I put the “ahem” in there because most people probably don’t believe in the existence of “supernatural” things but I’ll explain anyways:
I’m incredibly skeptical but also incredibly open-minded, so I’ve dabbled in mystical stuff or thought of stuff or about stuff that even most intelligent or creative adults probably would never imagine giving any thought to (or they’d simply dismiss it “out of hand”)
I actually have tried to “psychically” or “supernaturally” or “miraculously” predict major events or personal events in the future, and when I say this next part please don’t immediately “rolleyes” and scoff at it, but (clears throat again) “I’ve had some weird accurate predictions that may go beyond immediate academic dismissal”
Insert cliche line of “That’s what they all say” here
I’d like to hear what you have to say about this topic first (because I’m not psychic enough to know what responses I’ll get yet ) before I possibly go into any detail about it, thanks everybody!
I think persons who try to tell the future sometimes might have a lot of training and background in doing so. I once read a perhaps nonfiction book wherein the author consulted a seer who seemed to have been raised to see things in his head after touching the belongings of those involved. But, according to the thread’s structure, I’ve never involved myself personally in these activities.
That’s because the winning numbers that night were 4 8 15 16 23 42 and of course the final and most important number known as “Don’t bother watching this TV show because it won’t pay off at the end as a result of multiple changing writing staffs just making stuff up as they go along.”
The nonsensical thing I typed above there is a result of me having trouble quoting other users sometimes
It didn’t work in the first post there, but I’m not allowed to delete that post apparently, so I typed in five random characters and saved that edit, sorry guys this PC messes up half the time that I try to quote another user.
I love that book. I read it in my early 20s and it made a big impression on me as I was forming my worldview. I should read it again to see what I think about it now.
I’ve tried prayer even though I don’t believe in gods or the supernatural. But I’ve never tried predicting the future (beyond humorously making Barnum statements).
I believe in evidence (gravity) and am happily ‘open-minded’ whenever that happens (microwaves have invisible rays that heat stuff?!)
However I currently do not believe in:
ghosts
loch ness monster
bigfoot
psychics
phone calls telling me my bank account has been hacked (etc.)
If reliable evidence is produced for any of the above, I will then accept their existence.
An example of a misunderstanding of ‘evidence’:
Somebody dreams that something happens (e.g. massive traffic jam) … and the next day it actually happens!
Firstly traffic jams happen regularly.
Secondly the person may have dreamt about a traffic jam before. When it didn’t happen, they forgot about it. But this is evidence that their dreams are not predictive!
I pay careful attention to “I’ve got a bad feeling about this”.
Especially when I’m the one with the bad feeling.
Yes,I’ve tried Tarot Cards, and Runestones.
I pray, too.
I never let any of those things override demonstrable facts, though.
BTW-keep your snider criticisms to yourselves, my fellow Dopers.
As a teenager? Sure. And I amazed friends with a few of my Tarot readings.
As an adult? Not so much. What I’ve read about cognitive biases, statistics, cold reading, the Randi Challenge, and other subjects have led me to believe that it’s extraordinarily probable that supernatural predictions are the result of natural phenomena.
Seriously: no you haven’t. You haven’t even brought them up to academics, so they can’t be dismissed, much less go beyond dismissal.
This isn’t just nitpicking. The entire point of “academic dismissal”, if I’m understanding this term, is that you’d subject your predictions to the methodical scrutiny of intelligent experts familiar with the history of similar predictions. Unless I’m very much mistaken from your tone, you haven’t attempted to begin such a process. Claiming that they “might” survive such scrutiny is true only in the most technical sense of the term, in the same way that I “might” sprout wings and fly on Labor Day.
No, they don’t, because it’s impossible as far as we know. And even if it is possible, we don’t yet understand how and therefore nobody can be trained in it.
No doubt there are people who claim to provide this sort of training and people who believe they have received it. They are either charlatans or delusional.
Humans aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are. Throughout our history, things we swore impossible turned out to be true. I’m confident there will be many more … that is if we last long enough.
Yup! And things we swore were possible turned out to be false. We can only live in the moment we have, but with all our current information, supernatural predictions seem to be in the latter category: something we once thought was possible, but turned out to be false.
I believe in having a bad feeling too, I think it is my subconcious putting two and two together faster than myself, who is more atuned to wishfully believing in a good outcome. I particularly listen to bad feelings when my wife has them. She is better at this than me.
And it is much worse when she is right and I did not listen. Uuuh, boy: you don’t want to be there.
Apart from that, I regularly try to predict the future, for instance when I invest in stocks. But I would not call this supernatural, and the results so far have been average. I did not expect anything else.
Then there is the football related superstition. That, I can tell you, does not work. It is not even a good counter indicator. Complete random.
But if there is a method to poke the future supernaturally I am willing to give it a try. Where are the instructions?
I had a dream once about a trip I was going to take with my aunt to see one of her sisters who lived out of state. In the dream, I heard my aunt’s phone number, which ended in 3269. I (a 10-year-old) thought, “Wow! I wonder if I have predicted my aunt’s number?” I have no idea what her number was now, but I do remember that my dream did not come true.
I expected someone would ask me about this, and now that you have, let me summarize something I realized recently:
Close-minded people are closed to new ideas, but when it comes to the ideas or beliefs they already have in their heads, they are too Close-minded to ever doubt or question those ideas.
An open-minded imaginative person like me is very much able to question any idea or reality, even if just for a short moment or two, including ones most people would never question or contemplate.
And thus I’ll say: An Open-Minded person can oftentimes be the best and most hard-core Skeptic there is
I’m not sure who these ‘close-minded’ people are?!
As i said, I follow the evidence. If new evidence comes along, I happily change my beliefs.
Firstly do you spend much time questioning well-proven stuff e.g. gravity?
Next - I read science fiction and enjoy considering new ideas.
For example I believe that aliens exist.
My reasoning is that life exists on Earth; the Universe is vast; therefore it’s reasonable that life exists elsewhere.
However there is no reliable evidence that aliens have visited Earth.
) before I possibly go into any detail about it, thanks everybody!
