I've been in this church more than 20 years, and my husband and son have both served before me; and this isn't my first or only position of service. But I have to say that most people seem willing to focus on getting the work done over their own egos and agendas.
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She dreamed about three numbers. She played them. She won. That reinforced her magical thinking. At the same time, a lot of people no doubt dreamed about numbers, played them, and lost, but they didn't go out of their way to let people know that. If she hadn't won, would she have told anyone?She said, "I dreamed about 3 numbers and I played them and I won." So what's going on here?
Bingo. We are, to some extent, wired to pick up connections between things, even if those connections are in no way causal. That's why people remember in such clarity where they were when JFK was shot or the Challenger exploded, even though the two events in question have nothing to do with each other.But we do tend to remember only the times we were "right".
Indeed. If you're looking at someone, posture and movement can tell you things their words don't. If you're just listening, intonation, cadence, and even breathing can fill in gaps. Usually we are not conscious of how we process nonlexical information like that, and so we surprise ourselves with sensing something without being told it in so many words.We also are very good at putting together subconscious clues, such as when I heard a neutrally worded phone message from a relative and knew that he had terrible news.
I don't think the precog stuff is so much as slippages in time- as the fact that we are physically connected to our future selves, and awareness traumatic things can echo back and forth along the physical body stretching between the *now* you and the future *you*.vison wrote:I think, myself, that there are slippages in Time. It's the most logical answer. Some of us are more aware?
We arrived at the conclusion that "great events" send ripples in all directions, including backwards. But I go further and say all events do so, only some ripples are larger than others, and some people's brains may be wired to feel those ripples.
Voronwë_the_Faithful wrote: If, as several of you have asserted, all knowledge is empirical, how do you explain that? Do you just dismiss it as coincidence (or the ravings of a madman)? Because I can't.
bt, I want to make sure that I am reading this correctly. Are you saying that, in your opinion, when I claim that in a very high percentage of cases where I feel I know what is going to happen, I turn out to be right, I am in essence deluding myself, simply blocking out most or all of the occasions when I am wrong? That, at least appears to me to be what you are saying. I'm asking you to clarify that that is in fact what you are saying (and since I am asking you directly, I am also promising not to get upset at the answer, as that would be quite discourteous of me). If in fact that is what you are saying, I would also like to ask a follow-up question or two. Assuming for a moment that you would agree that I am otherwise a reasonably intelligent individual, how would you account for such a delusion? (I realize that that may be an impossible question for you to answer, but I am genuinely interested in what you have to say.) Do you think that it is entirely internal forces that would cause such a delusion, or do you think that there might be some external force contributing? And if the latter, what would that external force be? Cultural influences, perhaps?baby tuckoo wrote:Yeah, I sometimes have an ESP that turns out right. I have many many more that turn out to be wrong. I remember the wrong ones as easily as the right, though the right seem remarkable at the time. Some people may well be more sensitive to the data and more predictive of its course, but IMHO the biggest difference is that my memory is less selective.
). More complex projections of possible outcomes, though, always remain problematic, simply because we have less grasp of the fantastically large number of variables involved on any level, conscious or subconscious. 
But the type of thing I am talking about really is different then what you are talking about, Ax. The type of thing that I am talking about is not at all based in any way on filtering perceptions. And it is very rare; it has only happened maybe a dozen times in my life. And (perhaps most importantly) it is not always what I want it to be; on several occasions it has been exactly the opposite of what I wanted it to be (situations involving illnesses of people that I care about).axordil wrote:Since I believe I said effectively the same thing as BT, Voronwë, I will answer for myself. Delusion is not the same as filtering, and filtering out negative results is a transcultural phenomenon. We LEARN from a negative correlation, but it doesn't stick with us consciously the way a positive one does. Our conscious mental model of reality is based on constructed patterns much more than the non-patterns between them, as it were, even though the law of averages pretty much ensures there will be far more negative correlations during the years we begin to form that model, childhood.
By the time we get to adulthood, we're better (as a rule) at perceiving positive correlations because we've been at it for a while. We know the chances of the guy in the car next to us suddenly sprouting wings and flying away are pretty low, compared to that of him merging into our lane without looking (especially if we notice him talking on a cell phone
I am puzzled by why you say that, Ax. I specifically waited to respond to bt's post until I was not on edge, and I thought (or at least hoped) that that had been made clear. I hope you will come back to the discussion, as I am interested in your thoughts.edit to add: Seriously, this whole discussion, on both boards, is getting people on edge to no good purpose that I perceive. I have said all I care to say, and for now, read all I care to read. See you all in the funny papers.
