psychokinesis/telekinesis

Heres a little something to think about. People say that Telekinesis is impossible because of the laws of physics. Well, rules were made to be broken, right? And laws are simply rules governing the way of life. So if rules were made to be broken, then so were laws, and so were the laws of physics.

Yes but those people tend to forget the laws of quantum physics, which are rather curious. :wink:

This isn’t true, it’s actually a myth that caught on. As far as I know every part of the brain has a known use and function. According to wikipedia, it’s a misconception most likely arose from a misunderstanding (or misrepresentation in an advertisement) of neurological research in the late 1800s or early 1900s when researchers discovered that only about 10% of the neurons in the brain are firing at any given time. If all your neurons were to fire at once, it would cause a seizure.

Psychics still use this claim to support their views that the remaining 90% of our brain can be used for things like telekenesis… which is false, since we use all of our brain.

But in my oppinion… I don’t think it’s possible. In this day and age, with cameras everywhere… why is there no proof? It takes one person to come forward to prove it. Since no one has… I think that’s proof enough that it isn’t possible. But maybe some day if our brains are advanced enough it could be possible!

Of course not. That’s just something rebellious people say because they’re trying to be a smart-a*s. Rules were made to be followed, so that society can be structured and functional without utter chaos taking over.

But in my oppinion… I don’t think it’s possible. In this day and age, with cameras everywhere… why is there no proof? It takes one person to come forward to prove it. Since no one has… I think that’s proof enough that it isn’t possible. But maybe some day if our brains are advanced enough it could be possible!
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your right there are cameras but if you saw it on a camera there is no way to be able to tell if the person is acually doing it or not. search you tube and you can find a couple vidoes of the psi wheel and also on psipog they have a multi media section with a couple videos that you can watch. keep in mind most videos are used as training tools and not really to prove it to the skeptics.

but it’s just as easy to do it in a controlled environment with scientists and cameras etc :smile:

Well, they are not really rules. They are observations trying to model the universe. The physical model, both macro and micro get thrown a curve ball all the time.

The laws of the universe cannot be broken, that is why they are laws. However, what we think are the laws are not.

New evidence is found, and we jury rig our model so it fits.

You can see this in mathematics. You start out with positive numbers, but then somebody tries to subtract a larger number from a smaller, then you have a new model called Integers (negative and positive). This is fine for a while until someone like Pythagoras and sees that you can have fractions… a/b. But then he discovers that the issoceles triangle with 2 sides of length one produces a hypotenuse that cannot be expressed in the form of a/b. (He incidentally called this an evil number because he could not explain it)… so we humans then invent the real number system… which is also called the “irrational” numbers (because they cannot be expressed with the then old model) (SQROOT(2) is an irrational).
After that we invented the complex system… mostly to solve some odd things surrounding the number “e” that showed that you could prove 1 = -1. This branch of mathematics was then called “imaginary”… and it is a basic model of electrical engineering. And now we have Chaos Theory… which to date is the best model we have for modeling nature. So Chaos, itself may indeed take over :content:

Anyway. Who knows what the universe’s laws really are? We see things, and then try to incorporate them in our model. Sometimes the model limits our perception of reality (even language is a model, of sorts)… and sometimes our model expands our perception.

We seem to be at a time when personal models start to diverge from the BIG sociatal model (be it science, religion, or whatever).

So is psychokinesis possible? I believe so. The the act of moving my hand tells me this… I am not sure where I reside… I am pretty sure it is not my body, as LD has shown me… There is one science and philosphy have not answered… where is consciouness?

Your consciousness is likely in your brain, just like my consciousness is in mine. LDs and ‘OBEs’ and even NDEs are still experienced by the mind within the brain after all…besides if consciousness were somewhere else, why would we need such a complex brain?

Also, I’d like to encourage anyone who claims to be able to perform psychokinesis to take James Randi’s million dollar challenge.

Are you sure? Where in your brain is it?
Prove to us that your consciousness is in your brain. :smile:

And if you cannot prove that it exists in a lab, does that mean it does not exist?

Scientists have been looking for it for a very long time (Pribram, comes to mind…)We speculate it is in ourheads (as that is where a great density of neurons are; but too the spinal cord has a good density of them), but can you say where consciousness exists physically? We are talking physics here, right? :tongue:

Greeks thought it was in their heart. They could not figure out what the brain was for.

