How do you feel about telekinesis?
I have seen quite a few videos of supposed telekinesis. For instance, Nina Kulagina. Just curious to what the Fluther community thinks about it.
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Not everything you see in videos is real.
I like it and wish I had it. It’s like the Force.
You’ve also seen movies with fighting robots, flying superheroes, and walking dead, and they were in high definition.
From a fantasy standpoint I think it’d be fun if such a power existed. I hardly think it’s any more reality than what David Copperfield does.
It’d be some nice power to have if it were real. I’d also like time travel, except I really couldn’t leave the machine, then, could I?
To manipulate your surrounding environment using your thoughts I can only imagine possible if assisted by technology.
don’t ask us what we think. try it out and see if it works. I have an open mind about it.
I’m afraid it leaves me unmoved.
the notion of telekinesis is a creation of mankind’s universal cockiness.
we’re obviously so smart and powerful that we can bend the forces of nature and the laws of physics by merely thinking it…
come on now.
Steven Wright:
“All those who believe in telekinesis raise my hand.”
The vampires in Anne Rice’s books can do it, but only after being undead for a long time. As for real people? Nope, can’t be done, typical wishful thinking BS! People who claim to levitate are not living in the real world either.
Another question I should probably ask, “Where the hell do these people find the time to develop their “mental abilities”?
It is certainly a fun idea, and would liven up dull parties, but I fear it is a fictional talent, demonstrated only by trickery.
At least it is a way for those with more chutzpah than job skills to earn a living without actually stealing.
If I had telekinesis, I’d join the NBA. I’d have a perfect free throw average. And three-point average. And field goal average.
how you can guys state with such authority that it doesn’t exist? have you conducted scientific experiments to that effect? or even informal experiments?
We say it with the same authority as we say that there isn’t a lion on the roof. We can’t prove there isn’t one, but there is no reason to believe that there is.
@Ria777 – Yes, plenty of people conducted scientific experiments. They asked hundreds of people to move a chair at the far end of a room without touching them. Just using the power of their minds. To this day, none of the chairs has moved. Is there still hope?
I have done it with a witness but havent been able to repeat the feat. yet.
I’m sure all you naysayers out there wouldn’t accept anything thats outside of your little box even if you witnessed it first hand. And of course I’m absolutely positive I will be attacked for tellinig you all this. Just know this, no amount of harasment or BS will convince me otherwise. I did it! I was there and you were not. Period. The key for me was for one moment in time I had the EXACT same certainty (without any doubt whatsoever) that I could do it as I have certainty I can move my arm or hand or anyother body part. I knew I could and I did. I didn’t “try” to do it, just as you wouldn’t try to move your arm. You would just do it. The person that witnessed it FREAKED out and ran away. After he calmed down I found him “trying” to do the same thing. I will not go into any further detail. I ask you to believe nothing. I only say that when you know, you KNOW…
When you don’t… most people (not all) tend to try and invalidate those who do, apparently to justify their own inabilitys.
Best to all!
@Rickomg: Congratulations. Now that you have mastered telekinesis, work on shortening your text and writing clearing sentences with less punctuation. (abilities)
Not seen that particular video. There are some interesting experiments which were conducted in the height of the Cold War by the Soviets, and I’ve seen some videos of those. Apparently the Soviets thought it was a good idea to round up all the people who seemed to posses unusual powers. In a population of 250 million, they did manage to find 6–7 who seemed to be able to move tiny objects such a piece of paper or maybe a pen. But they could never train them to be spies and flip switches and so on. And of course even this story could be a hoax.
@Rickomg what did you “move”? explain how it is possible, elaborate on the what the object did when you “moved it”, I’m not trying to convince you, I just want to know how you came to believe something that’s completely impossible.
@Ria777
(1) We’re not saying anything with utmost certainty (I’m not, at least)
(2) The burden of proof lies with those making the positive claim.
(3) Experiments have actually been done on this issue.
@Ivan: of course I know that researchers have already done experiments.
@mattbrowne: maybe telekinesis doesn’t work that way. maybe telekinetic energy (if you want to call it that) fans out into nothing beyond a certain distance. the (few) videos I have seen show the person doing telekinesis done in pretty close proximity to the object. we don’t know enough about the parameters involved.
or perhaps psi powers don’t work on chairs. something to seriously consider.
I actually once volunteered to take part in a psi experiment (actually one of a series of psi experiments over the course of more than a decade done by Harvard, I think). I want to say what I think happened, though I don’t trust my memory and other parts I won’t go into because I respect my privacy. I do remember that it took place in a lab located in a gothic building adjunct to to a psych ward in the Longwood area of Boston.
the lab looked and felt exactly like a movie or television version of such a lab and the researchers looked like movie or television versions of researchers. young, good-looking. they wanted to find out (and I swear that I have not made this up) whether crazy people had psi powers. this had nothing to do with the psych ward, though.
@mattbrown: we talked about moving chairs without touching them. therefore I meant whatever you use to move chairs without touching them. (for telekinetic energy read telekinetic force. energy implies something like EM radiation so I should have said force.) a tautological explanation for sure, though, I mean, I don’t know how PK works and neither at, this stage, does anyone else, as far as I know. (though a physics degree might help.)
@Ria777 – What would be the connection between the human brain and the (small) object being moved? Electromagnetic field generated by firing axons? A quantum phenomenon like quantum entanglement? A fifth elementary force yet to be discovered?
