Psychics?

OK. Someone in one of the cubicles a few rows down is talking about psychics performing weddings. The person in question was really concerned about how this psychic was trying to do something mean to a dead person (trying to channel them into the wedding). Look, I really enjoy the company of people I work with, but this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I really cannot believe that people buy into the whole psychic scammary. Really? It's a person with "magic powers" that people hastily believe because they themselves cannot disprove the validity of the psychic's irrational and outlandish claims.

I know ATHEISTS who believe in psychics! How can you believe in one but NOT the other like that? It's like saying "I belive that there is nothing after death and that all I see is all there is. But I believe that people can talk to the spirits of the dead." Or, put more simply, "I believe in 'A' and 'NOT-A'". You can't rationalize that!

Things like this frustrate me. However, I am always open to discussion. Therefore, it is your turn.

I didn't used to believe in ghosts until going to school at CSU Monterey Bay, the campus for which is on the old Fort Ord. The dorms were old Single Officers' Quarters. Well, one wasn't. It was the old mental ward. Many of the dorms were haunted.

This was not a "knew someone who's roomate had a friend who was going out with someone who saw..." I believe my tally was something like 10 events that I personally knew the people reporting what had happened, and they were all reasonably normal people. Of those, I think 6 of them were corroborated by at least one other person who was in the room at the same time.

Had a friend who would get really pissed if anyone started talking about playing around with a Ouija Board.

I seriously thought of running a side business performing exorcisms in people's rooms.

Now, I'm not saying these were actually ghosts, or that I know what was really going on. But there was definitely some weird juju.

I think one can buy into the possibility of weird juju without buying into some people's ability to speak to the weird juju.

Ask 'em this, how come nobody knew the Pyschic Friends Network was going bankrupt? Shouldn't they have seen it coming?

These things start making more sense when you realize that the universe exists in the Frequency Domain, but our perceptions are in the Time Domain. When you look at a lot of the ghost stories like on the ghost hunting shows and not fictionalized ghost stories, you see a lot of the time that a ghost appears here and does the same thing each time. Like an echo from a high signal event.

Dr.Hess is currently the Technical Director of LOST.

Does that mean I need to Fourier transform myself to talk to dead friends and loved ones?

Talking to dead people is okay. When you start hearing them answer back is when you have problems.

Just like people who talk to God a lot join the clergy, and people who God talks to a lot get committed.

i speak to dragons on another astral plane.

It's a DC7 that Xenu built...

Billy, you're doing a Fourier Transform right now. Probably at the cellular level in the neurons. It all gets real fuzzy there.

The FFT was just pure brilliance, or insight or bleed-over from the Frequency Domain. Without the FFT, there would be no DVDs or online porn.

Dr. Hess wrote: Without the FFT, there would be no DVDs or online porn.

God Bless Fourier..

(as an ex engineering student, never thought I'd say that!!!)

Hmm. I think I like the treehouse thread better...

Call the Psychic Friends Network, first thing they ask is "What's your name?" Hey [shineyhappyperson] you're the frikkin' psychic!

Channeling I don't get, but I had a friend that he and his father would communicate without talking, telepathically I guess. Mom hated it. He was 13 before he realized not everyone can do this. Sitting around one night having a beer, I was just staring at the fire and he starts talking. I realize he's saying wha't going on in my head. Stop that. He just laughed.

There are things we don't know about yet, keep an open mind.

Oh, and if I ever get picked up by aliens, you can poke me prod me and I'll even have your little grey babies; just let me tour your engine room.

Dan

I've got two schools of thought in my mind about the supernatural:

1: There is too little proof (or indeed, to few ways to prove) that ghosts or whatever are real, and too many other explanations. (Infrasound is my favorite)

2: On the flip side, the universe is complex, big, and difficult to explain. We're bacteria on a termite chewing through the floor in the Kitchen of the universe, trying figure out what's in the fridge.

