Which paranormal ability might be real in the future?

[Kaylee]

Intuition. I don't actually believe that we will evolve it, but that we will understand what other processes we've mistaken it for, and we'll understand those processes better.

The other processes include adaptive unconsciousness and olfactory perception, which is often unconscious in people.

Some links:
Malcolm Gladwell touches upon it a little bit in his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0316172324/sr=8-2/qid=1165881383/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-1244222-5888017?ie=UTF8&s=books

and he has a web site.
http://www.gladwell.com/blink/index.html

This abstract gives an example of how odors can affect us.
http://chemse.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/31/5/415

Here, we study the effect of human fear chemosignals on the speed and accuracy of cognitive performance. In a double-blind experiment, female participants performed a word-association task while smelling one of the three types of olfactory stimuli: fear sweat, neutral sweat, and control odor carrier. We found that the participants exposed to the fear condition performed more accurately and yet with no sacrifice for speed on meaningful word conditions than those under either the neutral or the control condition. At the same time, they performed slower on tasks that contained ambiguous content. Possible factors that could introduce bias, such as individual differences due to anxiety, verbal skills, and perceived qualities of the smells, were ruled out. Our results demonstrate that human fear chemosignals enhance cognitive performances in the recipient. We suggest that this effect originates from learned associations, including greater cautiousness and concomitant changes in cognitive strategies.

Its not clear in this abstract if these scientists thought that the women could identify the smells consciously but from my other readings most olfactory perception occurs unconsciously, but still produces a measurable response.

If anyone is interested I'll dig up more references.

 

[Kaylee]

When a rat smells a cat...

I think that's somewhat unlikely, since there is no indication that any other species has evolved telepathy over the last few billion years. Telepathy (or any other form of ESP) would be an enormous advantage, even if it was at first present in only a very vague and hit-and-miss form. For example, a prey animal that occasionally got "feelings" about the location of predators (or a predator which sometimes "knew" where its prey was going to show up) would have an advantage over other animals that didn't. Once such an ability existed, animals in which it worked more reliably would have a distinct advantage over those in which it only worked "capriciously". There would be enormous selective pressure for the evolution of consistently reliable ESP. And lets face it, in the face of predators with ESP, any prey animal without it is going to be in trouble; the same goes for predators without ESP trying to catch telepathic prey. Can you imagine, for example, lions trying to ambush gazelles if the gazelles knew where the lions were?

If ESP had ever evolved, we should see it working reliably pretty much everywhere.

Rats exposed to cat odor spent more than 87% of their time in the hide box during a single 20-min exposure session, whereas rats exposed to a control odor (an unworn collar) spent less than 20% of their time hiding.

So some animals do have "ESP" but what they are actually doing is reacting to pheromones.

I don't think the classic SF version of telepathy would actually have a survival advantage. Can you imagine being constanlty exposed to people's unfiltered thoughts on 7 by 24 basis?! IMHO, People need their illusions in order to get along.

 

[Ladewig]

Prayer. A new supernatural trait would need some sort of mechanism to support it. I feel that a supernatural power being starting to answer prayers is easier to conceive of than a supernatural gland allowing people to communicate telepathically or allowing people to move objects psychokinetically.

 

[Jeff Corey]

The ability to ignite one's flattus without the use of external agents such as matches, flint and steel or butane lighters. Or those flashpaper igniters you can get at your magic shop.

 

[Jimbo07]

The ability to see infrared would open lots of interesting possibilities. I can't see how to sell it and make it look paranormal, but that's just an argument from personal incredulity.

Hmmm... would some sort of sensory-enhancing flesh-embedded electronic device count?

 

[Admiral]

I wonder whether telepathy might be a starter.

I've known identical twins who shared an ability which verged on telepathic. Certainly, there are reasons why it's not paranormal, but I wonder whether a time in the future could come when we evolve the ability. Close siblings and twins maybe.

Not saying it's likely, just the least fantastic idea of paranormality I could come up with.

I'm an identical twin, and I know what you're probably talking about. Sometimes my brother and I turn out to be thinking exactly the same thing at the same time, even thoughts that seem to have absolutely nothing to do with our current situation.

