Precognition Causality Quantum Theory and Mysticism

As far as my understanding of this universe goes, precognition or divination is utterly impossible in any and all ways.Even things like this: I no doubt believe your story about your friend. However, I do not think that the "green" involved was some sort of inherent physical property of the pencil-and-paper written equation. I think that the "green" involved is more of a property of his intuition. That is, his intuition of an equation being incomplete was being visualized by the colour green. Of course, more testing would have to be done in order to say one way or the other, but that's what I think without further evidence. (And my guess would be that you agree). In a word: Yes. No. Yes.Basically, I use a form of a lemon test. That is, if there was anything to it's validity, then it would be used as much as possible. Yes, I'm sure you can find a few minor police forces who have a "psychic" they talk with to get leads from when they are absolutely out of all other possibilities. But if there was any validity behind such methods, then all police forces would have an on-payroll psychic to which they always consult. In the same way that since science does work... all police forces consult science to determine the validity of their evidence. They all do it, simply because it works. If it worked, they'd all do it.Using this simple lemon test, it's easy for a new method of psychic abilities to be ignored... for a while. But once it proved itself to actually work, it would then get picked up rather quickly. Also, most psychic "methods" have been around for a long time, so the fact that they are not widely used is... telling.Just 'cause it isn't labelled "snakeoil" doesn't mean it's legit.Edited by Stile, : I don't grammar good.

The thing is, as soon as you start imagining the possibility of a Q-like being, you're already imagining a universe that is not like the universe we have knowledge about around us (that is, as far as we know, no Q-like being exists or can exist).Therefore, you can set up whatever rules you like for this new imaginary universe to see "what might be possible" within such an idea.Now the questions of "what is possible for a Q-like being..." all become directly dependent on the rules you set up for the universe that would hold such a Q-like being. Therefore, the answer for all these "what is possible for a Q-like being..." questions is the simple "whatever was defined as possible while creating the imaginary Q-like being in it's imaginary universe."That is, unless you are able to specify all the rules of the universe and Q-like being you are thinking about in your imagination, it isn't really fair to ask others what they think such a Q-like being would be capable of. That is, their imaginary Q-like being rules and imaginary Q-like universe may be slightly different from what you're understanding is.Straggler and I got into a very similar impasse while trying to "talk sensible" about time travel, prophecy, and free will*. The thing is, such things are inherently imaginary (as far as we know, anyway). Therefore, any talking of such inherently imgainary ideas requires you to imagine a universe with certain rules that do not necessarily exist within our current universe (and may even contradict some rules of our universe). Without clearly specifying exactly the rules your imaginary idea entails (something I was unable to convey in my discussion with Straggler) the other party is free to use whatever imagination they would like. The two of you also may not agree on which "inherent rules of our real universe" carry over and are "untouchable" within the imaginary universes you're both thinking of.Such confusion can lead to an impossibility of common ground on which to have an actual "sensible talk" about imaginary concepts.*Thread: Free Will and Biblical Prophecy: Are They Mutually Exclusive?
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Heh... took me almost 15 min. to find that thread. I was scanning my post-history but couldn't remember the name of it Right. And as long as we're talking about the real universe (an assumption I didn't take for granted in the other thread... which I think is what caused most of the confusion, along with the growth of my position into one that resided within an imaginary realm as I learned more about what you were describing). I stick with my boring answer of "it's impossible."Mysticism just doesn't make any sense. It's mandatory for it to be surrounded by such excuses as "but, it doesn't work that way... I have no control over it..." and "well, my abilities aren't that powerful..."If it didn't have such excuses, it would be a definitive method, in which case it would be scientific, and then there would be evidence about it.With such excuses, however, it's rendered equivalent to chance or the random world of probability with educated guesses. And, therefore, it doesn't really exist as anything "special."

Seems like a good idea, but wouldn't it be useless in practice?That is, let's say we remove skepticism and rigid control upon a test for telepathy. Now let's assume we run some sort of telepathy test and the results show 100% accuracy.What does this mean? Are the results 100% accurate because telepathy is actually real? Or are the results 100% accurate because of some other process that we can no longer identify because we didn't control the experiment?If the point is to identify whether or not the phenomenon is real, isn't skepticism (that is: rigid control of the experiment) required in order to make sure any positive results aren't caused by some alternative process?If it comes down to "telepathy only seems to work if we remove any amount of skepticsm" isn't that the same as "telepathy only seems to work when we can't identify if some other process is actually causing the positive results?" Such a conclusion seems rather pointless to pursue.

Heh... just saw that, sorry Alright then, I have no problem. As long as rigid controls are in place, I don't have any problem at all with screening against "negatively biased" people. Although I think such screening may very easily become some sort of political issue. That is, as long as someone is claiming to be "neutral," how could you tell if they aren't? (That's an off-topic, and kind of unimportant, kinda redundant question... no need to actually answer it).Edited by Stile, : Negative... not positive, whoops.