Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

For theory crafting this "Void" that is in 40k might be the reason to why there is Psykers.

You folks missed that...

Rustgob wrote:
I've always held the belief that Physics, Chemistry and Biology as we know them only work because enough smart people believe that they SHOULD.

Think about quantum wave/particle duality; the state of a quantum wave/particle is altered because it is being observed!

How crazy is that, honestly?!

Therefore, I think we, as a species generate a kind of gestalt control over the universe when our beliefs align!

Edit: We'z well orky!

*sigh* There are days I really wish the general public had never heard the word "quantum".

Observer Effect is not magic, it's simply the factual statement that the method of taking measurements can cause the thing being measured to change - when you wire a voltmeter into a circuit, you add additional load to the system and thus alter its behaviour; when you measure the air pressure in a tire you must by necessity allow some air to escape and so on. That this proposition does not change when we're measuring extremely small things like subatomic particles is not strange or mystical, indeed if it did change and measuring subatomic phenomena didn't change the system being measured in some way, we'd have to throw out our entire bloody model of reality! When you know that the "observer", ie whatever you're using to take measurements, will alter the system, you can account for that by considering the "observer" as part of the system being measured. With systems on the macro scale, we can do that very easily, but it's much harder to get the math to make sense when dealing with quantum scale because we don't properly understand the bloody quantum scale of reality yet.

Now, get your icky philosophy out of my physics, do you have any idea how hard it is to scrub that stuff out?

The OP asks valid questions. And dangerous ones. IF such people existed, what do you think the "Powers that Be" would do? Round them up? Attempt to bring them under control? Or if they couldn't do that, kill them? Yes. Those in positions of power will do whatever they can to keep it and that includes controlling and/or killing those with psychic ability. Can you even begin to imagine what a government would do with a person or group of people that could wield that kind of power? They could use them spy on not just their enemies, but their own populace as well. They would have yet another tool of control to use against their own people. If someone spoke out against the government, they could use a psychic to change the perceptions of the speaker or, worse yet, the audience to view that person as a traitor.

If I had psychic ability I'd keep it hidden as I don't want my government getting a hold on such power and using me to hurt others. It would only be the smart thing to do as every government on the planet is only worried about maintaining their power and controlling their people. Even though it's just a game, the Emperor said it first: it's a dangerous ability. And for all the reasons I just gave.

And for dessert: has anyone ever read about Edward Casey? I suggest you do because that man was amazing. He had to hire guards to stand outside his hotel rooms because people would come in and, while he was sleeping, ask him about horse races. That John Edwards is a charlatan.

How do explain the link between mothers and children. I remember when I brother got hit by a car my mom knew he was hurt. On the way up to college someone called my mom and said me and my dad had been in a car wreck and were in the morg in TX and she had to come claim the bodies. My mom said no sorry I would have known. I had a really bad night at college and my mom called the next day to pull me out.

Is there a connection between living things. I believe so. Do people have an aura or electrical fields? Can these fields connect us? Can you you really say you know the answer to that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY745NxZwsY

There is the unexplained. some people have abilities others don't. I mean that guy can take voltage that would kill me or you.

Have you read the governments experiments with far seeing? Useful no. interesting I think so. I had read experiments that certain people defy probabilities w/ dice rolling or random chance. Is it just random luck or is there some gift that people have for rolling dice? I know gamers who roll bad all the time and others who roll far above average all the time.

Do we truly understand the human brain?

 GreySkull wrote:
The OP asks valid questions. And dangerous ones. IF such people existed, what do you think the "Powers that Be" would do? Round them up? Attempt to bring them under control? Or if they couldn't do that, kill them? Yes. Those in positions of power will do whatever they can to keep it and that includes controlling and/or killing those with psychic ability. Can you even begin to imagine what a government would do with a person or group of people that could wield that kind of power? They could use them spy on not just their enemies, but their own populace as well. They would have yet another tool of control to use against their own people. If someone spoke out against the government, they could use a psychic to change the perceptions of the speaker or, worse yet, the audience to view that person as a traitor.

If I had psychic ability I'd keep it hidden as I don't want my government getting a hold on such power and using me to hurt others. It would only be the smart thing to do as every government on the planet is only worried about maintaining their power and controlling their people. Even though it's just a game, the Emperor said it first: it's a dangerous ability. And for all the reasons I just gave.

And for dessert: has anyone ever read about Edward Casey? I suggest you do because that man was amazing. He had to hire guards to stand outside his hotel rooms because people would come in and, while he was sleeping, ask him about horse races. That John Edwards is a charlatan.

