Do you believe in "Extra Sensory Perception"?

[Jonte_1979]

I don't think that it's entirely unfeasible to suspect that there could be other senses beyond the ones that we are aware of as of this point in time. Regardless, I think it's a fascinating subject.

[Aristus]

1. I had this strange premonition you were going to ask that.

;-)

[tjdee]

2. When someone's on my mind a lot, it's kinda like ESP.

KINDA.

Sometimes, I'll start thinking of someone out of the blue. And I'll start thinking about them A LOT. And later I'll find out that something happened to them...good or bad, that I should be there for them or something.

Once it was a friend of mine who got a collapsed lung. Once it was a friend of mine whose father died. Once it was that a friend of mine came back to Jersey after spending a year away--she'd been planning to stay longer and hadn't called me to tell me she was coming back, etc.

I don't think that counts as ESP, and everytime I feel someone weighing down on my mind like that I discount it--so the long winded answer to your question is I don't know.

[arcos]

3. We use a minimal percentage of our brain's capability...

I'm sure there are several other underdeveloped (or undeveloped) senses that some people are able to use more than others. Perhaps we don't know exactly how they work, or we aren't even sure if they exist at all. But sometimes there are things that you just can't call a coincidence and that relate to all of this.

[geebensis]

4. No

But you already knew that, huh?

mm

[newyawker99]

20. Hi geebensis!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[PunkinPi]

5. humans only use 10-15% of their brain capacity

I don't see why ESP wouldn't be possible.

[geebensis]

6. Huh?

People have been saying this for a long time. Doesn't make it true.

Check out http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm

mm

[TlalocW]

7. My opinion

Our brains, wonderful though they are, are always looking to connect things in terms of cause and effect. If you have a queasy feeling when you get on an airplane and then run into a lot of turbulence, you might attribute it to some sort of psychic premonition. However, if you got on the airplane, and nothing at all happened, you wouldn't pay it any mind, and you'd forget about it. This pattern is what phony psychics (redundant) count on when they start reading your palm, aura, chakra, talking to dead Uncle Benny, etc. That you'll be amazed with their "hits" and remember them and forget their misses.

It's entirely feasible that there is something like that. I can't prove there isn't, but then I can't prove that the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist. The only way to discover if there is is to have scientific tests done that are double-blinded and tightly controlled - which always scares off the psychic performers or gets them throwing out excuses about negative vibes, etc.

TlalocW

[nuxvomica]

12. If we have no idea what ESP might be...

How can we devise controlled experiments to measure it? Rather than a double-blind study, I would be satisfied with a single documented case of information communicated via ESP that could not have been communicated in any known way. I think if that case occurs, it will be in the field and not the laboratory.

edit: "no", not "know"

[TlalocW]

14. She Blinded Me with Science!

A lot of science does come from field work, but if it's not able to be replicated under the harshest conditions, then it's just mumbo-jumbo. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If ESP does exist, and we don't know what ESP *really* is, we can still observe the effects and start building a rudimentary science around it. If however, as most psychics claim, their phenomena cannot be measured accurately or consistently or at all then we set science on its ear, and I, for one, am not willing to take the word of a scumbag like John Edward or Uri Gellar over thousands of years of dedicated observation and science.

TlalocW

[I AM SPARTACUS]

19. know Dolby's Cube...???,,,may the Cube be with you...

Thomas Dolby meets George Clinton
http://www.tmdrfan.com/rthurlow/ThomasDolby1985.htm

[Owl]

8. Answer is...

no.

[RememberJohn]

9. How many times have you been thinking about a song...

...then it came on the radio?

[TlalocW]

10. How many times have you been thinking about a song...

And it didn't come on the radio?

When it did come on the radio, was it a new song that was currently getting a lot of air play? Was it a standard oldies on one of the classic stations? A joke between a friend and mine is that whenever we get in the car and turn on a particular oldies station, we'll hear either Queen or Supertramp, and we're right an alarming amount of the time. That doesn't mean we're psychic.

It's like what I posted above, you remember your "hits" - thinking of a song, and it comes on the radio, and you forget your misses - thinking of a song, and it doesn't come on the radio.

TlalocW

[Nikia]

11. I don't know

I really wanted to buy a book about it. It is fairly new something like "The Phenomenon of Being Watched" or something like that. I read the back and skimmed it. It was about ESP in humans and other social animals and said that we could connect with each other on this level.

[TlalocW]

13. Save your money

Go to the library and check something out by James Randi like "Flim-Flam," "The Truth About Uri Gellar," or "The Faith-Healers." Apologies to all the believers out there, but the "psychics" who write books or do shows (like Van Praagh and John Edwards) are scam artists in the same category as evangelists like Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggert.

TlalocW

[Hell Hath No Fury]

15. I think it's possible...

I think there is much out there like ESP that we don't now how to measure yet but may in time be proven true. And I do think we may find that it comes down to brain wiring or chemistry.

I have a long history of premonatory dreams coming true. Funny thing is, I get hit the hardest and most clearly during the times I am in love. I think that being in love does all sorts of things biochemically to the brain that perhaps, for me, allows me to access different types of information.

I think that physics and chemistry will unravel much of the things we view as mysteries now.

[shanti]

16. i'm like that with several people in my life

when my bf is out and about and i'm stressing and wanting him HOME with ME, it's usually just a matter of minutes before he comes tooling up to the curb.

also with my mother and sister and phone calls. i personally think one is either a sender or a receiver. i'm a sender.

[solinvictus]

17. ESP

At best, I am open to the possibility of it. It seems to be a phenomena that defies both space and time by allowing the person experiencing a premonition to transcend both by "receiving" information that is temporally displaced. Yes, the TV ghouls who leach off the guilt of others are scum. All they do is simply suggest or lead their victims with relevant questions that allows them to discern information about the dead person. It is verbal trickery.

[ScreamingMeemie]

18. Nope. Like in the case of mothers saying they had a bad feeling when

their child walked out the door...Heck , I get a bad feeling every time my kids walk out the door....

[Ratty]

21. Absolutely not

I'm not saying there's categorically no such thing as ESP, that wouldn't be scientific. I just don't believe in it at all.

I believe our subconscious can notice things (via our 5 and only 5 senses) that we consciously do not perceive. We tend to remember our "successes" and forget our failures. E.g., if we have a premonition that something bad will happen and it does, we generally have forgotten the times we had a premonition but nothing happened, or the times when bad things have happened but we had no premonition. If there were such a thing as telekinesis we would have long ago demonstrated it scientifically. That has never been done.

[JewelDigger]

22. There's LOTS of things going on around us all the time

that we can't perceive and yet we scientifically KNOW that they occur.

Examples:

The sun emits UVA, UVB rays we can't detect them, but we can see the consequences and 'know' that they're there.

Photons and all kinds of sub-atomic particles flying all around us all the time - we can't detect those either.

Radio waves, Microwaves, etc., etc.

Many animals have all different types of 'senses' than the five that humans have. Bats have radar; insects often 'sense' rather than 'see', etc., etc.

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One phenomena that I've often wondered about: If you stare at someone (say at a stoplight in another car) chances are more than 50-50 (and I think close to 100%) that that person will turn and look at you. Try it for yourself! It's like they can 'sense' someone looking at them, even when they are thinking about something else. I've always wondered, "What IS that?"

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So, yeah, I definitely believe that there's a lot more 'going on' than what we 'know'.