Collective Conscious

[directionless]

Rupert Sheldrake has several youtube videos and books on these pseudo-scientific topics. I'm not sure what I think of him. I bought his book "Science Set Free", but it was hard for me to follow.

 

Here is a wikipedia page about him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake

[Voice]

It's hard doing calcs for this stuff.  The method is the same as what insurance companies do to evaluate likelihoods for claims.  You have to evaluate all the things that contribute to an event, decide as realistically as possible how likely the various components of an event are to occur (for example, your friend keeps calling you at exactly the same time as you're calling them.  Factors are things like how many times a day do they call?  What times do they call?  How many people do they have to call?  Then you, how many people could you be calling when you decided to call them, etc. and there's a lot more to consider, things like this)  Start adding all this stuff up and there's a long list of things to count and calculate in your estimates.  After all that, what are the chances they will call you at the same time you're calling them, then twice, then three times?  If they're doing it more than three times, it's less likely to be a coincidence.

 

I wouldn't call this pseudoscience though it has great potential to be made into that.  Neuro-cientists working on empathy have their valid scientific methods.  

I'm just a mentally ill clown of an observer who knows when coincidence is not a realistic model.  That's not very often when you're talking about this stuff.  Not too many have the gift.

If I dwell on this subject I'll go manic so I need to get the fuck out of here.  Enjoy.

[Voice]

Norm, what are your thoughts?

[WaitingInfinity]

This has happened to me. 

 

A few years ago, my dad called a family meeting and said that we only had enough money to make it through the next month and we didn't know how we would pay the bills after that. He said we were going to lay out a fleece just like Gideon did in the Bible and wait to see if God would work a miracle. I was very upset, cursing the day my dad "followed" God's calling to be a pastor instead of staying in his lucrative career. 

 

Near the end of the month, my dad attended a board meeting. He hadn't told anyone of our financial troubles, but at the board meeting, the board revealed that they had met in secret and had decided to pay off some of my dad's medical bills and give him a raise for a little while. 

 

I always thought it was God, but now that I am not a Christian, I don't know how they knew to do that. I suppose they know a pastor's salary isn't very high and that we could be struggling. I wonder if we hadn't had those financial troubles, would it still have happened that way and they would have offered to pay off the medical bills? Perhaps my dad gave cues that we were having trouble in talking with people. 

 

I've puzzled over these "coincidences" too. 

 

But then, why doesn't a plane full of food crash near a village of starving children?

[Storm]

Norm, what are your thoughts?

Well, I have read some of the articles suggested and looked up a few suggestions and I have not reached a specific conclusion as of yet. I have thought about it a bit more and I have begun to think that it is a possibility that some type of collective conscious exists. Whether or not it can be explained or even rationalized is unclear at this point. These situations occur with enough frequency that at some point, there has to be at least some plausible acknowledgement that something other than pure coincidence and/or chance is occurring. We as humans connect on many levels and I believe that it is certainly possible that we communicate needs to one another in some fashion that is not easily explainable. As to whether or not we can ever find a way to study it or quantify it in some shape or form is yet to be seen. I would argue that it is unlikely that any type of controlled experiment could be set up to examine this, but maybe it can. I suspect that this particular subject can provide sufficient food for thought for quite some time.

[Geezer]

Christians are indoctrinated to live out the biblical teaching that we are to love others as we love our self. I think most Christians attempt to do that in one way or another. That teaching makes people more aware of the needs of others and also motivates them to take action when they become aware of situations where people need some help.

 

The theory of mental telepathy was the subject of a recent Through The Wormhole program I watched. There is at least some evidence that the human brain is capable of experiencing these phenomena on a very limited scale.

 

Some scientists apparently believe the human brain could be trained to become more proficient to the point this could become, in theory, a learned skill. I need to note the theory is that this anomaly is more along the lines of an instinct that, with training, could become more useful. I am unaware of any scientist who thinks this could lead to having the ability to read minds or communicate actual thoughts or instructions telepathically.

