what was going on last night ...

Subject: what was going on last night ...
From: skarpi
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 03:30 AM

am I the only one that felt something strange ? there is something going on can´t explain but some thing terrible is going to happen...
I could not sleep last night , not at all ....and then something happened inside me ...like a boom .....oh my   ....hahaha maybe I should see the doc ....

all the best Skarpi Iceland .

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 05:05 AM

skarpi, how strange! Because I have felt a sense of impending doom for a day or two. I can't put my finger in it, bit it's a feeling that something is going to happen, and it won't be nice. I wonder what it will be? Let's hope our fears are wrong. (Happy New Year by the way!)

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 05:22 AM

Could it be whatever it is that causes animals to appear restless before an earthquake - vibrations or gases from below the earth's crust? Keep an eye on those volcanoes Skarpi!

Eliza, where do you live - anywhere near volcanoes or earthquake zones?

PS No sense of doom here in Hampshire - so far . . .

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 05:50 AM

Skarpi, if something funny really did happen inside you go and see a doctor.

Eliza, if you think something is going to happen but you don't know what it is, don't get worrying about it. That way lies madness...

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 06:40 AM

"Imp ending doom". I like that.

Tone

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 07:19 AM

I slept like a log last night and woke feeling happy and refreshed. If nothing dramatic happens today would it be in order for me to claim that my psychic powers are better than yours? :-)

As Richard Feynman used to say: "think of all the times you've had a bad feeling about something, and nothing happened. Or all the times that something happened that you *hadn't* had a feeling about!

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 07:27 AM

Slept like a log last night...............woke up in the fireplace this morning.

Dave H

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 07:40 AM

I've been feeling quite happy and optimistic lately. And I've had my share of impending doom thoughts, including one or two dreams in my life that were followed by world events that seemed related. But I've learned that my ominous thoughts are almost guaranteed to be linked to my own psyche, nothing more nor less.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Ed T
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 07:50 AM

Internationally, it seems to be a temporary period of calm?

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Elmore
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 09:31 AM

Nothing.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 09:32 AM

I don't live near any volcanoes or earthquake zones. And I know it's a bit mad to be unsettled by a 'feeling'. But my Irish mother used very occasionally to get this same 'premonition', and something always DID happen. As a practising Christian I should be able do dismiss foreboding and trust in God. But... As both skarpi in Iceland and myself (in Norfolk UK) seem to be in a similar state, it must be a global, or at least northern hemisphere thing. Anything unusual in a planetary, astronomical sense going on? (Maybe I'm going to win the Lottery! In which case, excellent!)

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: skarpi
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 12:55 PM

Eliza ....yes those are feelings and seeings ..
and Anything unusual in a planetary, astronomical sense going on? yes there is ..but most of people don´t see or feel it ....

Peter ....no I don´t think I am going to a doctor ........

this is something more than a volcanic happening ....or earthquakes .

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Helen
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 03:14 PM

Hi all,

I'm not sure how the timezones line up, but most of the middle of yesterday (here in East Coast Australia, current time 7.06am) I had a strong feeling of something happening or about to happen too.

Does Richard Feynman have anything to say about the times when premonitions, intuition and that "feeling" are correct? Because I have learned in my life that I can rely on my premonitions a lot. I always double check against the data but it usually gives me a "heads up" about what is currently going on or what may be about to happen, in relation to things or situations which are important to me.

I had a premonition a week before the major earthquake which hit Newcastle, NSW in 1989. I couldn't pinpoint what the problem was but I knew it was going to affect a lot of people in the area. A week later, I was standing in the exact, same spot, waiting to cross the road, and everyone was shell-shocked because the earthquake had hit earlier that morning. We don't get major earthquakes here, only tremors now and then. This one was totally unexpected.

Helen

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 04:18 PM

As both skarpi in Iceland and myself (in Norfolk UK) seem to be in a similar state, it must be a global, or at least northern hemisphere thing.

As 90% off the world population live in the northern hemisphere, I don't think 2 people out of 6.3 billion counts as a representative sample.

DC

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: GUEST,Manuel
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 04:34 PM

I'll go along, all the way, with Pete Jennings on this one.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Tangledwood
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 04:36 PM

Helen, given the extreme fire danger conditions today I hope your feelings are wrong this time. Stay safe everybody.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Will Fly
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 06:22 PM

SAD? (Seasonal Affective Disorder)...

