Poll: ESP: Does/Could it exist?

[mdk31]

I suppose it COULD be possible, however there is no compelling evidence to support the claim that it's real. Therefore, I must say no.

 

[Skeleon]

Nah, ESP is bull.
Everybody likes to feel special now and again.
But it's not real, beyond empathy and the occasional slip-up in the Matrix, erm, I mean Déjà Vu.

 

[traceur_]

It does not, your friend needs help.

 

[The Shade]

Sorry, but your friend is full of it. Anyone who genuinely thinks they have psychic powers is one dead brain cell away from wearing a tin foil hat in my books.

At least, that's what the alien overlords told me to say.

 

[Cuniculus]

Not at all. We get lucky every now and then with a prediction, sometimes eerily so, which is what this stems from. Well, that and the ability of people to believe almost anything with little to no proof. I hate when all the television psychics say things like, "You're going to have a terrible day soon!" and then a week later the idiot gets a headache and now believes that Miss Cleo foresaw this. I mean, if she said "Tomorrow, your mom is going to die in a horrible accident!" then I hear her house exploded I might start to get a bit freaked out... but still.

Most of this stems from what everyone else said... instincts. We aren't fully aware of all the ways our bodies detect things. The slightest breeze from someone passing by could be felt by the hair on your arm letting you "sense" someone you didn't see. Noises so small we can't detect them with our conscious mind alert us to someone being at the front door. A tiny difference in light on your eye lids lets you know someone is leaning over you while you sleep. The list goes on.

 

[SharPhoe]

It does not, your friend needs help.

Well, gee. It looks like the decision has been pretty unanimous this whole time...

 

[delet]

Funny you talk of ESP. Coincidentally, I just got done watching the movie Akira. Good movie...

No, there's proly not anything of the sort to do with ESP. However, there is insanely lucky coincidence based upon general knowledge/gut feeling/ damn pure luck.

I find that many things I talk about/ hope will happen/ say will proly happen do often become true. It's just coincidence though. That, or dumb luck. Your friend is just plain weird, as anyone who says they're psychic of any sort (looking at you, pet psychics) is proly just tellin a lot of BS...

 

[Motti]

Of course extra smelly pants exist.
Wait. Oh, that esp? Nah, that's a load of bull. By nature, humans are pack animals and empathetic by nature, it's fairly easy to tell what someone's thinking/feeling by their body language.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

If there were such a thing as ESP, you'd think reporters and politicians would be using psychics. If it were real, imagine how useful it'd be. We'd know how to flawlessly win wars, prevent recessions, and navigate through every problem we'd have if we had people who really had precognition.

Your friend can detect people's emotion's based on their "aura." No duh. People are expressive. That's why you get a certain "vibe" when you're around moody people. We're wired to pick up on that. Your friend either is either pretending to have crazy powers or can't distinguish his own mundane intuition from mind reading.

Have him read Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett. It touches on how the brain's an imperfect, evolved "bag of tricks." It's a toolbox, with tools that have adapted to help our genes survive and get passed on. Part of that would include understanding (or attempting to understand) each other, and predicting future outcomes based on experience.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

Hey, I don't want to post this here but I can't start a new thread because the button's missing.

Does anyone else notice that all the quote, reply, edit, and new topic buttons are missing, or is this mess on my end?

 

[Lukeje]

Hey, I don't want to post this here but I can't start a new thread because the button's missing.

Does anyone else notice that all the quote, reply, edit, and new topic buttons are missing, or is this mess on my end?

Yup, mine keep disappearing too.

 

[Johnnyallstar]

I'm missing them too, ThrobbingEgo

What I will say is that studies show that humans use very little amounts of their mental capacity at any given time, and when stressed, the brain still never reaches close to half it's capabilities. Possible? yes, probable? I don't think so.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

Hey, I don't want to post this here but I can't start a new thread because the button's missing.

Does anyone else notice that all the quote, reply, edit, and new topic buttons are missing, or is this mess on my end?

