Crazy Thread 5: Subconsiousness and Self

Yes, I'm taking over for Dave because he's been a big fat slacker on crazy threads!

Something strange happened to me (again) this morning, actually its pretty common. Aparently, when the alarm clock rang this morning, my wife couldn't reach it so she asked me to get it for her. I reached over, stopped it and picked it up and gave it to her. I was told all of this, because as far as I know I was sleeping the whole time. I even woke up late and was upset that the alarm never rang, to my knowledge.

Anyhow, the intersting topic here is - the subconcious seems to be able to understand and process language all on its own, and as well, perform actions in response to it. But languages you learn as a 2nd language, it can not understand. Wonder what the process is to teach the subconcious somethings and not other things.

It reminded me today that the brain is pretty crazy. And if your brain can do lots of stuff without the consiousness being there, what does that say about your sense of self (most would say that the consiousness is the 'self' I think)

Actually, it can. But it certainly takes more than 3 hours a week in a language class to reach that point.

Well, most language processing takes place on a subconsious level. We can say an understand complex sentences like "Yesterday I told Susan that I was wondering what the weather would be like today" without any real consious effort, although there are some intensely complicated grammatical structures and constructions in there.

I would think what more likely happened in your case though Maxox, is that you were half-awake and consious, but then immediately went back to sleep and your brain didn't have it's "write-head" engaged, so you didn't remember the episode.

There are a few experimental meathods going on right now that spit facts at a high speed into your brain while your in a hypnotic sleep. The speed of the facts and the amount that you take in at once is beyond comprehension, but your subconcious mind proccesses it and hands it over to your memory while bypassing your frontal lobe, or the part of the brain the causes emotion.

Arexin is the main element that keeps you awake. Your body produces Arexin naturally while you sleep. Eating helps too. Narcaliptics have an Arexin diffciancy. Arexin is also what's being tampered with when you do Excticy (sp?). Doctors used to use Excticy to get their paitents to talk to them about their problems without the emotional inclination to bias. When this information is passed, after you come out of your high, your frontal lobe goes into alert mode, causing the condition known as paranoia.

Anywho, back to subconcious learning...

The basic reason for emotions is a learning tool. If you don't like something you don't learn it, which works perfectly when hunting in the wild, but not when memorizing your multiplication tables. According to Darwin's Theory (no, the big guy ) those who find learning math facts fun will be those who live and get the opertunity to reproduce. Unfortunetly, the dumb ones live in our society. So, we must evolve in manual gear. Emotions must be bypassed in order to learn these things more effciantly. That's what they say anywhow.

It's speculated that hypnosis is a built in feature for problem solving, and that if we can tap that when we need it we can solve problems that way.

The theories go on and on, going into psychic phenomina and so on, but I'm far too lazy to type them all out. If your wondering how I know so much, it's because the game GoldBullet is currently developing (www.sonoftheoracle.com, WEE AN AD ) deals with this a-do-do. We're going to make the visions just how REAL psychics have 'em, so that should be cool. Note that REAL psychis mean NOT the ones you see on the street corner, the John Edwards and VanStraughts

Sorry, Darwin. John Edwards is NOT a psychic. While the tv show may make him look like it, we don't get to see the outtakes. A lot of the information 'revealed' to him, has been discussed prior to filming. And we don't get to see his misses, as he narrows down the possibilities. You don't hear about it from the peeps who go to his show, because they have to sign a huge, multipage NDA. The techniques he uses are the same ones that fortune tellers have been using for centuries to ply their trade. It's all well and good for entertainment, but JE is not to be taken seriously. Gives real psychics a bad name if you ask me. Okay, so you didn't ask me...

I don't hate a lot of people, but I hate John Edwards. Really. He is a two-bit scam artist who has gotten rich preying on the desperate hopes of the recently bereaved. He does not have psychic powers, and he is not a deluded fool who thinks he has psychic powers, he uses well known and obvious magicians tricks, and he looks directly in to the eyes of widows and orphans and he smiles at them and lies lies lies.