This is pretty easily explained- the similarity in both genetics and enviroment for our entire lives have led to our having similar patterns of thought. What's more, most twins spend so much time together that at least a few strange coincidences occur (and, of course, those are the times you remember).

So this form of "telepathy" is nothing but people that think similarly. If you're suggesting that people could evolve this ability, well... I understand how it could have its advantages (it's easier to communicate if you think similarly to someone else- this leads to the "finishing each other's sentences" phenomenon), but I think that diversity in thought is, of course, an inescapable consequence of biology, and one that helps a species more than it hurts it.

 

[athon]

It would depend on your definitions, of course.

Remote viewing is possible now, with technology. So is telepathy. Would it count if we could store a personality on an AI machine and count that as surviving death?

Anything we presently consider the result of the paranormal today could conceivable be performed by some form of future technology.

Athon

 

[gtc]

I'm an identical twin, and I know what you're probably talking about. Sometimes my brother and I turn out to be thinking exactly the same thing at the same time, even thoughts that seem to have absolutely nothing to do with our current situation.

Same here, still it is odd when it happens.

 

[Operaider]

Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd Law
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

By that logic, given enough time, I'm sure science will be able to recreate many of the paranormal claims out there today. Of course, since it would be science recreating them, I guess they'd no longer be paranormal.

apologies if anyone else already pointed that out. Too lazy to read the posts. I'll catch up tomarrow

 

[Admiral]

Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd Law
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

By that logic, given enough time, I'm sure science will be able to recreate many of the paranormal claims out there today. Of course, since it would be science recreating them, I guess they'd no longer be paranormal.

apologies if anyone else already pointed that out. Too lazy to read the posts. I'll catch up tomarrow

I believe, though I can't be sure, that the OP was referring to abilities gained through evolution, not technology.

Reading minds through technology (in some limited way) doesn't even break any physical laws- we can already observe the activity of portions of the brain (indirectly, by observing blood flow with MRIs and such), and we might be only a few large advances in technology away from finding ways to observe "thoughts" in much greater detail (though it could take years, decades, or even centuries).

However, whether any humans (through mutations and gene shuffling) will ever gain such abilities naturally, without the implementation of complicated tools, is much more doubtful.

 

[The Atheist]

Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd Law
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

By that logic, given enough time, I'm sure science will be able to recreate many of the paranormal claims out there today. Of course, since it would be science recreating them, I guess they'd no longer be paranormal.

apologies if anyone else already pointed that out. Too lazy to read the posts. I'll catch up tomarrow

I think hindsight would prove that thought. Even to people of only a few centuries ago, even the simplest of us would be a god.

 

[Mojo]

Rats exposed to cat odor spent more than 87% of their time in the hide box during a single 20-min exposure session, whereas rats exposed to a control odor (an unworn collar) spent less than 20% of their time hiding.

So some animals do have "ESP" but what they are actually doing is reacting to pheromones.

Well, the ability to detect the smell of cat pee is hardly paranormal!

But what if a rat could somehow "know" that a cat was on its way by detecting its thoughts (or what pass for them)? Wouldn't it be better able to avoid getting caught than rats without this ability, while spending less time hiding?

 

[osmosis]

I've always liked the idea of x-ray vision, then I could watch people doing it. I could save a lot of internet bandwidth and space on my hard drive since I wouldn't need to download porn anymore.

LOL

 

[Mojo]

Sure, I have no doubts that it hasn't evolved so far, but you seem to be taking a short-term view of a long-term process. Evolution could take tens of thousands of years.

I was pointing out that it is no more likely to evolve now than at any other point since life developed a nervous system, and that once it evolved it would be a big advantage to animals having it.

I figure that if telepathy were to evolve, language would be a pre-requisite, so the survival usage of it wouldn't apply.

I don't see why. We're talking about an ability to detect brain processes here (if language is involved, it goes a bit further than that, of course). In the example of the rat and the cat, all a rat would need to do to gain an advantage over rats without the ability would be to detect the presence of the cat. It wouldn't need to know what the cat was thinking. Language wouldn't be necessary.