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Helen
Date: 07 Jan 13 - 08:07 PM

Hi Will Fly,

Hopefully SAD won't affect me until winter arrives. :-D

Tangledwood, where are you located? In Oz?

Bushfires and extreme heat are our worries at the moment, although Tassie is copping the bushfires worse than around here.

We have some fires up in the Hunter Valley, some appear to be deliberately lit, according to a news item today, and another one earlier this week near the main hospital in Newcastle, also probably deliberate.

It was 10 years ago this month that the whole of Oz appeared to be going up in smoke. We went down to Victoria, and over to Tassie, and there were bushfires almost everywhere we went.

Helen

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Abdul The Bul Bul
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 03:14 AM

Hi Skarpi, no 'boom' but unusually for me, couldn't sleep at all about 2 to 4.30. Was wide awake and restless. When family got up, all complained of a badly broken nights sleep. OK last night though.
Al

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 05:33 AM

Hi Skarpi, I hope you are coping with the Icelandic winter darkness at the moment. What do you folk do to cope with the dark? Hot tubs? Partie? Here in England the days are growing longer again, slowly tempting us out of our mid-winter gloom. Get your guitar out Skarpi and sing away your feelings of doom....

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 05:48 AM

Helen: Does Richard Feynman have anything to say about the times when premonitions, intuition and that "feeling" are correct?

Yes, he says(as do many others) that people are predisposed to conflate coincidences and random events into patterns or connections. Over a large population, improbable events will occur sometimes.

For example this year the papers were full of a story about a baby born on Christmas day whose elder sibling had also been born on Christmas day....supposedly at odds of 133,000 to 1 (though whether they factored in the possible non-random nature of parental planning wasn't stated). Well even at those odds, given the global population, there'll be several families per year in the same position, whereas through most of human history, where news propagation was at the village level between a few hundred people at most, it would have appeared very noteworthy in any village where it occurred.

As for premonitions....they're usually vague and the connection time elastic, so, say, a flood somewhere, say a week after someone having a "premonition" about water, may well be "seen" by that person as their premonition coming true, even though a proper study of flooding patterns might indicate that such events occur weekly anyway.

Even something like a train crash...in the UK, I'd hazard a guess that several dozen, at least, people a night dream of train crashes, so the day one does inevitably happen there'll be people who can truthfully say " I dreamed about a train crash last night"....but, statistically, it's still coincidence.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Ed T
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 08:03 AM

Odd thing happened last night 3:30 a.m. Atlantic time- my cat woke up and started moving around and meowing constantly for 15 to 20 minutes. I woke up, she did not seem hungry or to want anything. First time she did this, odd?

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 10:42 AM

"Odd thing happened last night 3:30 a.m. Atlantic time- my cat woke up and started moving around and meowing constantly for 15 to 20 minutes. I woke up, she did not seem hungry or to want anything. First time she did this, odd?"

Obviously a sign of coming cat as trophy....

Tone

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Sian H
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 10:55 AM

That was me saying get your guitar out Skarpi. I wasn't signed in. Sian

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: GUEST,Seayaker
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 12:08 PM

I often have very strange dreams.

Started when I went on Statins.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 12:38 PM

Is there any music content in this thread ?

Seems not. Except that the 7th of January was the eve of the aniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, or perhaps you had too much to drink at that Breaking up Christmas party the night before. Resin up the bow.

Hoot

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Helen
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 05:07 PM

Hi Rob,

I doubt whether Richard Feynman spent any significant time investigating and compiling data and statistics on people's psychic experiences.

On a quick reading about him and his career, he didn't appear to specialise in investigating psychic phenomena at all, so these quotes may be based on his opinions or beliefs rather than on empirical data.

