Precog

[Zoink]

Let's say that there is a 1 in a 100 million chance of winning a particular lottery, 100 million people buy a ticket, each thinks about winning the money. One does. That one guy thinks "I must have forsaw it happen, there was only a 1 in 100 million chance I'd win." Everybody else forgets about it.

There is a selection process going on. Statistically, wierd coincidences must happen (eg. the lottery drawing 911 after Sept. 11th). When concidering precog situations, you are only remembering the wierd coincidences, not the million other dreams/thoughts that didn't coincide with anything. You are trying to prove something's existence with a process that only selects positive data.

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For anyone convinced they have precog powers, you should have them tested, as there is a million dollar prize for anyone who can demonstrate any "supernatural" powers like: telekinesis, remote viewing, precognition, etc. As of yet, many of the world’s best psychics have failed the testing (most don't want to be tested for some reason).

[AdmiralKanos]

Precog exists because if you make a thousand predictions and have a thousand dreams and they're all wrong, you will forget that they ever happened. But the one time you make a prediction or have a dream which corresponds to an actual event, IT WAS FUCKING PSYCHIC, MAN!!!!

and if you get it right more often than not.....? and if you don't have to guess....?

OK, what number am I thinking of?

[Zoink]

About the prize $$$:

http://www.randi.org/research/

[Darth Servo]

Precog exists because if you make a thousand predictions and have a thousand dreams and they're all wrong, you will forget that they ever happened. But the one time you make a prediction or have a dream which corresponds to an actual event, IT WAS FUCKING PSYCHIC, MAN!!!!

and if you get it right more often than not.....? and if you don't have to guess....?

OK, what number am I thinking of?

Knowing you, 69

[Rye]

Well the thing is, when i get deja vu's it's more of a sequence of events, like one person will say something and another person will move back on their chair, and i'll look out the window per se, then it happens then i'm like..whoaaaa....seen that before, i'm sure of it.

This could just come from knowing the people well and then dreaming it, then remembering the dream when the event happens. The thing is, it gets hella weird when you remember the deja vu you're having...maybe that's indicative that it's become a routine thing.

Also, like ultraviolence said, you can feel them coming on, and if you try really hard you can remembver it before you do it, and change it.

And no i don't predict things, just remember them -slightly- before they happen in order to react to them better maybe...i dunno.

One of the most extreme deja vus i had was at my friend chris' house, when he was sat on the stairs and he phoned my parents to come and pick me up. This is unordinary as usually i'd phone them to get them to pick me up. Then i had an extreme deja vu when he hung up the phone and said "they're coming for you now". I'm fairly sure i'd dreamt the sequence of events, where i'd looked and the conv chris had with my mum repeatedly, and deja vuing in the dreams. Then when it happened for real, had multiple deja vues...very strange feeling.

I don't predict things though, as i don't want to set any self fulfufilling prophecies off, nor self nullifying prophecies, or "tempting fate".

[Hotfoot]

OK, what number am I thinking of?

It's Pi/2! Pi/2!!!!

[Lagmonster]

and if you get it right more often than not.....? and if you don't have to guess....?

OK, what number am I thinking of?

Actually, Mike, that's not a half-bad idea to start. In my experience, there are a number of frighteningly simple ways to discredit someone's claims of pregonitive or psychic abilities.

Perhaps we could construct some sort of basic experiment which would work over a web board...if we could find someone with enough faith in their claimed abilities to participate.

[Falcata]

I have some sort of deja vu feeling about once a month, I guess they are just things that I once did in a dream, but since I never remember any of my dreams when I wake up I can't be sure.

I also have a habit of continually talking against myself in my head about things that might happen, like what will I do when I forget my keys, what do I do when my bike gets stolen, what if alf suddenly crashlands in my back yard, etc. It can also just be one of these scenario's that I thought of several months ago that suddenly happens.

And maybe I'm just slowly going crazy, which would probably be the most simple and logical explanation.

[Rye]

and if you get it right more often than not.....? and if you don't have to guess....?

OK, what number am I thinking of?

Actually, Mike, that's not a half-bad idea to start. In my experience, there are a number of frighteningly simple ways to discredit someone's claims of pregonitive or psychic abilities.