Do you mean Edgar Cayce, the racist crackpot fraud who claimed that he received psychic knowledge that humanity was simultaneously and spontaneously created as five distinct races(white, black, brown, red, and yellow), and that "red people"(referring to Native Americans one assumes) are in fact the descendents of Atlanteans? The man who claimed that Atlantis was destroyed by a "Death Ray" which the USA would find, according to his skryings? The man who claimed he spoke to angels as a child, who supported alternative quackery(because as someone has already mentioned; alternative medicine that works is called "medicine", and who routinely couched his predictions in terms of "perhaps" and "I feel like"?

Yes, amazing indeed

 Mythra wrote:
How do explain the link between mothers and children. I remember when I brother got hit by a car my mom knew he was hurt. On the way up to college someone called my mom and said me and my dad had been in a car wreck and were in the morg in TX and she had to come claim the bodies. My mom said no sorry I would have known. I had a really bad night at college and my mom called the next day to pull me out.

Is there a connection between living things. I believe so. Do people have an aura or electrical fields? Can these fields connect us? Can you you really say you know the answer to that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY745NxZwsY

There is the unexplained. some people have abilities others don't. I mean that guy can take voltage that would kill me or you.

Have you read the governments experiments with far seeing? Useful no. interesting I think so. I had read experiments that certain people defy probabilities w/ dice rolling or random chance. Is it just random luck or is there some gift that people have for rolling dice? I know gamers who roll bad all the time and others who roll far above average all the time.

Do we truly understand the human brain?

To begin with your questions: Of course people have an electric field, bioelectricity is well known and understood, and it has knob-all to do with psychic mumbo-jumbo. I have read of the government's experiments with "far seeing", they were complete failures, to the point that comedy films have been made about them. It is just random "luck"(rather chance, since luck implies positive gain); if statistically unlikely events never happened, they wouldn't be unlikely, they'd be impossible.

Do we truly understand the human brain? Not completely no, but the pertinent question is; has any of the substantial knowledge we've gathered about the human brain so far suggested that it could provide people with supernatural abilities? No.

You talk about people who "know" that relatives are in pain/danger/etc, but the great likelihood is they didn't "know" anything, consider; do you get a "spooky" feeling when you think of someone, then that person immediately calls you on the phone? That's an example of Confirmation Bias, specifically selective memory. For every occasion on which you thought of someone and they immediately called you, there were dozens, perhaps hundreds of occasions on which you thought of them but they didn't call you. But you don't remember those occasions specifically, so you assign special meaning when the "unlikely" sequence of events of "thought of person > person called" occurs. The same is likely true in the case of your "connection" idea; how often do we worry about the people we care for? Often, often enough that statistically speaking the chances that a person will have a worrying thought about a loved one at the same time that loved one is actually in an accident is essentially 1 in 1, given enough people and enough time.

Human beings do have some amazing abilities; pattern recognition, for example. Sadly, those abilities often lead us to make flawed judgements based on biased recollections and incomplete information, and so our species is blighted by psychics and charlatans.

 Mythra wrote:
How do explain the link between mothers and children. I remember when I brother got hit by a car my mom knew he was hurt. On the way up to college someone called my mom and said me and my dad had been in a car wreck and were in the morg in TX and she had to come claim the bodies. My mom said no sorry I would have known. I had a really bad night at college and my mom called the next day to pull me out.

Congratulations, you have hindsight bias over coincidence, not psychic powers. And you are assigning arbitrary values that are easily tested and disproven. If your mother has 'brother getting hurt' sense, you can test it. Put your brother in a room and poke him with a needle, enough to cause pain. Your mother should know when it is happening without you having to tell her.

Is there a connection between living things. I believe so. Do people have an aura or electrical fields? Can these fields connect us? Can you you really say you know the answer to that?

There may be, and hey! There have been people offering a million dollar prize to prove it since 1964. And aura reading is a super easy, valid test. If the aura exists, it would be some kind or projection from the body, correct? All you have to do is put a sheet that obscures just the body and it should be possible to track movement via the 'aura' right, so long as the sheet only barely covers the body, and only the body.

I'm not dismissing them, but I'm not buying anything without a mote of proof.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY745NxZwsY

There is the unexplained. some people have abilities others don't. I mean that guy can take voltage that would kill me or you.

Right because a TV interview is totally legit science. And there's absolutely no chance of this being obfuscated. At all.

Have you read the governments experiments with far seeing? Useful no. interesting I think so. I had read experiments that certain people defy probabilities w/ dice rolling or random chance. Is it just random luck or is there some gift that people have for rolling dice? I know gamers who roll bad all the time and others who roll far above average all the time.

