• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Premonition?

Maybe this is like one of those "Why does this Universe contain life?", questions.

Perhaps you had the premonition because, if you didn't, you'd not be here to wonder why you had the premonition. Either that or it was just a coincidence.

Someone asked how many times you've had a premonition and had it not come true. This is a good question, but not quite the right one. The real question is, how often has a person at any time, all over the world had a premonition that has not come true? The answer, I'm willing to bet, is millions upon millions of times.

The fact yours happens to be one of the rare occasions when, by chance, the premonition has come true, is objectively uninteresting. I'm sure it was a profound subjective experience for you, though.
 
Z said:
This actually is fairly interesting in connection to what I've been reading about sensory processing.

See, here's the thing: our senses don't immediately report to our conscious mind, but in fact are sending info into other parts of our brain first. It's a simple survival mechanism: immediate danger signals can be immediately reacted upon without conscious consideration. Cars make vibrations when they drive. Motors make noise. Lights reflect off of other surfaces. Some tiny bit of information came into your hearing or sight that you didn't get an immediate chance to process consciously, and put you on alert.

I use techniques like this when I drive a lot - specifically, for difficult and/or blind turns, the blind spot on my van, etc. I've spent time working on recognizing the indirect clues other vehicles provide as to their location.

The specifics of a 'vision of being t-boned' could simply be that sensory data was processed in the non-conscious portions of your brain, and a warning issued in the form of a brief mental assimilation of that data. It's actually similar to what goes on in martial arts - from simple body language clues, a seasoned practicioner can predict exactly what attack is going to commence - which limb, what angle, amount of force, etc. This allows the practicioner to react appropriately and accurately without conscious thought.

My platoon at Ft. Sill gained a considerable amount of this automatic subconscious skill during crew drills. We had a timed event during evaluations in which we had to pull our command center into position and set up a camoflage net, tent extension, communications antenna, and establish basic communications - voice and digital - in under 15 minutes. After training about two weeks, each of us had gained excellent subconscious skills in doing these tasks, and honed our procedure to the point we could set up in under four minutes. We would weave and throw equipment and run hither and yon, never once consciously processing where we or our equipment were, immediately detecting problems and snags and dealing with them, etc.

Several observers wondered whether we had some weird psychic link, because we also did all of this in complete silence.

NEVER underestimate the power of the human brain!
Click to expand...

Ramachandran described victims of "blindsight" in his book, "Phantoms of the Brain". He described their behavior as seemingly paranormal -- they were blind, but still could perform simple, repetitive tasks that required vision (such as lining up a piece of mail to put it through a mail slot). This is a strong indication that a lot of our visual processing is unconscious, and therefore essentially automated. (How many times have you REALLY had to think about the drive to work, even though it requires some extremely sophisticated visual processing to navigate through traffic?)

Another thing to take into account is that the brain is wired to handle dangerous situations differently from innocuous ones. Once it learns that a certain sequence of events is potentially dangerous, it recognizes this pattern whenever it occurs and re-routes the message to a more primitive part of the brain for immediate action, rather than sending it to the more evolved visual centers for thorough analysis. The result would be a feeling exactly like what was described in the opening post: An urge to take action even though no threat was consciously perceived.
 
Reno said:
Premise 1 is wrong: He has NEVER slowed down in perhaps a thousand times at THIS intersection unless the light has just changed.

Premise 2 is irrelevant to my question.

With both your premises being wrong, your conclusion is as much use as a fart in a spacesuit. Eh, Einstein?
Click to expand...

Is it now?
RandomElement said:
Number of clear intersections where the light was green that I have braked at without hearing a siren or seeing someone crossing against the light - one.
Click to expand...

I wonder whose conclusion was correct.. Anyway, I'm done teaching you basic logic. For more you'll just have to go to school.
 
If I want to learn more about logic, I certainly won't look for a teacher who could be fooled into thinking a TV remote can make a foot wiggle.

Peace out.
 
Reno said:
If I want to learn more about logic, I certainly won't look for a teacher who could be fooled into thinking a TV remote can make a foot wiggle.

Peace out.
Click to expand...

Ran out of arguments, have we?
 
Not at all. I'll engage you in any discussion you like. If it's a digression from the topic here, feel free to open a new thread.

Maybe you'd be good enough to give us all here your wise opinion on what caused RE to jam on his brakes and avert disaster?
 
Random element, I have had similar experiences, several times. I just contribited the end result to defensive driving. I can't count the number of times I have slowed down for no reason only to see a cop around the corner with radar. I did dream about a trip to another school one time, two weeks later we were there. I started to look around, the time, people and what each one was doing was unfolding as it had in my dream. Can that be explained? I knew what was going to happen before it happened. Is that a premonition?
 
Reno said:
Not at all. I'll engage you in any discussion you like. If it's a digression from the topic here, feel free to open a new thread.

Maybe you'd be good enough to give us all here your wise opinion on what caused RE to jam on his brakes and avert disaster?
Click to expand...

Not really. You've demosntrated your inability to comprehend logical arguments so I see no need to discuss anything further. EOD.