In an effort to diplomatically comment on RF's quotes, although I admit that I do have my tongue slightly lodged in my cheek :-)

In my observations:
* Some people's "coincidences" can be wishful thinking about their psychic abilities, or about what they would hope will happen in a situation
* Some people's hopes and/or fears interrupt their ability to think straight
* Some people's "coincidences" are straight-out charlatanism, trying to pull the wool over other people's eyes, usually for the charlatan's gain, even if only in attempting to increase their own kudos
* Some people's "coincidences" may be not so accurate, because the accuracy relies on how they interpret the messages they get, or some people try to overthink the messages
* Some people's "coincidence-seeing/feeling" skills are very carefully honed and analysed with an exceptionally high degree of self knowledge and awareness of the possibility of mistakes and misinterpretations, and an exceptionally high internal quality-control process
* Some people's "coincidences" can be uncannily accurate more times than not, and some people's "coincidences" can be uncannily accurate some of the time
* Some people have been seeing/feeling these "coincidences" since childhood and use them as accurately as they use their other data gathering and two-way communication skills

On the other hand, some other people without "coincidence-seeing/feeling" skills can sometimes feel threatened by them, or because they don't understand these skills they try to convince others that "coincidence-seeing/feeling" skills don't actually exist.

Some people also convey the message that all or most of the people who say they have "coincidence-seeing/feeling" skills are blindly accepting the messages they get without checking their messages against other criteria or data.

I sincerely suspect that most true psychics don't really care about what other people think or believe because a true psychic knows how clear and accurate the messages can be. Unless someone has either experienced a real psychic message themselves or had a clear and accurate reading or message from a true psychic, then I don't think that that person can really understand.

Opinions and beliefs which are not based on clear, accurate observations of psychic phenomena, remain as opinions and beliefs only, until the theories and hypotheses are scientifically tested.

On the other hand, most of the psychic people I have observed don't have any desire to be put under the microscope by people whose opinions and beliefs are interfering with their ability to conduct accurate, scientific studies.

A lot of people, on any given date, may dream about floods or train wrecks, but most of them would dismiss the dream straight away as being just a dream. Others might think about it through the day, or worry about catching a train, but then go about their normal business without thinking they needed to change their actions based on the dream.

A true psychic usually knows whether a dream is a psychic message and not just their own brain throwing images and situations into a dreamscape for the usual purposes of dreaming, such as processing the previous day's experiences, or making sense of life situations which may be bothering them.

Another one of the bees in my bonnet is about the definition of being a sceptic or thinking critically. It doesn't mean saying "No" all the time, or only saying negative things. It means making accurate observations, weighing up the data and coming to logical conclusions, even if the conclusions are not consistent with your own beliefs or opinions. Having an open mind, in other words.


Normally, I just think all of this and don't say it, but today, I decided to weigh in on the topic. Your quotes from Richard Feynman could form the foundation for a proper scientific study of psychic intuitive phenomena.

Helen

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 05:48 PM

Well, now I know. Just after my last post, my little Siamese cat Minty became very ill. The other two were trying to lick him and keep him warm. We rushed him to the vet, and it was a near thing. It's pancreatitis, he was terribly poorly but they got a line into a vein and rehydrated him. It's cost me £456, we've just brought him home this evening. I was distraught with worry. I must have inherited my mother's second sight!

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Rumncoke
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 06:25 PM

I hope I have a fairly scientific outlook, but there are more things ....

I was once driving through a rather pretty English village towards a blind bend, fairly cautiously as is usual for me, when I heard someone say 'slow down' - it seemed to come from the unoccupied back seat and it sounded like my mother. I slowed down, and then braked, very, very hard.

Just around the corner there were bales of straw all over the road, a tractor and trailer and another car completely blocking the road. If I had driven normally I'd have gone under the corner of the trailer.

My mother had been dead for some time by then, so it could be considered a psychic phenomenon, I suppose. I just thank whatever power was watching out for me that day.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Helen
Date: 08 Jan 13 - 08:59 PM

Hi Rumncoke,

I remember a very similar incident. I didn't hear a voice, but I knew with certainty that I had to move to the left lane, while driving up a steep, dark, twisty suburban hill.

There were two lanes going up the hill, but only one lane coming down, so there was no logical reason to quickly move over into the left lane on a blind corner, but as I came around the bend a car was speeding down the hill in the wrong lane, and I would have had no chance to avoid a head on collision. Someone was definitely helping me out that night!

The feeling was like a compulsion to change lanes. I could have ignored it, but it was a very strong feeling and I knew to trust those feelings.

Helen

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Tangledwood
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 04:08 AM

Helen, I'm on the north side of Brisbane. Fire danger is higher than usual here but nothing like down south. There was plenty of smoke around this afternoon from a fire on Bribie Island but that's now under control I think.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: DMcG
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 04:28 AM

I doubt whether Richard Feynman spent any significant time investigating and compiling data and statistics on people's psychic experiences.