Can you show us some of these experiments? Preferably from an actual government source, and not someone's interpretation.

And did you seriously just say that dice rolling is a skill? SERIOUSLY? I know people like to stretch to embrace their magical thinking, but dice rolling is lovely and random, and no two dice rolls can ever influence one another if cheating or some gaming doesn't occur.

Do we truly understand the human brain?

Nope. But magic powers are fantasy until I see some proof to the contrary.

 Yodhrin wrote:
what do you think the "Powers that Be" would do?

Hanlon's Razor applies here.

There are a lot of folks on here that speak so matter of factly about things they do not have first hand knowledge about.

karandras15 wrote:
There are a lot of folks on here that speak so matter of factly about things they do not have first hand knowledge about.

Explain.

karandras15 wrote:
There are a lot of folks on here that speak so matter of factly about things they do not have first hand knowledge about.

When it comes to proving things scientifically, firsthand knowledge is useless. Give me tests and controlled conditions.

 Melissia wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
what do you think the "Powers that Be" would do?

Hanlon's Razor applies here.

You fudged your quote tags Melissia

Also, I prefer "cock-up before conspiracy" myself, heh.

 Melissia wrote:

karandras15 wrote:
There are a lot of folks on here that speak so matter of factly about things they do not have first hand knowledge about.

Explain.

Either he's trying to imply we don't know what we're on about because we're not actual scientists(bad news chum, some of us are), or it's a variation on the old quackish canard that the only people qualified to discuss quackery are people who already believe in quackery.

 curran12 wrote:

karandras15 wrote:
There are a lot of folks on here that speak so matter of factly about things they do not have first hand knowledge about.

When it comes to proving things scientifically, firsthand knowledge is useless. Give me tests and controlled conditions.

You are not authorized to view most results of the scientific proof, but the "official" statement is that the information gathered proves remote viewing is not consistently accurate or specific for intelligence use...

If that makes you feel better

karandras15 wrote:
You are not authorized to view most results of the scientific proof, but the "official" statement is that the information gathered proves remote viewing is not consistently accurate or specific for intelligence use...

If that makes you feel better

Pfffftttttt and you buy that?

Oh wait, you're serious?

You seriously believe that the government, a body of THOUSANDS of individuals and incapable of keeping their own personal lives secret, is not only CAPABLE of keeping the secret of psychics under wraps, but also have somehow done so through that many people?

Woooooow.

Yodhrin, i think i love you.

Your rationality keeps the stupid in line, keep it up.

 curran12 wrote:

karandras15 wrote:
You are not authorized to view most results of the scientific proof, but the "official" statement is that the information gathered proves remote viewing is not consistently accurate or specific for intelligence use...

If that makes you feel better

Pfffftttttt and you buy that?

Oh wait, you're serious?

You seriously believe that the government, a body of THOUSANDS of individuals and incapable of keeping their own personal lives secret, is not only CAPABLE of keeping the secret of psychics under wraps, but also have somehow done so through that many people?

Woooooow.

I never revealed any personal beliefs...? You are taking leaps of assumption and being dramatic...that is the official release from military research on the subject for 30 years...

karandras15 wrote:

I never revealed any personal beliefs...? You are taking leaps of assumption and being dramatic...that is the official release from military research on the subject for 30 years...

Fine, let's see the release then. Blow me away.

Google it up...I don't intend to spoonfeed information to those that dare not seek it...

Fort Meade and Wright Patt are interesting places.

karandras15 wrote:
Google it up...I don't intend to spoonfeed information to those that dare not seek it...

Fort Meade and Wright Patt are interesting places.

Google for what, exactly? You haven't said a single solid item.

And I love how you say you won't 'spoonfeed' me when I ask you for proof of your claims. If they were such good sources, wouldn't you want to share them to shut me up?

I'm not claiming anything... enjoy the blue pill

karandras15 wrote:
I'm not claiming anything... enjoy the blue pill

And you're coming across as wonderfully rational for it. Now do you use Reynolds Wrap for your hats or just the store brand?

Sharks hunt by the electrical field given off by the body/nerves so there is field that living things give off. How that field interacts things I am not claiming to know.

Sadly my mom can't be tested as she is gone but would one truly be in danger in a test test environment as you described?

And you say magical thinking and what I am saying is the brain has about a 90% unused area who knows what its potential is.

You don't know people who roll consistently bad and others who roll consistently good? What if it is not magic like you're trying to say and more like the rain man. You drop a pack of toothpicks and an autistic can tell you how many are on the ground. I am saying one person denied one sense will sometimes develop others to compensate. The computation power of the brain is staggering. What if some brains are better at calculating if I throw this die now I have a better chance at getting a 6 thus skewing the odds?

