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What would it take? Precognition

One wonders, if "precognition" exists, why no one forsaw a rather vast catalogue of Earth-shaking events.
Even in recent history, we could mention the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Rwanda genocide/massacre, the LA earthquake, the attack on the Murrah federal building, 9/11, the Columbia disaster....And so on.

Instead, we are treated to a scattershot of claims about the pregnancy of Brittney and the activities of Micheal Jackson.
 
Bikewer said:
One wonders, if "precognition" exists, why no one forsaw a rather vast catalogue of Earth-shaking events.
Even in recent history, we could mention the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Rwanda genocide/massacre, the LA earthquake, the attack on the Murrah federal building, 9/11, the Columbia disaster....And so on.
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Plenty of them claim to have intuited or vaguely felt those things. Trouble is, none of them do so until AFTER the event.
 
The 3rd eye said:
What would it take for a sekeptic to belive in precognition?

I have asked my self this question many a time and only found ways of poking holes in the truth.
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There have been a lot of great answers to this on this thread already, but I may as well chip in:

1) You'd have to decide on exactly what precognition is, as well as its inherent limitations. Can you only precognate (precognize?) events that specifically affect you? If so, this may not be actual precognition. For instance:

I predict that I will drink large quantities of coffee this morning. I further predict that I will require repeated visits to the urinal this afternoon, largely as a result of said coffee. I predict that my car will be noisy and in need of repairs, that my clients will be whiny. I predict that I'll watch the battery on my 80gb iPod drain *way* faster than it should, and will curse the name of Apple. I also predict, however, that I will grin with girlish glee as I watch the latest episode of the Colbert Report on said iPod before I begin cursing Apple.

See what I'm doing there? All of those things are highly likely to happen, but that's not precognition. Human beings are creatures of habit, and we're all fairly aware of what will happen in our day-to-day lives.

Now, if I were to precognify that a toilet seat is going to fall from outer space and crush my car at approximately 3:28pm today, and it actually happened, *that* would be an example of precognificationality. If I could do that on a repeatable basis with a high accuracy rate, I'd convince even the most hardcore skeptics. Unfortunately, I cannot do that...and I know someone who is willing to bet $1 million USD that you can't do it, either.
 
Bikewer said:
One wonders, if "precognition" exists, why no one forsaw a rather vast catalogue of Earth-shaking events.
Even in recent history, we could mention the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Rwanda genocide/massacre, the LA earthquake, the attack on the Murrah federal building, 9/11, the Columbia disaster....And so on.

Instead, we are treated to a scattershot of claims about the pregnancy of Brittney and the activities of Micheal Jackson.
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True for the "big names" of the psychic mafia, but not for people like 3rdeye, who tend to think small and personal:

What makes you so sure that someone who has preditions can see the future of people who arent around them or evnts that dont effect that persons life.

If i did dream of the future why would i dream of a plane thats going to crash tomarow ? Im not attached to it, It doesnt effect my life,
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Note that the definition of "events that effect [their] lives" are rarely clearly defined, and that they often do not include a lot of things that they would have been much better off knowing in advance, about their finances, their family, car maintenance, etc. ;)

I find this is a repetitive theme from skeptics that they expect you know all once you can see the future
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He's got a point here. There's no reason to suppose, should something like precognition exist (and I'm not inclined to believe that), that it should automatically include all and everything.
 
Flo said:
He's got a point here. There's no reason to suppose, should something like precognition exist (and I'm not inclined to believe that), that it should automatically include all and everything.
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Why not? If the claim is to be able to see future events then it's certainly up to the claimant to define that. With no other definition, then it should include all future events. It's certainly not an unreasonable assumption in the face of the claim of precognition.

In fact, we suggest those great big, headline making events because claimants frequently say that they're picking up on bad vibes or strong feelings, and these sorts of events would cause more people to send out more such bad vibes.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Why not? If the claim is to be able to see future events then it's certainly up to the claimant to define that. With no other definition, then it should include all future events. It's certainly not an unreasonable assumption in the face of the claim of precognition.
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I disagree. Turn it around for a second, so that we're talking about past events instead of future ones. I claim to be from the past, and that I can tell you of events that happened in the past. But I can't tell you every past event. I can't tell you what you had for dinner on the evening of your 11th birthday, for instance, and it would be unreasonable to assume that I could.