 

The thinking seems to be it’s an instinct like sensing danger before the actual threat can be identified.

[miekko]

Christians are indoctrinated to live out the biblical teaching that we are to love others as we love our self. I think most Christians attempt to do that in one way or another. That teaching makes people more aware of the needs of others and also motivates them to take action when they become aware of situations where people need some help.

 

The theory of mental telepathy was the subject of a recent Through The Wormhole program I watched. There is at least some evidence that the human brain is capable of experiencing these phenomena on a very limited scale.

 

Some scientists apparently believe the human brain could be trained to become more proficient to the point this could become, in theory, a learned skill. I need to note the theory is that this anomaly is more along the lines of an instinct that, with training, could become more useful. I am unaware of any scientist who thinks this could lead to having the ability to read minds or communicate actual thoughts or instructions telepathically.

 

The thinking seems to be it’s an instinct like sensing danger before the actual threat can be identified.

A friend once calculated the kind of energy requirements it would take to read someone else's mind. It's not doable unless you ingest crazy amounts of energy. Receiving sent thoughts, though, that's physically doable - but we're essentially doing that anyway using sound waves (or, in the case of speakers of sign languages, light waves) as the medium for transmitting and receiving. Why we'd evolve the use of some of those other media - presumable some kind of electromagnetic kind of rays (so radiowaves, microwaves, whathaveyou) when we have a perfectly functional use of a much less finicky medium - is less obvious.

[Storm]

A friend once calculated the kind of energy requirements it would take to read someone else's mind. It's not doable unless you ingest crazy amounts of energy. Receiving sent thoughts, though, that's physically doable - but we're essentially doing that anyway using sound waves (or, in the case of speakers of sign languages, light waves) as the medium for transmitting and receiving. Why we'd evolve the use of some of those other media - presumable some kind of electromagnetic kind of rays (so radiowaves, microwaves, whathaveyou) when we have a perfectly functional use of a much less finicky medium - is less obvious.

I have to admit I cannot even think of where one would even start in trying to evaluate the amount of energy needed to read someone's mind. I cant imagine why it would take any more energy that it would to read through a telephone book. To me, that would be no different than going to a large library and just hanging out there randomly selecting books or magazines and just seeing what is there. I suspect that its a bit more complicated than that, but I just don't see how it could require such massive amounts of energy. Humans are capable of processing huge amounts of data just doing simple things like driving or playing sports or even in a simple reaction time test. I don't see how reading another's mind would require massive amounts of energy. Any info on what data he used, how he suspected that we would actually read another mind? I am curious about this.  

[miekko]

 

A friend once calculated the kind of energy requirements it would take to read someone else's mind. It's not doable unless you ingest crazy amounts of energy. Receiving sent thoughts, though, that's physically doable - but we're essentially doing that anyway using sound waves (or, in the case of speakers of sign languages, light waves) as the medium for transmitting and receiving. Why we'd evolve the use of some of those other media - presumable some kind of electromagnetic kind of rays (so radiowaves, microwaves, whathaveyou) when we have a perfectly functional use of a much less finicky medium - is less obvious.

I have to admit I cannot even think of where one would even start in trying to evaluate the amount of energy needed to read someone's mind. I cant imagine why it would take any more energy that it would to read through a telephone book. To me, that would be no different than going to a large library and just hanging out there randomly selecting books or magazines and just seeing what is there. I suspect that its a bit more complicated than that, but I just don't see how it could require such massive amounts of energy. Humans are capable of processing huge amounts of data just doing simple things like driving or playing sports or even in a simple reaction time test. I don't see how reading another's mind would require massive amounts of energy. Any info on what data he used, how he suspected that we would actually read another mind? I am curious about this.  

 

As it happens, we know a lot about information and we know a lot about the brain. We have things such as Shannon's theorem that tell us a huge load about how information works and this gives us some starting points, although I will not walk you through the process of using that theorem for this particular kind of calculation.