Ambulance chasers and playground herion dealers can look down on him and say "well, at least I'm not that bad"

Edwards uses a technique called "cold reading" that's been employed by people pulling this scam since the dawn of time. For an excellent debunking of Edwards see http://www.skeptic.com/newsworthy13.html

I used to like John Edward, but after just reading the link that Chip posted, I totally believe he is a fraud. Yikes!

HAHAHAHAHA OMG you're right Chipper, and all of yas.
JOHN EDWARDS IS A TWO BIT FRAUD.

Although, Martain VanPraugh is real. He came up to me and told me that my grandfather (whom I never knew) appreciates my love of baseball, although he wish I liked the Yankees instead of the Dogers.

I just stood there for about 10 minutes gaping at him.

I'm assuming then Dar that you ar from New York.

It's likely that you had a Grandfather.

Based on your age, it's likely that he had passed.

Being a guy, it's likely that you like baseball, especially in a baseball centric place like New York.

Only two teams really. . .

50/50 chance.

Cold reading is definitely jaw dropping inducing. . .

50/50 odds are good.

Hope this doesn't deflate your belief in psychics. . .although it should

Oh yeah, hopefully I'll see all you tomorrow IW, yay!

I'm from LA, was born in Boston but he didn't know that. 'Sides, I moved to LA when I was 1 and I have no accent. LA is not a baseball-centric place sadly. It's a fashion and money-centric place LOL

But really, how could he have known my grandfather was from New York, he was a baseball fan (Yankees) and that he wishes I were. It got me, that's for sure.

Actually esp is completely true. This website proves it. No really. Try it. http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/esp.html
(yes I know how it works, and no I won't tell you )

What were the circumstances of your meeting him? Who were you with? Who did they talk to? Were you wearing a Dodgers cap at the time or anything else that gave you away as a dodgers fan? Did he say exactly what you claim or did he say something vague that you then interpreted as meaning that?

This stuff works because of "the god of the gaps." If something seems fantastical and can't be readily explained people take that giant leap to attributing it to a mystical source... it's the easiest way to fill in the gap. These kinds of scams work because on the surface they seem impossible, but they're tricks like those of any magician. If you knew who he was before he spoke to you then you were predisposed to believe.

Which is the more giant leap in logic... to think that he had some way of gaining the foreknowledge or enough to make educated guesses? Or that he was in communication with your dead grandfather and chatting about baseball? What makes you choose the most unlikely of the two? Human psychology and the god of the gaps.

ESP is completely false
or at least, the link above doesnt prove it

(replying to the above reply)

The way the thing works is by playing on your perception of colour. The cards that appear in the second page (after you click the eye) arent ANY of the cards on the first page (look at them closely). I did the experiment, and was amazed to see that it was 'right', I read through the commentary a few minutes (10-20) and eiather thought it tracked your mouse movement, or played a trick on your mind, it was the latter . Its funny how the mind can be tricked so eiasily ^_^

I figured it out by opening the first and second pages in seperate windows, then comparing the cards that you were shown.

-Chris

... yes I suck the fun out of everything

Awwww man, you are no fun at all! You could have at least let them squirm for a while first before you gave it away. It boggled me for a good day and a half before I had the forehead smacking moment, hehe. Go tell kids there's no santa or somethin', ya meanie.

Haha Chip I saw that trick before

As to the circumstances of meeting him, I was wearing a red polo shirt with cordoroy pants, and I was having a meeting with him interviewing him and how he sees his visions, for our game. I asked him if he could tell me anything, and he did.

The god of gaps it may be, how was he to know my grandfathers favorite baseball team? Besides even that, he told me it was on my mother's side. Quite a bit to jump to instantly, I can say that.

I think the whole subconsious movement thing is NOT actually subconsious. Look at it this way...