On a quick reading about him and his career, he didn't appear to specialise in investigating psychic phenomena at all, so these quotes may be based on his opinions or beliefs rather than on empirical data.

That's an interesting observation. Yes, Feynman, and similar scientists, do make a core assumption: that psychic experiences must conform to similar laws to the entire rest of the universe. Under that assumption, his experience with compiling data and statistics is relevant, even if it is not specifically on psychic events. So things known in the rest of data analysis do apply - confirmation bias, sampling outliers and so on.

Now, if (as I anticipate) your response is that the core assumption is not valid, then we get onto quite interesting grounds since you would be saying this is something that is inherently outside science, not merely something that science chooses not to study for whatever reason.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: theleveller
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 04:47 AM

I have an open mind with regard to coincidences but I have had a few interesting experiences of it. When I did a regular hour and a half commute each way to Manchester every day, I read a lot of books. After reading Jung's 'Synchronicity' I decided on a little personal experiment: having read a book, I would choose the next one to read at random from the bibliography. This was an interesting journey that led me, after several months, to read Koestler's 'The Act of Creation'. One morning a woman boarded the train at Leeds and sat opposite me as I was reading it. She opened her briefcase, took out a large envelope, opened it and began to read from a sheaf of papers. After a few minutes she began to glance over at me with a curious look (I have that effect on people!). After a while she leant over and said: "Excuse me, are you doing the Open University Course on the Psychology of Art?". I said not and asked why. "Well," she replied, "I am and I'm just off for a tutorial at Huddersfield University. I've just got my tutor's reading list here and the book you're reading is at the top."

What's even more curious is that Koestler himself wrote "The Roots of Coincidence".

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: DMcG
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 05:14 AM

Just thinking about it, we could treat this thread as a mini experiment in its own right. What would be the criteria needed for skarpi to say this experience was NOT an pyschic prediction? Here's a few things that I'd suggest we include.

a) The predicted event must happen in the next few days. Without a reasonable timescale, there is no meaningful prediction. I can confidently 'predict' my own death sometime in the next 50 years ...

b) The predicted event must include an actual 'boom'. An explosion or a volcano, perhaps, but not a forest fire.

c) The event must be of a significant size, and as a benchmark lets say enough to make the national news. The fuse on a kettle in the house may blow with a 'boom', but it would hardly be of the right scale.

Now, of course even if such an event did occur, I would want to make sure it was not an outlier, so we would need rather more than one correct prediction to say we have proved anything, but it would be a good data point in favour of psychic events.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 05:31 AM

Well, Eliza's cat wouldn't meet those criteria, but Eliza was maybe still right. (Hope Minty is continuing to be well, Eliza).

However, rather than a premonition of the cat's illness, I would suspect that he hadn't been behaving normally, but not abnormally enough for any real concern, just enough to create a subconcious feeling that all was not well.

I experienced that one time when I was working abroad and came home to find my wife was ill. It was only later when one of my colleagues said that they all thought I had been behaving a little bit out of character (not badly or anything like that, just a bit odd) that I realised there I may have been picking up something different in my wife's voice during the calls home.

Food for thought...

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: DMcG
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 06:30 AM

I'd say, Pete, that the sort of explanations you are suggesting there, which can plausably be responses to subtle changes in behaviour of a well known person or creature, are quite a different category to predicting an event that only affects people you don't know, in a place you don't know at a time you don't know.

A person can be right for reasons they don't fully understand without a need for either a scientific or a psychic explanation of how they got there.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: theleveller
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 07:20 AM

As the waywe live has changed over millennia, the 'instinctive' part of our brain has been suppressed by the 'logical' part but it's still there and can become active without our noticing it.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Ed T
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 07:34 AM

""A the 'instinctive' part of our brain has been suppressed by the 'logical' part ""

Unfortuantely, Not in all cases:)

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 07:59 AM

Last night, in the UK, a bunch of posh yahoos from the Bullingdon club were sneering at and impoverishing the poorest and most vulnerable in the UK. If that doesn't make you sick it should.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: skarpi
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 08:36 AM

hmmm
   , now ...this has nothing to do with the darkness , and if some of you want to make fun out of this , then so be it ...

just remember some people feel things that , others don´t ..