 

Thoughts are processes of information going on in our mind - and we know quite a bit more than you might think about the mind. We know that it basically is a neural network, where neurons sometimes get enough signals from other neurons that they too fire signals off to other neurons. To read thoughts, you would have to

1) be able to measure the state of a huge number of neurons (in the tens of thousands) from a distance (the states here correspond to 'firing' or 'not firing'). We live in a noisy environment (as far as electromagnetical noise goes), so we have to do a sufficient number of measurements to overcome the likelihood of noise affecting our measurement too much. However, some margin probably exists as to how large a percentage of our measurements could be off without it significantly affecting an attempt to read the mind.

2) be able to emulate the relevant portion of the neural network in which the thought originally took place (which includes knowing roughly what 'weights' each individual neuron assigns to each synaptic connection) to a sufficient level of precision - and as each neural network has different 'learning history' behind it, you will have to measure hundreds of thousands of individual synaptic weights for each mind you're trying to read.

3) Each such measurement requires reading biochemical information in the relevant neurons with some level of precision. We know a fair bit about the physical realities of acquiring that kind of information, and acquiring it does expend some energy.

 

My friend rounded down as much as he could all the way throughout the calculations - which introduces additional problems because the rounding errors grow exponentially with every calculation. But this was because he was looking for a lower bound of the necessary energy, and that lower bound is crazy high.

 

When you read a phone book, the involved process is much less intense : you have light hit your retinas, the patterns in this light - the letters and numbers - are recognized by the neural network by a thing we call pattern matching (which is pretty much all that neural networks do, although that also implies them being both memory and computational devices), and those patterns also occur in patterns of patterns and we parse those, etc. All that stuff happens inside one neural network, and we don't need to account for individual differences between networks, or even try to read biochemoelectrical states at a distance. The undeniable fact is that there's a shitload of differences between reading a text and reading a mind.

[Storm]

 

 

A friend once calculated the kind of energy requirements it would take to read someone else's mind. It's not doable unless you ingest crazy amounts of energy. Receiving sent thoughts, though, that's physically doable - but we're essentially doing that anyway using sound waves (or, in the case of speakers of sign languages, light waves) as the medium for transmitting and receiving. Why we'd evolve the use of some of those other media - presumable some kind of electromagnetic kind of rays (so radiowaves, microwaves, whathaveyou) when we have a perfectly functional use of a much less finicky medium - is less obvious.

I have to admit I cannot even think of where one would even start in trying to evaluate the amount of energy needed to read someone's mind. I cant imagine why it would take any more energy that it would to read through a telephone book. To me, that would be no different than going to a large library and just hanging out there randomly selecting books or magazines and just seeing what is there. I suspect that its a bit more complicated than that, but I just don't see how it could require such massive amounts of energy. Humans are capable of processing huge amounts of data just doing simple things like driving or playing sports or even in a simple reaction time test. I don't see how reading another's mind would require massive amounts of energy. Any info on what data he used, how he suspected that we would actually read another mind? I am curious about this.  

 

As it happens, we know a lot about information and we know a lot about the brain. We have things such as Shannon's theorem that tell us a huge load about how information works and this gives us some starting points, although I will not walk you through the process of using that theorem for this particular kind of calculation.

 

Thoughts are processes of information going on in our mind - and we know quite a bit more than you might think about the mind. We know that it basically is a neural network, where neurons sometimes get enough signals from other neurons that they too fire signals off to other neurons. To read thoughts, you would have to

1) be able to measure the state of a huge number of neurons (in the tens of thousands) from a distance (the states here correspond to 'firing' or 'not firing'). We live in a noisy environment (as far as electromagnetical noise goes), so we have to do a sufficient number of measurements to overcome the likelihood of noise affecting our measurement too much. However, some margin probably exists as to how large a percentage of our measurements could be off without it significantly affecting an attempt to read the mind.

