Precognition- What is your take on it?

[Gray-Wolf]

but how would you know it was precognition and not just a guess? or fear? or coincidence?

You would need to conclusively prove precognition and then establish which neural pathways were involved but I do not believe that precognition has been proven as yet.

By all means provide links etc. I will gladly read what you believe to be proof

Appearances can be deceptive GW. I just need proof before I believe

and so we go full circle.

Experiments accepted as valid in both their methodology and results prove that human beings pre-concieve when they are about to suffer a 'stress event' and start to produce measurable ,physiological alterations within their bodies to prepare them for the 'shock'.

No coincidence, no guesswork (the stats were far,far better than that).

If you truely wished to engage /discuss this you would search out the papers I am reffering to and discuss their findings instead of this relentless flow of 'show me proof's.

I suspect you would not accept the proof within the documents if you chose to study them and it is more the reasoning behind what appears to be an unscientific approach that is fascinating me.

If I visualise all I see is someone with there hands clamped over their ears screaming "it isn't true, it isn't true" .

Funny thing the imagination eh?

[VillagePlank]

Experiments accepted as valid in both their methodology and results prove that human beings pre-concieve when they are about to suffer a 'stress event' and start to produce measurable ,physiological alterations within their bodies to prepare them for the 'shock'.

It is perhaps more helpful if you refer to the studies about Presentiment.

[flagpole]

Funny thing the imagination eh?

Well yours is, certainly.

If you have links to the proof why not show them? I will gladly read them.

Obfuscation is unnecessary, all I am asking for is links.

You surely appreciate just how much rubbish there is on the internet.

[Gray-Wolf]

Neurons (and their associative networks) do not react in a linear way as you (maybe mistakenly) suggest. Indeed the electical potential on the soma membrane is well known for it's non-linear behaviour.

So how complex are we wishing to make it?. We talk of atoms consisting of Electrons ,neutrons and protons for the sake of easy consumption yet we know they are so much more . We could discuss the extra 'complexity of avian neural networks but who would want to engage?

For the sake of most out there I think it easier to visualise a causal pathway as moving from A to B.

Out of interest how would you approach that area of discussion and keep it palatable for the majority?

[flagpole]

It is perhaps more helpful if you refer to the studies about Presentiment.

Thanks for that VP.

[Gray-Wolf]

It is perhaps more helpful if you refer to the studies about Presentiment.

I sit corrected. I had not heard the word before but if this is what I am refering then Presentiment it is.......which of course leads us onto precognition (LOL)

[VillagePlank]

So how complex are we wishing to make it?. We talk of atoms consisting of Electrons ,neutrons and protons for the sake of easy consumption yet we know they are so much more . We could discuss the extra 'complexity of avian neural networks but who would want to engage?

For the sake of most out there I think it easier to visualise a causal pathway as moving from A to B.

Out of interest how would you approach that area of discussion and keep it palatable for the majority?

That's the point, though, isn't it GW? We are taught causal physics and philosophy from year dot, and in reality, the natural world is anything but causal; in fact causality only appears when man's mind abstracts and creates mathematical models of nature. Sometimes they're good - really good, but they're still an approximation no matter how close.

Why should it be palatable to the majority? If someone has a significant enough interest they'll learn - if they don't, then they just weren't interested enough

I'm not normally an egalitarian, but, if you wish to dilute things down a little, then so be it; I won't stand in your way. In fact, I'll stand aside.

Oh and by the way; the study does not show how the random numbers were generated. Lot's of potential problems, there: see Knuth et al.

[Gray-Wolf]

That's the point, though, isn't it GW? We are taught causal physics and philosophy from year dot, and in reality, the natural world is anything but causal; in fact causality only appears when man's mind abstracts and creates mathematical models of nature. Sometimes they're good - really good, but they're still an approximation no matter how close.

Why should it be palatable to the majority? If someone has a significant enough interest they'll learn - if they don't, then they just weren't interested enough

I'm not normally an egalitarian, but, if you wish to dilute things down a little, then so be it; I won't stand in your way. In fact, I'll stand aside.

