[QUOTE=KGS]
Everyone’s asking me to come up with my definition of a “psychic”, and…well, my best explanation would be, “Someone who is skilled at detecting unconscious rhythms & apophenic connections in the grand matrix of the universe.” I’m not even sure what that means myself 
but I’ll try to explain:
We all know about cold reading. Anyone who knows how to interpret body language and how the neurotypical mind works can become a skilled cold reader, whether they’re truly psychic or not. However, a genuine psychic reading goes beyond mere body language – it’s about reading a persons “rhythms”. The way they dress, their tone of voice, the way they carry on a conversation, all combine to project “rhythms” which give you a deeper insight into that person’s personality.
The process more like statistical analysis or weather forecasting – that’s why psychic readings tend to be general and not very specific. For example, I can say, “RecessiveMeme has a playful & energetic personality, but she’s also very logical” (which shows in the tone of your postings, so it’s not really a “cold read” at all) – but if I were to say, “Your mother’s maiden name is Schwartz, and you like chocolate ripple ice cream,” I’d probably be way off the mark.
It’s vital to understand, however, that most people DON’T read these apophenic connections; and frankly, I don’t know why. I suppose it’s the nature of our modern, 21st century society – everyone’s distracted, tied down to their routines, always watching too much Fox News. Sometimes, even the most obvious connections get skipped over.
[/QUOTE]
Sorry I haven’t been following closely - work has its demands on my time. But I will note that more and more, your definition of “psychic” sounds analogous to my definition of “person who is not a psychic”.
Take this “rhythm” business for example. You don’t say it’s “reading a magical carrier wave that provides a direct emotional and informational connection from the other person’s brain to yours”. You say it’s “being sentient enough to notice that the person’s dress, behavior, and mannerisms tell you something about them”. This isn’t paranormal, it’s just normal..
Similarly, your attempt to “read” screen names is nothing more than applying simple inference and a grand sense of unjustified confidence in your conclusions. There’s nothing psychic about this, either. A “true” psychic could use something like a screen name as a touchstone to infer things that are not implied by the name itself, such as the user’s favorite color or shoe size (assuming their user name is not ILuvRed or Size13Boot). From my screen name (which as I recall you found cryptic), a genuine psychic should easily be able to tell me what I was doing last night (10/04/2007) at 11pm. (Care to take a stab? It has nothing to do with begging or cone-headed yellow muppets.)
If all you’re doing is repeating back avaiable information that you have observed or inferred, you might indeed be exercizing the non-psychic skill of cold reading, but you are not doing anything worthy of the term ‘psychic’.
Similarly, I saw nothing in your explanation of how to tell whether you’re working with or against the world, aside from you’re supposed to be “in touch” with yourself, which clearly isn’t all it takes. And that you have decided that the Governator has done this, just because he’s successful in the world (or because you like his movies, I can’t tell which). This is not encouraging. I really don’t think there’s anything there, and that the “working against the world” think is nothing more than a label that can be applied after the fact to people you don’t like or who are skeptical of your supposedly psychic claims.
Really, the only thing you claim a skill at that sounds even remotely paranormal is seeing ghosts, and somewhere from 50% and 100% of that sounds like it’s all in your head. (Of course, if ghosts were real, they’d surely have been objectively verified in some indisputable way by now, since not *everyone is dishonest and devoted to covering it up, so I lean towards the 100%.)
Not to tell you what to do, but large chunks of what you describe as “psychic” sound like you’re just hanging psychic-sounding names on ordinary things so as to be able to give your life spice, or something. Perhaps you’re doing that with the supposed effects of your ghosts, too; there might be other explanations for whatever you’re seeing (possibly including this synaesthesia stuff; I don’t know nothing about that), and you choose the psychic explanation and label first because you like the sound of it, or something. So maybe, the next time you think something is psychic or paranormal, take a step back and say, “Is there any non-paranormal way this could have occurred?”, as opposed to “Where can I find an example of the paranormal in this?”