@attbrowne: Wishful thinking.
You mean W = M * c^2 ?
W = Wishful thinking
M = Magic
c = Number of brain cells in the neocortex
Seriously. We should rather promote math and science and give it a cool image, instead of becoming too fascinated with paranormal phenomena. Like @Ivan, I’m not saying anything with utmost certainty, but telekinesis isn’t science. Quantum teleportation is and it’s pretty “magic” too.
@mattbrowner: science fascinates me. so does the paranormal. I do believe in cultivating critical thinking, in no small part because they combat established dogma, like the unsupported denial of Fortean phenomena.
I have functional critical thinking skills and I still believe in telekinesis and further that, as I did earlier in thread, used a science-based rationale to counter criticisms of telekinesis ever existing. why couldn’t you have come up with a counter-argument?
lastly, I have no problem with calling telekinesis a form of magic. as for wishful thinking, cast your mind back to 1930 when our world would have seemed like science fiction.
_You mean W = M * c^2 ?
W = Wishful thinking
M = Magic
c = Number of brain cells in the neocortex_
science depends on empiricism, not ad hominem attacks.
You want to know what I think:
<telekinesis> </telekinesis>
@Ria777; where did you use “a science-based rationale to counter criticisms of telekinesis ever existing”? I’m not seeing it.
my explanation for why telekinesis couldn’t fling around chairs on the other side of the room. (I mean my serious explanation, not the silly one at the end of the post.)
additionally, I want to note that I do not know of instances of anyone demonstrating have the power to do that particular thing “in the wild”, anyway, aside from possibly-faked seances.
That it might dissipate with distance? That is by no means a counter-argument; as the person arguing for something which all available evidence and theory strongly suggests is not true, the burden of proof lies on you, not just the burden of evading disproof. To return to my analogy of a lion of the roof, it is as if we went to look at the roof to settle the argument, and saw no lion, and you then claimed that the lion is invisible. You may have successfully made it impossible to prove that the lion isn’t there, and you can continue doing so, perhaps by arguing that the lion is controlling my mind to make me unable to sense it in any way. But no matter how long you counter the evidence that the lion does not exist, you have not done anything to strengthen the argument that the lion does exist. Yes, telekinetic energy might dissipate with distance, and, hell, you could argue that it might be neutralized by the presence of nearby skeptics, making it impossible ever to disprove its existence; but this doesn’t make it any more likely to exist. If you are trying to make an argument that something does exist, you absolutely must present good evidence for it, not just rebuttals to arguments against it.
(@Jayne: How is it far above Cayuga’s waters so far?—)
@Jayne: “all available evidence and theory…”
if we could explain it, we couldn’t call it paranormal, would we? science can’t explain (to the best of my knowledge) why a foot develops into a foot, either or where most of the mass in the universe resides. so let’s leave theory aside.
as for the other part of your analogy, yes lions don’t generally stand around on roofs. on the occasions that they do, we’d think, ” a tree branch making noise”, or “a person on the roof making lion noises”, etc., before we cottoned on to the truth. and if the lion left before we could see it, we still think guy making lion noises.
anyway, I will scour the web, looking for some proof of psi and get back to you. (and I don’t mean videos, though I saw one that very much convinced me a few days ago.)
or to put it more succinctly, creationists think of evolution as a lion on the roof.
@Ria777 – It’s fine with me to find both science and the paranormal fascinating (I like to watch the X-files occasionally). It’s true that in the past some phenomena were thought of as magic and later a scientific reason could be found. As of today in 2009 the overwhelming majority of the very best scientists in this world think that telekinesis doesn’t exist. Around 1905 almost all British scientists thought Albert Einstein is crazy and they didn’t buy into special relativity. So maybe the perspective on some of the paranormal will be different in the year 2109. But maybe not.
Here’s how telepathy works:
Picture a man and a women in a car talking about politics. They pass a building made of clay brick (which is kind of unusual in the area) without noticing it. Well, their conscious minds don’t notice it. All of the sudden the man says, hey, I’m hungry, how about some pepperoni pizza tonight. The woman turns, astonished. Hey, I just thought the same thing. Pepperoni pizza. Telepathy? Looks like it. Scientific explanation: associative cortex. Both their unconscious minds noticed the building made of clay brick they just passed. 6 weeks earlier they had a wonderful evening in a different town and ate pepperoni pizza in a nice building made of clay brick. The sex later that evening was great.
@mattbrowne: inarguably, though, the vast majority of scientists haven’t studied telekinesis.
I know that instances of apparent telepathy has a perfectly mundane explanations most of the time. but not all of the time.
Well, I certainly wish I could read my son’s mind so I can figure out why he does what he does.
But I can’t.
Why did you do what you did at that age? You should just grant him beingness (allow him to be who he wants to be) and let it go at that. You’ll find a much more sane child on your hands.
@Rickomg – Unfortunately that would only work if I had an average child. However, my son is bipolar, ODD and ADHD, deliberately sabotages himself and his relationships, destroys possessions (his and mine), and first attempted to kill himself at age seven because the voices told him to.
However, granting my daughter “beingness” has worked very well. But then she is well within the range that is considered normal.
@Darwin Nice bait there. partial answer then drop the rest of the story like I knew your story… Very well set up there…
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