Predicting the future and other odd things that happen to me

Page 3 of 3 [ 45 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3

Fnord
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 6 May 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 60,939
Location:      

17 Feb 2021, 1:37 pm

HeroOfHyrule wrote:
Fnord wrote:
HeroOfHyrule wrote:
I don't necessarily believe in a psychic ability to predict something is going to happen, but sometimes I am able to use reasoning and my knowledge of certain situations to expect the right outcome. Like, after having a conversation with someone about something, I can sometimes look at their body language and tell that they're thinking about someone/something specific that's loosely related. People think it's weird I can do that and say I predicted their thoughts, but I'm just observant and learn what kind of topics trigger other topics with certain people and how they react to them. People and situations have patterns that they don't really notice.
What you relate is called "Cold Reading".  It is the core practice of store-front "psychics" and people like Sylvia Browne and James Van Praagh.
Yup. That's why I don't believe in psychics, because I know it's all just knowing certain patterns, reading body language, etc. It's actually irritating when people suggest I can predict things because it's just simply me being observant.
There is profit to be made from those seeking guidance.  Keep in mind that there is also a seeker born every minute.



Dear_one
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Feb 2008
Age: 76
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,721
Location: Where the Great Plains meet the Northern Pines

17 Feb 2021, 1:55 pm

Where it is only a matter of seconds, just the housekeeping in your brain can be fudging things. I was once woken by a host's parrot, but I thought I'd woken up seconds before, which helped me stay calm.
I have had several dreams of future events that came true, and my otherwise no-jive dad once had a half hour of perfect deja vu. The "tightest" pre-cognitive dream involved me, my parked car, one guy I knew and two girls I didn't. Two weeks later, we were there, and while I was wondering if I should say the same things I said in the dream, I was watching myself say them.
Fnord - you are protected from ever having your nose rubbed in proof by the basic contract to live in the material plane. Whatever happens, you will be protected from fear by denial. If you allow your consciousness to expand, fear dissolves, except for the loss of ego.



Fnord
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 6 May 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 60,939
Location:      

17 Feb 2021, 3:43 pm

Dear_one wrote:
... Fnord - you are protected from ever having your nose rubbed in proof by the basic contract to live in the material plane. Whatever happens, you will be protected from fear by denial. If you allow your consciousness to expand, fear dissolves, except for the loss of ego.
That is all very interesting, but I am not really into horoscope readings anymore.



OkaySometimes
Raven
Raven

Joined: 22 Oct 2020
Age: 47
Gender: Male
Posts: 114
Location: SF, CA

18 Feb 2021, 11:09 am

Just because science doesn't have the tools to measure, or even discover, the mechanism behind something doesn't actually mean it doesn't exist. If a person in 1600 had a chunk of Uranium in their pocket every day, they would have no idea why they developed cancer. They wouldn't even know what the cancer was. Just because they didn't know about ionizing radiation wouldn't make ionizing radiation not exist.

Just one guy's opinion, worth exactly what you paid for it.



Fnord
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 6 May 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 60,939
Location:      

18 Feb 2021, 11:16 am

Argument from Ignorance, also known as Appeal to Ignorance, is a fallacy in informal logic.  It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true.  So, just because an experience cannot be explained does not automatically default to that experience having a supernatural connection or cause.



diagnosedafter50
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

Joined: 15 Dec 2020
Age: 58
Posts: 309
Location: United Kingdom

18 Feb 2021, 11:39 am

I used to wish my dad dead. This is bad. Seven years ago well journalling I wrote down “my dad is such a stress head that he is lucky to have made it to 72 years old without dropping dead with a heart attack” a few days later I got a message to say he was on the way to hospital with an aortic aneurysm and he never made it.



Dear_one
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Feb 2008
Age: 76
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,721
Location: Where the Great Plains meet the Northern Pines

18 Feb 2021, 11:39 am

Fnord wrote:
Dear_one wrote:
... Fnord - you are protected from ever having your nose rubbed in proof by the basic contract to live in the material plane. Whatever happens, you will be protected from fear by denial. If you allow your consciousness to expand, fear dissolves, except for the loss of ego.
That is all very interesting, but I am not really into horoscope readings anymore.


You are not even recognizing a difference between astrology, which tries to predict general events, and suddenly seeing your life seem like a movie you remember, but did not expect to see again. I wouldn't be so sure of myself, what with science telling us that the universe is mostly dark matter and energy, but not what information it may contain.
The closest approach to lab-grade results I've seen are the children who know verifiable facts about recent previous lives.



