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Perdicting Earthquakes

Wow Dan O. you really got me there. You guys are just so on top of things here. Its just funny that no one can seem to come up with protocals that meet up to everyone standards of how things should be done. Personally I think it would be an impossible task to do with people that just simply don't want to believe. You have to have an open mind first and it seems that most of you don't for whatever reason.
 
Drew599 said:
You have to have an open mind first and it seems that most of you don't for whatever reason.
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This pseudo-argument really pisses me off, because it is invariably used by people whose mind is completely closed to the possibility that their favourite superstition is not real. Where I am willing to accept actual evidence, should it ever be presented, that prescience and suchlike exists, most believers will not accept that several hundred years of no evidence could be a sign that there is nothing there.
 
Drew, are you open-minded enough to accept that if all of your 10 dates come to pass with your prediction unfulfilled, that there is another explanation for your feelings about these dates? Or will you go on thinking that you can predict things, even though when you try, it never comes true?
 
Reno, I doubt myself all the time in this area of my life. Believe me the logical part of my mind keeps telling me to stop thinking about this stuff. But things I see and feel in my life make me want to investigate more into the other end of what has been happening to me.

But if I am wrong about all these dates, which I'm hoping for. Then I guess I'll just keep my perdictions in the circle of family and friends. That way I won't be wasting any of your time with anything else. I can admit when I'm wrong but it won't make me stop trying to understand these types of this in my life.
 
Should we take this to mean that no evidence will convince you that you don't have predicting power? Because the way I read it, you are not interested in knowing weither or not this test (or, I imagine, any test) will pan out, as you've already made up your mind that you can predict stuff. (ETA: Please do correct me if I am putting words in your mouth that do not reflect your thoughts.)
 
Drew599 said:
But if I am wrong about all these dates, which I'm hoping for. Then I guess I'll just keep my perdictions in the circle of family and friends.
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Let us see, if you are right, you are right, but if you are wrong - you are still right, but you will keep it to yourself in the future. And this comes from a person who asks others to keep an open mind :rolleyes:
 
Drew599 said:
Reno, I doubt myself all the time in this area of my life. Believe me the logical part of my mind keeps telling me to stop thinking about this stuff.
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You don't have to stop thinking about this stuff, we do it all the time. That's one of the reasons we post here and participate in this community - we all have an interest in the paranormal.

Drew599 said:
But things I see and feel in my life make me want to investigate more into the other end of what has been happening to me.
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Perfectly acceptable to investigate these things. But as you investigate, you have to believe the facts that turn up. You can't ignore the evidence or it's not a true investigation.

Drew599 said:
But if I am wrong about all these dates, which I'm hoping for. Then I guess I'll just keep my perdictions in the circle of family and friends. That way I won't be wasting any of your time with anything else. I can admit when I'm wrong but it won't make me stop trying to understand these types of this in my life.
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You're not wasting my time by posting your predictions here. I see this as your way of looking for more experienced people to help you understand what is going on with you. You will get the right answers here. Whether you accept them or not is up to you. But if it is explained to you by so many experienced people here that what is happening to you is normal, and you refuse to accept it and continue to believe you can predict the future, then you're wasting your own time.
 
Rodney said:
If you kept a journal, why didn't you check it before telling people that you had a prophetic dream?
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I don't re-read my journal every day (indeed, for eight or ten years after I graduated, my high-school and college journals were lost--stored away, actually, in a box of odds and ends that I uncovered when we moved). Besides, why check it? I was absolutely certain that I remembered the dream accurately--even though I did not.
 
Spektator said:
I don't re-read my journal every day (indeed, for eight or ten years after I graduated, my high-school and college journals were lost--stored away, actually, in a box of odds and ends that I uncovered when we moved). Besides, why check it? I was absolutely certain that I remembered the dream accurately--even though I did not.
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I'm still having trouble understanding how you could have gotten the misconception in your head in the first place. When you had the dream about your friend after his funeral, I would think it would have been way beyond the garden variety type. Therefore, even though you wouldn't remember the timing of most dreams, this one would have stuck firmly in your memory. Yes, our memory can play tricks, but what you're claiming is akin to having a dream of 9/11 several days after the attacks and somehow thinking you had that dream before the attacks. Doesn't make sense to me.
 
