Author Topic: Clairvoyance  (Read 11981 times)

thunderforce

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Re: Clairvoyance
« Reply #40 on: July 18, 2013, 11:07:36 AM »
Unless of course, seeing the future would mean that time is linear and that it was going to happen that way no matter what.  If you could see the future it means you could change your actions to bring about a different future.

That seems to be a similar objection to the previous poster, but not so. The precognition only has to be of a potential threat, not the consequences to you; the poster upthread who mistakenly supposed they were warned of a railway accident is a perfect example. The accident still happened, but the would-be victim was standing somewhere else.

Of course the world would be very different if these sorts of powers actually existed. For example (I'm not advancing this as any kind of ironbound proof that they don't, not least because the onus is obviously on people to show that there _are_ fairies at the bottom of the garden, not on me to show there aren't, merely a random example out of many) poker would be dominated by clairvoyant or precognitive players, and in a world where enormous numbers of online poker players collect and analyse countless hand histories, we can be quite confident that isn't happening. (Why? Because one of the things looked for in hand histories is evidence of cheating by collusion between poker services and players - a player whose play only makes sense if they had information they shouldn't). In fact, if precognitives exist they can't win consistently at any kind of gambling on future events. Isn't that odd?

Mantic

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Re: Clairvoyance
« Reply #41 on: July 18, 2013, 12:16:55 PM »
That's just game design being refined to eliminate prediction by hiding information and increasing the number of variables.

Blackjack is a card game that is much more susceptible to prediction by logical means, and so a lot of people with good minds for probabilistic math have been banned from many casinos. If someone who is not a conscious card-counter had a great deal of experience at playing a game like Blackjack, such a predictive ability could reasonably be developed as a natural skill. Said individual might even attribute resulting success to luck or some other mystical connection, because the underlying skill is not being accessed or understood on a conscious level.

Tacitala

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Re: Clairvoyance
« Reply #42 on: July 18, 2013, 02:12:21 PM »
Like one named Cleo or something.

No, that's called 'cold reading'.  :P
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thunderforce

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Re: Clairvoyance
« Reply #43 on: July 18, 2013, 02:18:58 PM »
No, that's called 'cold reading'.  :P

Good cold reading is magic - er, bad choice of word - truly astonishingly effective.

Taceus Jiwede

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Re: Clairvoyance
« Reply #44 on: July 18, 2013, 09:23:16 PM »
If this was a ability some people had I would be curious if they saw their own future, or just the future in general.  Still, I feel in order to see the "future' it means their has to be a definite future.  Although of course maybe Clairvoyance would just be a form of prediction using given information to assume the most likely scenario using visual imagery.  People kind of can do that already if they have enough information but perhaps one day it will be effortless, even the absorbing of the inputted information may become effortless.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2013, 06:11:13 AM by Taceus Jiwede »

Dollmistress

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Re: Clairvoyance
« Reply #45 on: July 20, 2013, 03:05:12 AM »
I'm not much for clairvoyance, but due to the wholly ridiculous amount of time I spent playing the game (often near-totally immersed in terms of emotion and concentration, plus on occasion also sleep-deprived or semi-conscious due to exhaustion), as time passes my memories of playing become progressively less "virtual" and blend with recollections of real life.

I have a very good and vivid memory and when I think back to certain specific examples of playing the game my imagination tends to fill in the sensory gaps (touch, smell, heat, wind speed/direction, etc) and the results are memories more like half-recalled dreams of me actually doing the things my character did, rather than memories of sitting at a computer staring at a pixellated screen.

I'm confident that by the time I'm sixty I'll swear blind that I really did once jump down an ancient stone abyss into a vast, breathtaking cavern of pink crystals to fight an immortal wizard surrounded by demons.

For our generation, dementia is going to be absolutely mind-blowing for the poor young nurses charged with keeping us entertained. "Yes dear. Yes. You collected all the exploration badges in the hospital and got the accolade. Now let me take you back to bed or you'll miss Sally spawning in the morning..."