I dream ..and I remember my dreams ...one of them came true
not so long ago ..
another seeing as I call it , is about to happen ....

have a good future all

kv Skarpi Iceland ....
p.s I play the guitar everyday I can ....

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: DMcG
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 08:56 AM

if some of you want to make fun out of this

I don't, for one. Things that cause fear and anxiety are no laughing matter. However, it is a great help in dealing with them if you have a clear perspective on how often the feelings are right or wrong.

I claim this has parallels, if not the same. Most of my wife's life she has been fearful of strong winds. Whenever we had strong gusts at night she would lie awake worrying in case the roof was holed, and then the rain would come in, and then there'd be so much damage and, and, and ... Getting that under control involved learning to see just how often nothing came of these fears. Concentrating on the [few] times when something did happen - a lost tile here, seepage through a poor window seal - let to a great many fearful nights 'just in case'. About a decade ago she had CBT professionally and it has helped greatly, and now while no-one would ever claim she likes high winds, they do not bring the fear they did.

So that's my advice - it is worth a good deal of effort to get fear in proportion.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 09:01 AM

You've got a point there, DMcG, in your response to my last post. Interesting discussion developing here.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: skarpi
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 10:21 AM

most of people live in denial of what is going on around them ....
many of them don´t want to know the ugly of this world , just to be in their comfort ring and never look out ....but when you start to shake the boat , then they will stand up and fight back to hold their way of live as it is .

this how I up live people around me ..today , they don´t want to know or believe ,

you may have a day dream :) ..great
you may have a night dream and you are a sleep , they say most people
don´t remember their dreams ...that may well be ...
you may have a night dream s and you remember all of them , some of them are about the future , about the present or the past ...family or a person , illness or happiness .

what about if you feel some thing in your subconsciousness ? and it come´s true ...is it one time happening ? or do that person have sense
for some event or event´s in the days to come ? every time that happens .



its not fear or darkness its a sense and some thing you feel or see ...
I can´t explain how I am , when this happen to me ....
I may be crazy , or a big fool ..in eyes of some ... so be it ..

well I am a strange man ...I must say ...

I don´t fear the coming future , what come , will come , when it comes
then I will deal with it in school of live ...the hardest of them all


big love to you all
all the best Skarpi Iceland ....

p.s
its okei to have fear about things we don´t know

but its much stronger to believe and have faith ...than being
denial and fear .

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Stu
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 10:33 AM

I woke up in the night with a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach too. As the night wore on I was restless and unable to sleep and the feeling moved down into my lower gut. I would describe it as a hot, almost burning sensation and it felt physical. It was accompanied by a deep, almost subsonic rumbling sound. It only went away this morning, after I spent some time in a the smallest room in the house at my wife's insistence. I noticed the bedroom window was open.

For lunch today I finished off the rather hot curry i had for tea last night, so this strange experience didn't put me off my food.


**parp**

Pardon.

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 10:49 AM

I said interesting not intestine!

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 12:46 PM

There are times when I feel a strong sense of 'something's going to happen' but usually I am also aware that many, many times when something does happen I had no advance warning at all. I've about decided that often when something is going on I/we pick up on someone else's fears or anticipations.

Does that make sense? I do know that on occasion I have picked up on someone's fear, even when I didn't know the person.

(On the other hand, maybe it's because it is Elvis's birthday, Skarpi!)

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 01:14 PM

Recent Research HAS SHOWN that people who drink four cans or more of carbonated beverage per day are 30% more likely to experience depression and forebodings of disaster, and those who drink 4 cans or more of DIET carbonated beverages are even more likely to suffer from the same.

Drinking fruit juices raised the odds by 50%.

LAY OFF THE SODY POP and have a good brew or a cuppa coffee.

(The same report indicates that coffee drinkers are less likely to feel depressed.)

John

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: SINSULL
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 01:39 PM

skarpi,
I often know when something bad is going to happen. Sometimes vague feelings; sometimes specific - knowing that a perfectly healthy person is about to die is not fun.
But no bad feelings here.

And to my surprise no bad feelings pre-World Trade Center disaster.

So bad tacos? Too much Christmas candy?

In the immortal words of Ebenezer Scgrooge "There's more of gravy than grave in you."

