Have you ever actually tried to supernaturally (ahem) predict the future?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Step One: Yea, ye must realize this truly: either a) the whole world is an illusion in your mind, in which case hypothetically you’re the only human mind that exists, which means you’re a “god” or possibly very very powerful and might be able to predict things that happen in this illusion we call Life that actually exists only in your own mind, or b) there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of real human minds right now on planet Earth; You can’t imagine the number of thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, memories, and ideas that were just powered through those brains as I typed this; that’s an ocean of Godlike power and unimaginable variety and feeling and Realness. Summary of this point: Either you are God, or you live in an ocean of Godlike power (hundreds of millions of real human brains right this millisecond, bro :smiley: )

Step Two: As you walk around in public, actually look at the people around you. You’re alive, bro (apparently). This **** is incredible, mate.

Step Three: Recognize this- if other human beings are actually flying around in airplanes built by certain human beings, and gosh-dang rocket ships like the one that just orbited the moon a few weeks ago, and if we’re really using something called “the Internet” right now, which by the way is too unimaginably impossible and amazing to possibly exist, and people invented nuclear bombs (as they apparently did), then human beings- or at least a small fraction of them, the ones who pulled this **** off- are incredible, and powerful, and anything’s hypothetically possible, including you or me using our minds to pick up on the future; if those humans can do the utterly impossible why oh why can’t I?

Step Four: Think about how uneventful most news days basically are, and how relatively uneventful most of a person’s own personal life days are. If something exciting or eventful or crazy is coming in the future (which “it” always inevitably is), you should be able to not just see it coming but to FEEL it coming, like a wave of eventfulness approaching the shore we stand upon.

Note: if that whole “feel the wave coming” thing had worked for me recently, I would have known a random car was gonna explode on Wall Street yesterday and I’d have taken the subway train down there to observe :smiley:

22

Here’s the problem, right here. Yeah, the Internet is cool. So is a tuatara’s third eye, which I just learned about two days ago. So are black holes. Ain’t nothin special about us naked apes vis a vis cool things in nature. We’re no more impossible than a black hole is. On the contrary, by definition we’re possible.

So when you say, “If humans can do the impossible”, that’s a problem. Humans can’t do the impossible. We can just do cool shit, like tuataras can.

I’m so glad you’re excited by the universe! So am I! But that doesn’t mean I draw unsupported conclusions. My excitement means my excitement, no more and no less.

23

The special thing about us “naked apes” is that we (or a tiny fraction of us) pull off incredibly unimaginable things like airplanes, rocket ships, the internet, Television, etc.

I’m so imaginative and open-minded- but not so much that my brain has fallen out (insert “Sure about that, bro?” or “No, but I think it’s coming pretty close” or “Did you have one in the first place?” comments here)- that I simultaneously consider thousands of possibilities a day, including solipsism, astral projection, Time Is Quite Possibly A Non-Existent Thing, Parallel Universes (I’m actually pretty skeptical about parallel universes, though), etc.

24

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

To elaborate: you’re describing things you imagine that are honestly, in our culture, super-easy to imagine. Solipsism is just about the easiest thing in the world to imagine, much easier to imagine than the existence of other minds. Astral projection, the illusory nature of time, parallel universes? These are the stuff of mediocre blockbuster movies.

But then you’re saying that things like airplanes are impossible to imagine, despite the clear evidence that people imagined them in such detail that they built them.

I commend your willingness to be imaginative. Can you imagine the possibility that there are other people much more imaginative than you, people who can imagine things you find unimaginable?

25

Yeah, it’s a pretty subjective term, and this thread topic of mine is pretty loosey-goosey mumbo-jumbo “let’s question everything and go crazy but in a friendly way” kinda stuff, but hey, anyone who wants to dive in to this pool here: it’s party time! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

26

If thousands of humans can invent radios and televisions and rocket ships and airplanes and movie theater screens/projection, which would take me years to learn how to do (if ever), maybe I can Feel Future Waves coming, who knows, a thing is only supernatural 'til proven to be part of reality!

27

And as I said above, a thing is only accepted as real until it’s proven to be false. I’m not discounting the possibility that you can feel future waves, or manipulate tropical Skittles with the power of love, or set my toe-hairs on fire by dreaming about eggnog, or grow wings and fly to Jupiter. It’s all possible, man! I’m just not especially expecting any of those things to happen, and one’s as likely as the others as far as I can tell.

28

Yeah, Left_Hand_of_Dorkness, I intend this thread to just be a free-for-all of hunches, personal anecdotes, chit-chatting on the subject, etc.

However, I’m gonna share some of the “Predictions” I’ve made (since 8 years ago in 2018 when I first started trying to be “supernaturally” psychic/clairvoyant) that kinda came true/were accurate in some way and I think are at the very least kinda cool/entertaining/fun:

