River's psychic abilities... growing? by TDBrown

Actually, in Objects in Space, if you listen very carefully to the background conversation when everyone starts to go back to business, Jayne claims the gun in the cargo bay for his. Apparently he left it there.

And I, uh, think the lights thing and the big pile-o'-dead-Reavers reveal was just Joss doing some dramatic emphasis with his cinematography. >_> :) Or the lights were motion sensitive, in the future there seems to be a lot of that, and if Mr. Universe wanted to stay off the grid, energy saving measures like lights that turn on and off depending on activity seems like a solid investment to me.

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Monday, May 4, 2009 10:47 AM

I've heard that the crew tells stories about one time they all had a few drinks together, and Summer Glau claimed to be a Jedi and that she could levitate their glasses.

I think Two posted that one... Two claims to actually be Alan Tudyk, so I have no idea how valid it all is. I would be shocked, SHOCKED if Alan actually came here. But the stories are great stuff, lots of detail so I'm inclined to believe that if Two isn't Alan he's at least someone else on the production team.

Here's the relevant links:

http://www.fireflyfans.net/sunroomitem.asp?i=21471
http://www.fireflyfans.net/sunroomitem.asp?i=21709

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Monday, May 4, 2009 10:51 AM

TDBROWN

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Actually, in Objects in Space, if you listen very carefully to the background conversation when everyone starts to go back to business, Jayne claims the gun in the cargo bay for his. Apparently he left it there.

And I, uh, think the lights thing and the big pile-o'-dead-Reavers reveal was just Joss doing some dramatic emphasis with his cinematography. >_> :) Or the lights were motion sensitive, in the future there seems to be a lot of that, and if Mr. Universe wanted to stay off the grid, energy saving measures like lights that turn on and off depending on activity seems like a solid investment to me.

In OiS, Jayne says later that he doesn't leave his guns laying around, and doesn't leave them loaded either.

And the lights on timers thing? Why would the lights go out suddenly and come right back on? Who would time their lights to do that lol? And motion detectors? the lights didnt come on when they entered the room, either then or when Mal passed through to the elevator earlier.

I'm not saying my theories are "The" answer, but it's possible that River's abilities are growing.

"Might have been the losing side, still not convinced it was the wrong one." -Mal

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Monday, May 4, 2009 11:01 AM

It's possible. Killing people with your brain I think would TECHNICALLY qualify as telekinesis.

I don't think I have enough evidence to say yep, yessir, without a doubt, can I steal your ideas? But I don't have the evidence to say no, either. :)

Point of interest: Jayne may not be the most reliable source, especially when he may be guilty of something. I pretty much took his objections as he totally DID leave the gun AND leave it loaded. He gets a mite defensive at times... :)

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Monday, May 4, 2009 1:05 PM

BRIGLAD

Remember in Out of Gas, there was a loaded pistol strapped to the gas tank on the mule... I'd imagine that guns are squirled around all over Serenity.

Jayne mislaying one is entirely possible.

Brian

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Monday, May 4, 2009 4:16 PM

TUJIAOZUO

I agree with the theory that guns are hidden all over Serenity as insurance policies. Jayne probably has a few tucked into nooks, and that could have been one of them.

River's powers really do seem to be more than just the mind reading. So my theory that I apply is this:

Some people are 'gifted'. It's a genetic thing, but it's rare and scatted throughout the verse. Some people's gifts are naturally stronger than others, some are more specific (telekinesis, precog, machine empathy, mind reading, projection, second sight, even the ability to 'take' or absorb another's memories or pain ect). One person may just have 'feelings' and 'hunches', while another could have full on precog visions, it varies from person to person. Usually people don't show much of an inclination until puberty (children tend to have 'feelings' and 'hunches', they can't tell exactly, but they can sense things).

As you get older, your gift does naturally grow to some extent, although if you practice it will grow even further. There are clusters of gifted people that have found ways to train and hone the gift, usually monks that teach peace and meditation, although there are more war oriented factions. These places however are secretive, and are usually seen as just monk temples that take in strays and orphans. They all fear the Alliance.

The Alliance ranks readers according to their power, and are not afraid of trying to unnaturally enhance a person's gifts. River is one of these, she wasn't as strong as she is now before the academy, and with all of the tweaking they did to her, she's now very strong and a mite unpredictable because she didn't go through the natural process of growth. There's no telling how strong River really is, and I think as she attempts to wrangle her gifts and understand them, she also gets stronger.

Help much?

Your Indian Pirate Lord,
Ash

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Monday, May 4, 2009 9:40 PM

Guns: I can't remember the scene, but somebody in a pinch specifically pulls guns out of 1.) a crate and 2.) the mule, while being attacked in the hold.

