Was this precognition, i.e., the ability to see the future?

[The Backward OX]

Today I dropped off my lady at a red light outside the radiographers, where she was to have a CT scan. As she was about to close the car door, I pointed at the collapsible floral umbrella on the floor and said, “Do you want your umbrella?” She had already turned away from the car, and all I heard was the word “No”. The light changed, I drove to McDonald’s for lunch, and completely forgot the umbrella.

 

Hours late when we arrived home she was unpacking the car while I opened the garage. I said, “Did you get your umbrella?”

 

“I never had an umbrella. I told you that earlier.”

 

“Sorry. I misheard you.” She was right. There was no umbrella there.

 

I was not under the influence of anything. I saw that umbrella as clearly as I see these words appearing on the monitor.

 

Maybe I’m not really here at all. Maybe I’m only dreaming we drove 100km to the radiographers, maybe I imagined the burger and fries, maybe ScienceForums doesn’t exist, maybe . . . . .

 

What do you think? Is there an explanation?

[npts2020]

Since I have never viewed credible evidence of precognition and seen plenty of evidence of people seeing things that are not there, I would have to say the explanation lies in that direction. Memory is not perfect, and your desire for there to be an umbrella in the car could easily get transferred to believing there was an umbrella in the car, especially if you are distracted thinking about something else at the time. That does not mean you are delusional or anything of the sort, similar things with memory happen to many people. Anyway, I think this is a far more likely explanation (even if it isn't right) than any form of precognition.

[Phi for All]

Check the car for something with a floral pattern and a roughly tube shape. Odds are you saw something briefly, your mind quickly wanted a pattern to define it before your lady walked away, and it chose "collapsible umbrella", then dismissed it from further thought. Later when you were looking for "collapsible umbrella", you saw the item more clearly but saw that it was the edge of a floral shopping bag sticking out from under the seat, and your mind knew that wasn't "collapsible umbrella" and kept searching to no avail.

 

I don't see how this could be precognition, unless you now go out and buy her a collapsible umbrella and put it in the car for her future use. But then, that's cheating, isn't it?

[GDG]

Precognition is probably the least likely explanation. As far as I recall, nobody has ever demonstrated convincingly that it exists at all. More traditional explanations that do not bend the laws of physics should be your first thought. Much more likely that the car window reflected glare onto the floor, and in a quick glance your visual processing decided it was most similar to an umbrella.

 

Perception is a very strange and incompletely understood phenomenon. Say you have a book with a brightly colored cover: the appearance of the cover stays the same, regardless of the lighting conditions (assuming you have enough light for color vision). Bright sunlight, fluorescent lights, incandescent lights, candlelight, all give off a different mixture of light frequencies and intensities, and the light reflecting from the cover will be measurably different (with lab instruments), but the cover will still look the same to you.

 

And then there are the simple experiments that demonstrate the blind spot in the eye. Your brain just papers over the blind spot, so that you don't notice it. Again, just a simple, everyday hallucination.

 

But seriously, if you frequently see things that are not there, best to have it checked out.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I will often see one of my cats in my peripheral vision, then look and discover it's actually some lumpy object that is kind of cat-shaped if you look at the right angle. Could be the same phenomenon here.

[Baby Astronaut]

I will often see one of my cats in my peripheral vision, then look and discover it's actually some lumpy object that is kind of cat-shaped if you look at the right angle.

Occasionally those peripheral imaginings resemble scary animals. We practically jump, go wtf is that, and laugh at how startled we got from a harmless object. Usually the wind or something had moved it, lending weight to the temporary illusion (of a menacing plastic bag).