Not Katla I hope.
SINS

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: Helen
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 04:16 PM

DMcG, in your post of 09 Jan 13 - 04:28 AM, you said:

"That's an interesting observation. Yes, Feynman, and similar scientists, do make a core assumption: that psychic experiences must conform to similar laws to the entire rest of the universe. Under that assumption, his experience with compiling data and statistics is relevant, even if it is not specifically on psychic events. So things known in the rest of data analysis do apply - confirmation bias, sampling outliers and so on.

"Now, if (as I anticipate) your response is that the core assumption is not valid, then we get onto quite interesting grounds since you would be saying this is something that is inherently outside science, not merely something that science chooses not to study for whatever reason."


No, I wasn't saying RF was making a core assumption. I was wondering if he had ever done any scientific studies of psychic phenomena. I think that, scientist or not, a lot of people make assumptions about events or phenomena without having done proper, controlled experiments, or without having read any data from those type of experiments. It's very easy to make sweeping statements about anything at all in the world, but what is the actual, factual, data-based evidence for making those statements?

A scientist usually has to study a specific topic with very specific hypotheses, and to attempt to design experiments which eliminate, as far as possible, flaws in the experiment which might skew the data, or lead to incorrect assumptions. An experiment about one topic does not usually mean that the scientist can make assumptions about different topics. It usually means that more questions are raised and more experiments might be needed to attempt to find answers to those questions. Can a physicist make assumptions about the nature of human abilities of the non-physical kind, without calling on reputable scientific data?

I agree with Pete Jennings, too, that subtle human signs, like body language, tone of voice etc are important ways of picking up on how someone is feeling. I use that a lot and I can see how it links in with other perceptive skills, including psychic skills. Some dogs have been specially trained to pick up on a scent (or something else?) which indicates an epileptic is about to have a seizure, so there are other signs which our brain may perceive that our logical, conscious mind does not realise. So these data inputs are part of the whole process, too.

I think that when psychic abilities are truly understood, they will fit neatly into the physical and other laws of the universe, but I get frustrated when sweeping statements without a base of scientific data are made about the nature of psychic abilities.

I've been thinking, last night, about why I get frustrated.

Imagine this thread:

"I spoke to my sister last night and she told me something important which I want to discuss in this thread. She was at home, 20 miles away. I used a telephone."

Then someone replies to the post saying, "Telephones don't work. It's just a coincidence that you happened to know what your sister had to say."

Surely the response would be, "Why are you diverting the topic of conversation from the core matter of the thread to a technological discussion about whether telephones exist or whether they actually work or whether they are a figment of our imaginations? I started this thread to discuss a particular topic, not to discuss the side issue of telephones."

So, I have noticed over the 17 years I have been coming to Mudcat, and also in other forums and in real-life conversations, that for some reason, if a topic is raised and it refers to psychic abilities, the main topic is often ignored by at least one person, and there is a throwaway line about whether psychic abilities exist. If that one person simply said, "I don't BELIEVE in psychic abilities," it would be an opinion, but I rarely witness that sort of honesty. More times than not, in my experience, the statement is made in a way which challenges the person who mentions psychic abilities to prove that they exist, and it means that that person is then put on the defensive, and diverted from the topic they started the thread to discuss.

Like I said before, I normally don't weigh in on this discussion, but my frustration over the years got the better of me. I just wanted, for once, to put my side of the story, but in doing that, I fear I've fallen for that old "setting the cat among the pigeons" ruse and I have to take some responsibility for diverting the topic away from skarpi's original post. For that, skarpi, I am truly sorry.

Helen

Subject: RE: what was going on last night ...
From: akenaton
Date: 09 Jan 13 - 04:57 PM

I believe leveller is correct, our natural "senses" and instincts have become eroded as we have become more domesticated.

Animals have much better "senses" like sense of smell, which we have almost completely lost; our hearing is dim, our eyesight poor, we depend on technology to live and have dispensed with most of our senses and instincts. We no longer even think for ourselves.
We are in the process of becoming vegetables....some further along the road than others.

I have personal and startling evidence of mental telepathy and what some people call "deja vu"....I dont know the proper term.

One of my sons, with whom i have a rather special relationship, lives about forty miles away, we rarely phone one another as we work together, but often, when he phones me, i have been just about to call him.... and vice-versa, it is a bit of a standing joke between us, that we have no secrets from one another.