2) be able to emulate the relevant portion of the neural network in which the thought originally took place (which includes knowing roughly what 'weights' each individual neuron assigns to each synaptic connection) to a sufficient level of precision - and as each neural network has different 'learning history' behind it, you will have to measure hundreds of thousands of individual synaptic weights for each mind you're trying to read.

3) Each such measurement requires reading biochemical information in the relevant neurons with some level of precision. We know a fair bit about the physical realities of acquiring that kind of information, and acquiring it does expend some energy.

 

My friend rounded down as much as he could all the way throughout the calculations - which introduces additional problems because the rounding errors grow exponentially with every calculation. But this was because he was looking for a lower bound of the necessary energy, and that lower bound is crazy high.

 

When you read a phone book, the involved process is much less intense : you have light hit your retinas, the patterns in this light - the letters and numbers - are recognized by the neural network by a thing we call pattern matching (which is pretty much all that neural networks do, although that also implies them being both memory and computational devices), and those patterns also occur in patterns of patterns and we parse those, etc. All that stuff happens inside one neural network, and we don't need to account for individual differences between networks, or even try to read biochemoelectrical states at a distance. The undeniable fact is that there's a shitload of differences between reading a text and reading a mind.

 

While I do not disagree with your statement regarding the difference between reading text of information and reading biochemical states, I do posit this question: Does every brain store memories the same way? Is the information stored more like a fragmented Hard Drive or are the memories store more in a linear, orderly fashion. I would think that if the storage system was able to be learned and figured out, then it would likely become much easier to understand and, subsequently, easier to do and less energy would be expelled. I am only looking at this from the standpoint of where we are now. It is entirely possible that at some point, someone could possibly become evolved enough to be able to accomplish this. Probably not going to happen, but its possible. Strange things not thought possible are being done now and I would not be utterly surprised if mind reading happened some day in the distant future. There are yet to be understood mysteries in our universe and until we figure it all out, we can only imagine what there is left to discover.

[directionless]

I think miekko's friend's calculation is for a brain scan as opposed to telepathy. Telepathy means distance empathy. Examples would be a mother who knows that a distant child needs help, thinking about a good friend just before that friend calls, dogs that know when their owner is on the way home.

 

But I'll admit that I couldn't follow the reasoning behind the calculation miekko described. This is just my impression.

[miekko]

 

 

 

A friend once calculated the kind of energy requirements it would take to read someone else's mind. It's not doable unless you ingest crazy amounts of energy. Receiving sent thoughts, though, that's physically doable - but we're essentially doing that anyway using sound waves (or, in the case of speakers of sign languages, light waves) as the medium for transmitting and receiving. Why we'd evolve the use of some of those other media - presumable some kind of electromagnetic kind of rays (so radiowaves, microwaves, whathaveyou) when we have a perfectly functional use of a much less finicky medium - is less obvious.

I have to admit I cannot even think of where one would even start in trying to evaluate the amount of energy needed to read someone's mind. I cant imagine why it would take any more energy that it would to read through a telephone book. To me, that would be no different than going to a large library and just hanging out there randomly selecting books or magazines and just seeing what is there. I suspect that its a bit more complicated than that, but I just don't see how it could require such massive amounts of energy. Humans are capable of processing huge amounts of data just doing simple things like driving or playing sports or even in a simple reaction time test. I don't see how reading another's mind would require massive amounts of energy. Any info on what data he used, how he suspected that we would actually read another mind? I am curious about this.  

 

As it happens, we know a lot about information and we know a lot about the brain. We have things such as Shannon's theorem that tell us a huge load about how information works and this gives us some starting points, although I will not walk you through the process of using that theorem for this particular kind of calculation.

