Originally Posted by Philomel (Post 1767194964)

I would apologize, but I've gone through this before. People are just stuck on that being the case, and when it's proven to them that it's not, they ignore it. It happened to me in the debates thread -- I posted the exact same source Keyori did, it was ignored for about five pages, and then someone repeated the myth. It's completely obnoxious.


Because you're acting as though me doubting I'm psychic is because I've never considered the possibility, nor looked into this "third eye" idea (which, by the way, is a concept that originally had nothing to do with psychic ability). Like I said, this was a subject that I was once deeply interested in. I still am, my beliefs about it are just different from yours.



No, there is no part of the brain we don't use. What I said was, we don't use every part of the brain for each individual task. For instance, if we're trying to remember something, we don't use every part of our brains. If we're trying to solve a problem, we're not using every part of our brain. It's not a matter of "brainpower", it's just that certain sections of our brains are used for certain things and using unrelated parts for a task would be useless. But we do use all parts of our brains for something. If we don't, something has gone wrong.


It makes sense, but it's missing the point. I don't mean you're consciously doing it, just as those who become convinced that they're, say, the reincarnation of some important person, don't consciously realize that they're setting themselves (and usually, others; we want to be different, but absolute uniqueness is lonely) apart from everyone else. You are saying that some people can use it and some cannot. Not that they can never possibly use it, but it is still saying, I can, you can't. You're further saying that some are born with it, yourself included. When this concept is applied to other fields (including the one I'm most familiar with, witchcraft), those who are born with it are usually seen by the ones doing the segregating as innately better or, at the very least, more mysterious than those who have to develop it later in life.


Yes, you did. You've repeatedly told me to try it. If you believed there was a possibility I had already tried it, you would not have phrased it this way.


What if we don't really exist and are simply the characters in a dream? Or, what if you exist, but you're just a brain in a jar and all of us, everything you know, is not real?

It's really not worth dwelling on the "what ifs", and it's certainly not worth living as though a specific "what if" is true.


That's what they always say. Someone hears a creak, there's no possible explanation for it other than ghosts. Someone sees a light in the sky that they cannot immediately identify, there's no possible explanation besides aliens. People do not see explanations as being possible if they don't want them to be.


Exactly, that's what I was saying. You want to believe, so the lack of personal experience wouldn't hamper your belief any.


I am quite sure about it. You've shown that your belief is not based on whether or not those who claim to be psychic really are, so if they said they weren't, what would keep you from continuing to believe?


Pretty much anyone, really. It's sort of like the problem of reality, that we can only examine the Universe from within the Universe, and as such are affected by it and our observations are limited by it. Likewise, when we try to examine ourselves, we are limited by our own minds. If we're imagining things, it's very difficult to tell that's the case. If we forget, we can only look at clues to get an idea of whether or not what we're remembering is what really happened. If we think something is true, it is difficult if not impossible to tell whether or not we believe because of the evidence presented to us, or because we want to, or because it's what we've been taught to believe.


So you believe it's B because A cannot be proven conclusively, even though B cannot be proven either. That's your choice, but I really hope you don't use this logic with everything.


Something tells me they will eventually be able to fairly replicate psychic ability through technology. Probably not the whole "talking to the dead" thing, though depending on who you believe, they've already got one machine that does that, but almost certainly telepathic and telekinetic abilities and possibly even precognition.


As you wish.