Quantum physics makes no sense to me, but I'm not going to call the quantum physicists liars.
 
Rodney said:
I'm still having trouble understanding how you could have gotten the misconception in your head in the first place. When you had the dream about your friend after his funeral, I would think it would have been way beyond the garden variety type. Therefore, even though you wouldn't remember the timing of most dreams, this one would have stuck firmly in your memory. Yes, our memory can play tricks, but what you're claiming is akin to having a dream of 9/11 several days after the attacks and somehow thinking you had that dream before the attacks. Doesn't make sense to me.
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And yet the anecdote given was not unusual at all, it is precisely how the very fallible human memory works. Try googling "eyewitness testimony is unreliable".
 
Here is somewhere to start.

An event memory may incorporate information subsequently gained from other witnesses or read in the newspaper, information drawn from general knowledge, information of another event or even information of an imagined event. People may inadvertently combine memory of two different events or confuse mental images with real events. This "misinformation effect" occurs because people are often poor at determining the source of information - another example of semantic memory intruding into biographical memory.
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Reno said:
Quantum physics makes no sense to me, but I'm not going to call the quantum physicists liars.
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First, I'm not calling Spektator a liar, I'm just trying to figure out how the sequence of events he describes could have happened. I have been recording my dreams for more than 15 years and have never had an experience remotely like his. By that, I mean that I've never thought I had a premonitory dream about a significant event in my life when, in fact, the dream actually occurred after that event. Second, you took Random Element to task for reporting a premonition and implied that he hadn't gotten his facts straight. In fact, you called his reported premonition a "non-event." See your post # 70 on this thread -- http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76185&page=2
 
Miss Anthrope said:
Here is somewhere to start.
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Yes, but eyewitness accounts are completely different than dreams about significant events in your life. In the former, you're taken off guard by the unexpected, such as an automobile accident. In the latter, you're not taken off guard at all if the dream comes after the event. Rather, you would immediately understand why you had the dream. If, on the other hand, the dream came before the significant event, you would likely be troubled by it and then -- when it came true -- electrified by it.
 
Eyewitnesses are not unreliable only when they talk about sudden and unexpected events. Randi comments frequently in SWIFT about how many people he meets completely mangle how a trick he performed went.

Memory is a funny thing.
 
Rodney said:
Yes, but eyewitness accounts are completely different than dreams about significant events in your life. In the former, you're taken off guard by the unexpected, such as an automobile accident. In the latter, you're not taken off guard at all if the dream comes after the event. Rather, you would immediately understand why you had the dream. If, on the other hand, the dream came before the significant event, you would likely be troubled by it and then -- when it came true -- electrified by it.
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Dreams are even more subjective than witnessing a real event. I have to ask, where is your evidence that dreams would be remembered more accurately as it relates to memory than witnessing an event? I'm sorry, but your disbelief in this is completely subjective and based on what you think should be true. If what you think should be true, then show us.
 
Rodney said:
I'm still having trouble understanding how you could have gotten the misconception in your head in the first place. When you had the dream about your friend after his funeral, I would think it would have been way beyond the garden variety type. Therefore, even though you wouldn't remember the timing of most dreams, this one would have stuck firmly in your memory. Yes, our memory can play tricks, but what you're claiming is akin to having a dream of 9/11 several days after the attacks and somehow thinking you had that dream before the attacks. Doesn't make sense to me.
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Fortunately, what makes sense to you is not my responsibility. I can't say it any more clearly: no matter what you think, it happened the way I described it, and I was really and truly convinced for several years that I had been visited by a ghost or something like it. I was mistaken. I have learned not to trust memory unless I can verify it in some way.
 
Miss Anthrope said:
Dreams are even more subjective than witnessing a real event. I have to ask, where is your evidence that dreams would be remembered more accurately as it relates to memory than witnessing an event? I'm sorry, but your disbelief in this is completely subjective and based on what you think should be true. If what you think should be true, then show us.
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Again, I've been recording and analyzing my dreams for more than 15 years. Spektator's story is inconsistent with my experience. If you think his story is common, see if you can find anyone else with a similar story.
 
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