 

Thoughts are processes of information going on in our mind - and we know quite a bit more than you might think about the mind. We know that it basically is a neural network, where neurons sometimes get enough signals from other neurons that they too fire signals off to other neurons. To read thoughts, you would have to

1) be able to measure the state of a huge number of neurons (in the tens of thousands) from a distance (the states here correspond to 'firing' or 'not firing'). We live in a noisy environment (as far as electromagnetical noise goes), so we have to do a sufficient number of measurements to overcome the likelihood of noise affecting our measurement too much. However, some margin probably exists as to how large a percentage of our measurements could be off without it significantly affecting an attempt to read the mind.

2) be able to emulate the relevant portion of the neural network in which the thought originally took place (which includes knowing roughly what 'weights' each individual neuron assigns to each synaptic connection) to a sufficient level of precision - and as each neural network has different 'learning history' behind it, you will have to measure hundreds of thousands of individual synaptic weights for each mind you're trying to read.

3) Each such measurement requires reading biochemical information in the relevant neurons with some level of precision. We know a fair bit about the physical realities of acquiring that kind of information, and acquiring it does expend some energy.

 

My friend rounded down as much as he could all the way throughout the calculations - which introduces additional problems because the rounding errors grow exponentially with every calculation. But this was because he was looking for a lower bound of the necessary energy, and that lower bound is crazy high.

 

When you read a phone book, the involved process is much less intense : you have light hit your retinas, the patterns in this light - the letters and numbers - are recognized by the neural network by a thing we call pattern matching (which is pretty much all that neural networks do, although that also implies them being both memory and computational devices), and those patterns also occur in patterns of patterns and we parse those, etc. All that stuff happens inside one neural network, and we don't need to account for individual differences between networks, or even try to read biochemoelectrical states at a distance. The undeniable fact is that there's a shitload of differences between reading a text and reading a mind.

 

While I do not disagree with your statement regarding the difference between reading text of information and reading biochemical states, I do posit this question: Does every brain store memories the same way? Is the information stored more like a fragmented Hard Drive or are the memories store more in a linear, orderly fashion. I would think that if the storage system was able to be learned and figured out, then it would likely become much easier to understand and, subsequently, easier to do and less energy would be expelled. I am only looking at this from the standpoint of where we are now. It is entirely possible that at some point, someone could possibly become evolved enough to be able to accomplish this. Probably not going to happen, but its possible. Strange things not thought possible are being done now and I would not be utterly surprised if mind reading happened some day in the distant future. There are yet to be understood mysteries in our universe and until we figure it all out, we can only imagine what there is left to discover.

 

... I already answered the first question you ask: yes, every brain does store memories in the same way - in that they are stored as synaptic weights. However, this also means that if two persons remember the exact same thing - let's say they both have heard the exact same recording of a piece of music, and they're recalling this piece of music - the neurons involved in the two persons' brains may be very different, the neurons that fire and the synaptic weights involved may be quite different. Certainly there will be some shared things - for both, there will be significant clusters of activity in parts of the brain usually associated with hearing. You should probably read a few books on neural networks to get how memories really are stored, and how thoughts happen. 

[miekko]

I think miekko's friend's calculation is for a brain scan as opposed to telepathy. Telepathy means distance empathy. Examples would be a mother who knows that a distant child needs help, thinking about a good friend just before that friend calls, dogs that know when their owner is on the way home.

 

But I'll admit that I couldn't follow the reasoning behind the calculation miekko described. This is just my impression.

So, by what medium does that information pass from the child's brain to the parent's brain? I'd claim it doesn't and such magic is bullshit.

[florduh]

At the Institute of Noetic Sciences, we are exploring this phenomenon in several ways. For example, we design and conduct studies to empirically test hypotheses consistent with the theory of a universal consciousness. If in fact there is a universal, shared aspect to consciousness, then does the intention or attention of one person affect the physiology of another person, even at a distance? And can this type of connection be demonstrated under rigorously controlled laboratory conditions? We also conduct studies using social science approaches to systematically examine people’s experiences of oneness or universal consciousness and how it impacts their lives. What are the conditions under which these experiences take place? How do they feel, and how long do they last? What insights arise from them, and do those insights have lasting effects on coping, stress, or health and well-being? We are also exploring what happens in the electrical activity of the brain when people are actually experiencing these states of consciousness.

