectively seem that many of our past thoughts anticipate the future.

I like to use this illustration to my research methods classes, both to discourage belief in psychic ability, but more to illustrate why anecdotes are useless and not evidence of anything and why systematic observation is the key to the power of science. IF there were a scientist there to systematically record every thought, then every thought would be recalled and could be compared to future events. Then, the instances of thoughts anticipating random future events would be revealed for the extremely rare coincidences that they are.

^All of this.

But there's a second factor that amplifies this effect - People are simultaneously really, really bad at estimating probabilities; And are incredibly confident that they are really good at estimating probabilities.

When this tends in the direction of overestimates of the probability of actually improbable events, we get casinos.

When it tends in the opposite direction, we get woo.
 
Do you have any stock tips?

Ever be thinking of someone and then they call while you are thinking? Ever have a dream that you think came true? Ever had a bad feeling and something bad happened?If so you may be psychic. Buy my book on the real paranormal story and find out for only $29.95. Find out how the govt uses psychic's to spy on you.

The problem is one of stastics. You rmeber a dream and part or all sems to play out in reality. How many times have you had a dream that did not mean anything?

How many times were thinking of someone and they did not call compared to coincdense when they called while you thinking about them?

It is a subjective sunconsious selection bias. You highlight that which conforms your conclusion and ignore counter experinces.

If you get hooked into it you will start looking for conformations and seeing then, like theists do.

Back in the 70s a sister was getting dragged into the Edgar Cayce stuff, I managed to pull her back. There is a foundation and library of his prophesies.

There is a well developed organized culture around the paranormal.

You are m a well trodden path. Read the whole link. So far there has been no scientific demonstration of any paranormal powers.

Back in the 70s I took a psych class caked Altered States Of Awareness. The prof can the experiment. He held up envelopes with a set of symbols we new. We had to deduce what was in each envelope. The class was a statistical average of success. Some a little high some a little low.

I ran the same kind of experiment using a poll on the form. I drew an simple geometric figure on paper and made up 3 others for the poll. The result was statistical. Approximately 25% picked the right figure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Cayce

Edgar Cayce (/ˈkeɪsiː/; March 18, 1877 – January 3, 1945) was an American clairvoyant who answered questions on subjects as varied as healing, reincarnation, wars, Atlantis, and future events while allegedly asleep. A biographer gave him the nickname, The Sleeping Prophet. A nonprofit organization, the Association for Research and Enlightenment,[1] was founded to facilitate the study of Cayce's work.

Some consider him the true founder and a principal source of the most characteristic beliefs of the New Age movement.[2]

Cayce is also notable for his contributions to the notions of diet and health, particularly the issues of food combining, acid/alkaline diet, and the therapeutic use of food.
 
Memory failures are the key to beliefs in psychic abilities.

If we constantly recalled every thought we ever have, then it would obvious to us that 99.999% of our thoughts do not anticipate any future random events. Thus, the notion that we have some kind of special psychics powers would seem obviously false.
But instead, we fail to recall almost every thought we have ever had, and only in the rare instances when a random future event does correspond to a thought is the past experience of the thought recalled. Thus, the future events determine the biased sample of thoughts recalled making it subjectively seem that many of our past thoughts anticipate the future.

I like to use this illustration to my research methods classes, both to discourage belief in psychic ability, but more to illustrate why anecdotes are useless and not evidence of anything and why systematic observation is the key to the power of science. IF there were a scientist there to systematically record every thought, then every thought would be recalled and could be compared to future events. Then, the instances of thoughts anticipating random future events would be revealed for the extremely rare coincidences that they are.

But, how do you know?!


Could you tell what I meant?
Check here:

That's proof you're a psychic.



EB
 
Really many, many people are real psychics.


They know God doesn't exist. :D


EB
 
Really many, many people are real psychics.


They know God doesn't exist. :D


EB

Actually, the evidence for being psychic would be if theists turned out to be correct. Given that there is no evidence or logic to support God's existence and the a priori probability in infinitely small, for them to have gotten it correct would be a miraculous feat of supernatural ability.

Knowing that God doesn't exist is just the boring application of reason to conclude the probability approaches zero.

Interestingly, many theists do not believe in psychic powers, not for rational reasons, but because that would make humans too God-like and that is not allowed.
 
Really many, many people are real psychics.


They know God doesn't exist. :D


EB

Actually, the evidence for being psychic would be if theists turned out to be correct. Given that there is no evidence or logic to support God's existence and the a priori probability in infinitely small, for them to have gotten it correct would be a miraculous feat of supernatural ability.

Knowing that God doesn't exist is just the boring application of reason to conclude the probability approaches zero.

Interestingly, many theists do not believe in psychic powers, not for rational reasons, but because that would make humans too God-like and that is not allowed.

So you do have psychic powers!

How could you possibly assess the probability of the existence of God if you were not a psychic?! QED.
EB
 
Actually, the evidence for being psychic would be if theists turned out to be correct. Given that there is no evidence or logic to support God's existence and the a priori probability in infinitely small, for them to have gotten it correct would be a miraculous feat of supernatural ability.
If there was one religion, maybe.
With over 5000 flavors of Christain alone, if some of them turn out to have chosen the correct one, it's more 'some of those buying scratch-offs won more than they spent' results.
 
Actually, the evidence for being psychic would be if theists turned out to be correct. Given that there is no evidence or logic to support God's existence and the a priori probability in infinitely small, for them to have gotten it correct would be a miraculous feat of supernatural ability.
If there was one religion, maybe.
With over 5000 flavors of Christain alone, if some of them turn out to have chosen the correct one, it's more 'some of those buying scratch-offs won more than they spent' results.

Yeah but all Christian, Jewish, and Islamic God are largely the same concept and each one has an a priori probability of 1 / infinity, with no evidence to alter that probability. So, it would still be a psychic miracle if any of them turned out to be correct.
 
Yeah but all Christian, Jewish, and Islamic God are largely the same concept and each one has an a priori probability of 1 / infinity,
No because the prior probability for a believer is 1. No need to be psychic. You just need to be a true believer.
with no evidence to alter that probability.
Exactly. Probability 1.
EB
 
Really many, many people are real psychics.


They know God doesn't exist. :D


EB

Actually, the evidence for being psychic would be if theists turned out to be correct. Given that there is no evidence or logic to support God's existence and the a priori probability in infinitely small, for them to have gotten it correct would be a miraculous feat of supernatural ability.

Knowing that God doesn't exist is just the boring application of reason to conclude the probability approaches zero.

Interestingly, many theists do not believe in psychic powers, not for rational reasons, but because that would make humans too God-like and that is not allowed.

So you do have psychic powers!

How could you possibly assess the probability of the existence of God if you were not a psychic?! QED.
EB

If God existed only in the minds of people, then only a psychic could prove the existence of God. I get where you are going... but I am not psychic.. I guess people get clues in other ways, hmmm.
 
Back
Top Bottom