Science News: Is River's ESP Real? by two

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Science News: Is River's ESP Real?

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POSTED BY: TWO
UPDATED: Sunday, June 17, 2012 11:33
SHORT URL: http://goo.gl/JixHO
VIEWED: 20005
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Thursday, April 7, 2011 12:20 PM

There's actually quite a bit of documentation on the effects of damage to the amygdala, and actually a lot of people with a damaged amygdala end up with anxiety problems. (Though they don't normally end up with schizophrenia or word processing issues)

However! It's just as possible that the Alliance was aiming for "fearless super-soldier" (which can also happen), then messed it up, but in the meantime stumbled across another interesting area of study (psychic). To compensate for the anxiety issues, they then put her through conditioning training, to give her an on/off switch for the "fearless super-soldier" that they were originally trying to do.

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Thursday, April 7, 2011 2:58 PM

INVADERCHAT

Well this is a very interesting thread, I've followed it for a bit but never had time to throw in a response before someone else sort of says what I was thinking anyway :P

On the subject of the amygdala though. Going with the uncertain nature of what damage to it can do in real life and what is said on the show, if they essentially aimed to remove her emotional filter I think that would be with the intention of improving empathic abilities. If she can't 'not feel' anything then she would be much more sensitive to other people's thoughts/emotions running through her head.

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Thursday, April 7, 2011 5:48 PM

MYOWNKNIGHT

maybe the phsycologists decided on naughty pictures just because its funny. come on guys, phsycologists have a sense of humor too.

I have to agree with InvaderChat, stripping the Amygdala would have been more likely to produce a Empathic side effect, rather than that of Precognition. you know when you get a 'vibe' off of people? well I've heard it described as I am 'reading someones aura' (bull) my 'spirit' is touching theirs, (possible) and my subconciously picking up phsycial warning signs. (sounds possible, but unlikely, Ive gotten 'vibes' off of completely none threatening people before). perhaps stripping her Amygdala would result in her being able to pick up these 'vibes' off of people more strongly, since her subconcious can't ignore them.

~Ji~. www.riversdiary.tumblr.com

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Thursday, April 7, 2011 8:36 PM

INVADERCHAT

Oh, and it also could have made her more susceptible to mental conditioning/triggers and the like because she wouldn't be able to ignore the pain and stuff so easily. For example, her vivid (probably specifically engineered) dreams at the start of Serenity would seem much more real if she couldn't reign in her emotions.

*EDIT*
Hah, good point about the psychologists having a sense of humor too, funny how nobody, including myself, even considered that :P
Though I still think it's unlikely.

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Thursday, May 31, 2012 12:57 AM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

In the latest news, it is still not proved that River has ESP:

Paranormal Circumstances: One Influential Scientist's Quixotic Mission to Prove ESP Exists; published online May 14, 2012
http://discovermagazine.com/2012/mar/09-paranormal-circumstances-scien
tist-mission-esp/ claims require extraordinary evidence, and Bem’s findings must be well confirmed by other researchers before they will accept them as true. Electromagnetism works the same way every time. But so far, nobody who has attempted to reproduce Bem’s findings has published positive results. Marketing professors Leif Nelson at U.C. Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University’s Jeff Galak failed to get positive results from a replication of the test involving erotic images, and experimental psychologist Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire in England failed to reproduce the outcome of the word recall test. www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033423

Bem responds that there were flaws in both efforts.

There should be people working on this crazy stuff. It probably doesn’t exist, but if it does, it’ll upend everything.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, May 31, 2012 3:46 AM

BYTEMITE

Really I can't say I'm surprised that they've had statistically random results in the duplication tests. The original STUDY was statistically random within margin of error. If anything it was another indication that ESP doesn't exist.

This Bem guy reminds me of Conan Arthur Doyle, author of the Sherlock stories, who started out a rationalist, saw some now considered rather laughable photographic "evidence" of fairies, and went off the deep end trying to prove fairies were real when it was revealed the evidence was a hoax. There is a human tendency to become invested in an idea, and among intellectuals when their credibility is at stake, they tend to double down instead of rethink.

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Thursday, May 31, 2012 12:02 PM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
There is a human tendency to become invested in an idea, and among intellectuals when their credibility is at stake, they tend to double down instead of rethink.

I have a career for fanfic River Tam -- Parapsychologist. Who better to explain causation of the capricious, actively evasive, unsustainable nature of ESP? She'd discover why psychic phenomena are so weak, unreliable, and rare.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, June 2, 2012 3:41 PM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!

Good thread, so much to discuss...