Fnord
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 6 May 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 60,939
Location:      

18 Feb 2021, 11:48 am

diagnosedafter50 wrote:
I used to wish my dad dead. This is bad. Seven years ago well journalling I wrote down “my dad is such a stress head that he is lucky to have made it to 72 years old without dropping dead with a heart attack” a few days later I got a message to say he was on the way to hospital with an aortic aneurysm and he never made it.
Your father's death is not your fault.

If such a power existed, several dozen politicians, a few monarchs, countless bureaucrats, and my neighbor's dog would have all burst into flames and burned to ashes years ago.



Fnord
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 6 May 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 60,939
Location:      

18 Feb 2021, 11:56 am

Dear_one wrote:
Fnord wrote:
Dear_one wrote:
... Fnord - you are protected from ever having your nose rubbed in proof by the basic contract to live in the material plane. Whatever happens, you will be protected from fear by denial. If you allow your consciousness to expand, fear dissolves, except for the loss of ego.
That is all very interesting, but I am not really into horoscope readings anymore.
You are not even recognizing a difference between astrology, which tries to predict general events, and suddenly seeing your life seem like a movie you remember, but did not expect to see again. I wouldn't be so sure of myself, what with science telling us that the universe is mostly dark matter and energy, but not what information it may contain.
The closest approach to lab-grade results I've seen are the children who know verifiable facts about recent previous lives.
I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I will believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous is may seem at first, if only there is valid material evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, after all.

Astrology is superstition.  Perceptive distortion has organic causes.  No case of alleged reincarnation can not also be explained by parental coaching.  The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data', after all.

But let me meet a 15-year old child who remembers things that only my late father and I would know, and I will believe.  Heck, I will even apologize for being wrong!  But until that time, you will just have to accept the fact that not everybody shares all of your beliefs or even considers all of them valid in an objective context.



NorthWind
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Jun 2016
Gender: Female
Posts: 577

18 Feb 2021, 1:18 pm

OkaySometimes wrote:
Just because science doesn't have the tools to measure, or even discover, the mechanism behind something doesn't actually mean it doesn't exist. If a person in 1600 had a chunk of Uranium in their pocket every day, they would have no idea why they developed cancer. They wouldn't even know what the cancer was. Just because they didn't know about ionizing radiation wouldn't make ionizing radiation not exist.


You wouldn't need to know what ionizing radiation is or the mechanism of how it causes cancer to show a link between radioactivity and cancer. You could simply show that statistically people exposed to radioactive materials have a heightened risk of cancer. It wouldn't be irrefutable proof because there's an error probability and because correlation doesn't prove causation and there might be another variable you don't measure that is the actual causative one, but it would be solid evidence. And your results would be well reproducible even if you vary other factors than the radiation.

The same would work for some paranormal phenomena or psychic abilities that supposedly have a measurable effect even if you don't understand the mechanism. And scientists have tried to find evidence for these phenomena in the past. They just didn't find any good one. Psychologists have had more success at explaining why it might seem to the human mind as if it has psychic abilities or as if paranormal phenomena occur.

Now in the OP's case testing the existence of his predictive powers would indeed be hard, because his predictions reach 2 seconds into the future which doesn't allow time for him to report them before they happen and are about completely ordinary things and he would only realize his prediction once it came true.

However, to me they seem like perfectly normal psychological phenomena. I also sometimes randomly hear other people or someone on TV mention something I've just been thinking of even if they were talking about an unrelated topic while I thought about that thing. That's expected to happen by chance. People, TV and the radio use a whole lot of words, they switch topics, they use examples, they use metaphors. However, this doesn't stand out to you and you won't remember unless it happens to be something that is meaningful to you - in this case because you were just thinking about it.

As for the dreams, that's only predicting the future if you assume that you are fast asleep one moment and wide awake within a fraction of a second and that your perception is always 100% accurate no matter what state your brain is in. Things happening in the real world have definitely entered my dreams. If the person talking loudly wakes you up they started talking while you were still dreaming.
I don't remember most mundane instances this happened to me. One I still remember is I dreamed I was repeatedly stabbed in the abdomen with a knife. I woke up and a moment after I woke up I noticed I had belly cramps. But I don't assume that I had that dream because it predicted that I'd get cramps a few moments later. I had the dream because I had cramps, but while I was asleep I didn't consciously feel the pain and I only became consciously aware of the pain a moment after I had woken up, not even as I woke up. Also, those cramps were period pains and I know how they feel when I'm awake. The onset didn't feel how it feels if period pains start while I'm awake. They were there before. I just didn't consciously feel them.