River:Basically, this is space. "Dear, we live in a spaceship."

Some things that aren't exactly kosher here on Earth-That-Was suddenly are, without blinking, out in the black.

So Firefly, while being very "real" is more "surreal"--hyper-real.
The real of dreams. Joss specifically says he wants to invade peoples' fantasies and aspirations.

So we get a "tweaked" version of newton's reality. After all, we shuttle between planets with less to-do than an inter-city plane flight. People been flying so much, so long that they're like ships. that's a lot in 500 years.

I personally thought that there were stages to River, somewhat close to your idea,TuJiaoZuo. I think there are "natural" readers existant in the verse, but that they're quite rare. River may or may not have been one of these, but she was such a good option for testing.

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Tuesday, May 5, 2009 11:11 PM

I don't think she is "becoming" but rather just more cloudy at first, her hibernation drugs and Institute chemical imbalances. She has all the abilities already, just can't tune them in or see through the fog, or filter out all the "noise" of too many voices ALL THE TIME -- the uncontrolled environs.

In Pilot, she knows Dobson is coming to kidnap her and she awakes to call for Simon.
In Ariel she knows the Doc is going to kill the patient before it happens. She also knows Jayne is taking her back to the Alliance, although Simon keeps assuring her it's OK. She knows when the Hands of Blue have landed and are headed for her.

In the end, she attains clarity, having less distraction from her abilities.
She also has wrested control of her PROGRAMMED abilites from the subliminal controls the Institue installed.

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Wednesday, May 6, 2009 12:27 AM

BRIGLAD

I agree with the "Enhanced natural reader" theory.

There's a little over 4 billion people on Earth. According to the Recently released White Paper on the 'Verse, Just the population of Londinium and Shinon more than double that figure.

Add in the rest of the high population core worlds and then the rest of the 'Verse. Even if a natural reader is one in ten million, that's still a lot of readers. Even one in one hundred million gives you more than just a few.

I think River already had some "abilities". Notice how Simon describes her as perceptive and intuitive.

Also like Jewel said above, River has gained clarity over time as she deals with the massive amount of "static" in her brain. Once she can control and filter this, she will be able to grow in her abilities.

This helps with her psychosis as well. I read somewhere they when she says "I'm alright" in the BDM, Joss meant that. It was the catharsis that starts River on the road to being who she truly should have been.

Hence how sane she is at the end of the movie when she starts flying Serenity. She may never be quite "right" compared to "normal" but some of that stems from her huge IQ anyway. She just thinks differently than the rest of us anyway.

My $0.02

Brian

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Wednesday, May 6, 2009 5:02 AM

JSF: I totally agree. :)

As for natural readers... I don't think they exist. There are some people who are very good at telling what other people are thinking. They might even feel a sympathetic response to whatever they're feeling. Or there's people who make logic jumps and suddenly make predictions that come true, even unexpected or highly unlikely ones. There's people who can call the roll of a dice ten times in a row. And there's people who have flashes, who can see something, almost like in a daydream, a few seconds before it happens.

It's uncanny, even for the person doing it, but it's not psychic. It's just advanced pattern recognition in the brain. And there's never been any evidence for telepathy or telekinesis. So I feel pretty safe in saying there's no such thing as psychic ability in the real world.

"Real" psychics, who can do the things I've mentioned above in more impressive manners, generally aren't.

So I subscribe more to the idea that River may have had some of the skills I mentioned, but she was MADE a psychic.

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Thursday, May 7, 2009 4:45 PM

I definitely think River was also made. Static theory is a go.

However, if natural readers (or a long history of engineered ones popping up) don't exist, why is everybody so puzzled in OiS? Several of the crew have spontaneously heard of readers.

Or are they confusing the issue, ascribing cow fetuses to aliens because it's all they know when an actual engineered "alien" shows up. Meaning they know verse "readers" like pay-per-order psychics who have some uncanny cold reading abilities, but not anybody with true psychic abilities. Thoughts?

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Thursday, May 7, 2009 4:46 PM

And is there a continuum of readership...ie "advanced pattern recognition" vs. actual psychic-ship, as you mentioned, Bytemite? And where do you draw the line?

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Thursday, May 7, 2009 6:14 PM

I draw the line, I suppose, where people have abilities beyond what I've described. What I've described isn't so impossible, really. I mean, the dice thing, each time it's only a one in six chance. Consecutive rolls don't depend upon the outcome of the next.

I suspect predicting cards would be harder. Only a one in fifty-two chance. Although each time, if you remove a card, it's easier. You'd have to have a good memory though.

