Ariel... by freelancertex

FIREFLY EPISODE DISCUSSIONS

Ariel...

POSTED BY: FREELANCERTEX
UPDATED: Monday, January 7, 2008 05:01
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VIEWED: 8660
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Monday, December 31, 2007 1:03 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Lacyflyer:
Simon said that, as gifited as he was (top 3% of his med school class) River made him look like an idiot.

Um... he was referring to River before she went to the Academy. She was good at physics and ballet and whatever else - that was clearly what he meant. There is no reason to assume he was referring to extra special abilities. We see none of that in her in the flashbacks.

Quote:
I think that even if she had not been messed up by the Alliance people playing with her brain she probably would have been pretty mentally unstable.

Why? In the early bits of the River Tam sessions, she's quite normal seeming. A healthy, normal, very very smart and talented girl. The instability pretty clearly comes along gradually, as they train her and cut into her head. If you want to argue that she was pre-disposed to it, that's something else. But to say she had it already... I'm not seeing itisall.

Oh - and welcome to the site Lacy Flyer! Debating Firefly is fun.

Freelancertex: "except that she is a precog..as has been stated by more than one character."

Really? Where? Seriously, I missed that.

JSF: "Not sure how that gonna work. She's absorbing all the extra sensor input, but when she gets future data, she thinks, "oh, golly, that's the pre-cog stuff I'm gonna filter out, and not process because Joss doesn't understand ESP a bunch"

Man oh man. Where are you getting all these ESP rules? I had no idea that it was so well established and mapped out!

- Seriously Doubting Mal4prez

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Monday, December 31, 2007 9:27 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

How do you think Extra Sensory input is percieved? It comes in with some time stamp in the corner of the datastream?
How do you determine that any of your senses are current, or in chronological order, or in linear time format, or in compressed or refracted deviation, or in dream?

Most psychics who are greatly certain of their time reference are incomplete, that is they can only Extra Sense forward (future) or back (past) or current - their abilities are limited to one or very few parameters, so they have learned from experience where their focus lies.
If more than one timeframe is possible, the sensor must determine which direction in time the input is from.
How else did you think they could tell? Like watching a TV or video playback or something?
During testing/experimenting, the subjects can only learn when the researchers are careful to use time-specific criteria and not cross time references, so the direction of time as well as the distance into that time vector can be evaluated.
Nostradomus looked centuries into the future - how could he determine when it was, other than be viewing calendars or newspaper datelines.

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Monday, December 31, 2007 10:54 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Mal4prez, you sound unfamiliar with the practices and/or [rotocols.

Perhaps this would be a helpful intro, pay attention to the parts about "precognition."

http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/CIA-InitiatedRV.html

and maybe this one:
http://www.firedocs.com/remoteviewing/

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Tuesday, January 1, 2008 10:00 AM

MAL4PREZ

Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
There is no reason to assume he was referring to extra special abilities. We see none of that in her in the flashbacks.

OK - I was soooo wrong about this! I just watched the R Tam sessions, and River does make the point, in Session 1, that she's always been very intuitive. She always knows who Simon likes and stuff like that.

Still, I take this to be a pre-existing tendency, and not a full-blown ability. Certainly her innate sensing abilities are greatly expanded at the Academy, and she becomes crazy because of what they do to her.

JSF: I looked those sites over. I only saw two mentions of precognition in the first, and both were in passing. Now, I'll admit straight up that I don't think ESP is real, and a few vague studies don't convince me. I could be wrong. Maybe ESP does exist. But I've never seen it and never seen anything to make me think it's a proven thing, and especially I've never seen anything to convince me that the process behind it is as well known and defined as you say.

Whatever. What I do get out of the CIA papers is that even if ESP is real, no one knows how it works. There is absolutely no reason why mind-reading and knowing the future happen in the same mechanism. In fact, I think it'd be damned unlikely that they do. A brain is a physical, chemical structure, one that exists in the here and now, and a person's thoughts, memories, and emotional state are written there. The future... well, now you're talking a whole different deal. The future doesn't exist. Precog is a lot harder to pass off as sci-fi.