Perhaps we could construct some sort of basic experiment which would work over a web board...if we could find someone with enough faith in their claimed abilities to participate.

Well, i never said my "abilities" were in anyway controlled by me, they seem random at best.

Isn't there already an noline ESP test? which presents a random image and you post what you think you're going to see before the pic comes up? I remember seeing the experiment it came from, in which people's brains prepared for the image that was going to come up.

[UltraViolence83]

I've done something like that. "Guess the color coming up next" type deal. I got a pretty good score. Y'see, the trick is to NOT listen to your first guess, it's that little almost non-existent half-guess you make a split second before the first pops up. The real trick is to be able to backtrack your mind to try and find it again, and/or translate it (it's more like a feeling than a rememberable thing).

[Wicked Pilot]

Knowing you, 69

My prediction from page 1 is coming true. I'm psychic!

[Howedar]

Psychic powers either don't exist or are so weak as to be useless in the real world. Otherwise, all of us mundanes would be under their control.


In other words,
no
nothing
no

[Setesh]

Only once but it was not so much precog as coincidence

Me and a friend were waiting to see Bulletproof Monk, I hadn't heard of it but he was payin' so...

While waiting we availed ourselves of the video games in the lobby:
House of the Dead
Time Crisis 2

We had also been awake for many hours at a Lan party playing Day of Defeat (WWII half-life mod) so I quipped "today I've killed Nazi's Ninja's and the undead, what's next Undead Nazi Ninja's?"

Then we saw the movie toward the end what comes on screen "hey look its that Undead Nazi ninja you wanted"

[Setesh]

Precog exists because if you make a thousand predictions and have a thousand dreams and they're all wrong, you will forget that they ever happened. But the one time you make a prediction or have a dream which corresponds to an actual event, IT WAS FUCKING PSYCHIC, MAN!!!!

and if you get it right more often than not.....? and if you don't have to guess....?

OK, what number am I thinking of?

69 dude

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Precog exists because if you make a thousand predictions and have a thousand dreams and they're all wrong, you will forget that they ever happened. But the one time you make a prediction or have a dream which corresponds to an actual event, IT WAS FUCKING PSYCHIC, MAN!!!!

and if you get it right more often than not.....? and if you don't have to guess....?

OK, what number am I thinking of?

6523 . . . admit it, you just thought of it, for all of three tenths of a second, maybe.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

OK, what number am I thinking of?

Actually, Mike, that's not a half-bad idea to start. In my experience, there are a number of frighteningly simple ways to discredit someone's claims of pregonitive or psychic abilities.

Perhaps we could construct some sort of basic experiment which would work over a web board...if we could find someone with enough faith in their claimed abilities to participate.

Well, i never said my "abilities" were in anyway controlled by me, they seem random at best.

Isn't there already an noline ESP test? which presents a random image and you post what you think you're going to see before the pic comes up? I remember seeing the experiment it came from, in which people's brains prepared for the image that was going to come up.

Except you can't get good random numbers out of a computer and a web-based Java applet. The pseudorandom number generator there is pathetic. If I had some idea what number was associated with what picture, then I could easily guess at the order the pictures will appear in.

And worse, I've seen some of these sites. They're so desperate for evidence to back their claims of ESP that they say that a positive hit rate a few tenths of a percentage point above what would be achievable by random guessing is evidence of ESP.

[Utsanomiko]

I probably get deja vu once every 10-15 days.

Deja vu is nothing more than the brain improperly assigning a 'label' to a thought as if it were an event that already occurred. That's why it feels like it's happened before, but you could only 'remember' it as a vague idea of an event, or just as an identical copy of the event. You're actually just labelling it as a repeated thought the moment you think of it.

And pre-cog is just selective memory of guessing and Coincidence Demons at work. It's all pure luck, or based on estimates and deduction. There's not even a remotely non-fucking-crazy mechanism for precog to function other than vague mysticisms and ethers (unless you count the Coincidence Demons).

[haas mark]

Precog exists because if you make a thousand predictions and have a thousand dreams and they're all wrong, you will forget that they ever happened. But the one time you make a prediction or have a dream which corresponds to an actual event, IT WAS FUCKING PSYCHIC, MAN!!!!

and if you get it right more often than not.....? and if you don't have to guess....?

