Breaking down telepathy

[Paul2]

Giza, I'd like to reiterate what a few people have said: that this forum can be a great place to sharpen your intellect and learn how to think. I have learned a *great* deal here over a few years.

Figuring out reality works - like what the voices you hear mean and really are, or what animals think about us, etc. - can be very difficult while seemingly easy. That's fascinating to me.

 

[Robrob]

I believe hearing voices is evidence of something more, like telepathic communication.

Only if you define mental illness as "telepathic communication."

 

[Kuko 4000]

Hi Giza, welcome to the forum!

In my opinion you should start by testing your abilities to make sure they are actually real and not for example confirmation bias (as suggested earlier by 23_Tauri). Maybe think what is your strongest and most impressive telepathy-related ability, share it here, and us forum members can try to come up with a very simple test that you can try at home with minimum effort.

For example:

Well one simple way would be to find a person or some people who are willing to voluntarily send you thoughts. Get them to use a normal pack of playing cards (obviously so you can't see it, maybe they sit behind you so can't see them or the cards)) and then they look at a card and think 'red' or 'black', you write the answer down that you telepathically pick up onto a sheet. The person sending the telepathic message put the card down face down and then you both move on to the next card. At the end of the test, you match up how many you got right. Report back here with your results.

 

[Kleonaptra]

Thank you all for the responses. I figured since I can hear my own thoughts, that there would be a possibility for anyone to hear them.

Another question if you all don't mind..
Animals/insects seem to pick up on my thoughts.
Is it common for animals/insects to pick up/respond to your thoughts?

Hello Giza. I have experienced telepathy but I have also heard voices due to psychosis. The two experiences are completely different and the 'hearing voices' is in my opinion, a form of nerve noise, as it went away completely when I was on nerve blocking drugs. That drug did not prove to be wholly effective so I'm on a different one now, but since my physical psychosis has been treated I do not hear voices anymore.

I'm a professional horse trainer and animal rescue volunteer. I admit to a large amount of cold reading, since horses taught me and they are the greatest cold readers on earth, thats to be expected. However, I have known things about my rescue animals and horse clients I could not have known without a bit of telepathy.

Welcome to the JREF forum, my friend.

 

[PixyMisa]

Hello Giza. I have experienced telepathy but I have also heard voices due to psychosis. The two experiences are completely different

How do you know this?

However, I have known things about my rescue animals and horse clients I could not have known without a bit of telepathy.

How do you know this?

 

[Kleonaptra]

How do you know this?

Because hearing voices is terrifying and lonely. Quite obviously only my own mind. Exercises with telepathy with members of my family are always accompanied by the 'feeling' of them, such as their scent even when they are not near me. It has a sense of their identity, and I believe this is merely their electromagnetic frequency.

[/QUOTE]How do you know this? [/QUOTE]

If I am training a horse and solving its problems, I can say, "You have to move the blue drums near his stable door, he doesnt like them" even when I have never been to the property. I have on multiple occasions diagnosed health problems in animals before the physical symptoms appeared, such as rattles in a foal before coughing or respiratory distress began.

 

[PixyMisa]

Because hearing voices is terrifying and lonely. Quite obviously only my own mind. Exercises with telepathy with members of my family are always accompanied by the 'feeling' of them, such as their scent even when they are not near me.

Have you tried a blinded study to remove confirmation bias?

Becuase you can do that immediately and for free, and there's no point messing about with SQUIDs until you've dont it.

It has a sense of their identity, and I believe this is merely their electromagnetic frequency.

PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE AN ELECTROMAGNETIC FREQUENCY.

If I am training a horse and solving its problems, I can say, "You have to move the blue drums near his stable door, he doesnt like them" even when I have never been to the property.

And how do you know that this is true, and how do you know that you learned it via telepathy?

I have on multiple occasions diagnosed health problems in animals before the physical symptoms appeared, such as rattles in a foal before coughing or respiratory distress began.

Have you performed controlled experiments to demonstrate this ability? Have you kept precise and detailed records to allow for proper statistical analysis, so as to prove that you are doing anything beyond random chance?

 

[Kleonaptra]

Have you tried a blinded study to remove confirmation bias?

Becuase you can do that immediately and for free, and there's no point messing about with SQUIDs until you've dont it.


PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE AN ELECTROMAGNETIC FREQUENCY.


And how do you know that this is true, and how do you know that you learned it via telepathy?


Have you performed controlled experiments to demonstrate this ability? Have you kept precise and detailed records to allow for proper statistical analysis, so as to prove that you are doing anything beyond random chance?

I will be working on telepathy experiments in the future. I wouldnt enter the olympics without years of training, and Im not about to enter the challenge without similar training.

I like how everyone says its no good messing about with SQUIDS, but if I held a seance and said a spirit was in the room, and the SQUID said no, there is no extra electromagnetic radiation, Id be wrong and Id admit it.

Because the horses owners tell me. They say, 'how did you know that?" Quite regularly. There is no amount of cold reading that will tell me what the object was that is upsetting the animal - I can tell somethings changed, and somethings upsetting him, but without telepathy, how am I going to know its a blue drum/ new yellow food bucket/ automatic water trough etc?

