The apocalypse on 2012?

[Numion]

Wonder where humanitys want for there to be something beyond our observations comes from. If you get right down into it the things we can observe are wondrous enough to fill at least one lifetime.

But no, it's gotta be aliens, the end of the world, stuff like that..

 

[RithTheAwakener]

Wonder where humanitys want for there to be something beyond our observations comes from. If you get right down into it the things we can observe are wondrous enough to fill at least one lifetime.

But where does one find the time...

 

[megamania]

Let me make my point in a less snarky way. Prophecy or predicting the future is both useless and pointless, if all you can do is point to something after the fact and say that "predicted" it happening.

Can you name one single disaster, assassination, war, plague or such that was predicted ahead of time and was either averted or significantly reduced in it's impact by it's being predicted? Cause human history is carpeted with situations that if prophecy worked, if psychic powers actually existed, could have been averted. It wouldn't have taken a lot to have prevented the assassination of the Arch Duke that triggered WWI for example.

Why aren't all Psychics making a killing in the stock market? Why do they ask me "Who's calling?"? Why don't they call me and tell me what I need to know?



Ah, this one was a favorite of the "creation science" people, once upon a time. It's been debunked. Even the Institute for Creation Research doesn't claim they are "human" and dinosaur footprints any more (they were in fact other smaller dinosaur and larger dinosaur Footprints).

http://www.skepticfiles.org/evolut/fooevo.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy.html

In my experience when a person claims something like this is "unexplainable" or have some fantastic explaination for it, usually that's because they know nothing about what they are claiming is "unexplainable". When you ask people who actually know something about the subject, these "unexplainable" things usually tend to have fairly simple and straight forward explanations that don't involve any extraordinary factors.



References? Pictures? Links? Something other than your word it is so?



No that's Circus Maximus. That's actually a separate web site, though loosely associated with EN World. I think there's a link to it under the Media sub-board heading.

I'll see if I can find the books this weekend. As for predicting the future I have the ability but it is basically useless and trivial stuff. The earliest I remember is when I was about 3-4 years old I dreamed of falling through wooden planks that I was crawling on. And soon enough, my folks were building a new storage area and as lil' tikes go, I began to climb on them. Placed my weight on a not and crack- down I went.

In 7th grade I dreamed of cutting out pictures of fruit and then an arm in a purple sweater reached before me. When I awoke I honestly thought how stupid that was. I'm just short of a teenager and I'm cutting out fruit like a lil' tike. Then a few weeks later- French class, the teacher had us cut out pictures of fruit and label then. Carrie Pike, a girl in my class, reached across me to get the glue and ...yup- she had a new purple sweater on.

Second year of college, driving home on an open stretch of road. Have a flash in my head about a police officer and being pulled over. Even as I laugh at it I see a police car that turns on his lights.


So yes, seeing the future can be done. How useful it is.... in my case very little.

 

[Rackhir]

I'll see if I can find the books this weekend. As for predicting the future I have the ability but it is basically useless and trivial stuff. The earliest I remember is when I was about 3-4 years old I dreamed of falling through wooden planks that I was crawling on. And soon enough, my folks were building a new storage area and as lil' tikes go, I began to climb on them. Placed my weight on a not and crack- down I went.

In 7th grade I dreamed of cutting out pictures of fruit and then an arm in a purple sweater reached before me. When I awoke I honestly thought how stupid that was. I'm just short of a teenager and I'm cutting out fruit like a lil' tike. Then a few weeks later- French class, the teacher had us cut out pictures of fruit and label then. Carrie Pike, a girl in my class, reached across me to get the glue and ...yup- she had a new purple sweater on.

Second year of college, driving home on an open stretch of road. Have a flash in my head about a police officer and being pulled over. Even as I laugh at it I see a police car that turns on his lights.


So yes, seeing the future can be done. How useful it is.... in my case very little.

While I believe you are being 100% honest and sincere in what you are saying, the problem is that human memory and perceptions can be both extremely unreliable and remarkably selective in how they function.

How many times have you had X pop into your head and had nothing like that happen or appear? People have much stronger memories for when things like this happen to match up than they do for when they don't. Most so called "speakers to the dead" and other psychics depend very heavily on this fact. So they'll toss out 10 guesses and all people remember are the one they happened to get right by accident or by basic deduction.