For that reason, I think Joss is making sense to not have precog. And again, I see no sign of it in the series. The only thing close is Peteline going into labor, but that doesn't have to be precog at all. River spoke up a second before Petaline did, but that doesn't mean Petaline didn't know. Most likely, Petaline felt the contraction and breathed off the pain for a second before she could speak. Check the timing and look at Petaline's expression in the episode - it fits.

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Tuesday, January 1, 2008 7:50 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
There is absolutely no reason why mind-reading and knowing the future happen in the same mechanism. In fact, I think it'd be damned unlikely that they do. A brain is a physical, chemical structure, one that exists in the here and now, and a person's thoughts, memories, and emotional state are written there. The future... well, now you're talking a whole different deal. The future doesn't exist. Precog is a lot harder to pass off as sci-fi.

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OK, I see where you're splitting up. You are differentiating between proximity mind reading and remote sensing, and you seem to consider one to exist and the other to not exist, and they are seperate skillsets or talents, and are not related to each other - if I understand you correctly.

So, you seem to consider the possibility of proximity mind reading to be less outrageous, and more likiely than the other to exist. This may or may not include reading the memory, so you could effectively understand seeing the past, as long as it was experienced by the person being read, thus in their memory. This type of reading (if I understand you) would not include reading, sensing, or communicating with the dead or with spirits.

The concept of remote sensing, even in real time (reading the mind -or sensing the vision - of somebody in another State or another continent), you consider seperate and you consider it not possible, it doesn't exist. Therefore, if you do not feel current time remote sensing is possible, then remote sensing in different times (forward or backward) also would not be included as possibility.

Is that correct?

To summarize in pop-culture terms, you would consider the Ghost Whisperer to be fantasy because the communication is with non-living entities, so mind reading (sensing the chemical reactions and interactions in a nearby brain) would not apply to the dead. And you also consider "Next" to be fantasy because you do not feel remote sensing is possible, even if it were in real time (although the Next protagonist is severely limited to future-only sensing).

i only linked to those as an intro to the concepts for you, they are not full descriptions.

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Wednesday, January 2, 2008 10:49 AM

MAL4PREZ

Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
OK, I see where you're splitting up. You are differentiating between proximity mind reading and remote sensing, and you seem to consider one to exist and the other to not exist, and they are seperate skillsets or talents, and are not related to each other - if I understand you correctly.

Not quite. I don't think any of this actually exists, I'm just pondering what makes sense in the context of Joss's fictional universe, and wondering the average viewer/reader will believe in their sci-fi.

Quote:
So, you seem to consider the possibility of proximity mind reading to be less outrageous, and more likiely than the other to exist.

Yes. One sci-fi book I read explained mind-reading based on quantum physics - that the state of things in one's neurons sets up a standing field that another person might be able to sense. In that way, whatever is in one person's mind can be read by another. This would include their memory, so in some sense the past, but only as the first person experienced and remembers it.

The idea being: you are able to access your own thoughts and memories and emotions through some (somewhat mysterious) system of electrical and chemical signals. So these things in your mind exist in physical reality. Perhaps there are ways that other people can access these things as well.

Again, I don't really believe it's possible for someone to stand next to you and read your mind - there's too much background noise to pick up that small a signal. But I can be convinced to believe it if I'm being told a fun story.

I can be convinced to believe a lot more too, for the sake of entertainment.

But I don't think this "remote sensing" or "precog" fits what I've seen of Joss's Firefly verse. It fit Buffy and Angel, but not Firefly.

Quote:
This type of reading (if I understand you) would not include reading, sensing, or communicating with the dead or with spirits.

Those things are not physically written in the brain. They do not exist in the material realm. To me - in the context of story-telling - they are solidly fantasy rather than sci-fi (I'm overlapping threads LOL!) You know... unless some clever writer comes up with good pseudo-science to explain it. The Matrix did a bit of this. Vampires and deja vu and such.

Quote:
The concept of remote sensing, even in real time (reading the mind -or sensing the vision - of somebody in another State or another continent), you consider seperate and you consider it not possible, it doesn't exist. Therefore, if you do not feel current time remote sensing is possible, then remote sensing in different times (forward or backward) also would not be included as possibility.

Hey, that all may be possible, but I've seen nothing to convince me of it, and there's no plce for it in the laws of physics as they're currently written.

