Psychic Powers

I have been meaning to respond to this thread for a while but it took a bit to find the data I needed to reference.

I work in a scientific field that virtually requires adherance to the paradigm espoused by Your_Ass (archaeology). Although I agree that 90% of what he says is correct and that these "psychics" on the tube are charlatans, some room must be left for error. The reason I say this is that there are times, when working in burial grounds or sacred sites, that I have seen and felt things that just cannot be explained scientifically at this time.

And now there is some interesting new research that suggests a possible better understanding of these "psychic" abilities. I saw a show quite a while ago on string theory (a relatively new area of study in physics) and finally saw it again over the weekend (so I now have a bit better understanding of the subject). I say "bit better" because I am not well grounded in the field and I didn't do very well in it at college.

Anyway, several advocates of string theory (and it is only a theory, and controversial) suggest that if string theory is correct, then there should be about 11 dimensions of existance. We only recognize three today (up and down, left to right and depth). Since these strings are believed to consist only of differing forms of energy it is thought that the strings could be capable of migration between the different dimensions (the primary thought here is to try and explain certain problems with gravity).

Since there is also the thought that the human spirit consists of energy, it is possible that someday (and if string theory proves correct), we may be able to know what "the other side" is and how it relates to us.

Again, physics is not my area of expertise, but I found the correlation interesting.

If your interested in actually knowing more about string theory and the show I mentioned, check out this PBS link (you can DL or stream the show):

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html

I've got a story for you guys which i think is rather interesting.

my great grand mother came from deep in the hills; by deep i mean they had no indoor plumbing or electricity. She would go to the pennycost church and speak in tounges.

She was known as a hands on healer, that what they called it. if you had a bleeding wound she could stop it from bleeding by just putting her hands on you or if you had a burn she could put her hands on it and the next morning it wouldnt be blistered.

Unfortunately she died before i was born but according to the stories i have heard about her she was also a little eccentric. it wasnt just family members that had seen this people would actually bring their kids if they had been burned by the stove, wood burning stove, or something minor like that.

she claimed she was using the power of god to heal these people. but don't get me wrong she wasnt curing cancer or fixing broken legs just little things like a bleeding cut or something.

I'm not sure how she did it, the closes guess i can safely muster would be suggestion. I have heard of people being hypnotized and being told that they are about to be severly burned. The hypnotist would then poke them with his finger or a pencil. the hypnotized would beleive so much into it that they would squirm and shout out in pain like they where really being burned! some would even develop a blister on the spot where the hypnotist poked them.

I have also heard of an interesting "experiment" where a group of monks went to Washington D.C. and prayed for a lower crime rate. the interesting part is that the crime rate did drop by 10%!

I dunno, read into it what you want.

AWESOME

Glad this debate had some action!

First Mox

I admit i am an extreme sceptic when it comes to claims for the paranormal or supernatural. Still we only use around 10% of our brains, and some in the medical profession admit that possitive thinking can have an effect upon one's recovery- the use of placebo's attest to this -is this not the power of the mind.

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Ok a couple of things.
First, we don’t only use 10% of our Brian, that’s commonly believed fallacy. I’ll refer you (in a humorous but non-offensive way) to a children’s science page.

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html

Secondly, that bit about positive thinking and placebo affect is right on the money and absurdly well known and researched by science (you know, since it exists).


Now conman

I just re-read your post, almost nothing to comment on here, other than to say, Congratulations! And that your good fortune has nothing to do with feng shui.

TO THE DUKE!

I never saw this thread! Anyway i wanna point out that it is not unrare at all that psychics are called in to help solve murder cases and such "by" the police. I figure that if we knew for sure it was indeed 100% impossible than this thread would never have existed and the cops wouldn't waste their time. Does that leave enough room for a little open mind for the sake of possibility?

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Short answer, no you’re incredibly wrong.

Long answer:
1) You can’t prove a negative. So we could never know if anything is 100% impossible, just really unlikely.
2) There’s never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever been a case (That’s a lot of evers… I’ll throw in a “that I know about”) that a psychic has solved. I DEFY YOU to find a reputable news source telling about one (unless that psychic was ALSO a cop and solved it in a regular fashion).
3) Cops shouldn’t use psychics and are not using them more and more.
4) No, that doesn’t leave enough room for a little open mind, particularly when its inhibiting the progression of serious police work, and all of mankind.

This is a great article for you.
http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/police-psychics.html

To Min

Interesting, but it sounds a lot like another bullshit movie involving quantum physics and the supernatural, “What The Bleep do we Know”, which has been thoroughly discredited. http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/04/what_the_bleep_.html
But since I’ve never seen it I’ll leave it at that.

Mighty Mighty Meth Cooker.

Cool story, but since you only really said one thing that is capable of being objectively researched I will respond to that.

I have also heard of an interesting "experiment" where a group of monks went to Washington D.C. and prayed for a lower crime rate. the interesting part is that the crime rate did drop by 10%!

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This has also been thoroughly discredited, and its even mentioned in a page I’ve already linked to! http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/04/what_the_bleep_.html
Go there and ctrl+f search for Washington D.C.

That’s all for now, hope to hear from you soon.

I dont depend my life with psychics... but some are true.. and false sometimes.. my girlfriend is always using this.. http://www.psychicguild.com , I just thought if psychics can guess someones email password?? LOL

I'm not sure if that's a terrible post, or spam.

LMAO! If it's spam it's absolute genius!