Ben Underwood - Amazing. Truly a well documented if sad story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUXh-X1iveU

10 years ago a robotic arm that can use nerve impulses would have seemed like magic. Who knows what is scientifically possible. Why do you want to limit what is possible or stop people from trying to dream up the next big miracle?

http://www.gizmag.com/thought-controlled-prosthetic-arm/25216/

Solar Sails,anti matter, Space Flight, flight, and anything else that once was or is considered impossible should still be explored and considered. I am saying I don't know what is or isn't possible but I am at least willing to have an open mind. Who knows what machine we'll invent in the future to interact w/ the brain and make what ever possible. maybe one day the energy of the brain will be used by some helmet type device to move things. Who knows I can't say I do.

Every great achievement was once considered impossible.

Do I think time travel is possible? No. Does that mean it will never be invited?

 Mythra wrote:
Sharks hunt by the electrical field given off by the body/nerves so there is field that living things give off. How that field interacts things I am not claiming to know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampullae_of_Lorenzini

There ya go.

Sadly my mom can't be tested as she is gone but would one truly be in danger in a test test environment as you described?

So now it is only if they are in 'true danger'? Keep changing the conditions of the test to prove yourself right? Anything to be scientifically proven must be able to withstand testing and critical analysis. Blowing it off with 'oh it's not TRUE' danger reeks of you defending what boils down to guesswork.

And you say magical thinking and what I am saying is the brain has about a 90% unused area who knows what its potential is.

And that is just blatantly false. Y'see, I actually study psychology and this 90% thing is utter, complete bullcrap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_brain_myth

Even without a link, this whole myth falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. Why would a brain evolve to not use 90% of itself. For goodness sake, use your head, man.

You don't know people who roll consistently bad and others who roll consistently good? What if it is not magic like you're trying to say and more like the rain man. You drop a pack of toothpicks and an autistic can tell you how many are on the ground. I am saying one person denied one sense will sometimes develop others to compensate. The computation power of the brain is staggering. What if some brains are better at calculating if I throw this die now I have a better chance at getting a 6 thus skewing the odds?

Except that properly rolled dice and random, and the results of any one dice roll are entirely separate for the rolls of any other dice. I like how you try to work in counting as part of being able to guess random chance.

Ben Underwood - Amazing. Truly a well documented if sad story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUXh-X1iveU

And this says what in relation to your point? People do compensate. This is not proof of super powers. Come ON.

10 years ago a robotic arm that can use nerve impulses would have seemed like magic. Who knows what is scientifically possible. Why do you want to limit what is possible or stop people from trying to dream up the next big miracle?

http://www.gizmag.com/thought-controlled-prosthetic-arm/25216/

Solar Sails,anti matter, Space Flight, flight, and anything else that once was or is considered impossible should still be explored and considered. I am saying I don't know what is or isn't possible but I am at least willing to have an open mind. Who knows what machine we'll invent in the future to interact w/ the brain and make what ever possible. maybe one day the energy of the brain will be used by some helmet type device to move things. Who knows I can't say I do.

Every great achievement was once considered impossible.

Do I think time travel is possible? No. Does that mean it will never be invited?

And now we get to the whole emotional BS argument. Because I have the cruel heart to demand proof of something, I wish to limit people dreaming up the next big miracle. I love this kind of subtle attack, it is so sneaky, yet it makes you come across as a noble defender of science by not wanting any of your horsecrap to be analyzed and tested.

Here's the bottom line. I want scientific progress. I'm not embracing nonsense to do it, I want science to do it.

If you can give me a nice little bit of proof, then I will happily change my opinions and adjust accordingly to new information. Like scientists do. But I am not going to simply accept what you want me to because you really REALLY believe in it. That is the kind of magical thinking nonsense that leads to bad science that is ultimately more harmful. Are you seriously suggesting that wanting something to be tested before we accept it is bad for science? I'd love to sell you a lead-based cancer cure then. What do you mean you don't want to use it? WHY ARE YOU HOLDING BACK DREAMS?

See how easy and hollow that is?

You should begin a research project to study psychic phenomenon. Then you will have your proof...


Until then, you will need to get a security clearance, join either a military branch, of get hired by a gateway research nonprofit like AIR.

But you will probably keep asking for others to feed you information as a child seeks it's mother's teet.

karandras15 wrote:
You should begin a research project to study psychic phenomenon. Then you will have your proof...


Until then, you will need to get a security clearance, join either a military branch, of get hired by a gateway research nonprofit like AIR.

