Tom Sawyer

I think psychic abilities would be cool and would believe in them in a second if someone could show me they were real. I also think that it would be really cool if there were some all-powerful, all-knowing being that loved me unconditionally and will give me immortality after I die and would believe in Him in a second if someone showed me He was real.

Unfortunately, no one has shown me anything to make me think that either has any validity whatsoever. If a psychic has anything that can show me he's actually got some valid abilities, I would really appreciate it if he could get in touch with me before I post this message.

King Rat

Why wait? There are plenty of psychics around.



So, are you saying that one has to suspend reason, in order to 'develop' these abilities?

I would imagine so!

Undercurrent

And this happens to all of the people with this ability? Never once has the young boy overcome his childhood to use his ability to conquer nations? Never once has the card playing brother said, "shit, he's wierd, but I can exploit this" and grown up to make a killing on the stock market?

To say that your story has never happened ever is implausable, but to say that there is any siginificant number of psychics who have all been kept quiet by social rejection is ludicrous. After all, computer geeks face social rejection all the time, but at least of decent fraction of them grow up to exploit the benefits of computer geekdom (big salary) anyway.

As others have pointed out, the large number of americans who noisily trot out their claims of psychic power, denies the claim that there is some massive social stigma against phychic claims. I suspect the only reason why an adult "psychic" would keep quiet would be because they are frauds with a good scam in a small market, and are anxious to avoid the critical examination that greater attention levels brings.

Mad Kally

Don't you dare say that!!!!

Tabula_rasa

Interestingly, I heard this on the way home from work last night...

Neuroscience

Of course, this doesn't imply that there is any scientific proof that 'psychics' can predict the future.

Tabula_rasa

Mad Kally

I wish they had all got together and warned us to evacuate the WTC and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001..

Ensign Steve

I think it's totally bogus. I was raised atheist, but my mom had (has) a powerful belief in the super-natural, and she is convinced that she has a psychic connection with me and with her sisters. It took me a lot of time with critical thinking to work out my issues with this. The antecdotal evidence was everywhere.

A couple things that helped me were concepts like: We think about people all the time. We get phone calls all day. So the odds of thinking about someone and having them call you are not as amazing as they seem. We just don't notice when we think about someone and they don't call. I learned that one from a book called How To Think About Weird Things. That is the book that officially turned me into a skeptic.

Also, learning about how cold-reading (a la John Edwards) works really helped. Try watching that Penn & Teller show, Bullshit on Showtime where they debunk all kinds of bullshit.

The last idea I use, and I don't remember if I heard it somewhere or if I came up with it myself, but it was talking about "luck" as a bell-curve. Stastically speaking, very few people guess wrong all the time. Most people guess right half the time. And very few people guess right all the time. Those people are called psychics. If anyone has seen that anywhere, please let me know, and then I can stop trying to pass it off as my own original idea.

Jen

Ensign Steve

Just a clarification: I don't believe these lucky people have any sort of "gift." It would be a sort of modified gambler's fallacy to think that just because they have guessed right the last 100 times, they are going to get it again next time, so I'd better pay them for next week's lotto numbers. I believe it still all falls within the realm of natural laws and probability.

Ab_Normal

I was playing a board game with my husband and daughter last night, and both of 'em kept saying things like, "You're stealing all my ones", and "Gimme a three". My husband was doing it just to watch me twitch, and I'm sure my daughter will eventually get tired of me saying, "Um, that doesn't work, bug-butt."

Mad Kally

I saw that too. One of my best friends believes John Edwards. She is so desperate to hear from her son and her brother that I would never say what I think of him in front of her. However, I do go on and on about xianity, Jebus, etc. She justs laughs. To her John Edwards is talking about a separate plane of existence or something like that, so all these stupid religions mean nothing to her anyway. She is technically a Catholic. Hasn't been to mass since she was a little girl. She rarely brings it up and my other best friend has been an atheist all her life. She laughs at me for getting so upset at all that bullshit like god, etc. (she calls it that) and she can not figure out why it's so important for me to come here. Lucky girl! Damnit, that makes me jealous.

Kally