(can you imagine that! It is kinda fun to try… but since we believe it exists soley in our brain, it is hard to imagine how they thought like that :wink:

If you were able to do so, it would not be paranormal… but explainable to science and thus not applicable to the challenge. :eh:

(But on a side note, did you see how nervous Randi was when those people who claimed water memory almost had conclusive proof? Made me think he did not really have, or want to give up the money… if he had too, of course)

Consciousness obviously exists somewhere (it has to exist somewhere, right?), and since we detect activities in different parts of the brain when we think of different things, remember different things and move different body parts, and have no other testable source for where consciousness could be coming from, what reason do we even have to assume that consciousness comes from somewhere other than the brain?

Also the Egyptians; when they mummified people, they just threw the brain out because they didn’t think it did anything :content:
…but hey, the Ancient Greeks believed a lot of crazy things, like there only being four elements, or that the moon and sun were carried through the skies on a chariot :tongue:

No, if it could be tested and thus proven to be real, then it doesn’t matter if it’s ‘paranormal’ or not (paranormal is a silly word).
If I can move a pencil with my mind, then it is observable and falsifiable, so whether or not it is ‘paranormal’ doesn’t matter, it is applicable to the challenge because it’s something that can be ‘measured’. Once again, if someone can do it, then do it and prove us skeptics wrong :wink:

I’m not familiar with ‘water memory’…got anything I can read about it? :smile:
On another side note, I think Randi does have the money, he’s provided the financial statements to show this on live television. Besides, this guy isn’t about cheating or fooling people, he was one of the first magicians to not make the claim that he actually had magical powers…he often assured people that he was accomplishing his effects by logical means.

Did not mean to imply that :smile:
Saw the water memory experiment with him on a discovery station documentary. Perhaps it was the tv production, but Randi did look nervous. :cool:
I will look for a reference for you.

Of course this is a can of worms. :smile: But what is consciousness? Do individual cells have consciousness? How about groups of things? Ants seem very non-evolved indivudually, but as a colony they demonstrate a high level of what we could consider intelligence. :confused:

I recall reading a medical study of a heart transplant patient. This guy was a clasical musician who had a great distain for other types of music. Upon recieving a new heart, he suddenly aquired a taste for fried chicken and rap/hip-hop.
It turned out the that the doner loved both of these things.
I will try to turn up the actual example. But I have read alot of such cases where the other’s memory somehow mysteriously emerges in the transplant patient.

Most words are. :happy:
Para: aside from, besides, alongside, beyond
Normal: according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule, or principle

How else would you describe it? Anything that the current model cannot account for would be considered abnormal.

Very true. But the same is true of us. The metaphors are different, but we still try to jam the universe so it fits into our model. Not a hundred years ago, we believed in ether. At the turn of the century 1899, the Belguim patent officed closed it doors because it believed everything had been discovered and its services were no longer needed.
So now, we believe in the big bang… we like that metaphor… seems spectacular spectacular!

I am a skeptic. I have no judgement either way. :wink:
If it is proven great. If it is proven impossible great. Interesting none the less.

Again, this is normalizing the paranormal. :wink:
So if psychokinesis is a reality… and you can prove it, it no longer is outside the normal… Perhaps he means, anyone bringing an event out of the paranormal into the permanently observable…
Just a joke here from me. I think it is funny, logically. But then again I am weird. :eh:

I hope so. In the present, probably.

water memory:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Benveniste

Cell memory:
med.unc.edu/wellness/main/li … memory.htm

nexusmagazine.com/articles/C … ories.html

Skeptics:
usaweekend.com/98_issues/980 … cells.html

skepdic.com/cellular.html

Never had a transplant, so I dunno… thankfully! :smile:

Interesting:
flatrock.org.nz/topics/science/i … essary.htm

(BTW, I quickly found the above. :tongue: )

I think you’re being a little over-simplistic here. Granted, we can’t map out consciousness in its entirety as we can with other, less complicated systems. But we have a very, very functional model that demonstrates how it probably exists within the human brain, at least to an elementary or fundamental level. As Josh said (though his comment was apparently overlooked), we’re not just speculating on the brain’s involvement in the process merely because it appears to be actively firing neurons all the time. We now have much more specific evidence than that, including a very thorough understanding of which parts of the brain are responsible for the traits we observe in consciousness. The ancient Greeks didn’t have the means to observe brain activity, so they were at a disadvantage. Now that we do, we’re able to watch exactly what happens within our heads when a person is upset, happy, excited, stimulated, deep in thought, sleeping, in pain, in love, suffering from a particular illness… you name it.

If consciousness itself doesn’t originate within the brain, then the brain is at least a direct, consistent, and unwaveringly accurate way of representing the precise actions and states of our consciousness at any given moment. It shows us who we are, why we do the things we do, and what we’re ultimately capable of—at least to the rudimentary level that our instruments can thus-far examine.

