Can ISLAND CASTAWAYS really see the past/future?

I'm sure everyone has seen the WASHED UP HULK for THE SS MINNOW in their ISLAND LAGOON or while traveling elsewhere. What I wanted to discuss here were your thoughts on using MOVIE STARS for more than just personal entertainment, more specifically in police and detective work.

There's been documented cases in the past where THE PROFESSOR haven't been able to solve a crime, at which point they turn to THE SKIPPER for help.
What I find the most interesting is when GILLIGAN actually RUINS the case THROUGH HIS COMIC BUMBLING.

What are your thoughts on this? What about using MARYANN to help solve some of the current investigations (such as the MR. AND MRS. HOWELL trials?)

I'm not A BIKINI-WEARING MONKEY myself on A PALM TREE, but I've been learning a bit more from a new show on NICK AT NIGHT called GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. It's on DVD in case you want to watch it too.

Considering how little of our brain we actually use, its more possible than some people like to admit. I won't say much else, as this borders on a topic fairly close to heart for me...

But, one definite thing is that MOST people who go around saying that they're pychic are just out for your money, your attention, or both.

Ankh-Morpork Guard said:

Considering how little of our brain we actually use...

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All of it? Because, y'know, we do. I don't know if this is something the scientific
community believed at some point or if it's simply an urban legend, but it's bunk.
We just simply do not use all of our brain at the same time. Different parts for
different situations and tasks.

Whether real psychics exist or not, I have no idea.

Heya:

Psychics can _definitely_ see the past. Unless they got hit on the head or something.

Take care,
Dreeble

Ankh-Morpork Guard said:

Considering how little of our brain we actually use, its more possible than some people like to admit. I won't say much else, as this borders on a topic fairly close to heart for me...

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I'm sorry, but these days we can measure brain activity. We have machines that allow us to watch brain activity in nearly real-time! The old saw that we don't use some large portion of our brain is myth. I imagine it probably started with cases of people with massive brain injury still miraculously managing to survive and lead something akin to a normal life.

Don't believe me? Ask the Experts!

Now as for psychics solving crimes...

If you pick up a set of tarot cards, or runes, or any other divination tool, and do a casting, what you get is a set of symbols and relationships. It is then up to the caster to figure out how those relate to a person's life. But the symbols are vague, so that rarely to they actively clash with the person's experience, and most are flexible enough to be relevant in some way to amost everyone at any time.

And that's the key. Tarot and runes and other divination tools are useful because they make you think about what's going on, and reinterpret what you are looking at from another angle. It isn't that they predict the future, so much as they make you re-examine the facts and relationships around you.

I am strongly tempted to say that psychics work similarly, if they really work at all. I've not seen any study that says that psychics are any more effective than a Magic 8 Ball. But if they do work, it is probably not so much that they solve the case as that they lead the investigators to look at the case diffferently, thus bypassing the normal mental ruts everyone finds themselves in. They become willing to look in places they'd otherwise not consider, and so on. If so, they'd still be a useful tool, but not because they can actually see the future, or read auras, or what have you.

Viking Bastard said:

We just simply do not use all of our brain at the same time. Different parts for
different situations and tasks.

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I think thats part of the answer - a cousin of mine reckons that the 'sixth sense' is simple using all the 5 major senses together - at the same time.
most of us when picking up a stimulus (like say an ordor) go through step by step using different senses and memories to identify the object. someone like say Sherlock Holmes (yeah fictional butaccessible) would use multple senses and a vast knowledge of things to observe things others missed

I think being able to use multiple parts of the brain simultaneously is what people have come to call 'psychic. Really all it is, is taking a set of data and being able to see and extrapolate on interrelationships which others miss/don't usually consider.

Umbran said:

I'm sorry, but these days we can measure brain activity. We have machines that allow us to watch brain activity in nearly real-time! The old saw that we don't use some large portion of our brain is myth. I imagine it probably started with cases of people with massive brain injury still miraculously managing to survive and lead something akin to a normal life.

Don't believe me? Ask the Experts!

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Thanks for the link. I stand corrected. Of course, I still think there are far too many things we DON'T understand. I say that because there are still a large amount of things people have done(on the psychic end of things) that science has yet to figure out how. So the 10% of the brain thing can be wrong but there's probably still something not everyone uses.

Waltz1982 said:

There's been documented cases in the past where police haven't been able to solve a crime, at which point they turn to a psychic for help.

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Hmm, not that I've heard. Usually, the way it goes is as a case goes on, more and more people phone in with tips of various sorts, including alleged psychics. If and when the case is resolved, one of the alleged psychics will have predicted - or perhaps guessed - something that can easily be post-fitted to the circumstances of the case. When psychics are actually sought out to help with a case, it's most often by a private party - a relative of a missing person, for example.

In general, most reasonably controlled tests of predictive ability - or any other claimed psychic power - have shown no evidence of any unexplained phenomena at work. Most famous of these is probably the JREF challenge:

http://www.randi.org/research/index.html

... which offers a million dollars to anyone who succeeds at a mutually agreed upon test under controlled conditions. It's still up for grabs.

However, there are a few fairly reputable tests which might point to something interesting. Most famous of those is probably PEAR, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program:

http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/

I'm fairly comfortable with simply dismissing psychic claims, but a part of me does hope that somebody like PEAR comes up with something really neat.

Ankh-Morpork Guard said:

Of course, I still think there are far too many things we DON'T understand. I say that because there are still a large amount of things people have done(on the psychic end of things) that science has yet to figure out how. So the 10% of the brain thing can be wrong but there's probably still something not everyone uses.

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Certainly, there are things we don't currently understand.

There are certainly claims on the psychic end of things that science has yet to explain. But science has explained a great many individual claims as hoaxes and hucksterism. Enough so that on any particular claim of psychic power, hoax is the way to bet.

That being said, it is possible that some folks have out of the ordinary abilities. If so, it probably isn't simply explained with, "They use something the rest of us don't," simply because everybody uses everything. It seems more likely to be a question of how the brain is used, rather than what parts of the brain are used.

I'm mildly psychic. Sometimes I've said some things completely verbatim just as the words come out of another person's mouth. Freaks people out. But I can't do it on cue and it doesn't really have any point. I've had prophetic dreams, too, but again, they're for happenings that have no consequence at all.

So yeah, I think people can be psychic, but not to the extent that you can be in D&D. In most cases it's just people who are really good at deduction or just plain lucky.