Phi for All

"Impossible" only in the headlines.

! Moderator Note This thread has gone from asking a question to proposing unsupported claims, so I need to move it to the appropriate section. Please note the special rules for Speculations, and support your assertions rigorously.

Sorry I even mentioned him, since he's stolen the focus completely.

While it's true there are gaps in our knowledge, this doesn't seem to be one of them. The human brain is constantly scanning for patterns in nature, looking for the familiar as a filter to help us form opinions and decipher the unfamiliar. Dreams are often formed around some justification for a real life event, like the dream of crossing the tracks before an oncoming train that wakes you up, only to find that the tea kettle is whistling. For whatever reasons, in your dream the train whistling fit the pattern of what you were hearing better than the tea kettle, or may have added a bit more motivation to wake up and turn the stove off. The most likely explanation is that something made the cuts on your arm that night and your brain came up with an elaborate dream to make sense of it and scare you awake so you could deal with the danger (Brother? Fork on the nightstand? Toy taken to bed for comfort? Door jamb scratch coming back from the loo?). We can feel when we're bleeding, usually, even when the cuts are clean. Was there a LOT of blood on the sheets from such deep cuts, or do you think the dream woke you up almost immediately after the wounds happened (however they happened)? This might rule out some explanations. The brain has access to many systems within the body that could make a dream seem like it was visiting a physiological phenomenon upon the dreamer, but only in a limited way. Rashes/inflammations, excretions, exterior skin temperature fluctuations, these are all part of existing systems, and it's not unlikely that a dreaming brain could access them. But there isn't a mechanism in the human body to produce cuts like the ones you describe. What would we use THAT for?

I believe whatever caused the wound caused the nightmare. No coincidence at all. It's amazing the way the brain can weave real life into what's happening in dreams.

What does this mean? Your brother, who was there, who you said liked to torture you, could possibly be the one to cut you, but it's "too coincidental"? It sounds like he had the means, the motive, and the opportunity, and if he did it he had a reason, so it wasn't random chance. What is "too coincidental" about your brother torturing you physically as well as mentally? And wounds manifested themselves on his arm because of it?! How do you imagine THAT happened?

Either way, it sounds like Arnold's money troubles have vanished. I'm happy it turned out so well for him, and wish him all the best.

See? I told you you're psychotic! The more I think about it, if the audience knew the comedian was trying to deliver the punchlines mentally, and the jokes were well-known enough so the audience might know the punchlines, the silence and absurdity would be hilarious, and then you wouldn't know whether they were laughing at the punchlines heard mentally or the situation. This would work better with karaoke, as long as Arnold's mental voice sings well. If the audience doesn't pick up his mental voice, they'll start booing, and if they do "hear" him they'll wonder how he does that with his mouth closed.

Find a comedy club with open-mike night. Tell some standard jokes with your voice, but deliver the punchlines directly into the audience's minds. Record the reactions.

Nobody is going to take your word on this, so you need some kind of trustworthy results to show people BEFORE you start asking for resources for better experiments. One of the reasons why is because of evolution. If people had psychic powers, they would spread and intensify fairly quickly, being selected for as advantageous traits every generation. If these powers were real, we'd see more and more undeniable evidence they exist. We don't see ANY, none at all. So heavy skepticism, yes. If what you say is real, I don't know why you don't do what Ghideon suggested and just go to a coffee shop, pick a person to focus on (without staring, obviously), and put it in their minds that they need to come over and introduce themselves to you. You could describe yourself exactly. No need to pre-arrange anything, very little cost, and a simple way to test whether it works or not. History has taught me that you'll have some shruggy reason why you can't do this.

I'm not sure what you hope to gain with your current educational strategy. You certainly aren't doing yourself any favors trying to build on misunderstandings you've accumulated. Please consider Strange's advice about asking questions regarding things you're unsure of. If you get into the habit of making things up to fill gaps in your knowledge, you'll soon find everything makes perfect sense, but only to you. And you won't be doing science.

You're too far away, so it's obviously just your own thoughts. Points for accuracy, though.

Whenever there's a gold rush, it's the folks who supply the miners that make the steady money. Imo, using material from space to make things in space for use in space is our next big industrial revolution. We're headed towards globalization but we're a long way away. Once we let ANYBODY offplanet without some kind of enforceable restrictions/regulations/protocols, their potential for personal enrichment/power/wealth is, for all purposes, practically limitless. Multinational corporations often have diversified operations covering many industries and services. Couple that with the idea that you make more profit when you control all the steps in your manufacturing, and you have an earnings potential that some extremists would do anything to get. Look around the world right now at all the folks sitting on enormous piles of cash. Billionaires, autocrats, oligarchs, that's all you hear about, and they don't like cooperating with governments, unless it's to lobby for less taxes or take taxpayer dollars. Governments mean regulations to them, and loss of profit. I do wish it could be as you suggest, but I also know how easily we could allow the worst to happen. The planet is a little too consumed in greed atm to be allowed unlimited access to the candy store, imo.

Energy is a property of matter in physics, not a thing separate by itself. Empty space is devoid of matter, by definition, so how are you accumulating energy? Add this to Strange's list, and I think you'll find you need a more formal science study. Popular science articles are NOT the place to learn science. They'll just confuse you with their sensationalism.