Fnord
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 6 May 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 60,939
Location:      

18 Feb 2021, 1:48 pm

When I was a kid, I learned to predict weather events.  Being suddenly able to see the horizon from my back yard, coupled with a stillness in the air and an oppressive level of humidity meant that a storm would strike within 12 hours.  A certain aroma always preceded a snowstorm.  When the storm clouds took on a greenish hue there would soon be lightning.  Certain combinations of clouds always meant high winds would strike soon.

(I later learned the rhyme, "Mare's tails and mackerel scales mean wise sailors should take in their sails".)

All it took was being observant and noting regular, predictable patterns to make me the "Go-to Kid" for predicting the weather for my relatives and neighbors.



OkaySometimes
Raven
Raven

Joined: 22 Oct 2020
Age: 47
Gender: Male
Posts: 114
Location: SF, CA

19 Feb 2021, 7:12 am

Fnord wrote:
Argument from Ignorance, also known as Appeal to Ignorance, is a fallacy in informal logic.  It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true.  So, just because an experience cannot be explained does not automatically default to that experience having a supernatural connection or cause.



NorthWind wrote:
You wouldn't need to know what ionizing radiation is or the mechanism of how it causes cancer to show a link between radioactivity and cancer. You could simply show that statistically people exposed to radioactive materials have a heightened risk of cancer. It wouldn't be irrefutable proof because there's an error probability and because correlation doesn't prove causation and there might be another variable you don't measure that is the actual causative one, but it would be solid evidence. And your results would be well reproducible even if you vary other factors than the radiation.


I understand those things, but they were not my point. I was not saying that "because it can't be proven false, it must be true." I'm not really arguing for the existence of paranormal phenomena, just saying that many people are very quick to dismiss things sometimes. Seems like the same logical fallacy to me, just going the other way.

Sorry if my post came off argumentative, it just seemed like the old "We can't measure it, so it doesn't exist" mentality to me. I'm not here to give evidence for psychic phenomena, or even to argue for the existence of it, or of ghosts, or of aliens, or of Sasquatch (and most of those I don't actually believe in.) It just seemed like the scientific dismissal that I see too much of these days.

A related point is that, back when either applied to me, I was not at all comfortable calling myself an atheist and preferred agnostic. To be an atheist seemed to me to require just as much faith as any religion. Maybe I'm just not comfortable with certainty...



FleaOfTheChill
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 31 Jul 2020
Age: 310
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 3,217
Location: Just outside of reality

19 Feb 2021, 7:50 am

OkaySometimes wrote:
I understand those things, but they were not my point. I was not saying that "because it can't be proven false, it must be true." I'm not really arguing for the existence of paranormal phenomena, just saying that many people are very quick to dismiss things sometimes. Seems like the same logical fallacy to me, just going the other way.

Sorry if my post came off argumentative, it just seemed like the old "We can't measure it, so it doesn't exist" mentality to me. I'm not here to give evidence for psychic phenomena, or even to argue for the existence of it, or of ghosts, or of aliens, or of Sasquatch (and most of those I don't actually believe in.) It just seemed like the scientific dismissal that I see too much of these days.


I take a similar stand on this kind of stuff. I tend to be skeptical of things, look for rational explanations, so on. But I also know enough to know that I don't know it all. Seems to me that if we box ourselves in and dismiss things just due to lack of present proof, we are ultimately doing ourselves a disservice. Shameful, that. My two cents.

As to the OP... Like I said, I look for rational explanations, so yeah. :lol: Here's my possible explanation.

I'd guess that because you are zoned out when these things happen, you might be hearing things before you realize you are actually hearing them. I've done that before. Like I'll be asleep and dreaming that someone is here and wake to hear knocking on my door. Turns out I wasn't having premonitions, but the person had been knocking while I was asleep and continued to do so until I answered the door.

Or I'd be focused on something, oblivious to my surroundings, and start thinking that my daughter was arguing with her boyfriend. The reason why would be because I hadn't noticed I got a series of texts back to back, and that mostly happens to me when my daughter is fighting her her dude and wanting to vent to me. I am apparently programmed to think there is a problem with her when my phone starts going nuts and my brain knows it even when I do not.

The short of it, things creep into our heads on subconscious levels all the time. Could be that.