But you will probably keep asking for others to feed you information as a child seeks it's mother's teet.

But of course, you have all that proof, doncha?

I'm just asking for the bit of evidence that completely proves me wrong and undoes my whole argument. And since you are so confident where it is, it is not a hard jump to assume you've seen some of this, right? You wouldn't just be spouting this conspiracy theory nonsense based on nothing, would you?

So your saying echo location on a human isn't a super power?

Wow how many people do you know that have it? That guy is amazing and an exception to what seemed to be possible.

I didn't say a lead based cure to cure to cancer.

I gave examples. A helmet that might move things, Solar sails, and a an arm that response to nerve impulses. An implant in the eye that cures blindness. I didn't even say silly stuff like healing with crystals.

What about teleportation?

http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_project.php?id=2862

I am saying things that seemed outrageous may be possible. You want hard science to back it first. I am just saying you would've been one of the guys standing next to the Wright Brothers saying sorry no available science of flight not possible. Give a littleor at least concede evidence might not yet available on the subject.

Come to think of it are you sure there isn't some way of delivering poisonous metals (lead, mercury, or who knows?) to cancer cell cells to kill them? I do want some evidence for or against this. I mean it seems silly to shoot harmful radiation at cancer cells too that has to be crazy.

Psykers in real life?

Meh.

Definitely not in the 40k sense of the term, but hell for all we know we can but we just don't know it yet. Technically, everything we know about everything is just things we've observed that happen to work in all common cases so the human race agreed that it must be fact. Physics, for instance, is only true because overwhelming cases make the human race all agree that physics is true. Now, if I say physics is fake and not real then of course I can't just ignore it. This is what makes them fact. Psykers 99% likely don't exist, but as said the human race has never really observed a psyker in a credible, scientific setting (someone randoms youtube video doesn't count).

So pretty much, Psykers most likely don't exist but it's much easier to prove they do exist through observation and peer review than to prove they don't. Of course, it's common agreement psychics aren't real, and until a credible scientific study comes out proving otherwise (and thus being able to shift public agreement) it's gonna stay that way

What if evolution exists and we we evolve into beings of pure energy one day everything will done with the mind. Likely - I'd say not. Impossible - I would say no to that also.

We are talking possibilities here and not hard facts. I think that is where we are having the problem.

Nope. Echolocation is not a super power. It's something that there is research about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation. It's echolocation, and developed as a compensation for blindness, it's not a super power. But it is a proven thing and exists, I'm not saying it doesn't. Buuuuuuuuut that's not what we're going on about.

You gave examples. And some of it has science behind it. But here's the thing, I'm skeptical of anything until I see it working. You bring me the stuff that shows me I'm wrong and I will happily say I'm wrong and admit that there was something to it. But what I'm not going to do is believe something because you ask me to. Because you started out with your mother being able to sense when your brother was in danger and auras. Now you are on nerve implants. Yet you are painting me as the evil nonbeliever for not buying into all of it. There actually is research towards more effective prosthesis that have nerve connections ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomechatronics ).

You see the difference in having something to go off of, and asking be to believe because your mother got lucky on some guesses?

But hey, keep trying to make me seem like the guy who hates science by acting like I don't want progress even though I just said what I want is rigor. Personal attacks are the true way to go when you are arguing science.

This should be at least moved to the off topic section.

In terms of the fluff I think yes, there probably were psykers much earlier on in human history, just fewer of them. Not only due to there being less of them as they evolved but also because they would either be in hiding from people who didn't understand or killed be either themselves or others who feared them.

In terms of real life, no I don't think there are anything resembling psykers. Even if such abilities are possible (and i'm not saying there are), I don't think the human race has been around long enough for many people to evolve with such abilities, let alone learn control.

To just say a bit about what the rest of the thread has discussed, i do think there are unexplainable things, I just don't think we can currently comprehend how to explain them. I won't use quantum as an example because that isn't my field of study but biology, yes. To go back to an earlier example, sharks abilities to sense the electromagnetic fields of other organisms. That would be an example of something that may seem extrasensory but its just evolution making the shark an even better predator. I think, as long as we don't kill ourselves off in the next few thousand years, it may be possible for humans to gain these abilities, through natural evolution or through genetic engineering. It may not benefit us as predators like sharks but with our ever expanding and growing high tech culture, wouldn't it be great to "see" electromagnetic fields and be able to manipulate them, instead of typing on a keyboard? It may not be shooting lighting but I do believe it is possible.

Sorry if this is a bit rambly, I'm trying to study for a test while reading through this post and may have just repeated something someone already said