No I have not, and telepathy with animals will not be accepted into the challenge - please see Iris Kaschubowski. She is WAY more talented than me, I need the animal, she only needs a photo.

When diagnosing and treating a rescue animal, the MDC is the last thing on my mind.

 

[dafydd]

Have you performed controlled experiments to demonstrate this ability? Have you kept precise and detailed records to allow for proper statistical analysis, so as to prove that you are doing anything beyond random chance?

Giza,many years ago I used to believe that I could dowse with a pendulum. I used to take a face down card from a pack and try to identify it. I was convinced that I could do it,until I began keeping a record. My hits were no more than predicted by chance,just as yours are.

 

[dafydd]

I will be working on telepathy experiments in the future. I wouldnt enter the olympics without years of training, and Im not about to enter the challenge without similar training.

I like how everyone says its no good messing about with SQUIDS, but if I held a seance and said a spirit was in the room, and the SQUID said no, there is no extra electromagnetic radiation, Id be wrong and Id admit it.

Because the horses owners tell me. They say, 'how did you know that?" Quite regularly. There is no amount of cold reading that will tell me what the object was that is upsetting the animal - I can tell somethings changed, and somethings upsetting him, but without telepathy, how am I going to know its a blue drum/ new yellow food bucket/ automatic water trough etc?

No I have not, and telepathy with animals will not be accepted into the challenge - please see Iris Kaschubowski. She is WAY more talented than me, I need the animal, she only needs a photo.

When diagnosing and treating a rescue animal, the MDC is the last thing on my mind.

Your misses are quite regular too,but you ignore them. This is called confirmation bias. My late wife was convinced that she could guess a person's astrological sign after a few minutes conversation. I used to keep a score in my head. She was right one time out of twelve,but her confirmation bias led her to ignore that. I let her carry on,it was a harmless conceit.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Alright been thinking of telepathy for quite some time, mostly due to my condition of hearing voices. I believe hearing voices is evidence of something more, like telepathic communication.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence to support that claim. The voices people hear are independent of whether anybody is near, and they cannot be shown to convey messages from other persons. In fact, they indeed often be shown to convey messages from the person hearing them.

I understand your wish to make something interesting out of your conditions, but I'm afraid you are out of luck. Since the immediate reaction to hearing voices is to assume they come from somewhere, much of the research into your condition has been on the origin of the messages.

Basically telepathy is moreso believed to be an ability of reading minds, but it can also be a way of communicating. Now how would that work? Well when one is thinking they can be read.

Unfortunately, all objective examination of the subject indicates that telepathy exists only in the realm of fantasy. It would be a very useful capacity, but alas ......

Another thing to factor in is vocabulary. It is rare for 2 different people to have the exact same vocabulary and way of using that vocabulary. So pretty much the one on the recieving end would put the words together differently but they would still get what the person is trying to say. Like "I don't feel good" = "I am not feeling well". Think of the languages, thank you in english is "thank you", but thank you in spanish is "gracias". Which would make it difficult for both parties to say/hear the exact words of the other. Which would make emotion/feeling shared as well.

That might be one of the great things about telepathy: That it could transcend the limitations of language. However, being potentially great does not make it real. It could also be great to be able to fly (without technical help), but it remains impossible.

Reading emotion is evidence of telepathic ability also. There are different levels of ups and downs, but usually you can tell if the person is up or down.

This is because we do communicate in many ways besides language. Body language, facial expression, voice tone, even smell. We are not always conscious of reading these clues, but it can be easily shown that we do.

A silent minded person in a non emotional state would not be able to be read. Telepathy could actually be the 'cure' to suffering or evil.

However, since telepathy does not exist, it is a little useless to dream about what it might be used for.

Any questions / critiques are welcome, it helps me further develop the whole concept. I cannot think of anymore questions about it, so if you have some, they will be greatly appreciated.

You need to keep in mind that whatever you develop for the concept of telepathy, it remains fiction.

A practice I made for developing skills:

Turn on the TV, pick a show or movie (depending how long you want to spend practicing)
** Also make sure you do not watch previews of it or read anything related to the show/movie, you can but it sort of handicaps your development.**
Make sure you can watch the show/movie over again, so record it, or make sure you have a way of seeing it again.

Now when you turn on the show/movie, put it on mute.
Watch the show/movie in silence and try to make out what the show/movie about
- try reading the body language, the emotion, the scene.
- take notes on what you believe is going on and what the people are actually saying.

Watch the show/movie over again this time with sound and see how well you did.

And exactly what has interpreting a movie on mute to do with telepathy? Do you imagine that your TV transmits telepathically to you? I'm afraid I have news for you: Your TV has no idea of the meaning of what is going on on the screen. To your TV, it's just signals.

- And hopefully you do realize that the persons who originally performed, especially movies, are probably no longer thinking thinking about it? Heck, some of them may even be dead.

But when they made the movie, they carefully tried to make their expressions, body language, clothes, lightning, etc to match the dialogue. - Not strange you can often find out what is going on, without the sound.