And this is important. Successful results would show that SOMETHING interesting is happening. Eliminate all the other possibilities (hidden transmitters, cooperation between participants, environmental influences, for instance), and if you can still show an anomalous pattern of success, it's strong evidence in support of the claims, but it's still not proof. Arnold's claims seem pretty strong as I reread them. Cognition with no sensual or experiential input, accurate within 10 meters, and if I read him correctly, he's saying he wouldn't have a problem putting all ten words into the minds of multiple participants, in the correct order, if only he could find willing participants. It seems to me that even if a university or school didn't take him seriously, a local newspaper could have someone spend half an hour running some experiments against what would seem like the story of the century if it were true. But asserting it is a good way to continue your claims without actually supporting them. You'd like to, but gosh, what can you do? Sucks to be psychic.

Something tells me we should remove standard connectors, the little words like "of" and "to" and "the" and "with", so we're not necessarily in danger of using words that suggest other words ("friends" and "benefits" might lead someone to put "with" in between them). Still, that's a LOT of words, which makes getting them correct more than just a guess. I'm also thinking the exact order is also a factor. If the participants are supposed to "hear" these words inside their heads, shouldn't they be hearing them in order? Although it probably only affects the odds calcs, now that I think about it. If Arnold was able to plant three of those ten words into someone's head in ANY order it would support the idea that something extraordinary was going on.

The first group to bring enough equipment offworld to set up manufacturing will have a huge advantage. EVERYTHING they can make will be vastly less expensive than anything they can get from Earth. Once your group has machines that can make more machines, everyone else has to ask themselves whether it's cheaper to deal with you or start their own manufacturing.

Perhaps this is Twinings way of helping the police put these criminals behind bars, like dye packets in the money from bank heists. Green is the new black.

I would place you and a willing participant in separate rooms within ten meters of each other, where you couldn't interact (can't see or hear each other). On a paper in front of you is a series of random words (egg shell gobbling underwear collectors jumping sand castles partly sunburned). Then you try to send these exact words directly into the participants mind in the other room. You can't make any sounds. Ideally, the participant shouldn't be told about you, or your alleged ability. They should just be told to relax, open their mind, and write down anything they think they hear. To make it a double blind experiment, you would have a second participant who did the exact same thing, except you wouldn't be anywhere near them. Ideally, you'd be in the next county. I like Ghideon's idea as well, and you can get more data by using actual sounds over the headphones. With a setup like this, I can control the words used, and I can make sure the environment isn't helping you in some way (like somehow the participant can see you, or be influenced by you in some manner), and there would be no other people to interfere with your alleged ability. If the participant, out of all possible words in the language, managed to write down ANY of them in consistent testing, it would show there is something beyond mere chance at work. I'm not sure how one would work out the odds of getting random words correct in this situation, but I used ten words in case someone wanted to figure that out. How extraordinary would it be to get even 30% in this setup? Are you saying you would be able to put those exact words into someone's head, and they'll hear it as if you spoke? Are you claiming they'll hear all ten words? In order? Most importantly, if the participants were NOT able to hear your mental transmissions, would that show you that perhaps you don't have extraordinary mental powers? I'm afraid to ask since it will undoubtedly be completely anecdotal, but what has happened in the past to make you think you can do this extraordinary thing? Hopefully it's a lot more than just having people say things that you were just thinking about. That's actually pretty common, and there are almost always lots of cues that prompt such a thing.

Is the honey darker in shade than the tea? If so, it would naturally make the tea darker. You mention it turns "black", but you also say it turned a "dark color". Which is correct? Not all dark colors are black.

Can you be more specific than "short"? Science requires rigor and accuracy.

"Build your own cloud chamber to see subatomic particles." Did I get it right?

What experiments are you talking about? And if you don't know, how do you know you can "prove" it? You should forget about "proof", and concentrate on how you can provide evidence of your claims. The more evidence to support it, the more persuasive your argument will be. Define EXACTLY what you mean by "I can do telepathic ability". Define what you mean by "send messages directly mind to mind". The most important thing at this stage is for you to decide what would show your claims to be FALSE. What test failed, or what message not sent would show that you CAN'T do telepathic ability? Your claims need to be capable of falsification before we can take them seriously. Once you can do that, then you should be able to take any standard test for ESP, using validated methodology. They'll be looking for results that go beyond statistical anomaly. Or if your definitions are different, perhaps then someone could suggest a way to test them. Based solely on your OP, I would expect you to be able to send a random phrase as a private message to one of our staff members, then send the same phrase directly to my mind with your telepathic ability. When the staff member and I confer, I should be able to tell them, "Blue peninsula hopping trousers twisted badly", and they should be amazed that I said the exact same phrase as you. That's when everyone here suddenly becomes very interested in your thread. Got anything like that?

You're right. So much so, I'm going to take back that comment about guitars and playing cards. Some quick math shows a deck of cards would cost about US$2000 to bring up to LEO. Better to spend your payload on a 3D printer and make your own guitars offplanet.

I'm hoping cultured meats will solve that problem, and possibly lead to even better tasting meat. We should be able to engineer all kinds of goodness into meat we grow ourselves. It seems reasonable that Earth would want platinum group metals and HE3 enough to warrant the high cost of bringing them back planetside. Earth will always be our source for biota if we transplant species to other planets/facilities, so trading eggs/seeds will be common. I'm not sure if there's any inorganic needs that can't be filled offplanet. Culture and comfort will always be marketable. It's one thing to eat a grilled steak but something else entirely to eat boeuf bourguignon or a Philly cheesesteak sandwich. I would imagine humans will need human touches out there in the dark, where you're always reminded how small and fragile you are, and you need something familiar. Non-essential tools probably wouldn't be manufactured offplanet for a while, so you'd have to get your guitars and playing cards from Earth.