Of course, Joss isn't huge on the laws of physics, so even all these ESP things were real with solid, proven laws behind them, there's no reason to suppose he'd pay attention LOL!

Quote:
the Ghost Whisperer .... Next protagonist ...

Sorry - I know neither of these!

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Wednesday, January 2, 2008 7:16 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

The Ghost Whisperer was a TV show in the last few years starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, IIRC. Haven't seen the show, but read the synopsis and understood she communicates with the dead, and much of the technical consultanting was with psychics of this specialty. The demonstration type shows that the real practitioners have had are difficult to sell because TV shows can produce fiction in the stead of documentary reporting, so it might be an easier sell on Tv to just pretend it's fiction/fantasy.

Next was a film from last summer, starring Nicholas Cage and Jessica Biel. He was a remote senser who was limited to solely future readings, I don't recall he could do present time readings or past readings - or perhaps he trained himself to only concentrate on future sensing.

I really should have also mentioned Suspect Zero, which was one of the best films I've seen regarding remote sensing. Not knowing much about it in advance, I was well into the movie before I realized what it was about (or, the background of the protagonist, played by Benn Kingsley). It also starred Aaron Eckhart and Carrie Anne Moss, although that was one of her most dissapointing roles I've seen her in. I was also disapointed in the ending, but it still provided great exposure and fantastic understanding of the practice. It did still have too much "hollywood" crud added in, to make it more "exciting" and hyped up.

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 7:50 AM

LEIASKY

>I haven't quite figured out why she cuts Jayne - just because he was rude to Simon?

Popular opinion is because he is wearing a Blue Sun t-shirt and they were the financial backers or some such in the Academy . . . or some of the 'secrets' she gleaned were about Blue Sun's less than legal activities. . .

"A government is a body of people usually notably ungoverned."

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 8:05 AM

MAL4PREZ

Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
I was also disapointed in the ending, but it still provided great exposure and fantastic understanding of the practice. It did still have too much "hollywood" crud added in, to make it more "exciting" and hyped up.

I see the difference here. I see sci-fi movies and books as entertainment and possible social/political statements, not as opportunities to market and educate the general public as to the practical aspects of ESP. But then, I don't believe in ESP.

Hey, to each his/her own!

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 10:04 AM

LEIASKY

Agreed, Mal4Prez.

Take National Treasure 2 for example. Great, entertaining movie. Not in any way plausible.

I wouldn't look to a movie to provide accurate information.

"A government is a body of people usually notably ungoverned."

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 4:24 PM

ASARIAN

Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:

There is absolutely no reason why mind-reading and knowing the future happen in the same mechanism. In fact, I think it'd be damned unlikely that they do. A brain is a physical, chemical structure, one that exists in the here and now, and a person's thoughts, memories, and emotional state are written there. The future... well, now you're talking a whole different deal. The future doesn't exist. Precog is a lot harder to pass off as sci-fi.

Is it bad that what you say makes perfect sense to me? :)

A word on ESP, first. RiverFlan, where did ya read telekinesis is considered ESP? It really says that? Well, the book is wrong! :) Telekinesis, lit. 'causing movement from a distance' (presumably by the psyche, hence probably better known as 'psychokinesis') is not something I would, my own self, file under 'perception' (extra or otherwise). It's all in the realm of parapsychology, though.

I believe mind reading exists, yes. But I'm also of the belief it has nothing to do with electromagnetic signals of the brain and such. To me, it's more a spiritual matter: 'spiritual' in the literal sense, as in pertaining to the human spirit (or soul, rather, encased in a spirit body, to be precise). I would ere call it soul-to-soul communication. Soul-perceptions. I think every human has em; for instance, in varying degrees of sensibility, we can all sense it when someone is staring us in the back. And I think they can be developed too, but I digress.

From books I read on parapsychology, when I was still a wee child, I recall astronaut Edgar Mitchell used Zener cards to test for telepathy in an unofficial experiment during the Apollo 14 mission to the moon in 1971. And one of the (expected) outcomes was that distance doesn't matter. So, spiritual phenomenon or no, at least I believe it occurs extra-dimensional: on a plane where distance either doesn't matter or takes on a completely different meaning. And it don't surprise me none the CIA is clueless; how they expect to find something so subtle? They can't even find Bin Laden. :)

Telekinesis I find plausible, too. I still, to this date, have to chuckle when I think back on what Hofstadter once cleverly remarked on the subject: "Mind over matter, or matter over mind? If you don't mind, it doesn't matter!" :) LOL. I actually think it's mind over matter.