OK, what number am I thinking of?

Bullshit question. Read my earlier stuff, and I can also tell you about some other things that happen every now and then (sometimes involving the use of Tarot cards)... But I do happen to have things come true here and there. Now, it's more often than not that it DOESN'T, true, but then it only has to be considered 25% of the time to be called "psychic." [shrugs]

[Rye]

I've done something like that. "Guess the color coming up next" type deal. I got a pretty good score. Y'see, the trick is to NOT listen to your first guess, it's that little almost non-existent half-guess you make a split second before the first pops up. The real trick is to be able to backtrack your mind to try and find it again, and/or translate it (it's more like a feeling than a rememberable thing).

That's eerily familiar...pun intended.

Not in a psychic way, but fairly close to my experiences to when it works.

[Lagmonster]

OK, what number am I thinking of?

Bullshit question. Read my earlier stuff, and I can also tell you about some other things that happen every now and then (sometimes involving the use of Tarot cards)... But I do happen to have things come true here and there. Now, it's more often than not that it DOESN'T, true, but then it only has to be considered 25% of the time to be called "psychic." [shrugs]

In my time, I've heard different 'percentages' of accuracy that a person should have in their predictions to be considered psychic, ranging from 25% to 75%. Funny thing is, I've also seen skeptics in scenarios where they have repeatedly hit 90% and UP by use of deductive reasoning and a firm knowledge of human behaviour patterns and probabilities, coupled with really, really good 'worded so as to be open to interpretation later on' bullshitology.

Frankly, I have always subscribed to the notion that the 'empathic' type of psychic are just people who are very good at picking up physical cues from people. Normal people exhibit this ability all the time, and we call it 'hunches'.

[haas mark]

In my time, I've heard different 'percentages' of accuracy that a person should have in their predictions to be considered psychic, ranging from 25% to 75%.

This is true.

Funny thing is, I've also seen skeptics in scenarios where they have repeatedly hit 90% and UP by use of deductive reasoning and a firm knowledge of human behaviour patterns and probabilities, coupled with really, really good 'worded so as to be open to interpretation later on' bullshitology.

However, what if it happens in advance? I mean, isn't that the point of precognition? See, anything that happens that might be unpredictable being "foreseen" or "foretold" far in advance is going to set ff some red flags, especially if they're just random thoughts, right?

Frankly, I have always subscribed to the notion that the 'empathic' type of psychic are just people who are very good at picking up physical cues from people. Normal people exhibit this ability all the time, and we call it 'hunches'.

Empathy is another issue entirely, and deals with emotions more often than anything. But again, it's another issue for another thread which I will not create.

[UltraViolence83]

I believe it may be possible to prophesize the future...But the big thing is that the future always changes...So today's prophesy will very likely be tomorrow's joke. There's a shitload of endtime nutjobs these days (no thanks to the Internet) and just the fact of so many people screaming bloody murder at Planet X and the Vatican controlling the European Union(!?) to fulfill the "Little Horn" prophesy in Rev. pretty much guarantees it won't happen, nevermind the stupidity of it.

At least Nostradamus was honest when he said his quantrains didn't have to happen because the future is very fluid. My take is that all the shit that was prophesized like 3,000 years ago is horribly less accurate than something foretold 500 years ago, mostly because the future changes in unforeseen ways, and lastly because the Bible authors were dropping some pretty powerful acid.

As for this whole "New Age" thing, I think these people need to open their eyes and realize it already fucking happened. It was a little thing called the 1960's. Think of it: Massive social disruption, changes in people's behavior, new and magical drugs, the re-rise of occultism, it's pretty much the decade that defines our culture. (And the decade the fanatics despise.)

This reminds me of Dune. I think I should reread Messiah.

[haas mark]

Hey, I never said that it wasn;t changeable. Hell, if I give a tarot reading, I always warn the person I'm giving a reading to that it's not necessarily what's going to happen because any little thing could change the future.

[UltraViolence83]

I never accused you of saying it wasn't changable.

[haas mark]

I never accused you of saying it wasn't changable.

I know. Just stating facts.