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Logically Psychic

gattino

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
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2,517
A few years ago I posted on here (sadly can't find the original precise posting with the details) how as a test of my hypothesis that perhaps the difference between a self declared psychic and the rest of us is that they assume a meaning to the random names or images that pass through their mind and mention them out loud..so get confirmation back from the person they're talking to, thus convincing themselves all the more (rightly or wrongly) that they have a special gift, I tried to "see" the name of a friend's deceased mum.

I got it right after about 4 guesses...and the thing of interest was that all of the first three names were ones he also identified as being relevant family members or whatever. Now as far as i was concerned i hadn't done anything "psychic"..the names were all appropriate for someone of that age group, ethnicity and social class. The problem with this simple self debunking was that i then realised the names ought logically then to have as great a likelihood of belonging to members of my own family or wider circle. But not one of them did.

I summarize that mildly interesting curiosity because two night ago I was regaling my american guest with all my personal paranormal seeming experiences, and she was trying to convince me i myself was a medium (!) and ought to develop my abilities. Which is news to me and also illogical as none of the tales i told her involved me doing anything let alone giving anyone information. She challenged me...

She closed her eyes and declared she was thinking of 1) A favourite colour. I said pink. She said "yes!" 2) A number between 1 and 10 . I said "most people say 7, but im going to say 6". She gasped "Yes! It was 6!" 3) And object in nature. as she ummed and ahed trying to think of one i already had an answer in mind. An oak tree. "I was thinking of a maple tree!" she replied.

Our luck ran out when she thought of a name. But the initial run of hits was very impressive to her...and not to me. Because in each instance i again had a logical reason for choosing my responses. With a colour i noticed she was wearing a top with several dominant splashes of colour on it. The largest of these splashes were pink. With the oak tree her words "an object" in nature narrowed the possibilities right down..a tree and a rock are about the only things you'd apply the word "object" to. The number 6 ..well..that was just a guess, i guess. I know factually most people think of 7 followed by 3, but figured she might also be aware of that and so avoid them.

So hypothesis 1) People who believe themselve to have a psychic gift are making the same logical deductions as I was doing but on an unconscious level. The thought process is happening below their own awareness.
Hypothesis 2) Maybe its the opposite..maybe i was picking up information from the mind of another and my conscious mind was rationalising the instinct by constructing a spurious but comfortingly logical sounding explanations for my choices.

I'll let you decide which box to put it in. :dunno:
 
Great post.

The question of whether psychics treat the content of their thought stream as (potentially) more significant than people who are not psychic, raises in turn the question of how different different people's thought streams are: are some people's thought streams more prone to (seemingly) random things bubbling up? It seems to be the case that some of us have an inner monologue of thought, and some of us have a more ... patchworky thought/image stream. I wonder if psychics tend to have similar thought stream styles?

Or perhaps there is an 'opening the mind' process which increases the stuff bubbling up (or, alternatively, increases the psychic reception).

With a colour i noticed she was wearing a top with several dominant splashes of colour on it. The largest of these splashes were pink. [...] The number 6 ..well..that was just a guess, i guess. I know factually most people think of 7 followed by 3, but figured she might also be aware of that and so avoid them.

Declaring both pink and 6 as not valid hits seems a bit unfair on your (psychic?) self, given that they are discounted for opposite reasons (pink discounted for assuming she _would_ go with the most obvious colour she was wearing, whereas 6 is discounted for assuming she _wouldn't_ go with the first and second most obvious numbers).
 
And, of course, since she was trying to persuade you of your mediumness, maybe she was lying? To try to get you to see that she was right and you should develop your powers? So she could have been thinking of black, the number three and Niagara Falls, but she'd have said whatever you guessed to make you think she had a point...
 
Her look of shock and the fact the name was completely wrong would count against that.
 
A few years ago I posted on here (sadly can't find the original precise posting with the details) how as a test of my hypothesis that perhaps the difference between a self declared psychic and the rest of us is that they assume a meaning to the random names or images that pass through their mind and mention them out loud..so get confirmation back from the person they're talking to, thus convincing themselves all the more (rightly or wrongly) that they have a special gift, I tried to "see" the name of a friend's deceased mum....

I believe that would have been this December 2012 thread:

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/medium-not-so-rare.51256/
 
Thank you. I googled every combination of words i could remember from it and it didn't show up.
 
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