  • In March 2018 I wrote a list of predictions for the next day’s USA TODAY newspaper headlines, and one of my ~9 predictions was the inexplicable phrase “Sister Caroline.” This probably makes you think of song titles like Sweet Caroline or Sister Christian :slightly_smiling_face: , but it’s not the exact same. I wrote this expression down, having no idea what the hell it could possibly mean. Next day’s USA TODAY, in the News From 50 States page, had a story for the state of Virginia. I can’t find this little paragraph online, but it’s pretty much verbatim the same as the text in (for example) this Forbes.com article from back then (March 2018): Community Weekly Newspaper In Virginia Closes After 137 Years. Here’s the opening lines from that article: “The Hanover Herald-Progress, a weekly community newspaper in Virginia in business since 1881, published its last edition on March 29. The Herald-Progress was based in Ashland, a town about 15 miles north of Richmond. A sister paper, the Caroline Progress, was closed on the same day. It served Caroline County and an area further north of Ashland, along Interstate 95 on the way to Washington, DC. The Caroline paper would have celebrated its centennial next year”
  • Also in 2018: I read William Shatner’s autobiography Up Till Now. I’m not a Shatner fanatic (I don’t dislike him, I just don’t care much about him compared to any other household name, and I’m not a Star Trek fan or anything). I wrote a list of predictions about what might be in the book. Two of those ~10 predictions: “Whirl Wind.” “Shatner Is Tomato Paste.” When I looked at these two items on my list, I thought for the first one: “Whirl Wind makes me think of the book of Job and “God” appearing as a whirlwind to answer Job.” For the second one: "This reminds me of that episode of Are You Being Served? in which the staff visits the toy department and old Mr Grainger talks about how he used to fill his toy soldiers up with tomato sauce before shooting them with his BB gun because it’s like fake blood flying out and it grossed out his sister, ha ha ha. Two incidents in Up Till Now: Shatner talks about the Whirlwind he tried/successfully did put an effect for in one of the Star Trek movies, how troublesome it was to do, and how the whirlwind does in fact represent an appearance of God. The only God stuff I know of from any Star Trek movie is the whole “why would God need a spaceship?” thing from that one movie. Second: Shatner shares the story of how when he was in his 20s his car broke down and he ended up getting sprayed by a skunk. He therefore poured tomato juice on himself to cover/kill the scent, and while walking down the highway to get help, people saw him walking and thought he’d been in a bad accident :grinning_face: (tomato product=fake blood)

I’ll share some more examples later, bros.

p.s. Left_Hand_of_Dorkness and all others in this thread: discussing “tachyons” is highly encouraged. :slight_smile:

29

Absolutely share them! These are really unimpressive to me, though; I was honestly expecting something much more precise.

It sounds like you’re saying, “Hey, I’m trying to predict the future, so I make a whole shit-ton of predictions, and every once in awhile I make a prediction that has a mildly interesting similarity to what I actually find, but the overwhelming majority of my predictions don’t have the slightest resemblance to what happens.”

The thing to remember is that one in a million events happen to 8 thousand people every day. Weird coincidences happen because so much stuff happens. If you want to be amazed, be amazed at how many things are happening, and enjoy the coolness of the weird coincidences when you get to experience one.

30

Yeah, I actually invented a term for that in 2008: “The Heparin Effect”

In 2008 an incident occurred in which about 80 people died from contaminated Heparin drug. An article I saw talked about how having a deadly reaction to the contaminant is 1 / 1,000,000 genetic predisposition kinda thing, but because of millions of Americans having contact with Heparin (and everything else), voila!, the incredibly unlikely happens at least 80 times.

“The Heparin Effect” doesn’t just refer to science stuff like that, I also think of it including things like "Only 1 / 2,000,000 people who see a Fast And Furious kinda movie are gonna do something stupid inspired directly by it, but hey, they did a Freakonomics podcast in which they said at least a handful of fatal high-speed stupid car crashes happen (an extra handful that statistically don’t happen on other days) on opening weekends of Fast And Furious films, and often near the theater in which the film was watched. (psychological/social/cultural “Heparin Effect”)

31

Yeah, but they’re still “cool” even though not proof enough of anything, and this thread is what you might call a “cupcake”- light, airy, tasty, casual, don’t hold back, don’t be afraid to be unscientific/unprofessional, make WAGs and share random wild ideas/hunches, let’s chat! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

32

I think you will find that Kahneman and Tversky got there first (early seventies). The human tendency to be surprised by the effect of the base rate goes back way before 2008.

In your Heparin example, the human tendency is to be surprised by the 80 people who died from a rare anaphylactoid response to contaminated Heparin, due to a failure to take into account the very high base rate of Heparin use.

This is called the base rate fallacy and has been called that for many decades.

33

Fiction writers and grifters need a way to explain impossibilities to make them more plausible seeming. Just throwing in something that can’t actually happen is jarring, but if you give it an (often paper thin) backstory it goes down better. Being able to move a gigantic spaceship FTL with your mind is silly but if you can do it through eating a mysterious substance, it’s OK.

Fiction writers and grifters also need to avoid the problem that if the explanation is too easy then it upsets the narrative and/or spoils the con. If a superhero gained their special powers by eating cornflakes, why isn’t everyone a superhero? Nope, it has to be some rare or difficult circumstance. If there are sea monsters why don’t I see them all the time? Well they are only seen at the edge of the map where nobody goes.

If I can see the future why can’t you? Well, I’ve had years of training from birth in a far off land from a mysterious master, ya see. Otherwise it would upset the narrative or my con.

34

I had a T-shirt with that on it, and was asked more than once if those were lottery ticket numbers.

Spoiler: They were, sort of.

35

A neighborhood practitioner at the county fair once told me I shouldn’t try to predict the future because I have a “blocked chakra.” She said I could unblock it with daily meditation and yoga but I think it’s not as dire as a blocked colon. Maybe I’m wrong about that.

36

Well if one has unblocked chakra and can therefore predict the future, one would know when one was going to have a blocked colon. And given that the latter is - as I understand it - something of an emergency, it seems to me that unblocking one’s chakra to avoid the possibilty of dying from a blocked colon could arguably be seen as the higher priority.