A similar phenomenon happens with street lights going out as you walk underneath them. You don't really notice or think about the hundreds that don't go out or were off and stay off while you pass underneath them, but the changing light conditions when one does go off attracts your attention in a way that the non-change doesn't.

Perhaps that girl had worn the sweater before and it simply hadn't registered. Maybe the French class had some similar projects from previous classes hanging on the wall or the teacher had mentioned previously that you'd be doing this and it had slipped your mind.

I know when I'm driving I think on regular occasions what it would be like or wonder if I might get pulled over by a cop and I haven't gotten a ticket in 20 years.

I once identified an episode of "Batman the Animated Series" from a 2 second clip of Batman running in some sort of non-descript cavern. Yet, I sometimes can't remember stuff I was told 5 minutes ago.

 

[Dire Bare]

January 19th 2038. At that point unix timestamps can no longer be stored with a 32 bit integer. PHP currently doesn't handle 64 bit integers well, and post times are stored using unix timestamps - so on January 19th 2038 the clock stops if I don't have the upgrade done by then.

Ahem, it will be done quite a bit sooner than then though

Thanks!

 

[WhatGravitas]

How many times have you had X pop into your head and had nothing like that happen or appear? People have much stronger memories for when things like this happen to match up than they do for when they don't. Most so called "speakers to the dead" and other psychics depend very heavily on this fact. So they'll toss out 10 guesses and all people remember are the one they happened to get right by accident or by basic deduction.

That's very true. Otherwise I'm a psychic as well - but I know I'm not, because I use the same method to learn. I know that my sub-consciousness is quite active and that I tend to remember a lot of things sub-consciously.

I'm using that by skimming a lot of stuff, even for my university studies, for example I'm doing that for my example sheets - and guess what: Reading and skimming through them (without thinking about the problems) in advance, taking a nap, and then start working helps me a lot. I'm getting ideas out of nowhere, and if I'm doing that with wikipedia, I also end up knowing a lot more stuff without knowing when and where I've learned that.

And I dream about lost stuff and find it - and I guess that's mainly because I've half-remembered where I've put it, but it takes a dream/nap to realize it. If that's not my sub-consciousness, it means I'm psychic about my physics studies. Or a genius. But as far as I know, I'm neither.

But I know how to put my resources to work, even if it's sub-consciously.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Relique du Madde]

January 19th 2038. At that point unix timestamps can no longer be stored with a 32 bit integer. PHP currently doesn't handle 64 bit integers well, and post times are stored using unix timestamps - so on January 19th 2038 the clock stops if I don't have the upgrade done by then.

Ahem, it will be done quite a bit sooner than then though

Dude... that will be Y2k+32y+28d!

[panic]

 

[Numion]

I'm using that by skimming a lot of stuff, even for my university studies, for example I'm doing that for my example sheets - and guess what: Reading and skimming through them (without thinking about the problems) in advance, taking a nap, and then start working helps me a lot. I'm getting ideas out of nowhere, and if I'm doing that with wikipedia, I also end up knowing a lot more stuff without knowing when and where I've learned that.

But think about it: why would humans have developed the necessity of sleep and the accompanying thought processes, unless there was some evolutionary advantage to it? Most people (or the scientists that study sleep) don't know why or how it works. There's quite a big disadvantage in having to sleep; you're mostly defenseless for 1/3rd of your life, or so. So the advantage should be comparably large.

You've at least recognized one advantage, even though the ability to ace exams probably isn't directly evolutionary

 

[Numion]

So yes, seeing the future can be done. How useful it is.... in my case very little.

Um yeah, sure. .. I have a vision coming in right now: Hmmmmm .. I see that tomorrow morning I'll ....hmmmm..... wake up around ....hmmmmmm.... 8 o'clock, shower, get dressed, eat and go to work.

I'll get back to you tomorrow how it worked out :\

 

[Rackhir]

But think about it: why would humans have developed the necessity of sleep and the accompanying thought processes, unless there was some evolutionary advantage to it? Most people (or the scientists that study sleep) don't know why or how it works. There's quite a big disadvantage in having to sleep; you're mostly defenseless for 1/3rd of your life, or so. So the advantage should be comparably large.

You've at least recognized one advantage, even though the ability to ace exams probably isn't directly evolutionary

Don't nearly all creatures with a brain have some form of sleep? It could be something that got incorporated at a very early stage in the development of "thinking" creatures and has been carried forward. Like the qwerty layout has been from typewriters.