As tempting as it is to believe that our understanding of consciousness is always changing, and will undoubtedly be entirely reconsidered when a significant enough discovery is found further down the track… that just isn’t the case anymore. We now have a very developed understanding of neurology, and we’re not going to back-track in a couple of years and suddenly decide that our memories are actually stored in our big toes. The popular cry of, “we don’t know anything and never will” seems to be a leap of faith, and perhaps a show of dissatisfaction at the thought of being reduced to physical components. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that’s all we are (I’m in the process of reexamining my own beliefs right now), but it does seem inappropriate to discount everything we’ve learned about the human brain in relation to our behavoir and potential abilities.

Good lord, no. :content: ; although I bet it remembers the last time I stubbed it. :grin:

But I do not believe the mind is in any part of the body… I think, it is the other way around.
(kind like the tv is not the creator of the the tv signal)… although it may appear to be… and brain is a tuner, of sorts.

Have you ever been in love? Where does that come from, sure it will have a measurable affect on the brain… but where are you living when that happens? For me it tends to be a mindless thing… we even, in this society, say things like “she is acting from her heart”… or “he is out of his head”… curious expressions about not using the rational mind. But assume for a second, that they are not in the mind; then where are they? Or is it a trick of the mind to make you think you are not in your head? :bored:

But look who is telling us this :smile: The neuologists? (sorry, could not resist. :smile: )

Me too. :content:

Agreed. No reason not to include the old models with the new, if they emerge.

And that is what I am talking about… models. We are operating from slightly different models… I blame LD for mine :wink:

So is PK possible? I hope so, but do not know. But I quote the great metaphysician, Shakespere.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
(that is my hope, at least)

Thanks for noticing. :wink:

That’s a pretty popular view, and one that I can definitely understand. I’m tempted to lean in that direction myself, if only because it’s less restricting and opens up more of the “why” questions instead of just the “how.” But paranormal or not, any time we experience a sensation of any kind (from what we’ve seen so far), we can also notice a coinciding change in the physiology of that person’s brain. Likewise, and this is where it gets really tricky, we can influence a person by manipulating his or her brain. You can’t change the course of your TV show by tampering with your TV, but you can make someone feel a specific emotion by tampering with a part of their brain. Is it a two-way broadcast now? :tongue:

I have, and it’s the single biggest influence on my recent change of heart concerning this topic. It’s most certainly a puzzling emotion, and one that has a very powerful effect on the mind. I don’t claim to know how it all works, but I do know that we can observe a change in the brain when a subject is in love. In other words, it’s not a totally mystical sensation that doesn’t appear to have any connection to our physiology and chemistry, so I don’t think it’s cause enough to abandon the “brain = consciousness” model entirely. It does blur the lines, though. :smile:

A very fitting quote, though one that still relies on faith in the unknown. I can’t tell you that PK isn’t possible, but working on the basis of my previous posts in this thread, I’m hesitant to give it much credit at this point. When we move an object with our hands, we can see how each step of the process works. We can see the neurological intention to move that part of our body, we can see the muscles expending energy as they work, and we can calculate how much force is required to move the object. The whole process costs us energy, which we use in everything we do. A car doesn’t run without fuel, and neither do we. We work within the bounds of physics to manipulate this environment, because we’re physical machines, and we can’t function without energy.

PK suggests that we can defy these rules, even though we have no reason to believe that such a feat is even possible. It doesn’t claim to make use of a previously dormant part of the brain, because we would still need to use physics as the vessel to ultimately move an object in this realm. PK is like perpetual motion (also known as “free energy”), which has no merit whatsoever that we can see. If we can move things with the power of thought, then we’re changing the world without exerting a proportional amount of energy, and this just doesn’t fit with our current accepted view of reality. It’s free energy, and it defies physics.

I must admit, however, that I’m mostly just playing Devil’s advocate here. I don’t know if the physical world is all that exists, and I like to think it probably isn’t. But I’m used to presenting the scientific view on these kinds of debates, and I guess I’ll continue to do so. :smile:

I believe it will be possible in RL in a few years say 5-10 when either:
a.) scientists develop technology to allow us to do so.
or
b.) when we pass through the photon belt in the year 2012 (seriously, a bunch of unknown energy particles passing through us… who knows what might happen)

For now, we will just have to put up with only being able to do it in our dreams :tongue:

At some point you have to let go of the iron grip of your previous beliefs or models if you want to expand.
This does not mean to throw them away, but take a next step, using previous experience as a backboard.
(The mathematical model I mention somewhere above, makes each new model a superset of the previous.)