And the visions, if you could call them that? If they're only happening about five to seven seconds before the event, and only in regards to insignificant events happening in the immediate proximity, I can't call that true precognition.

If someone, say, saw 9-11 happen as it did or just before, and before the media even started reporting it... something a long distance away that they wouldn't otherwise be aware of, or something soon enough in advance, and they weren't just SAYING they did, they had witnesses and proof? I might be able to call that psychic. Unfortunately, they never have proof, because their claims are generally hoaxes.

There's just no evidence for real psychics. Nothing impressive enough that can be proven, and nothing that can be proven that can't be explained through more natural means.

Fun to joke about, though. You can really freak people out. Yourself too, sometimes, which can be fun as well.

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Thursday, May 7, 2009 6:16 PM

{Serenity crew response: Well, and their verse isn't reality. Maybe they do have psychics... Or maybe they have their share of fakers and performers.

Or maybe not even that. The idea of psychics has been around for some time.

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Thursday, May 7, 2009 7:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:

There's just no evidence for real psychics. Nothing impressive enough that can be proven, and nothing that can be proven that can't be explained through more natural means.

Whoa! Responses in the thread have taken a turn, and here you went off the cliff.
Perhaps YOU have chosen to ignore all the evidence for real psychics, but that does not mean everybody else has put on your blinders, or ignored all of their own experiences to placate you, or denounced all real paranormal activity or Extra Sensory Phenomena.
You deny Deja Vu exists or occurs?
You deny clairvoyance exists or occurs?
You deny Remote Viewing exists or occurs?
Wake up, already.

No, River was not made. She already had the perceptions. She was trained to focus and enhance these senses, yes. Her abilities were not created by the Institute, just used.

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Thursday, May 7, 2009 8:09 PM

Deja Vu is a sensation, not a psychic ability.

And while the empathic side of clairvoyance exists (I discussed it above and called it mundane), I also covered remote viewing, and no, I do not think remote viewing exists.

Generally, when I hear of remote viewing, it's in association with a police crime case where they agree to let psychics help out. One in particular stands out in my memory: a bunch of psychics got together, all claimed to see the same shed, and were certain a little girl's body would be found in it.

The little girl wasn't found there, and I believe the police wasted valuable resources on that.

I think claims of remote viewing, and worse, of people who can speak with the dead, are harmful. I think the many of the people who make such claims run scams.

Furthermore, I think the uncanny feeling people feel when witnessing someone perform the abilities that I believe are real and possible are founded on the basis of logistical fallacies ingrained into common sense, or their own minds tricking them. The same goes for the person performing the apparent phenomenon. I can say, from personal experience, that every one of the abilities I've listed can feel surprising when they manifest, even uncanny or unnatural/supernatural. But I also recognize where those abilities are originating from and how my own mind is tricking me.

Perhaps it is different for those who call themselves real psychics. I wouldn't know, because I know I'm certainly not one of them.

So if I sound harsh in my dismissal, it's because I have my own experiences influencing why I feel that way.

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Thursday, May 7, 2009 8:51 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Deja Vu is a sensation, not a psychic ability.

And while the empathic side of clairvoyance exists (I discussed it above and called it mundane), I also covered remote viewing, and no, I do not think remote viewing exists.

Generally, when I hear of remote viewing, it's in association with a police crime case where they agree to let psychics help out. One in particular stands out in my memory: a bunch of psychics got together, all claimed to see the same shed, and were certain a little girl's body would be found in it.

The little girl wasn't found there, and I believe the police wasted valuable resources on that.

I think claims of remote viewing, and worse, of people who can speak with the dead, are harmful. I think the many of the people who make such claims run scams.

Furthermore, I think the uncanny feeling people feel when witnessing someone perform the abilities that I believe are real and possible are founded on the basis of logistical fallacies ingrained into common sense, or their own minds tricking them. The same goes for the person performing the apparent phenomenon. I can say, from personal experience, that every one of the abilities I've listed can feel surprising when they manifest, even uncanny or unnatural/supernatural. But I also recognize where those abilities are originating from and how my own mind is tricking me.

Perhaps it is different for those who call themselves real psychics. I wouldn't know, because I know I'm certainly not one of them.

So if I sound harsh in my dismissal, it's because I have my own experiences influencing why I feel that way.

Please explain your experiences of Deja Vu, and how you feel they were merely sensations, and how you were able to view years in advance an event which eventually happened, and how many times you Deja Vu'd the same occurence (maximum repeats).