 

[SusanB-M1]

Evolve to acquire what is presently paranormal? Unlikely I think, but most certainly scientific, logical understanding of what people think of as remote viewing, cell memory, reincarnation etc, yes. Understanding should lead to control and use of these abilities and those who believe in supernatural whatevers will finally have to admit they are wrong!

 

[Kaylee]

Well, the ability to detect the smell of cat pee is hardly paranormal!

Agreed! And the ability to smell a cat's odor on its collar left lying around in a lab, while perhaps paranormal for a person, isn't paranormal for a rat.

But what if a rat could somehow "know" that a cat was on its way by detecting its thoughts (or what pass for them)? Wouldn't it be better able to avoid getting caught than rats without this ability, while spending less time hiding?

Would a rat have survival advantages if it could detect a cat's intent and not only its presence? Well perhaps if it could detect a cat's actual decision vs. its musings ("Hmm, water (pads towards water dish), oh fluffy thing! (stops and attacks its toy) oh, a fly! (races after fly) ")-- than yeah, sure! More likely I think it would start reacting to thses signals the same way that the people ignored the boy who cried wolf in that fable; that is, if it didn't go crazy instead from processing not only every thing it was thinking (or whatever processes come close to thinking in rat) and what ever other life form it was "receiving" was thinking too. I think this type of telepathy would just be too overwhelming to have any survival advantages.

I was just trying to point out (and apparently doing a bad job of it!) that we already have non-paranormal explanations for what some people might attribute to slight, unrepeatable, psionic effects. (Also, see my earlier post about the adaptive unconsciousness and how odor perception is often unconscious in people.)

I suspect that some kids may think they can sometimes do telekinectics when really what they are seeing is the effects of static electricity or unperceptible (to them) air or water currents.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Blink and also, very briefly, on his web site, talks about how Cook County Hospital in Chicago [Illinois, USA] made a decision to use "thin slicing" to diagnose who actually was in the midst of a heart attack in the ER room. It worked and they now have one of the best statistics in the country for successfully diagnosing chest pain. Zeroing in the info one really needs to make a decision quickly isn't intuition, although it could be misinterpreted in ignorance to be.

People with paranormal powers are a popular genre in SF, Fantasy, and even apparently on weekday talk shows where it gets misfiled under non-fiction. I suspect one of the reasons for this popularity is because many people have experienced something "weird" at least once in their life. If they experienced something "weird", perhaps they start to wonder if someone else could have experienced something similar but in a more controlled, skilled fashion. And perhaps from there develops the appetite for these SF, Fantasy and misfiled-under-non-fiction stories. </meanderings>

 

[HeyLeroy]

Well, the ability to detect the smell of cat pee is hardly paranormal!

But what if a rat could somehow "know" that a cat was on its way by detecting its thoughts (or what pass for them)? Wouldn't it be better able to avoid getting caught than rats without this ability, while spending less time hiding?

I used to have a cat named Dingfutzer who was completely stone-deaf (hence the name; it didn't matter what we called him). You could not sneak up on him. I don't know if it was something to do with light, vibrations through the floor, vibrations in the air, smell, etc. or some combination of the above, but a friend believed there was something paranormal about him.

 

[The Atheist]

Evolve to acquire what is presently paranormal? Unlikely I think, but most certainly scientific, logical understanding of what people think of as remote viewing, cell memory, reincarnation etc, yes. Understanding should lead to control and use of these abilities and those who believe in supernatural whatevers will finally have to admit they are wrong!

Oh, I wish.

My cynical side (well, actually I'm cynical on both sides) says that even though those people will know they're wrong, I bet they don't admit they're wrong.

 

[The Atheist]

I've always liked the idea of x-ray vision, then I could watch people doing it. I could save a lot of internet bandwidth and space on my hard drive since I wouldn't need to download porn anymore.

LOL

I've been waiting for that one to come up!

The bad news is that you'd need to be able to control it. Some sights are best unseen.

 

[RenaissanceBiker]

I think telepathy is the most likely candidate. It would be a borg-like artificial telepathy utilizing cell phone implants. You wouldn't be able to read other people's thoughts, just communicate with them wirelessly through the implanted devices. I can even imagine that the users of this technology would not have to speak to use it. Hopefully it would have a "do not disturb" mode.