Extrasensory Situational Awareness

[Ralteria]

I'm always confused why it has to be either/or. Just seems to be a limiting perception.

[DeusTrismegistus]

Nonetheless, it can reasonably be argued that many things exist or occur as experiential realities which can't be adequately measured by current scientific processes sufficiently to conclusively either validate or invalidate how and why they exist or occur as they do.

I can't say that I agree with you there, the wording is a bit fuzzy. I'd love an example or two. Taken at face value though, I think you would have to concede that the 'gods of those gaps' grow smaller with each passing year.

hehe,Cryptohominid
as far as I know
modern psychology and related fields takes a lot of concepts and trainings/exercises directly from ancient eastern hermits...

Look, I still 'meditate' and do 'qi gong', I just no longer expect or desire any supernatural or paranormal benefits from them. Relaxation, breath control, and learning how to get one's conscious mind out of the way of the subconscious when necessary are all sufficient and useful benefits for a martial artist. No one in science doubts the mind can affect the body, they doubt (because of a lack of any good evidence) that anything paranormal is achieved by any of these methods.

However there is research showing not only that humans can effect the outcomes of random number generators by our consciousness but also the meditation of many individuals can effect the international crime rate. Further consciousness has been shown to effect directly physical object through torsion fields which are little known in the west but have been researched for over 30 years in Russia.

There was research claiming to show these things. It did not weather peer review, unfortunately. There are poor studies and experiments done all the time, some sincere and some deliberately (and often sophisticatedly) fudged to show support where there is none. I don't have time to go into all of it right now, and I doubt it would matter much, but suffice to say it's not enough to point to a couple of preliminary or just plain bad studies and say "look—Science proved it!" If you are really interested in this angle, try "Bad Science" by Dr. Ben Goldacre for a general audience overview of the topic. It's quite entertaining and informative.

So perhaps, just maybe, science will one day actually explain extrasensory awareness. However that can never happen until claims of such a thing existing are not dismissed out of hand

Honestly, I'm not dismissing it out of hand, I'm dismissing it for lack of evidence. I used to think exactly the same way you guys are about the subject and it was only after a ton of reading, practicing, and a stop and start multi year self education in science and reason/logic that I eventually gave up those beliefs. Hell, I might even still wish they were real (but not really, upon reflection) but as my grandpa said, "Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first." Bottom line here: Paranormal claims are by definition extraordinary and therefore the burden is on the claimant to provide (extraordinary) proofs, not on science to disprove them (it don't work that way folks).

I'm not going to go on and on trying to change the mind of believers here either, I know the futility of such an endeavor. You can't reason some one out of a position they didn't reason themselves into, and all that. I do hope that the odd person will be prodded to undertake their own process of discovery and understanding of what science is, what it knows, and how it knows. It changed my life for the better.

Cheers, guys!

Of course, because you studied science and logic and came to one conclusion that means that anyone else who holds a different conclusion just hasn't done the research, understand logic or science.

[TrainingDummy]

I did the "godan" test for my shodan in Bujinkan.

You don't see, hear or feel anything beyond sensing the "killing" intent of the attacker.

It's a lot easier than it looks, and is very trainable. It's actually a LOT harder if someone doesn't throw their intent meaningfully at you, and just swings the sword at your head.

Would be interesting to see if that skill/ability is reproducible (even by a master) while wearing some good noise-cancelling headphones...
I'm not saying it wouldn't be reproducible, but, if it were possible that way, it would be a hell of a lot more impressive of a feat, in my book.

It wouldn't prove much, as it still could be easily faked. I haven't trained this skill for a while, but maybe I can get my training group to get into it and film it.

But if you wanted to get really serious, you could just train the same skill yourself. Just close your eyes and get a partner to throw their intent at you, you'll feel something. Or throw your intent at the cat and see if it moves.

[wiesiek]

You know Crypto.,
simply and definitely not scientifically speaking:
some ability needs more than one life span to develop...

[Dmitri]

But if you wanted to get really serious, you could just train the same skill yourself. Just close your eyes and get a partner to throw their intent at you, you'll feel something. Or throw your intent at the cat and see if it moves.

I've done that sort of stuff a lot in the past... Surely SOME of it was indeed weird and "unexplainable". I've also "healed" remotely, had a couple of "visions" (confirmed), and also generally was exposed to a LOT of things of that nature (though my dad mostly, who BTW could do some REALLY mind-blowing stuff), -- that sort of thing was really blossoming in Russia back then (and probably still is.) But thinking back, from my current perspective -- I believe that a) all of it was within the normal statistical distribution/probability, and b) most of it was easily explainable with psychology.

But that's just me.
Again, I'm not saying "weird things don't exist/are impossible", what I'm saying is that every single one of them that I experienced or was exposed to was a completely unique isolated incident and NOT 100% reproducible. For me personally to be convinced in something, it needs to be 100% reproducible, no less. You know, like gravity. I.e. when I pick up a pen and drop it, I am 100% certain it will fall. I need THAT level of reproducibility. Others don't, of course -- so to each their own; it's all good, everyone's different.

[TrainingDummy]

I'm not saying that that sort of skill is weird and un-explainable. I actually think it fits quite nicely into the right hemisphere brain discussions that we've been having recently about animals reserving a portion of their brains to peripheral stimuli.

For me the godan test is a party trick skill that relies on the attacker throwing their intent at you strongly to work. Which is why I don't train it seriously anymore.

[Bhassler]

As a starting point, folks might want to check out The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker and Manwatching by Desmond Morris.