Just because you have not experienced every event that mankind has collectively engaged, does not mean those event never occurred. Unless you are an Astronaut, shall we assume you do not believe man walked on the moon, or man orbited the flat earth?

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Friday, May 8, 2009 5:29 AM

What you describe isn't deja vu, what you describe is precognition. I have said what levels I've observed precognition to happen at, and that those are natural. I also said I've seen no evidence to support longer distance or time frame examples of precognition, which are, admittedly, much harder to prove.

Deja vu is an eerie sensation where you feel like you have witnessed or done something before, but have no conscious recollection of having done so.

Your second statements are red herrings, and I'm not going to address them.

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Saturday, May 9, 2009 8:32 AM

CAVALIER

TDBrown, I can’t help but think that to some extent you are tending to look for evidence that supports an existing position, rather than looking for evidence that allows you to judge between possible explanations.

For example:

Quote:
Originally posted by TDBrown:
There is, of course, the classic scene in "War Stories", where she shoots the three Gunmen with her eyes closed. That's both mind reading and "second sight".

But she did not need to be a mindreader to shoot the gunmen: she just needed to know where they were. And she had glanced out from under cover to see them, just a second before. Perhaps she just has a good memory? And if she has second sight, why would she take the risk of exposing herself to gunfire in order to use ordinary sight?

Quote:
Originally posted by TDBrown:
In OiS, Jayne says later that he doesn't leave his guns laying around, and doesn't leave them loaded either.

True, but they cannot be that closely guarded – he might need them in a hurry. Even if they were, River is a supergenius who was probably being trained for some kind of Special Ops/ Espionage role, and stole into and seized control of another spacecraft with no apparent difficulty a few hours later. If she had all her marbles, she would be pretty formidable without any psychic powers at all.

In the real world, I tend to agree with Larry Nivens argument: psychic or magical powers, if real, must be almost useless. Otherwise, we would have done something with them by now. Certainly, I do not propose to believe any evidence for their existence that has not convinced Penn and Teller.

In the ‘verse, they exist if Joss wants them to. He has not given us anything unarguable, as JMS did in Babylon 5, or as Joss himself did in Buffy. On the other hand, he has raised the question with River (and her alone) in the ‘verse.

I’d say he wants to maintain the ambiguity. Probably however long the series lasted, the ambiguity would have remained.

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Sunday, May 10, 2009 11:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
What you describe isn't deja vu, what you describe is precognition. I have said what levels I've observed precognition to happen at, and that those are natural. I also said I've seen no evidence to support longer distance or time frame examples of precognition, which are, admittedly, much harder to prove.

Deja vu is an eerie sensation where you feel like you have witnessed or done something before, but have no conscious recollection of having done so.

How do you claim the two differ so?
Your explanation sounds like when you experience precog at some point and then later experience the event that you previously precog'd, you call that Deja Vu.
If you sense that you have experienced an event previously, although you cannot recall it actually happening before, that would logically indicate that you had previously precog'd the experience, right?
You seem to be implying that precog and Deja Vu have no relationship to each other, are not varying degrees of the same phenomena.
Or are you saying the only difference between them is that if the precog is unconscious, like during a dream, then it's called Deja Vu, and if the precog happens when fully awake then it's called precognition? Is that it?

Trying to clarify your Deja Vu explanation, you mean that you know what is about to happen in the next few seconds, the words and phrases spoken by which people, the sounds and sights you experience for the duration of the Deja Vu period, the unfolding input matches your prior recollection, is that right?

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Monday, May 11, 2009 3:50 AM

There is no "sensing" involved in deja vu. It only SEEMS like you experienced something before, or something feels familiar, when you haven't experienced it (including any sort of "sensing" or precognition), it shouldn't be familiar, and you have no memory of it. The person experiencing deja vu should have no notion or apprehension of the experience before it happens, or else it is not deja vu.

There aren't any ways to document unconscious procognition, so I can't really say that deja vu is some kind of reaction to a form of it.

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Monday, May 11, 2009 11:18 AM

I'd like to back Cavalier up here, (in the "can't look" scene) though I have experienced my share of uncanny stuff.

There are actually 2 mathematical ways to triangulate them...with her brain. One involves statistics and the other is in integral calculus. Unfortunately the specifics are not in my area of study. Theoretically, she could literally be "doing the math". Also, there's a visual training for something approaching this involving high physical sensitivity, I believe they use it in US special combat forces to some extent. So, whatever way you want to look at it, it's impressive, buuuuut not quite out of the realm of reality. Freakish though it is, her third eye would not be the only explanation.

--
"Bring it, Captain Tightpants."

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Monday, May 11, 2009 10:19 PM