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rebbel's avatar

A question for, and about, clairvoyancy sceptics.

Asked by rebbel (35553points) September 20th, 2011

You are sceptic about clairvoyancy, or you don’t believe in it at all.
Then, in a time period of a week you have two sightings, both of which were pretty detailed and you find out later when the happenings really occur to the point.
What will you do next?
Knowing that sceptics have arguments that you also always had/have, will you inform people about your newly gained ability?
Will you question your sanity?
Would you turn from a sceptic to a believer?

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8 Answers

gailcalled's avatar

I now see Milo a lot in what I think is my peripheral vision. The last sighting turned out to be a small stack of birch logs leaning on a tree stump near the house.

Sometimes I feel the air wiggle in the vicinity of my calves and, lo and behold, it is indeed Milo marking me.

Are these sightings or not?

rebbel's avatar

I think I would call these senses, @gailcalled :-)

CWOTUS's avatar

This is like asking “If you don’t believe in purple unicorns and then see two, would you believe in them then?”

Well… I suppose if I saw purple unicorns I’d be pretty much on board with believing in them… but it doesn’t make them more real. Maybe “more real to me”, but that’s not necessarily the same thing. I could simply be going insane.

As for clairvoyance… after you’ve lived long enough and seen enough cycles of various human events, from political to military to birth / growth / death and so on, it becomes somewhat inevitable, I think, that we make certain predictions about things that we see. And depending on how good our analyses were about cause and effect, and how good our observations about “the next time the same thing happens”, our predictions get better, too.

Just because I can make better observations and predictions now than I could decades ago – and I can do both of those things – isn’t going to make me think that I’m clairvoyant all of a sudden. Even meeting someone much younger than I am with the same abilities isn’t going to change my mind, I think – just my opinion of that person’s observation and analysis skills.

Blueroses's avatar

I think most people have had some incidents with perception that falls outside of their normal range and I don’t discount those at all. There are many things in this universe I don’t understand. But I have no kind words for charlatans who make their living bilking and milking the fragile emotions of the bereaved.

picante's avatar

Hear, hear to what @CWOTUS and @Blueroses said. I’ve seen great answers twice now in short order, and I believe in them!!

ragingloli's avatar

What do you mean by “sightings”?

rebbel's avatar

@ragingloli Ah, since @gailcalled also made a remark about it I guess I picked a wrong word.
Extra-sensory perception maybe?

ragingloli's avatar

Do you know of Déjà Vu? It is when something occurs and you feel as if it has happened before.
I had similar experiences, where something occured and I could swear I have thought of that same event some time before.
Both are (most likely) based on the same thing: The brain reinterpretes existing memories, both of actual experiences and imaginations, to fit the just experienced event, in its attempts to categorise the event.
So, I had such experiences, and to me they are nothing more than a variation of Déjà Vu.

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