Precog stuff, well that's indeed an entirely different beast. Assuming it even exists, there's no law says you'd have to perceive it in an extra-sensory fashion: because 'being' in the future, you could just perceive it with your regular senses. So, the question is more, is time travel possible? Future and politics, little girl. Situation is always fluid. :) Okay, the whole thing goes: "The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves." Oh wait, got confused again. :) At any rate, I doubt precog is really possible. For one, because even the act of seeing the future changes said future! To measure something is to disturb it (much lilke you cannot stick a thermometer in a bath tub to measure how hot the water is, without, in doing so, disturing said temperature). So, foreseeing the future changes that future insofar that when the foreseen moment arrives, it's already different from the 'original' in that you have the memory of having seen it before.

Okay, now my brain hurts. :)

--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 5:02 PM

CHRISTHECYNIC

I'm just going to throw this out here and I'm sure someone can tell me why it's wrong.

River can read people's minds. River has an incredible brain. With the information she has available to her and the brain she uses to interpret that information couldn't she simply be very good at predicting the future.

There's a difference between knowing the future (precognition) and just guessing.

In Ariel the natural assumption is that she saw a little while into the future and saw that the person was going to die, but there were two people who, if you combined their knowledge, would have seen it coming. The one who gave the patient the wrong medication knew what medication the patient had, Simon (and likely several others) knew it was the wrong one. River had access to both of their brains, couldn't she has simply worked it out.

River seemed to know Mal was coming back in Safe, but any one of us could have made that prediction equally well knowing what we know of Mal (though the timing was harder to predict.)

River knew that Petaline was having a baby before Petaline did, but if she was in Petaline's head and either Simon's or one of the whores who had given birth before it could be reasonable for her to know what was coming based on sensations Petaline wasn't able to interpret.

River said, "Fire," in Out of Gas but given what she seems to know about ships, that Kaylee had been fairly vocal about which part wasn't working, and the "hiccup" that could be an educated guess too.

There are definitely times when it seems River is a few seconds (or more) ahead of the rest of the 'verse, but I'm thinking that it could be that she's more like a chess player looking a few moves ahead than like Usul seeing the endgame that's already been written.

On the other hand she could just see the future.

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 5:08 PM

ASARIAN

Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:

River can read people's minds. River has an incredible brain. With the information she has available to her and the brain she uses to interpret that information couldn't she simply be very good at predicting the future.

There's a difference between knowing the future (precognition) and just guessing.

In Ariel the natural assumption is that she saw a little while into the future and saw that the person was going to die, but there were two people who, if you combined their knowledge, would have seen it coming. The one who gave the patient the wrong medication knew what medication the patient had, Simon (and likely several others) knew it was the wrong one. River had access to both of their brains, couldn't she has simply worked it out.

River seemed to know Mal was coming back in Safe, but any one of us could have made that prediction equally well knowing what we know of Mal (though the timing was harder to predict.)

River knew that Petaline was having a baby before Petaline did, but if she was in Petaline's head and either Simon's or one of the whores who had given birth before it could be reasonable for her to know what was coming based on sensations Petaline wasn't able to interpret.

River said, "Fire," in Out of Gas but given what she seems to know about ships, that Kaylee had been fairly vocal about which part wasn't working, and the "hiccup" that could be an educated guess too.

There are definitely times when it seems River is a few seconds (or more) ahead of the rest of the 'verse, but I'm thinking that it could be that she's more like a chess player looking a few moves ahead than like Usul seeing the endgame that's already been written.

On the other hand she could just see the future.

I don't disagree on any particular point. In fact, I see it exactly so.

--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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Thursday, January 3, 2008 7:15 PM

PLATONIST

I always thought Firefly writers fell victim (and hoped we did, too) to the 10% Brain Usage Myth for their watery explanation of River's psychic abilities coupled with her high cognitive function. Of course, there is little scientific evidence to support such claims of human cranial capacity compared to our actual brain usage, which for most people I encounter is about 3 percent (purely, an estimation on my part).

