I think we can reply to Soapbox Monkey’s OP on two levels. On a humane and emotional level, the incident obviously involved strong emotions and feelings, and s/he felt that s/he had a precognitive experience, or something akin to precognitive.
On a more scientific level, we can set the emotive aspects of the incident aside (while maintaining due respect for the feelings of all concerned) and say simply that we have to make sure there’s something to explain before we try to explain it. And the story, as told, isn’t evidence of anything precognitive.
Human perceptual apparatus is wondeful in many ways, but it also has its flaws when it comes to accurate accounts of past experience. As an illusionist, I make a living out of exploiting these flaws. A simple summary:
- People don’t always observe things very well.
- Even if they observe well, they don’t always remember very well.
- Even if they observe and remember well, they don’t always describe things very accurately.
- What little they tend to describe well, they tend to simplify (and also modify in terms of what they want to be true, feel should be true etc.)
I make these points with no disrespect to Soapbox Monkey at all, and there is no implication here that s/he is in any way untruthful or trying to mislead. These flaws apply to us all, more or less equally. But there is every chance the version of events s/he thinks s/he honestly remembers is a tidied up version. There may have been other aspects of his/her precognition which did NOT match the actual events, but s/he will have forgotten these because they don’t fit.
We should also be aware of the danger of selectivity. Cars and car accidents are a common part of everyday life. Suppose there are 10,000 people who form an expectation of an accident similar to that in the OP. Suppose also that only 1 of those is actually then involved in such an accident. Viewed in isolation, the story told by that one person seems to require some strange explanation. But we aren’t hearing from the 9,999 people who formed a similar ‘precognition’ and nothing happened. From this perspective, it’s not so weird is it?
Trying to examine precognition scientifically is hard. We need the precognition documented BEFORE the event actually happens, and we need results that fall outside of what can be accounted for by selectivity and chance. I haven’t read everything, but I’m very familiar with most of the research done in this area, and I’ve met some of the key players. To the best of my knowledge, at the present time we just don’t have any good evidence of precognitive ability. It would be nice to have though!
As for the contributions of devilsknew and aeschines, these boards are ostensibly about fighting ignorance, not disseminating it.