Oh and by the way; the study does not show how the random numbers were generated. Lot's of potential problems, there: see Knuth et al.

Thank you for the lead.

I have found through my life thus far that it is mainly true that you can lead a horse to water........ (hence the dilution) but sometimes the horse is so 'distracted' in its living it doesn't recognise it's own thirst until in front of the pool.

I think that many people have great potentials that lie dormant within them and maybe good teachers can help them discover their own 'potentials'.

In life we tend to get out more than we put in so we should keep 'putting in' shouldn't we?

[VillagePlank]

I have found through my life thus far that it is mainly true that you can lead a horse to water........ (hence the dilution) but sometimes the horse is so 'distracted' in its living it doesn't recognise it's own thirst until in front of the pool.

I think that many people have great potentials that lie dormant within them and maybe good teachers can help them discover their own 'potentials'.

In life we tend to get out more than we put in so we should keep 'putting in' shouldn't we?

If you want to talk about neurons then we'll talk about 'somas, dendrites, axons and synapses' etc

If you want to talk about computer programming we'll talk about 'procedure, functions, Big 'O', and Z' etc

If you want to talk about meteorology we'll talk about 'temperature, pressure, albedo' etc

Each particular interest generates it's own langauge; a language that takes time and effort to learn. An individual must be , by default, interested enough to expend the effort the learn such a new language.

BTW, I do not want to lead horses to water, I do not want to help point out to people that they are thirsty; I am by no means and by no fashion any sort of teacher good or otherwise.

Should we put more in? I think you'll find that we already do . . . by virtue of existence.

[Gray-Wolf]

If you want to talk about neurons then we'll talk about 'somas, dendrites, axons and synapses' etc

If you want to talk about computer programming we'll talk about 'procedure, functions, Big 'O', and Z' etc

If you want to talk about meteorology we'll talk about 'temperature, pressure, albedo' etc

Each particular interest generates it's own language; a language that takes time and effort to learn. An individual must be , by default, interested enough to expend the effort the learn such a new language.

BTW, I do not want to lead horses to water, I do not want to help point out to people that they are thirsty; I am by no means and by no fashion any sort of teacher good or otherwise.

Should we put more in? I think you'll find that we already do . . . by virtue of existence.

We neither of us are 'teachers' ,either through training or bent, but by our living we provide 'lessons' to others whether we choose to recognise this or not. We can be mindful of the example we set others or we can put the onus onto others by refusing to accept responsibility for that that we say or do.

Many young heads (I imagine) browse through sites like this and things that they read here, though above there intellectual ability at present, may ignite their interest in the subjects under discussion and they way they are discussed.

The Jargon/technospeech that goes with any discipline can be used as a weapon with which to bludgeon others into intellectual submission because they lack the simple 'terminology' (I could wax lyrical about the Ophiolite complexes on some of the islands in the Med. but how self limiting would that prove to the 'conversation'?). When techno speak is used to define a clique it is not useful, far from it it drives many 'would be novices' away from the subjects not through lack of ability /interest but for fear of social humiliation at the hands of the 'language users'. We all must start somewhere and hopefully it is a gentler kind that introduces a soul into a subject and it language than those who would seek personal self aggrandisement through a working knowledge of a 'lingo'.

I have had far too many run ins with 'Specialists' not to recognise that ,at times, to be heard and taken seriously we must speak their lingo and know a few 'buzz words'. Just as I recognise this I also know it takes a sound understanding of any notion to be able to 'bring it down' to a level even a child would appreciate.

Thank you for your input on this thread by the way I don't think I've had cause to pass so many words across to you before and I am currently enjoying what you choose to say.

[BARRY]

well i no when the phone rings in the pub it's the missus, call it what you like but thats intuition

[Gray-Wolf]

well i no when the phone rings in the pub it's the missus, call it what you like but thats intuition

Hers or yours?