So it is with people who claim to see the future.
 
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Beleth said:
I disagree. Turn it around for a second, so that we're talking about past events instead of future ones. I claim to be from the past, and that I can tell you of events that happened in the past. But I can't tell you every past event. I can't tell you what you had for dinner on the evening of your 11th birthday, for instance, and it would be unreasonable to assume that I could.

So it is with people who claim to see the future.
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Well that doesn't follow at all. We're all "visitors from the past" and that's an ordinary (non supernatural) claim. Precognition is not--so why would it be anything like talking about past events?

Also, this threadlet was in response to FramerDave's first answer to the OP: predict the World Series winner, etc. The OP answered that his precognition only works for things that directly affect him. I think that's just a cop out so he can claim an ability that is only verifiable by himself.

At the very least, as others have said--it's at least up to the claimant to say what his claim is. If it's not general precognition, then what is it?
 
The thing is, most of us don't expect people to be able to see everything in the future, but even the claim that they can only see things that effect them doesn't stand up. For example, 9/11 affected pretty much everyone in the world, yet no-one foresaw it. The winner of a presidential election, the economy of your country, the death of someone close to you, these are all things that should have a fairly big effect on you, yet 3rd Eye claims he can't even see this sort of thing. If you can't see this sort of thing, then what can you see?
 
I am a skeptic who does believe in precognition. That is if you define precognition as having dreams/thoughts/feelings that turn out to be similar to future events.

I think everyone has had some sort of precognition.

What I don’t believe is that it is useful.

I don’t believe is that, following a dream/thought/feeling, anyone can make a future predication with any more accuracy than chance.

You need to bear in mind what other posters have said. If you see a future train disaster (at an unspecified time and place). The chance of this happening is as close to 100% as you can get.

Certainly some people are going to have uncannily accurate predictions following a dream, where they might even have told people about a future event.

However chance expects this. When you multiply the number of people in the world by the number of dreams people have, you have a massive pool of possible hits, some of it must be very close to actual future events.

For example, if everyone in the world only remembers 1 dream a week, there will be 925 ‘million to one’ chance dreams every night.

What people can’t do is come up with million to one dreams regularly nor can they distinguish dreams that are hits from those that aren’t until after the event. As such, even if with hindsight they turn out to be at the top end of the dream chance bell curve, it is no use for future predictions.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Well that doesn't follow at all. We're all "visitors from the past" and that's an ordinary (non supernatural) claim. Precognition is not--so why would it be anything like talking about past events?
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I answered this in my previous post, but I will rephrase. Being from the past does not grant omniscience of the past. Likewise, being from (or seeing) the future would not grant omniscience of the future.

Also, this threadlet was in response to FramerDave's first answer to the OP: predict the World Series winner, etc. The OP answered that his precognition only works for things that directly affect him. I think that's just a cop out so he can claim an ability that is only verifiable by himself.
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And I think that your opinion is unsupportable, for the reasons I have given. I'm from the past, but I couldn't tell you who won last year's World Series off the top of my head. All I know is that it was neither team from Chicago.

At the very least, as others have said--it's at least up to the claimant to say what his claim is.
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I agree.
 
Beleth said:
I answered this in my previous post, but I will rephrase. Being from the past does not grant omniscience of the past. Likewise, being from (or seeing) the future would not grant omniscience of the future.
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Precognition is not time travel. Precognition is the supernatural or magical ability to see (or rather have knowledge of) future events, and as such has nothing whatsoever to do with ordinary ways of acquiring knowledge, information or experience. (So your observation that being from the past doesn't imply omniscience, while entirely true is irrelevant.)

If you claim to be precognitive, it's up to you to say how it's limited.

Why would it matter what things you will become aware of through personal observation? In other words, you obviously don't have to be an eyewitness to an event if you can somehow "see" it before it happens.

If your claim precludes anything that is objectively verifiable (such as lottery winners, outcome of this year's World Series, etc.), then I say it's just a cop out to claim something that isn't testable.
 
Joe, we're just talking past each other now. The objections you bring up are points I have already covered. So I'm going to move on.
 
I think you think that I said precognition implies omniscience, and I never said any such thing.

You never covered how knowledge of past events has anything to do with a supernatural claim of knowledge for future events.
 
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