Telepathy, precog, kinesis, etc, seem to be common day abilities of futuristic humans in alternative universes. I do think River may be the first character, I've run across though, to have a Mensa sized IQ and Level 5 Dance Dance Revolution moves.

In short, Joss and company know zilch about brain function and psychic abilities and didn't bother to consult with any expert or with a parapsychologist, except to watch Bill Murray in Ghostbusters.

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Sunday, January 6, 2008 8:21 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Quote:
Originally posted by asarian:

I believe mind reading exists, yes. But I'm also of the belief it has nothing to do with electromagnetic signals of the brain and such. To me, it's more a spiritual matter: 'spiritual' in the literal sense, as in pertaining to the human spirit (or soul, rather, encased in a spirit body, to be precise). I would ere call it soul-to-soul communication. Soul-perceptions. I think every human has em; for instance, in varying degrees of sensibility, we can all sense it when someone is staring us in the back. And I think they can be developed too, but I digress.

From books I read on parapsychology, when I was still a wee child, I recall astronaut Edgar Mitchell used Zener cards to test for telepathy in an unofficial experiment during the Apollo 14 mission to the moon in 1971. And one of the (expected) outcomes was that distance doesn't matter. So, spiritual phenomenon or no, at least I believe it occurs extra-dimensional: on a plane where distance either doesn't matter or takes on a completely different meaning.

Precog stuff, well that's indeed an entirely different beast. Assuming it even exists, there's no law says you'd have to perceive it in an extra-sensory fashion: because 'being' in the future, you could just perceive it with your regular senses. So, the question is more, is time travel possible?

You are assuming precog requires your own presence in the future, which would require time-travel. Time travel has major problems in terms of physical transmittal.
Remote viewing does not engage the transferrance of being to another place and/or time, but only a focused type of mind reading - mostly looking through the target person's eyes, sensing their optical input. If you are viewing the optical input of another, it does not matter how far away they are, and it has also been proven to not matter if it is in the future.

From what you have described above as your understnading, this also allows the reading of spirits/souls no longer living. So psychics who commune with the deceased are also included here.

Have any of you seen that primetime show that "investigated" technical remote viewing? It was about 8 or 10 years ago on ABC or NBC, some show like "48hours" or somesuch? I was amazed that a big network would put that on primetime, but they covered themselves pretty well. They did do a "live" demonstration, although being television, they could have edited a fictional account, but they stated they did not.

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Sunday, January 6, 2008 10:55 PM

ASARIAN

Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:

You are assuming precog requires your own presence in the future, which would require time-travel. Time travel has major problems in terms of physical transmittal.

No, you are assuming I assumed that. :) I just said: "There's no law says you'd HAVE to perceive it in an extra-sensory fashion: because 'being' in the future, you COULD just perceive it with your regular senses."

As for time and place, yes, I think looking into the future inevitably means you are, in essence, 'there' -- weird as that sounds. Since you're 'there' when seeing things, the "physical transmittal" part is simply absent, or has been skipped, rather. It's like seeing myself at work, 1 day in the future, while now sitting on the couch: I would, that next day, simply have traveled to work, in my car, in regular fashion. It's just that tapping into the future places me after that time, already at my desk. I know this is mind-boggling stuff, but I don't think looking into the future -- if it were at all possible, which I highly doubt -- would mean I'd "physically" have to zap out to that place: as it's simple NOT a matter of place, but of time.

Personally, I'm all for "looking through the target person's eyes, sensing their optical input," but, IMHO, that just shifts the question of the actual perception of the future to that third-party. In other words: instead of directly asking how I could perceive it, the question then becomes: how does he/she see it?

"It does not matter how far away they are,"

Agreed.

"It has also been proven to not matter if it is in the future."

Come to think of it, I actually DO rememeber that. With these Zener card experiments, you'd sometimes see a delay, as it were, where someone might predict the right sequence, but not of the current batch, yet of that of the next, for instance (or otherwise predict slightly out of sync). I do maintain though, with mal4prez, that precog is fundamentally different from 'simple' mind-reading. Though, as to a psychic, both abilities might come as easily, they've gotta be based on some fundamentally different principles.