So, is there evidence for a universal consciousness that can be reliably measured and demonstrated in physical reality? From a purely empirical perspective, I’m not sure we have the answer yet, but we see hints in the affirmative.

 

http://noetic.org/blog/is-there-evidence-for-universal-consciousness/

 

 

 

This stuff has been studied for decades, and still no definitive answer? Perhaps that IS the answer. 

[directionless]

 

I think miekko's friend's calculation is for a brain scan as opposed to telepathy. Telepathy means distance empathy. Examples would be a mother who knows that a distant child needs help, thinking about a good friend just before that friend calls, dogs that know when their owner is on the way home.

 

But I'll admit that I couldn't follow the reasoning behind the calculation miekko described. This is just my impression.

So, by what medium does that information pass from the child's brain to the parent's brain? I'd claim it doesn't and such magic is bullshit.

You seem to object to the revolutionary changes to science required to accommodate telepathy. I think the better objection would be the difficulty of confirming the existence of telepathy under controlled conditions. But I suspect this might be due to poor design of the experiments creating an environment where telepathy cannot work. For example, maybe telepathy requires two organisms with a strong emotional connection and genuine feelings. Meanwhile the experiment involves two strangers and Zener cards.

[miekko]

 

 

I think miekko's friend's calculation is for a brain scan as opposed to telepathy. Telepathy means distance empathy. Examples would be a mother who knows that a distant child needs help, thinking about a good friend just before that friend calls, dogs that know when their owner is on the way home.

 

But I'll admit that I couldn't follow the reasoning behind the calculation miekko described. This is just my impression.

So, by what medium does that information pass from the child's brain to the parent's brain? I'd claim it doesn't and such magic is bullshit.

You seem to object to the revolutionary changes to science required to accommodate telepathy. I think the better objection would be the difficulty of confirming the existence of telepathy under controlled conditions. But I suspect this might be due to poor design of the experiments creating an environment where telepathy cannot work. For example, maybe telepathy requires two organisms with a strong emotional connection and genuine feelings. Meanwhile the experiment involves two strangers and Zener cards.

 

My genuine intuition on this is that believing in telepathy is as retarded as believing in Christianity, tbh. 

[directionless]

 

 

 

I think miekko's friend's calculation is for a brain scan as opposed to telepathy. Telepathy means distance empathy. Examples would be a mother who knows that a distant child needs help, thinking about a good friend just before that friend calls, dogs that know when their owner is on the way home.

 

But I'll admit that I couldn't follow the reasoning behind the calculation miekko described. This is just my impression.

So, by what medium does that information pass from the child's brain to the parent's brain? I'd claim it doesn't and such magic is bullshit.

You seem to object to the revolutionary changes to science required to accommodate telepathy. I think the better objection would be the difficulty of confirming the existence of telepathy under controlled conditions. But I suspect this might be due to poor design of the experiments creating an environment where telepathy cannot work. For example, maybe telepathy requires two organisms with a strong emotional connection and genuine feelings. Meanwhile the experiment involves two strangers and Zener cards.

My genuine intuition on this is that believing in telepathy is as retarded as believing in Christianity, tbh.

That's what people say about UFOs too. It doesn't matter how many times they are tracked on radar, reported by multiple witnesses at different locations, etc. Nobody can explain how they work or what they are or why they are, so it's more comfortable to pretend there isn't a mystery.

[rach]

I had a friend years ago that got in a bad car accident and for a few months before the accident I got very worried about her and didn't know why.  I started getting upset and anxious around her.  I just sensed that she was in trouble.  I don't know how to explain these kinds of things.  For me even though I am not a bible Christian I still believe in the supernatural and think sometimes we can sense when something bad is coming.