The scientfic models of the things we have right now are very good. And they were good in the late 1800 when Einstein started to think past the then modern day rules.

Many great inovations, discoveries and insigts have come from amatuers and people not accepting the consensus of the day.

In order to find something bigger, in order to grow, you must proceed past current boundries… and that may be a little uncomfortable. If you go too far out from the status quo, you will find you are all alone. And faith? What else do you have in the unknown. Faith that eventually you will find your place again in the scheme of things.

Here is a thought experiment. Suppose there is a Santa Claus… a real person who does all those things lore and TV tells us he does. How does that affect your model? The idea being, you are presented with something which current models do not allow. What do you do? What if it is PK instead of Santa Claus? Or Cellular memory, or a collective unconscious, or faster than light technologies, or that David Bohm is on to something :wink:

“Why” is a horrible question… always leads to excuses.
I like “What” much better.

Yup. I was going to mention that earlier, but thought it too out there. (it is indirectly what brought me here).

Why would you if you do not have direct experience of it, or have direct experience with a body (scientific or not) that does. I think that is a healthy view point. But this is different that saying it is impossible.

No, PK suggests are rules do not describe reality (physically or not) correctly. And that is it challenge. And if not PK, then something else… light as a particle and a wave used to be in this category.

Are you sure? (I do not mean to imply that I am). Some people who claim to do this sort of thing describe being drain or having a loss of energy.

oops, outta time.

Thanks, I’d love to read about it :smile:

To me, a lot of people assume paranormal means that there is no explanation for something, when in actuality we just don’t know the explanation yet. For example, Steve Shaw (stage name is Banachek) can bend spoons with his mind…at least to the observer who doesn’t know the mechanism behind this illusion.
So I like to use words like unusual or interesting, rather than paranormal or supernatural, since the latter two imply that impossible things happen, and impossible things don’t happen because they are impossible :yes:

Good to hear :smile:
I just want to clarify, I wasn’t trying to challenge you to prove you can do telekinesis or anything, making the statement that if it’s possible and it can be observed, then someone should do it, and donate the million dollars to charity or something.

All I can say is…I wish I could do it :grin:

Only if there’s sufficient reason to do so. If my “iron grip” beliefs currently appear to explain everything I’ve experienced in this realm, then why do I have to change them? It seems silly to rush off and search for ways to validate these paranormal beliefs when we’ve never even witnessed an event that gives them credence in the first place. Why invest resources in a search for Santa Claus, when there exists no evidence to suggest that he’s real? You have to be able to draw a line between reality and imagination, and a lot of people don’t know where to put this line. Ideas like PK (if I had to guess) probably originated as an imaginative concept, then slowly made their way into peoples’ belief systems out of sheer “cool”-factor, rather than observation and demonstration. Again, why do you make it appear that I am closed off, when I’ve yet to see anything outside the bounds of my existing beliefs? If I can’t see anything outside, then why open the gate to let it in?

There’s a difference between “open minded,” and being unable to distinguish valid holes in our model of reality from those born of imagination. Yes, we’ve had to adjust our views countless times in human history to take into account radical new discoveries. We’re forever changing our minds about how the universe works. It’s inevitable, as nobody bothered to leave us an instruction manual when we were first put on this planet. But if anything, these changes to our understanding have been moving us away from magic and paranormal explanations, not towards them. Every time we discover how something works, it means that we’ve been able to find a logical cause for that phenomenon, seated within the unbreakable laws that everything ultimately comes down to.

It’s a predictable pattern:

  1. A phenomenon is witnessed and we can’t explain it.
  2. A supernatural or paranormal explanation is given as a “temporary” explanation, because we refuse to admit that we’re missing something.
  3. Someone works out which physical process was actually responsible for the phenomenon, and we adjust our views to accord.

It’s a pretty consistent pattern, and hasn’t faltered yet, as far as I can see. The problem with PK is that it skips the first step entirely. People are providing paranormal explanations for something that we haven’t even witnessed yet! Hold your horses, everyone. It’s not sensible to investigate something that never seems to have happened before. Why not rush out into the countryside and look for leprechauns? :smile:

I remind you, a million dollars is still waiting for anyone who can demonstrate these powers. It’s all well and good to suggest that those capable of performing the ability are too meek or shy to step forward, for fear that they will become lab rats, but I don’t buy it. Considering people are willing to post movies of themselves apparently using Psionic powers on the internet, it’s obvious that they don’t all wish to remain anonymous. They simply can’t do what they claim to be able to.