Sorry for offtopic everyone, won't happen again.
 
I have had lots of similar experiences. Defensive driving is a good thing. Have you ever had a dream that came true? I did once. It took two weeks to become reality, but the time, people, surroundings and actions were unfolding just as I had dreamed and just as I knew they would. Is that a premonition? Bear in mind, this was a trip to another school to use their gym to play floor hockey, I had no previous knowledge that we would go there to play...
 
sinclairmcevoy said:
Random element, I have had similar experiences, several times. I just contribited the end result to defensive driving. I can't count the number of times I have slowed down for no reason only to see a cop around the corner with radar. I did dream about a trip to another school one time, two weeks later we were there. I started to look around, the time, people and what each one was doing was unfolding as it had in my dream. Can that be explained? I knew what was going to happen before it happened. Is that a premonition?
Click to expand...

The thing about dreams is that memory is impaired while we are dreaming, so there is a great risk that the memory will be "contaminated" when we recall it in an attempt to match the pattern seen in the dream to real-life patterns in waking life.

The sequence is this: Dream images are taken from memories of waking life, so patterns one would see in waking life are mirrored in dreams. However, the dream memories are not recorded the same way. The memories are routed through the emotional centers of the brain, and the mechanism for laying down new memories is partly "asleep" when one is dreaming. The result is an incomplete but emotionally charged memory. When we see something similar later on in waking life, we relate it to these emotionally charged memories and it seems very significant to us because of the mechanism by which the memory is stored (it is recalled in the same way, by routing through the emotional centers). It's not a stretch that we could confabulate memories to both fill in the missing pieces of our dream memory and match it to what we are now experiencing.
 
Question ???

Hello RE have you ever had a had a near death experience.

Like almost drowning or having to be revived by a defibrillator.

I find most people who clame to have premonitions have had such an experience as i have my self.
 
Aggle-rithm, that is very interesting and makes sense. Thank you for that info. I'll have to take down my Fortune Teller for Hire sign however.....It was a really exciting experience however it's explained. I think I was about 9 years old and can still see it plainly. Oh well, back to the old crystal ball........
 
3rd eye, I have nearly drowned twice as a kid. One breath away from death, and then yanked out. Not a pleasant experience, I didn't see my life flash before my eyes as many have claimed. Did you??
 
sinclairmcevoy said:
Aggle-rithm, that is very interesting and makes sense. Thank you for that info. I'll have to take down my Fortune Teller for Hire sign however.....It was a really exciting experience however it's explained. I think I was about 9 years old and can still see it plainly. Oh well, back to the old crystal ball........
Click to expand...

I've had many experiences like that. I was once a firm believer in Jungian synchronicity, but knowledge of more recent (and science-based) discoveries has amended my beliefs considerably. I don't think having a logical explanation makes these experiences any less fascinating, though.
 
The 3rd eye said:
Hello RE have you ever had a had a near death experience.

Like almost drowning or having to be revived by a defibrillator.

I find most people who clame to have premonitions have had such an experience as i have my self.
Click to expand...

An experience like that can result in altered brain function -- either physiologically, psychologically, or both. Possibly, one learns to be more vigilant in looking for patterns as a result of the trauma. This could lead to the perception of having premonitions, simply because the person notices more.

Or, it could just be garden-variety brain damage from lack of oxygen. If cognitive ability is compromised, one would naturally fall back on magical thinking.

I would prefer to believe that the former is true.
 
I had an incident similar to the OP -- I had been riding my minibike as a young teenager back and forth behind my back yard (all back yards ended on a right-of-way for a big drainage ditch, so we went back and forth behind everybody's house.)

The minibike topped out at 35mph, measured next to a car.

Anyhoo, on the way back from one end of our run, I decided to slow down and see how slowly I could ride without tipping over. I got down to about 4mph (wasn't quite there yet) when the thing just fell in half, the big pin holding the front fork on coming out.

I always felt it rather odd. I must chalk it up to being pure coincidence (I don't believe I did that "slow thing" much if ever, and certainly not in the middle of a run way away from anyone, though one tries to balance when standing still and just waiting of course.)

I also had another incident where I had been riding a 10 speed for over an hour helping a buddy deliver papers. We zoomed home then up the driveway. I got off my bike and stood there straddling it, and it fell in half, with no weight on it, the tube through which the handle bars went breaking the weld from the body.

I also find it amusing that, technically, these would be two separate styles supernatural events -- a "guardian angel" would merely have had to tweak my mind in the first, while physically restraining the bike fork from breaking in the second. Unless the supernatural events stacked, him or her or it tweaking my mind both times, with, ahem, my mind picking up the telekinetic effort to hold the bike together in the second. All subconsciously, of course. :p

Pure coincidence, I believe, but I keep my eyes peeled.
 
baron said:
In that case, accept ours. Coincidence.
Click to expand...
Yes, coincidence account for all premonitions. That has been well-established by the vast research done by skeptics.

P.S. Random element: The vast research consists of skeptics endlessly repeating a one-word mantra: "Coincidence."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom