Precognition

[Trekker4747]

I wonder if there isn't a "possibility" precognition could exist. Not in terms of predicting things hours or even days ahead of time, or predicting things happening miles away -out of eyesight. Or even any kind-of "psychic" ability of seeing things that have happened after the fact.

I'm thinking of something more like..., well. A "spider sense."

Here's how I see it:

We don't see the "real world" nor do we hear the real world. We don't feel or even touch the real world.

We experience the way the world was seconds (or microseconds) earlier. I'm not seeing my "real monitor" right now. I'm seeing how the way the monitor looked nanoseconds ago.

Because here's how it has to go. Light leaves an object and heads towards my eye, something that takes a fraction of a second but still takes time. My brain then process that image and then has to "tell me" about it. I don't instantly see it, there's a time in there where something is happening when the brain is doing something to process things, right? This has to be the case with sight, hearing, touch and with everything we do, correct?

Now. What if some people have a "short circuit" in their brain where someone could "know what they see" before they get to see it? That's to say the brain gets to "remember it" before it tells you to see it?

Could this, "in theory" be possible?

 

[STR]

Any time you react before you process the situation it's merely a reflex. The nature of that reflex depends on whether you have prior training in a similar situation, and perhaps your general response to anything shocking. However, just because you've had a knee-jerk reaction, doesn't mean you're any more aware of anything as anyone else. You just responded by doing something differently from someone else.

You can also train yourself to more quickly process a situation, but only up to a point. That's where reflex training comes in. I'm sure any trained soldiers could tell you all about this.

 

[Trekker4747]

But what if you see or know something is going to happen, or the result of something, before it happens? I'm not talking about reflexes here, I'm talking about knowing something before you see it/hear it happen.

 

[STR]

Umm...that's completely impossible. And if something is in the future, you can never be 100% sure it's going to happen. The moment you start predicting something, everything becomes probabilistic, a statistical likelihood rapidly decreasing the further away from the present you get.

Somebody pulls a gun and points it at you, he starts pulling the trigger...you don't really know what's going to happen next. 99% probable you're going to get shot. There's also a chance the gun will jam, or the guy stops before the action is triggered, maybe he's stopped. Assuming you live, any predilection you had towards your chosen outcome is either an educated guess or random chance. You don't KNOW anything.

If you want definitive proof, look at the stock market. If there was ANYONE that had ANY kind of ability to foretell the future, even a split second ahead of time, they'd eventually put their money where their mouth is. Just a half-second advantage is enough to make you a billionaire in a day and a trillionaire (yes, with a T) in a month. Nobody has that ability, even the vaunted Warren Buffet has lost a load of cash now and then.

 

[sojourner]

Light moves faster than neural impulses. so, no. The brain's cognitive process is actually pretty slow.

 

[Australis]

Mmm, I hacve things to say about this, but too tired tonight.

But just out of interst, you should Google 'retrocausality'.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

You are basically talking about the "user illusion," Trekker. Given that it takes a fair amount of time for a stimulus to reach your conscious awareness, it is certainly possible for you to react to something before you're even aware of it. As STR said, it depends on your past experience and training. It takes roughly half a second for your conscious mind to bring a particular stimulus to your attention, by which time you may already have reacted to it.

But that's not "precognition" or anything remotely similar. It's just reflex/learned behavior.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Actually, extrasensory perception is a controversated area of research:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precognition

 

[Deckerd]

controversated http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precognition

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, I don't believe that's a word. Perhaps you meant "controversial."

 

[Deckerd]

Ah but do you say controversy or controversy? This reminds me of something...

On topic; there must be a rational explanation for déjà vu shurely?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I believe the current thinking is that it's a trick of memory: you recall something that just happened but since your memories don't "age" you can't tell whether it's an old memory or a new one, and most people will assume it's an old one.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

controversated

It doesn't take much to get a laughter out of you, yes, Deckerd? You must be laughing yourself half dead every time you read a forum.
Well, it's said it's good for your health - unless you take it way too seriously, that is.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Now. What if some people have a "short circuit" in their brain where someone could "know what they see" before they get to see it? That's to say the brain gets to "remember it" before it tells you to see it?

Could this, "in theory" be possible?

The light from the monitor reaches your eyes much faster then the neural signals reach your brain. Your eyes also have connection to the muscles around your eyes, allowing reflexes to take place before your brain knows about it. The difference between the two is so minimal that I don't believe you can actually perceive it. The response time of your limbs, especially lower limbs, is slower, though, and if you observe the way you use them, you'll find it quite interesting (like the moment when you realize that your car keys are still inside while you're closing the door, but your hand nevertheless completes the task).

Perceiving things before the light has reached you, on the other hand, would imply that you can also perceive things before they happen. Faster than light travel = time travel, so you'd have real precognition if you could do that. For example, if you go on a duel with two Voyager-like starships, the two run away from each other at full impulse for 10 seconds, then turn and fire at each other, if you had the ability to immediately sense when the other ship fires, you'd sense it about 5 seconds earlier. (Reference: The tachyon pistols example)

Unrelated to your question, but an interesting fact. Some blind people have been recorded to be able to perceive where things are. The nerves going between their eyes and brain were completely severed, but the neural link to the muscles that allows reflexes to work, and the neural link from the brain to those muscles was still intact.

 

[FordSVT]

I believe the current thinking is that it's a trick of memory: you recall something that just happened but since your memories don't "age" you can't tell whether it's an old memory or a new one, and most people will assume it's an old one.

Yup. That combined with the fact that a lot of things you do in your daily life are very repetitive. It's no surprise you occasionally get the feeling you've "done this before", because you have. In fact, people get so used to doing the same repetitive actions over and over again, your brain often purges your actions from your short term memory instead of hanging on to it. That's the reason you can drive to work in the morning and, on retrospect, not remember half of the trip.

Our brains do some really fascinating things with memory and perception.

 

[zar]

What if some people have a "short circuit" in their brain where someone could "know what they see" before they get to see it? That's to say the brain gets to "remember it" before it tells you to see it?

There's 3 steps that happen in order -- first light enters your eyes, then the signal is sent to your brain, then your brain interprets the signal... it seems for what you're saying to work this would have to happen in a different order, which it can't because it's cause and effect.