There was another time I wrote something on a card I sent my friend, it was just a passage from a book and turns out it was the same passage she had been teaching on at her class.  I didn't have any way of knowing that, I just felt like that passage was what I should write.

There have been other times that people have given me a "word from the Lord" that has been complete nonsense. 

[miekko]

 

 

 

 

I think miekko's friend's calculation is for a brain scan as opposed to telepathy. Telepathy means distance empathy. Examples would be a mother who knows that a distant child needs help, thinking about a good friend just before that friend calls, dogs that know when their owner is on the way home.

 

But I'll admit that I couldn't follow the reasoning behind the calculation miekko described. This is just my impression.

So, by what medium does that information pass from the child's brain to the parent's brain? I'd claim it doesn't and such magic is bullshit.

You seem to object to the revolutionary changes to science required to accommodate telepathy. I think the better objection would be the difficulty of confirming the existence of telepathy under controlled conditions. But I suspect this might be due to poor design of the experiments creating an environment where telepathy cannot work. For example, maybe telepathy requires two organisms with a strong emotional connection and genuine feelings. Meanwhile the experiment involves two strangers and Zener cards.

My genuine intuition on this is that believing in telepathy is as retarded as believing in Christianity, tbh.

That's what people say about UFOs too. It doesn't matter how many times they are tracked on radar, reported by multiple witnesses at different locations, etc. Nobody can explain how they work or what they are or why they are, so it's more comfortable to pretend there isn't a mystery.

 

...I hope you aren't proud about how you're less credulous than the Christians. You aren't.

[gall]

 

 

 

I think miekko's friend's calculation is for a brain scan as opposed to telepathy. Telepathy means distance empathy. Examples would be a mother who knows that a distant child needs help, thinking about a good friend just before that friend calls, dogs that know when their owner is on the way home.

 

But I'll admit that I couldn't follow the reasoning behind the calculation miekko described. This is just my impression.

So, by what medium does that information pass from the child's brain to the parent's brain? I'd claim it doesn't and such magic is bullshit.

You seem to object to the revolutionary changes to science required to accommodate telepathy. I think the better objection would be the difficulty of confirming the existence of telepathy under controlled conditions. But I suspect this might be due to poor design of the experiments creating an environment where telepathy cannot work. For example, maybe telepathy requires two organisms with a strong emotional connection and genuine feelings. Meanwhile the experiment involves two strangers and Zener cards.

 

My genuine intuition on this is that believing in telepathy is as retarded as believing in Christianity, tbh. 

 

 

Generally proof is a good way to follow any claim one has just made. I agree with your intuition in as much as I have never seen proof of telepathy that I could not debunk myself. Oh and I am just as good at the "cold reading" as all those ass hats on TV and have done it to peole without permission and they generally do not like it. Funny thing is how upset they are after you tell them it was all a trick and show them how it is done. Maybe I could announce it first but no one ever accepts (that believed in the first place) your explanation unless they have it done to them and generally not with permission. I think anyone could do it if you give them a few simple steps to follow. I would say telepathy is just about as true as the "cold reading" and I can prove that is fucking total 100% lies lies lies and a few guesses lol.

 

 

Telepathy LOLOLOLOL

[gall]

 

 

 

 

I think miekko's friend's calculation is for a brain scan as opposed to telepathy. Telepathy means distance empathy. Examples would be a mother who knows that a distant child needs help, thinking about a good friend just before that friend calls, dogs that know when their owner is on the way home.

 

But I'll admit that I couldn't follow the reasoning behind the calculation miekko described. This is just my impression.

So, by what medium does that information pass from the child's brain to the parent's brain? I'd claim it doesn't and such magic is bullshit.

You seem to object to the revolutionary changes to science required to accommodate telepathy. I think the better objection would be the difficulty of confirming the existence of telepathy under controlled conditions. But I suspect this might be due to poor design of the experiments creating an environment where telepathy cannot work. For example, maybe telepathy requires two organisms with a strong emotional connection and genuine feelings. Meanwhile the experiment involves two strangers and Zener cards.