Precognitive River, maybe. All of the evidence of River being precognitive could also have another explanation. In Out of Gas her fire comment could very well just been about the candles on Simon's cake. Ariel, the nurse helping the doctor may have had an idea he had screwed up but not said anything. River could have also known about the drug interactions, she is a genius. War Stories, her shots were not that far fetched. Just take a look at what some exhibition shooters can do. She may have just been counting on getting the shots off before the three men could respond.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Sunday, June 3, 2012 4:05 AM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by m52nickerson:
Good thread, so much to discuss...
War Stories, her shots were not that far fetched. Just take a look at what some exhibition shooters can do. She may have just been counting on getting the shots off before the three men could respond.

I think you are simply to say “Oh! Wow!” when River avoided getting killed by the three goons with machine guns in War Stories. You are NOT suppose to ever know what River knows when she steps in front of that firing squad. Why does she think she will survive? Nobody knows!

River is like the Island on Lost; we never know what is impossible for her to do next. She can walk barefoot and barehanded in snow to kill 6 bad guys in Serenity: Downtime and can jump down 55 feet onto a bad guy without spraining her ankle in Serenity: It's Never Easy. No explanations, please. It slows down narrative. Serenity: The Other Half is the exception to the rule of no explanations, ever. The Other Half showed what River was thinking.

River is more a story device than a real person with ESP, same as the Lost's Island was eventually revealed in the last TV episode as just another writer's device to make more stories. ( I was disappointed with Lost's b.s. ending -- the Island was a dream in the afterlife. Or something else half-assed and half-baked. )

Unlike Lost, I'm going to make a completely and utterly solid scientific explanation for River with no wiggle room for interpretation. I am stealing from Men in Black 3 (2012), which shows precognition as time-travel of two different types. River is doing the same.

So I don't spoil MiB3:

Select to view spoiler:

Agent J is hit 3 times by Boris's deadly spikes at the Apollo moon launch. Agent J falls to his death, except J uses his hand-held time-machine as a big red reset button for death. Next time, J knows when to dodge the spikes. Boris twice says, “THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE!” I agree that J is showing skills that only River has, unless you also have a time-machine. If River isn't Agent J then she is Griffin, the 5th dimensional alien from Men in Black 3 who lives in an infinite number of 4th dimension space-times and sees all alternate futures.

MiB3 put its explanations upfront, which is unlike Lost,which saved explanations until the last episode. But sometimes the last episode doesn't get made. Where is your explanation then?

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, June 16, 2012 4:55 PM

THEMACROPROSOPUS

Hey, look; Steve the Pirate.

I'm going to go with the notion that there's definitely something different about the kid. Sure, most of her statements could be construed as happenstance (candles on the cake = "fire", etc). But, what about when Simon says "we're on a ship", and she states the exact model - better than even Mal can - just by looking around the infirmary? One's powers of deduction can only get them so far.
Or, Serenity (the movie), when she actually sees the reaver attacking before it happens, and it causes her to launch herself backwards in fear?
She couldn't have heard Mal say he needed her for that bank robbery. So, how did she know she was "going for a ride"?
This one isn't quite precognition, but it supports mind reading: Wash is never shown teaching River anything about how the ship flies. Yet, River...obviously has some aptitude. Even Mal suggests that she reads minds, with the proceeding comment about her already knowing what he's going to say.
Precognition examples are relatively rare, but the telepathy idea is pretty concrete. Continuing with the movie, the opening scene even dictates that she "might have accidentally gleaned" secrets from people, which is made evident by her knowledge of both the location of Miranda itself, and the video file that explains the entire issue. Her fight scene demonstrates mind reading in that, unless you're like...Steven Seagal, it's pretty much impossible to know someone's attacking you from behind without looking.

I could probably keep going. But, now it just feels like I'm beating a dead horse.

---
If "liberty" means anything, at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. - Orwell

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Sunday, June 17, 2012 11:33 AM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by THEMACROPROSOPUS:
I could probably keep going. But, now it just feels like I'm beating a dead horse.

We're going about this too scientifically by looking for possibilities of ESP in the show or movie and reading scientific papers. The direct way would be to ask Joss Whedon about what River can do.

I think River's ability varies according to what Joss needed for a script. She has it when needed; when it is not needed, Joss turned off River's ESP, making her nice and quiet.

If River was a real person, her ESP would be turned on all the time, like taste and smell, and she'd be doing something inappropriately weird or violent all the time -- a female Jubal Early. Wherever Early goes, everybody is nervously watching that wacko. Thus River's various kinds of ESP had to come and go depending on what Joss needed for an episode.

That's why we can't make up our minds about River ESP, because it varied according to Whedon whim.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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