I mean, I'd love to believe that the human mind was special and unique, and were more than complex electrochemical reactions in a bone box. But wanting to believe something doesn't make it so, and douchebags like John Edwards (no, the OTHER douchebag John Edwards) don't help the psychic case.

Strangely enough, I have no problem believing in aliens. To believe that we are totally and utterly unique in the entire universe is hubris at its peak. That is especially true as we discover extrasolar orbiting bodies (technically speaking, not planets) in other star systems. Our solar system doesn't appear to be radically unique, so neither does the earth.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof; it's as simple as that.

Not quite psychics, but the I met a vet with an interesting case-story involving Reiki, a form of "energy" healing.

She'd operated on a cat with some bladder issue. The surgery did not take and the bladder was leaking (or something like that). The cat's belly was horribly discolored and she knew this cat had something on the order of less than a day to live, and that there was nothing she could do to go in and repair the damage.

So, she called a friend who did Reiki. They did a treatment and left the cat overnight.

Now, this was a cat that was going to die. It also didn't know that something was supposed to happen with the Reiki, so no power-of-suggestion effect.

When the vet returned in the morning, the cat's condition had noticeably improved, and done so at a rate beyond what could have happened if it had been healing naturally (presuming that she'd misdiagnosed its condition to begin with).

You don't have to be a religious person to believe that our existence may not be entirely physical and in this dimension... nor that we have an adequate understanding of the universe (or perhaps even our own abilities) to exclude a scientific, physics based explanation of what we now consider "supernatural"...

The ancients thought "supernatural" processes which we now clearly understand as natural.

There is undoubtedly alien "life", but given the vastness of the universe, the probability of having a species that we would reconize as sentient AND with the ability to travel the vast distances to us (using the speed of light as a limit given that is the theoretical max given our current understanding of physics) AND being in the same planet timeline as us (not visiting a primordial Earth nor a seemingly dead dry planet like Mars) is low indeed...

Bill

Even if aliens were able to travel here, they'd have to know to be able to.

I heard a report on NPR about all the radio noise our planet sends out (or did for a while). Apparently all our transmissions become quieter than the background noise of the universe by about the time they leave our solar system.

Aliens would only have been able to find this planet by pure random chance.

You might be interested to hear that a guy at my office worships the sun. He is a very intelligent and rational person...he just worships the sun.

(Carnac holds the sealed envelope up to his turban)

CARNAC: Sis boom bah.

ED McMAHON: Sis boom bah.

(Carnac rips the envelope open and removes the card)

CARNAC (reading): Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes.

I look at earth much like Kansas. If there IS intelligent life out there somewhere, why would they want to go there?

GameboyRMH wrote: You might be interested to hear that a guy at my office worships the sun. He is a very intelligent and rational person...he just worships the sun.

Well, that's arguably more rational than worship of invisible deities. Regarding the Sun:

1. We can prove it exists.
2. It is ultimately the source of all life and energy on this planet.
3. You can go outside and be warmed by its presence.
4. Its existence has given us bikinis and convertibles.

Salanis wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote: You might be interested to hear that a guy at my office worships the sun. He is a very intelligent and rational person...he just worships the sun.

Well, that's arguably more rational than worship of invisible deities. Regarding the Sun: 1. We can prove it exists. 2. It is ultimately the source of all life and energy on this planet. 3. You can go outside and be warmed by its presence. 4. Its existence has given us bikinis and convertibles.

Hmm good points. A lot of suffering can also be directly attributed to it, so you can also be sure that you're trying to appease the thing that is causing the suffering.

Tim Baxter wrote: I look at earth much like Kansas. If there IS intelligent life out there somewhere, why would they want to go there?

Barbecue and Worlds of Fun?

z31maniac wrote:

Tim Baxter wrote: I look at earth much like Kansas. If there IS intelligent life out there somewhere, why would they want to go there?

Barbecue and Worlds of Fun?

Topeka!

Worlds of Fun is on the Missouri side. And not really all that entertaining. Topeka is only worthwhile twice a year (and apparently that number's dropping).

But really, I didn't want to pick on anyone else's state.