It is proven 100% fact that everybody dreams when they goto sleep, it's the R.E.M. phase of sleep. The clarity and length of the dream is determinate only on how well you can remember it after you wake up. This is why some people say they don't dream, it's simply that they can't remember it. While other dreams "felt so real" usually because of certain things that happened in the dream, and because you remembered it so well. I'm not saying dreams are formed in the memory, but move this sort of thing over to doing things subconsiously.

I think that things like sleepwalking and sleep-giving-alarm-clock-to-wife are actually consious, except not remembered afterwards, with the onset of a sort of short-span amnesia. The same kind of amnesia given to us concerning the many dreams we have while sleeping.

And all those crazy things we do while we sleepwalk? I believe that is a person thinking that they are dreaming even though they are concious. But not concious enough to realize that they aren't sleeping. Sorta like a 90% sleep-drunkenness, while 10% is us actually awake and doing things.

Anyone think this might be possible or true? I just made it up and think it's pretty nifty

So, you had a meeting with him, specifically for the purposes of discussing his "abilities."

And it never occurred to you that no more than 5 minutes after he agreed to the meeting in the first place, he called his private-investigator-on-retainer and put the research machine into action digging up your background?

Actually, he's not even a very good cold-reader, he has plants in the line to pump audience members for information, and mics in the studio audience, among other tricks.

Read the transcripts of some cold-reading sessions (they're all over the web). Smart skeptical people (who don't know the tecniques of cold reading) will come out and swear that the cold reader told them specific information, and if asked if they gave any information to the cold reader, they will swear they did not, but if you look at the transcirpts, you will see that the cold reader threw out a ton of guesses and that the subject helped the reader get to the right conclusion.

Darwin, as for your baseball revelation, let's say he didn't use any kind of outside information (private investigators, information from your web site, whatever), imagine he just went up to people and made bold educated guesses based on their apperance.

For most people he might be wrong and could bust in to a cold reading session saying what he really meant was, or there must be someone else in the room that...

For about 1 in 100 people, he would be mostly right, and could swing it in to a correct guess (oh, it was really your uncle, who was like a grandfather to you? and it was hockey) and these people would be amazed and say he has Powers from Beyond

And for about 1 in 10000 people, he would be just bang on 100% right, just by chance, and these people would be jaw-droppingly stunned, just totally blown away, they would say "I am a skeptic, but this guy did this, and how do you explain that?" and post to web sites and expound on his marvelous psychic powers.

Here's another article on cold reading

http://www.randi.org/library/coldreading/index.html

While everything you say is true, there is no where on the internet (and if you can find one tell me PLEASE) where my grandfather expresses his love of the Yankees. Unless you can give me one. I would love to hear about it, really. And since I made the meeting the day before...

We get that John Edwards is a phoney.

As for those other things you said, Wednesday, they're valid, but hard to believe considering all those sites you yourself dug up proving how John Edwards was a fake.

[/B]

'splain!

Yep, the article I posted estimated his hit rate at only 10-20% which is pretty bad. A good cold reader can get a hit rate of 30-60%

And Darwin... I know it's tempting to believe, but it's silly. Really. Even if you can't figure out how he did it, it's still a few hundred billion times more likely that he used non-paranormal methods to do what he did than that he has psychic powers!

The average person (even if they claim to be a skeptic) wants to believe more than not, and that gives the "medium" a big head start towards convincing you that he has mystical powers.

I was talking to someone a couple of weeks ago that was convinced he'd been abducted by aliens and claimed to have proof. His proof was that he noticed some slightly triangular shaped blemishes on his stomach that he hadn't noticed before. What's more likely... that blemishes come and go due to very natural causes, or that space aliens flew thousands of light years across the universe to put triangles on his stomach?! The desire to believe in the fantastic makes critical thinking fly out the window.

YOU'RE ONE OF THEM!!!
*runs*

You have to sleep some time!