"From what you have described above as your understnading, this also allows the reading of spirits/souls no longer living. So psychics who commune with the deceased are also included here."

Avtually, yes. :) That is precisely what I believe; a very perceptive conclusion on your end! There is, far as I know, when it comes to psychic ability, essentially no difference between mortal-to-mortal, and mortal-to-spirit communication (if we call a 'spirit' here 'a person living in the spirit world'). Both are governed by the Laws of Rapport and Communication (and, sideways, the Law of Attraction, which dictates that like attracts like). Fascinating stuff, really. But I'm not entirely sure a Firefly board is the entirely proper venue for discussing matters that border so close on religion. Next thing I know, people might come out and say I have too much snow on my roof. :)

--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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Sunday, January 6, 2008 11:23 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Don't see how it requires tangent arguments regarding religion - although Sheppard Book is a good enough reason to have it here.

Furthermore, Joss states that Firefly/Serenity is River's story, the story of this crew through her view. Therefore, this is prezactly the place for discussions of River's abilities or possible talents.

Perhaps you could explain - how to you percieve the mechanics or instruments of "precog," and how do you consider it different from "remote viewing" - even in the future? How do you see the connection and control working, or being different? How do you precisely target a connection to a desired time/place/person?

Ooops, just reread that again. Are you saying that (IF) precog is possible, then it is only possible from your personal perspective? Only from your own future experience? So that it can only occur in a time and place when you are there? And no precog can exist past your lifetime (after you are dead)? If so, how would you explain Nostradomus, for instance? How about precog of a place you would never have been, you consider that impossible?

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Monday, January 7, 2008 5:01 AM

ASARIAN

Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:

Perhaps you could explain - how to you percieve the mechanics or instruments of "precog," and how do you consider it different from "remote viewing" - even in the future? How do you see the connection and control working, or being different?

I consider mind-reading an almost 'trivial' function, in the sense that it takes not much of a stretch to imagine that thought-transmissions take place via a different dimension, so that 'distances' may be radically shorter from what we're used to. Or that we're, on some level, never really separated from one another to begin with (!). There are, what, like like eleven dimensions anyway? Eleven, important number, prime number; one goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. :) I just mean that, though we don't know yet how mind-to-mind communication works, imagining that it could work does not require a complete rewrit of the laws of known physics.

The ability to foresee the future, however, bends the mind in ways that riddle the brain with holes. :) The movie Paycheck, for example, was predicated on the idea of building a "laser-enhanced lens" which is powerful enough to see around the curvature of the universe. Because if you could see around a curve that went on forever, you would end up back where you started, looking at yourself, except not looking back at yourself now, in the present, but you'd be looking at yourself in the future. Of course, such a lense does not exist. But if it did, you'd actually see EVERYTHING in this craphill 'verse (I believe there was a Star Trek Voyager episode about that once, too). Thing of it is, though, that I'm pretty sure you wouldn't really see the future, alas, but the past. Imagine the universe were like a sphere, and we'd be on the equator, being able to look, say, 10 billion light years in either direction. Then, if you could see all the way around the universe, and back again, what you'd be seeing were events that happened 40 billion years ago! That makes seeing the future a long wait for a train don't come. Best of luck, though. :)

Hmm, just had an interesting thought. What if you were to go faster than light? Yes, that's not possible, far as we know; but work with me here. You'd be travelling backwards in time, right? Ok, that don't do you much good, as you wanted to go forward. But, to a psychic person in the past, you and your knowledge represent the future! So, what if what we call the 'now' is actually someone's past, and precog is just a manner of psychically tapping into the consciousness of the one who, from his perspective, is traveling back? It wouldn't actually have to be a person traveling backwards: could be particles (tachyons?) or some such. In other words, something that, by the act of going back, left a trail of gleanable future?

Okay, here's is where the brain cramps are setting in again! :) The flames of ignorance burn without pain! as I heard spoken today. What we really need here, I reckon, is Mr. Universe himself, Citizen. He's the only one who can really discuss these matters, and still come out looking shiny at the end of it. :)

--
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam

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