In fact I recommend you to try the opposite: Listen to the sound of a movie, but don't watch the pictures. You will be surprised to find how incoherent, hollow, and silly it sounds, without all those visual clues.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

I will be working on telepathy experiments in the future. I wouldnt enter the olympics without years of training, and Im not about to enter the challenge without similar training.

That is a good idea. However do remember to include blind testing.

I like how everyone says its no good messing about with SQUIDS, but if I held a seance and said a spirit was in the room, and the SQUID said no, there is no extra electromagnetic radiation, Id be wrong and Id admit it.

What is SQUIDS? Anyways:

There is always electromagnetic radiation in any room, and it changes all the time, due to changes in influx, or if anybody in the room as much as lifts an arm. You can interpret absolutely nothing from it.

However, we have been working with very sensitive electromagnetic detectors for decades, in virtually all wavelengths, and if there were some radiations associated with people, souls, or spiritual entities, we would long since have detected them, and even if we hadn't realized what they were, they would have been described..

Because the horses owners tell me. They say, 'how did you know that?" Quite regularly. There is no amount of cold reading that will tell me what the object was that is upsetting the animal - I can tell somethings changed, and somethings upsetting him, but without telepathy, how am I going to know its a blue drum/ new yellow food bucket/ automatic water trough etc?

So you regularly work with horses, but don't see how they are kept at home? That sounds silly. Also you take more cues than you are aware of. Finally, you will forget the misses, and remember the hits. ALL people do that.

Do you know how many maternity warden nurses will swear that there are more births on full moon nights? Talk about expert witnesses? Yet, even a cursory look at daily birthrate statistics will tell you that there is no correlation what so ever with the moon phase.

Hans

 

[PixyMisa]

I will be working on telepathy experiments in the future.

Terrific. What part of

PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE AN ELECTROMAGNETIC FREQUENCY.

did you not understand?

I like how everyone says its no good messing about with SQUIDS, but if I held a seance and said a spirit was in the room, and the SQUID said no, there is no extra electromagnetic radiation, Id be wrong and Id admit it.

Pick up a seventh-grade science textbook first.

Because the horses owners tell me. They say, 'how did you know that?" Quite regularly.

So what?

There is no amount of cold reading that will tell me what the object was that is upsetting the animal - I can tell somethings changed, and somethings upsetting him, but without telepathy, how am I going to know its a blue drum/ new yellow food bucket/ automatic water trough etc?

Basic observational skills?

No I have not, and telepathy with animals will not be accepted into the challenge - please see Iris Kaschubowski. She is WAY more talented than me, I need the animal, she only needs a photo.

How do you know?

When diagnosing and treating a rescue animal, the MDC is the last thing on my mind.

No? Well how about reaching the correct diagnosis and providing appropriate treatment? Does that matter to you at all?

 

[Pixel42]

telepathy with animals will not be accepted into the challenge

Actually I can think of some protocols which might be accepted by JREF, if you're saying that you can telepathically tell when an animal is seeing something like a blue drum which upsets it.

You'd just need to stand near to but out of sight and sound of the animal whilst it's shown a series of objects, and be able to tell when it's the particular object that upsets it significantly more often than would be expected by chance.

 

[Kuko 4000]

Actually I can think of some protocols which might be accepted by JREF, if you're saying that you can telepathically tell when an animal is seeing something like a blue drum which upsets it.

You'd just need to stand near to but out of sight and sound of the animal whilst it's shown a series of objects, and be able to tell when it's the particular object that upsets it significantly more often than would be expected by chance.

FYI, in the case that Kleonaptra is talking about here, JREF did not accept the claim:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34605

 

[MRC_Hans]

Actually I can think of some protocols which might be accepted by JREF, if you're saying that you can telepathically tell when an animal is seeing something like a blue drum which upsets it.

You'd just need to stand near to but out of sight and sound of the animal whilst it's shown a series of objects, and be able to tell when it's the particular object that upsets it significantly more often than would be expected by chance.

Psst, his aim is not to get help to take the MDC, his aim is to rationalize not taking it.

Hans

 

[Pixel42]

FYI, in the case that Kleonaptra is talking about here, JREF did not accept the claim:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34605

Yes, but my understanding is that was because the claim as described was not testable under properly controlled conditions.

I'm saying that in this case the claim is such that it might be possible to come up with a test protocol that is acceptable to JREF.

 

[The Don]

What is SQUIDS? Anyways:

Superconducting Quantum Interface Devices

Apparently

 

[MRC_Hans]

Superconducting Quantum Interface Devices

Apparently

Yeah, I googled as much, but then I thought: These guys wouldn't know how tu use one of them things if was served on a silver platter, not to mention interpret any results they got.

Then I thought of this:

A girl and a boy bump into each other -- surely an accident.
A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops -- surely another accident.
But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid -- * that had to mean something *!
-- S. Morganstern, "The Silent Gondoliers"

But that was even more confusing.

Hans

 

[23_Tauri]

Superconducting Quantum Interface Devices

Apparently

Superconducting Quantum Interface Devices Fishing Monthly?! Are we sure about this?