EDIT Having now read up on the word 'presentiment' it does seem to cover precognition/gut feeling but doesn't mention the positive side of the phenomenon (butterflies when about to see/hear from a person dear to you etc.) the experiment showed changes when sexual or 'cute' images were produced also but the strongest responses were consistantly from the more 'disturbing ' images. Though human nature may put more weight on negative reinforcement nature likes balence so there is good in precognition as well as foreboding.

Edited February 13, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[The Penguin]

well i no when the phone rings in the pub it's the missus, call it what you like but thats intuition

smiling now, that's you three hours late for your dinner.

[BARRY]

smiling now, that's you three hours late for your dinner.

only three hours thats early

[Gray-Wolf]

Take to drinkin' 'Dog'........it's a meal in a bottle!

Like everybodies 'other senses' any ability for your mind to percieve the future must be a thing of gradation (as with eyesight or hearing) but here we have prejudice against those who display 'better' forward vision as most of us have mooted out our ability and focused on our 'common sense (as Hemmy puts it) leaving our 'abilities' as a residual 'vestige' of a sense that once proved useful. If you stopped using your legs pretty soon you wouldn't be able to use your legs through the muscle wastage that would occur (ask anyone who has had a cast on!) so you have a way to understand why most people cannot 'use' their presemtiment/precognition but do have moments when it 'fires up' in the extremes of emotional experience.

If, in the land of the blind , a sighted person started on about a beautiful sunrise then people would find it hard to accept. Maybe this is where we stand at present on presentiment/precognition.

[parmenides3]

A quick experiment. I am thinking (hard) about a word. In a few minutes, I'll post it. Does anyone know what this word is?

I'll allow a few minutes for responses.

:)P

[Gray-Wolf]

I don't think I'd like to stretch things as far as that P3.

The 'ability' I'm interested in is as much a part of the Autonomic response system as heart control or breathing so any 'conscious' effort unleashes the 'cage of chattering monkeys' who are less than helpful in this area.

In the eastern world of fakir's and devotee's meditation can lead to a greater control of autonomic responses (heart rate, body temperature, pain management etc.) but I doubt if many of us here can 'calm the cage of chattering monkeys' enough to 'perceive' anything other than their 'noise'.

I'd purely like to focus on the autonomic responses that would suggest an ability to 'perceive' future events of importance to our sense of well being. If we make any kind of sense of this 'ability' then we may choose to expand the notion into the abilities of folk with a 'heightened' ability in that area.

[parmenides3]

Okay, G-W. Just a bit of fun, but it has a point. To say that something is 'known' is to say that it already exists. 'Knowledge of future events', on whatever level, implies that the future events are already 'decided'. The same goes for the term 'perceive'; this should only refer to a 'phenomenon' (something which 'is'). We have a real problem with language when dealing with such matters. We also have a logical problem, relating to the relative fixity of the not-yet; are we willing to accept that, beyond the temporal horizon of the imminent, some things can be 'seen'? If we are (and I would argue that we have to be in order to allow for presentiment/precognition), then we have to accept some form of determinism. The alternative would seem to be 'anticipation', which is not based on the future being 'known' at all, but on the human mind's ability (rationally or otherwise) to imagine.

Just thinking out loud, really.

:)P

[Gray-Wolf]

I don't have the mental capacity to even start to think I have grasp enough of current understanding as I would wish to have.

If their are a 'multiplicity of dimensions' then every course of action would be possible/probable and though 'predestined' the choices before us would not be finite (in an infinite universe).

As with anything there will be a 'path of least resistance' through life tripping through many of the 'parallels' to arrive at a descriptor of 'our life' that we would recognise.

To make a wrong choice/not listen to our internal 'Tom,Tom' may lead us down a less favourable path and squander the potential that existed up until the point of the 'wrong turn'.

Though we live our lives to avoid 'regrets' I dare say we all feel we have made poor decisions that have impacted negatively on our lives (but somewhere another 'you' did it the other way!).

In this area of science we are limited by our inability to measure and quantify that that we do not fully perceive/understand. I have no doubts about more being discovered and integrated into our 'understanding' as time moves on.