My genuine intuition on this is that believing in telepathy is as retarded as believing in Christianity, tbh.

That's what people say about UFOs too. It doesn't matter how many times they are tracked on radar, reported by multiple witnesses at different locations, etc. Nobody can explain how they work or what they are or why they are, so it's more comfortable to pretend there isn't a mystery.

 

 

No reasonable and I mean zero scientists or people with a good scientific knowledge would accept what you are saying here.

 

Let's see the proof a creditable scientist would accept. Until then you can keep your UFO theory on the same shelf you keep your stargate theory and your nazca lines folder on. Proof of it is just rednecks flying homemade spaceships and crashing so drunk they actually think they just got raped by aliens... sounds just about as true eh?

[directionless]

I'll start a separate thread to discuss UFOs and my other wacky opinions that way it will not derail this discussion of collective consciousness.

[Storm]

I was looking through the interweb for some ESP articles and I found this one. It seems to be somewhat thorough and covers a lot of ground as to what the scientific community think regarding ESP and Telepathy.

http://www.williamjames.com/Science/ESP.htm

 

While it is obvious that there is a lot of skepticism regarding telepathy and esp, it appears that there is enough belief in its potential in the scientific community that people are convinced that it is entirely possible. Skepticism is warranted, however, I am not entirely sure that it could really be replicated in a scientific environment. The situations regarding real life scenarios and human physio and psychological responses to real life situations is something that I am not sure can be replicated in a laboratory environment. While it is certainly conceivable that it could be, I would say that, (in my non scientifically minded thought processes), just like a situation where a mom is somehow able to lift a very large object off of her injured child with the adrenaline surge that she gets from her limbic system, I would think that real human need and laboratory generated need are not the same thing. But I digress, I am not a scientific researcher, so I may very well be wrong in this. Definitely food for thought.

[florduh]

...people are convinced that it is entirely possible.

 

People are convinced by evidence, so this is probably more accurately an assumption.

 

Anything is possible. A continuing lack of evidence after decades of study makes a thing very improbable. If one still wishes to believe in something improbable, one must take the route of other religious apologists and claim Phenomenon X is real but is not able to be detected. That is tantamount to nonexistence for us mere mortals and more of an exercise in wishful thinking.

[Storm]

Anything is possible. A continuing lack of evidence after decades of study makes a thing very improbable. If one still wishes to believe in something improbable, one must take the route of other religious apologists and claim Phenomenon X is real but is not able to be detected. That is tantamount to nonexistence for us mere mortals and more of an exercise in wishful thinking.

But herein is where your argument is weak. There is some evidence that it is possible. Is it definitive? maybe not. But the fact that there is something that leads researchers to look for more answers indicates that there is at least some surface evidence. Just because there has not yet been an established way to verify it, doesn't mean that it isn't real. Numerous theories abounded that were unprovable until instruments were created to verify them and validate them. The same may be true about esp and telepathy. Just because many experiments have not yielded anything as of yet does not mean that it doesn't exist.

I find it ironic that one of the staples of the scientific community is the willingness to concede the possibility that things are possible. Despite failed experiments, people continue to test and research things always allowing for the possibility that it could be true. But I have noticed that many people on this forum are very closed minded and skeptical. While it is a valid point to say that it isn't true based on many failed experiments, to make such a bold statement that it is a foolish belief or wishful thinking, is , in my opinion, foolish. You are certainly entitled to your opinion and I respect that, but to make assumptions that because other people believe  something is possible is a foolish proposition on your part. In this particular case, you have written off esp and telepathy where science has shown that there is promising evidence. While they have not verified it in is entirety, scientists feel there is enough to continue researching it with more studies. I choose to be open to its possibility. If you choose the opposite, so be it.