Yup, mine keep disappearing too.

Hmm. I can see them in Firefox now, but they're still not working in Chrome anymore. It's funny, because I never used The Escapist in Firefox - the button disappearing thing is recent.

 

[CosmicGrenade]

I don't think true ESP is real, but if you look at twins.
There has been cases where one twin is half way round the world and they know when the other twin has been injured or killed.
But who knows maybe in 20 30 or even 1000 years time (if we last that long, or breath using gills) some mad person in a white coat might be able to unlock something... you never know

 

[Johnnyallstar]

I don't think true ESP is real, but if you look at twins.
There has been cases where one twin is half way round the world and they know when the other twin has been injured or killed.
But who knows maybe in 20 30 or even 1000 years time (if we last that long, or breath using gills) some mad person in a white coat might be able to unlock something... you never know

Really? Joseph Mengala debunked that in WWII I thought. With all the experiments he did on twins that science eventually accepted regardless of the evils he did.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

I don't think true ESP is real, but if you look at twins.
There has been cases where one twin is half way round the world and they know when the other twin has been injured or killed.
But who knows maybe in 20 30 or even 1000 years time (if we last that long, or breath using gills) some mad person in a white coat might be able to unlock something... you never know

Gee, when someone who you've grown up with and spent a lot of time with, gets old and sick or complains about their dangerous work - you think maybe you'd start worrying about their death? Also, if you're worried about someone, it's entirely reasonable you think about their death. We don't really pay attention when we get these fears and they don't die - we let that pass by, but when we get that feeling and they do die... oooh, eerie.

 

[black lincon]

It seems totally ridiculous. Except that people commonly have dreams that foretell the future: deja vu and all that crap. It's fucking confusing.

To understand prophetic dreams you have to understand regular dreams. All dreams do is play back what you've already seen, but they generally combine things. Like if you've ever seen a meadow, a beaver, a seagull, and a kung-fu fight scene, you might dream about a seagull and a beaver kung-fu fighting in a meadow. However, your never going to see that. But, if you've ever seen a pencil, a paper, a desk and your hands, you might see your hands holding a pencil writing something on a desk, which if you are a student is a very familiar scene. You'll then remember the dream and it will seem like you predicted the future.

If only it was that simple, but it's really not. There's SOMETHING more to it, because it's never vague things like that. They're short clips, but very detailed and slide into reality perfectly. And it can't just be that you produce so many billions of images that you get one right eventually, because I usually consciously remember them for a month or so after having them.

it's a little like flashbacks, you never remember your dreams but they can linger and be triggered when you see similar things. the mind see's things by relating it to things it's already seen. I've heard a theory about the native americans not being able to see the giant European ships because they had no reference to go off of and their mind couldn't comprehend what they saw. You have a short dream about you writing, then the next day your hands happen to be in the same position as in the dream you forgot, then your mind remembers the dream and fills in the blank spots in the paper with whats there so you can better understand with the situation at hand, it's you mind messing with itself.

of corse they could see the European ships. they had fishing boats them selves. i think its very ignorant to think that they couldent see it, because they hadent thought of it.

Hows that ignorant? It's a scientific theory based off the mechanics of the eye and how it see's. And I would be so happy if you could explain to me this similarities between a canoe and a caravel besides they're brown and float. the point was to demonstrate how the eyes work, which is based off relating images it's already seen. in Sweden(I believe it was Sweden, some Norwegian country) a man who was blind at 3 got surgery to give him his sight back, when they took the bandages off he could hardly see and when his vision wasn't blurry he says it looks nothing like what people tell him it should. sight isn't as simple as you think, and the boat example is more of a way to explain that your eyes see based of past reference.

and they did see the smaller Euro ships because of their similarity to canoes, but they couldn't comprehend the Caravels(if I'm using the wrong ship type don't act smug, I'm using it because it starts with the same letter as canoe) because they had no visual reference to go off, or so goes the theory.