The ancient Greeks came to the 'logical conclusion' that matter was made up of very small (atoms) particles. It took a long time for science to arrive art a point where this could be imperially proven.

So it will be with the areas of 'parapsychology' today. Until you know what you are measuring you can't devise equipment to measure it. Blind denial of the possibility of 'extra' abilities will not take us any closer to a point of proving/disproving the proposition so the 'open mind' is the most useful tool I can come up with at present.

[VillagePlank]

Okay, G-W. Just a bit of fun, but it has a point. To say that something is 'known' is to say that it already exists. 'Knowledge of future events', on whatever level, implies that the future events are already 'decided'. The same goes for the term 'perceive'; this should only refer to a 'phenomenon' (something which 'is'). We have a real problem with language when dealing with such matters. We also have a logical problem, relating to the relative fixity of the not-yet; are we willing to accept that, beyond the temporal horizon of the imminent, some things can be 'seen'? If we are (and I would argue that we have to be in order to allow for presentiment/precognition), then we have to accept some form of determinism. The alternative would seem to be 'anticipation', which is not based on the future being 'known' at all, but on the human mind's ability (rationally or otherwise) to imagine.

Just thinking out loud, really.

:)P

I have a problem with this. I have a problem with even the most basic physical systems. I have a problem with mathematics.

Now it’s not that I can’t do algebra, I can; It’s not that I can’t solve recursive non-linear equations – I can, and I manipulate them daily in my job as a computer programmer (In fact most computer programmers do this, but they don’t know they do)

What my problem is, is related to what Einstein said about Time. He called it an illusion.

From basic physics to classical Newtonian mechanics, Einstein’s relativity and on towards the statistic, and heuristic world(s) of quantum mechanics, each and every equation presumes that time is not uni-directional - The uni-direction of time is an assumption that human beings make. All the time.

But equations don't say that. They say that time runs forwards and backwards - it's a necessary assumption to get mathematics to work - which is, of course, implied by times ommission or more importantly times direction missing from even the most simplest physical equation.

This means that if you could fire a cannon-ball on a trajectory, and the conditions were utterly the same you could put the cannon-ball back into the cannon from where it landed on exactly the same trajectory. That if you can oxidise an egg (fry it) somehow you can unoxidise it. That if the butterfly flaps it’s wings in Tokyo and starts a hurricane in Texas, it is possible to Start with a hurricane, and end up forcibly flapping butterfly wings . .

Now, if you accept the mathematics, and physics, in which you base your cogent and lucid arguments in the environmental thread, then you must, by default, accept that the physical equations used can also run backwards if they don’t model time – which they don’t. In fact time is outside the system of equations and is controlled as an external forcing.

If you run this system forward you get your standard, and widely accepted, model of cause and effect, but if you run them backwards your effect becomes your cause, and your cause your effect; the so called time-paradox, which, incidentally was identified before Einstein, by Boltzmann (mid 19th century) who was trying to produce an evolutionary approach to physics much in the same vein that Darwin had done for species.

Indeed when we talk of ourselves, and of common-sense, the philosopher Karl Popper said that ‘Common sense inclines, on the one hand to assert that every event is caused by some preceding events, so that every event can be explained and predicted . . . .On the other hand . . . common sense attributes to sane and mature human persons . . . the ability to choose freely between alternative possibilities of acting’

It may be all we have, but, IMO, the scientific model falls down on the basis that it relies on mathematics, specifically on DeMorgan's laws of implication. As I said it's all we've had, and it's been very successful, but now, I think, there must be thought to a new kind of science, and new vision of the world. We are suffering (and have been since the end of the 20th century) from the law of diminishing returns. Easily measured, of course, by looking at the success of computer models predicting the weather - we still can't get past 5 days with any hope of consistent accuracy.

And now it's time for a cup-of-tea in a hopeless attempt to shift me hang-over.

(Edit:Oh, and GW, I am effectively uneducated leaving school at 17 with 8 GCSE’s, and only completing the first year of degree is Software Engineering; on the basis of my example, there are people who will make the effort to learn the lingo, and spend the time to understand. It isn’t a birthright, it isn’t education (although it helps), it is about personality.)