[Chris McKinley]

As good a thread on this kind of thing as we're probably going to get. But now we're starting to see the fatal flaw in trying to debate or even meaningfully discuss this kind of topic. Just like with qi, this topic falls into the category of things which are only subjectively verifiable, not objectively verifiable. No amount of subjective verification is worth anything to anybody but the one doing it. It only "proves" something if the person chooses to believe it does. It all depends entirely upon how each individual subjectively interprets what they find, experience, etc. Further, and as has been so aptly demonstrated by this very thread, there is nothing close to an objective consensus on how the thing being measured is even defined in the first place. Tom is giving anecdotal testimony about apples being purely explainable by science and psychology, Dick is giving anecdotal testimony about how oranges are entirely outside the realm of science to measure, and Harry is saying that neither apples nor oranges exist in the first place and is all just a parlor trick.

Who's right? Who's wrong? Who cares?

[TrainingDummy]

I take offense at being called a Dick, Chris...

[Chris McKinley]

I kinda pictured you more as one of the Pep Boys.

[Bhassler]

Who's right? Who's wrong? Who cares?

I'm right, everyone else is wrong, and that's all I care about.

[Dmitri]

I take offense at being called a Dick, Chris...

I kinda pictured you more as one of the Pep Boys.

His real name is Bob. Like, duh...

[SteveBonzak]

For me personally to be convinced in something, it needs to be 100% reproducible, no less. You know, like gravity. I.e. when I pick up a pen and drop it, I am 100% certain it will fall. I need THAT level of reproducibility. Others don't, of course -- so to each their own; it's all good, everyone's different.

So you don't take medication or see the point in visiting your local doctor for whatever diseases you or your family might have?

-Steve

[Cryptohominid]

Of course, because you studied science and logic and came to one conclusion that means that anyone else who holds a different conclusion just hasn't done the research, understand logic or science.

Completely misses my point. I didn't just "come to one conclusion" on my own. I was willing to line up my sacred cows and watch as one after the other was gored by science and reason. I'm talking about scientific consensus, not my own conclusions. Of course, scientific consensus is ever evolving and open to change in light of new convincing evidence, but many go way too far with what that means. There are far too many converging lines of evidence to ever think we might have to switch back from a heliocentric solar system model to a geocentric one.

I agree completely. And at the end of the day, that's all I'm really saying!

Doc, I think where we diverge is the implication in your first post that something non-physical (brains "sending and receiving" information independently of the senses) is occuring in these phenomena. If I misread, I apologize.

Surely SOME of it was indeed weird and "unexplainable". I've also "healed" remotely, had a couple of "visions" (confirmed), and also generally was exposed to a LOT of things of that nature (though my dad mostly, who BTW could do some REALLY mind-blowing stuff), -- that sort of thing was really blossoming in Russia back then (and probably still is.) But thinking back, from my current perspective -- I believe that a) all of it was within the normal statistical distribution/probability, and b) most of it was easily explainable with psychology.

This gets right tho the point I was trying to make. Highly unlikely or "lucky/unluck" shit happens to us every day. If I dream about my old aunt Nancy one night and then get a phone call the next morning saying she passed away, well that would certainly seem like a psychic event to me. Unless I knew about the law of large numbers, of course. Then I could put it in perspective. This is why I advocate for people getting a good grounding in science. It really helps if you are trying not to fool yourself, or be fooled by others.

Tom is giving anecdotal testimony about apples being purely explainable by science and psychology, Dick is giving anecdotal testimony about how oranges are entirely outside the realm of science to measure, and Harry is saying that neither apples nor oranges exist in the first place and is all just a parlor trick.

Who's right? Who's wrong? Who cares?

Assuming I'm Tom in this little parable, allow me to reiterate a correction. None of what I am arguing is based on my own anecdotal views. It's scientific consensus. Science deals with stuff that has a measurable effect on our shared objective reality. Of course, if you are talking about intent, for instance, science is not going to have a whole lot to say about it as a subjective phenomena. But if you argue that subjective intent can 'jump' from one person to another without being somehow manifest in objective, shared reality (say via the movement of a foot that is heard, or the change in air pressure that is felt, even if subconsciously) that's where I call nonsense, or at least have to throw my hands up in the air and wonder "How the F*&*7 would I know?"

When we talk about things that actually have an effect in reality, which I think is a perfectly sensible thing to do on a martial arts forum that—at least to some extent—is concerned with the practical side of the arts, I am constantly surprised at how suspicious people are of science. It's the best tool humanity has ever developed, by a long shot, for parsing matters of objective reality. To steal from a t-shirt I once saw—It works, bitchez! Our entire modern lives are the result of it, yet we get all hinkey when we notice one of our sacred cows has wandered onto the train track. I think it's time we admitted we can't have physics AND homeopathy, for example. The are mutually contradictory and one has a mountain of empirical evidence and practical marvels to support it, the other has anecdote. I know where my money is.

Ok, getting a little off topic and venting. I'll pass it back and let this go...

Cheers!

[TrainingDummy]

Again, I'm not saying "weird things don't exist/are impossible", what I'm saying is that every single one of them that I experienced or was exposed to was a completely unique isolated incident and NOT 100% reproducible. For me personally to be convinced in something, it needs to be 100% reproducible, no less. You know, like gravity. I.e. when I pick up a pen and drop it, I am 100% certain it will fall. I need THAT level of reproducibility. Others don't, of course -- so to each their own; it's all good, everyone's different.

So where do you sit with the more "fluid" sciences, like psychology, which are rarely 100% reproducible and are more about statistical averages.