AS far as I know, the late JB Rhine (who claimed to have proven that certain humans posess telepathic abilities) was not a good researcher-his experimental work was ridden with errors, and his experiemnts were poorly carried out.
Suppose that he was right-that a small minority of humans posess the ability to see things at a distance (telepathy). This “ability” was only manifsted statistically-Rhine only found a few people who seemed to score several standard deviations above the chance level (guessing which cards were held up in a distant location).
My question: if this is true, would such gifted people experience more success in life than the rest of us? take stock picking-if you had this ability, you would have a tremndous advantage in investing. The same for other firlds-you would have an advantage in civil service examinations, etc.
Has any evidence ever been found for such people 9exhibiting unusual abilities, and hence higher incomes?
So far, you’ve described remote viewing. We have to know exactly what ability you mean- what can it do? what are it’s limits etc before we can answer.
Well, if you had it, you’d know…duh…
Damn, it’s like you read my mind.
I’ve railed against people that fight the hypothetical before, so I won’t do that.
I think there may be other variables at play here such that there isn’t necessarily a direct relationship between telepathic ability (using your terminology–it’s really remote viewing, I think). For instance, maybe telepathic people have a higher than average propensity to money-sucking and general life goodness-impairing problems, such as meth addiction. Or maybe they get so fascinated by learning things by just sitting around that that’s all they do–they never get around to realizing on the practical aspects of their skills.
I think they’d make a killing at the poker table. Being able to see over your opponent’s shoulder as he looks at his cards would be a tremendous advantage.
You understand that there have been huge amounts of tests similar to Rhine’s but more rigorous, and when fraud and experimental errors are removed, none have shown evidence of telepathic or other ‘psychic’ abilities? I mean, if you do have reproducible evidence, then there’s a million dollars for you from James Randi, but so far, he’s still waiting for someone to give it to.
I’m only saying this because, if some kind of psychic abilities did actually exist, they’d be much much easier to demonstrate in laboratory tests than in some kind of study of ‘successful’ people.
No. None whatsoever.
I think one of the problems is if the ability is subtle, like a gutt feeling.
Then, how do you know whether you HAVE the abilility or are just lucky and the next time you’ll be wrong because your “luck ran out”?
When you have billions of people on the planet there are going to be a fair number that just always seem to be right and its really just “luck”/random chance that they are.
Yup, my thoughts, exactly. I know I’d be the current undefeated World Series of Poker Champion, unless I’d already retired because I have enough money and the game is boring now…
Science? Or was that a rhetorical question? Seriously, the entire concept of a scientific trial is around determining if variable phenomena are chance or not.
Really?
I did not know that.