Edited February 14, 2007 by VillagePlank

[Gray-Wolf]

And now it's time for a cup-of-tea in a hopeless attempt to shift me hang-over.

(Edit:Oh, and GW, I am effectively uneducated leaving school at 17 with 8 GCSE's, and only completing the first year of degree is Software Engineering; on the basis of my example, there are people who will make the effort to learn the lingo, and spend the time to understand. It isn't a birthright, it isn't education (although it helps), it is about personality.)

Sorry about the head V.P., if lifestyle allows a 'hair off the Dog' will spread out the unwelcome response to you purposely poisoning of your body!

I agree with your take on education and though I'm off topic the UNICEF report would suggest that we are quite adept at producing 'damaged' personalities (my 80% of 'folk out there') and so there are people who, through no fault of there own, are not in the right 'headspace' to utilise the world to their advantage in the way we can.

I also agree that there are many 'big fishes' in our 'little pond of understanding' who have a good grasp of the more 'common' take on 'life the universe and everything' not ever realising that like the atom they were sold at school (proton,neutron,electron) their is far more complexity to the 'model' of 'life the univerese and everthing' than they currently know.

We simplify things to allow easier decision making but in turn it also leads to poorer decision making.

[VillagePlank]

Did you know that 'hair of the dog' is a shortened version of 'hair of the dog that bit you' and derives somewhat from the same principle as fight fire with fire, and is the main principle behind vaccination ?

Edited February 14, 2007 by VillagePlank

[Gray-Wolf]

Did you know that 'hair of the dog' is a shortened version of 'hair of the dog that bit you' and derives somewhat from the same principle as fight fire with fire, and is the main principle behind vaccination ?

I knew the phrase but hadn't thought on it but I suppose that, like snake wranglers, to allow your system to have a little of the poison to build a defense against it makes sense. I know of other instances where to 'prime the system' is advantagous but I'll let 'mushyman' explain that!!!

[parmenides3]

VP: there's a lot to deal with in your comments about time, so I'll only carry on with a couple of thoughts, if that's okay.

The equations of Maths and Physics are often atemporal, but this is not the same as saying that their applications are.

There's also a distinction to be made between the bidirectionality of causation, which is something which occurs in Physics, and the biderectionality of 'time'; they are not the same thing.

That an equation can operate on a process in either direction, temporally, is not a problem. The problem is getting the cannonball back into the cannon. Time is a part of the continuum in which 'things' exist. It is the expression of the transition between states of entities, i.e. the dimension in which change/motion is possible. In the universe of real things, time is and must be strictly unidirectional, in the sense that that is what it is; the expression of motion.

What some have proposed and has been explored in quantum physics, is the notion that cause need not precede effect in time, in other words, that the action of a particle now has a dependent relationship on its resting state at some point in the future. If you apply this to us, humans, it might suggest that the experience of time might be 'flexible', but it doesn't work out that way. Whilst theoretical Physics and Mathematics can conceive and operate with n-dimensional entities (which therefore 'exist' outside 'time'), in the universe as we experience it, uniderectional time is an axiom of the entire system. If there appears to be a contratemporal causal relationship in this context, it might be worth looking at what we think the relationships are between the 'cause' and the 'effect', rather than assuming that it must demonstrate that causality, or time, are illusions.

Anyway, in the real world, time marches on...

:)P

[Gray-Wolf]

Maybe we need to 'look outside the box' P3.

If ,in a 2 dimentional world a 3 dimensional object appeared what would the 'flatlanders make of it?

I've witness some very complex 3 dimesional geometric shapes which I was assured were approximations of the 'shadow' of a 4 dimensional object. Some heads are better able to deal with such concepts better than others (but sadly not mine) but it doesn't stop folk appreciating the concept if they can't cope with the 'visualisation'.

To accept infinity doesn't necessitate experiencing it does it?

If we are able to witness the effects of actions we neither understand nor can measure does it detract from the observation itself ?