ESP

Extra Sensory Perception.

Do believe in it?
Have you ever witnessed or experienced it in any way?
If it does exist, do you think that some have it and some don't? Or that we all have some kind of untapped ESP?

I think that if it existed, science would have shown that to at least some degree by now.

No, but it can prove that it exists. And it can predict it to some degree.

exactly.

and it's not as if they haven't tried.

If any of that were true and demonstrable scientists all over the world are looking for you and your family.

(sorry for the edit. I'm bad )

You're the one claiming you and your family have super human powers .

Dancing bottle caps in the air at parties sounds pretty deliberate . So does astraly projecting yourself to far away friends.

I astrally project myself into Scarlett Johannsen's cooter every night.

Didja ever think maybe you're just crazy, dkmfc? I mean, my mom had a second personality, but she didn't call it magic. She called it Claire.

I only really believe the things that I have personally experienced. Most of my "psychic experiences" (for lack of a better term) are fairly dull; I will know somebody's name or their Zodiac sign or some other mundane fact about them. I don't know how I know, the information must come from somewhere but I can't say where.

It's different to simply guessing, I have made plenty of guesses about people and been right but this is different. It is like a nagging in my mind that won't cease. It always gets the better of me and I have approached total strangers to ask them if my information is correct; it always has been and has led to some very interesting conversations.

Whether it is some kind of highly attuned intuition based on life experience or actual ESP I have no idea.

Because there is a very large difference between the existence of a thing, and of a phenomenon. You can't prove that a thing exists without finding it, or finding the effects of it's existence. With a phenomenon like ESP, you can take people who claim to have powers, and test to see if they do or not.

In a case like ESP the only choices are to believe science, or to believe anecdotal evidence. I choose science.

I'd also like to add that just because something appears to be ESP does not mean that it is ESP. Take those TV assholes that "talk to the dead" for a beautiful example of that.

I'd also like to add that there are miles of difference between believing in something, and knowing something. Also between seeing something, and knowing what you have seen.

What technology would you need to tell if a person can move something with their mind? Not how they do it. Just if they can? None. You get them to move something with their mind. If someone can supposedly see the future, you listen to their predictions, and you find out of they are true. If they are, you find out if they had prior knowledge that would have told them it was going to happen, and you find out if their predictions are significantly better than random guessing. Just two examples, but pretty basic ones and so far no one has been able to prove being able to do either thing. Or any form of ESP. Is it possible that ESP exists? Yes. Do I believe that it does, no. Because I don't know that it does.

In a note related to the thread, but not your post specifically, Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer is a terrific book.

Without diving into a whole lot of retoric and quoting and references of stuff you can easily google yourself I would point out that I there is substantial scientific evidence that ESP does not exist and basically none that it does.
And as I mentioned in my first post , It's not as if science has not sought long and hard to prove for or against the exisitance of such phenomenon.

There is no doubt a lot we don't know so yeah , maybe someday we will find an unknown sensory organ in the human body or an unknown fundamental force of nature that was simply hiding on us, but I think givin our understanding at this point of how things work that is highly unlikely. Most of the hypothetical answers that would or could account for such phenomenon would change everything in the universe and we would all vanish in a poof of logic.

if something exists, someone somewhere should be able to come up with something more than anecdotal evidence of it.

maybe science doesn't yet have the tools it needs to plumb the nature of the human mind, but surely at some point in recorded history someone should have been able to reliably demonstrate the effects of ESP to the satisfaction of credible witnesses.

God knows the twentieth century's two superpowers tried long and hard enough to harness paranormal phenomena.

the problem with that is that science isn't designed to disprove anything; there'll always be room for doubt. as long as there's room, some people will doubt, and tell awesome stories about uncle bob who did insane magic tricks.

but there are two different questions being addressed here, and while the most bleeding edge technology of tomorrow in existence today couldn't possibly tell you what the hell ESP might be, any 10th grade science student should be able to set up an experiment that could find it if it exists.

But how do you prove perception? How could anyone possibly ever prove that when I see the color red that you see that color the exact same way? Sure you could measure wavelengths of the light being reflected off an object. you could study how my eye reacts to the light. But what I see as red, you may see as blue and there's no way to prove the perception scientifically because it's an internal matter. Such are my thoughts regarding ESP and finding scientific proof thereof.

The prosperity of the gambling industry suggests that humanity is not strangely good at predicting the future. I blame deja vu, and the like, for fueling these ideas. People don't want to believe that their brain can lie to them as convincingly as anything else we experience.

Depending on how ESP works (if we go with the stereotypical "reading minds"), it's as simple as Peter Venkman's card experiment. Minus the electric shocks. And minus the inappropriate use of scientific inquiry to pick up chicks. If you can show that someone is able to see an image from someone else's mind correctly in a statistically improbably way, it lends credence to the existence of ESP. If you can then isolate other factors, and use those to predict further readings (how mood effects esp, distance, relationship between participants), you go a long way towards "proving" it.

we need to prove the existence of perception now? when you're arguing about what toppings you and your buddies want on a pizza, do you start by making them prove that pizza exists?

I believe that little oddity about colors has occurred to everyone old enough to get an SG membership, but it's not remotely analogous, and I can't imagine how it's relevant. "proof," as far as your example goes, is absolutely meaningless. as any good stoner will tell you, you can't even prove, in that sense, that anything exists at all.

oops, it would have been a far better metaphor to say, "do you start by debating on a common definition of pizza?"

I remember the first time I thought of the color question. I thought I was soooooooooo SMART.

Maybe you're talking about another ESP (extra sloppy pizza?).
So ESP is perception based on some sixth sense. So the idea was, how are you going to prove the way in which one person perceives something compared to another? One person might sense tension in a room based on visual observation of body language or aural observation of stressed vocal tones while another person may use some higher emotional sense that we are unaware of (reading brain waves or some nonsense). Same stimulus, different means of perception leading to the same conclusion. Either way, how are you going to prove how each person felt the tension in the room?

Personally, I think that most of what people call ESP is the brain sub consciously using some of that data it normally filters. For instance: When you talk about grapes you inadvertently make a certain physical gesture. I don't consciously take note but the information is still collected in my brain. So, next time my eyes see you make that same gesture, my mind picks up on it and for some reason I know that you're thinking about grapes although you have not yet said, "it looks like lovely grape weather. would you care to share a bunch with me?" (which I know you would say. and if you wouldn't..you're a jerk. what kind of a guy doesn't share his grapes?).

Still, there's stuff I can't explain outside of saying that perhaps ESP exists. Stuff like one person feeling that a friend has died in a train crash in some other state without prior knowledge of them being on any train.