Autism and a heightened sense of psychic abilities

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I hate to be a fun slayer, but I consider myself a scientist, and I'm obviously not an expert on the subject, but my own studies/readings on the human brain and how it works leads me to believe that there is no possibility for psychic phenomena. There is an explanation for everything I found thus far, and the exceptions to that are always horribly unprofessional studies done with the intention of producing a seemingly "psychic" result.
We are biological creatures, yes, but we are made of tiny pieces of matter interacting. We are computers. And though it is possible for one computer to connect to another, that's not possible in our world.
(If anyone's seen Avatar, I found their connectible brain stems incredibly fascinating, because that could theoretically work...)

Again, sorry if I've offended anyone, I feel like I'm bound to offend someone, but I just can't ignore this thread I feel too strongly about things like this...

it's good, isn't it? I'm going to post that link in the women's section.

I have zero psychic ability. My dreams are mundane, usually involve looking for bathroom or eating yummy food. Though I'm great at "cold reading" and can make all sorts of predictions. When I was younger I used to practice all sorts of fortune telling, Eastern and Western astrology, coin flipping, palm reading, I Ching...etc. I've done birth charts for all sorts of people and they were quite impressed as far as free service go. I think I look smart and mysterious enough for a fortune teller. Though of course I don't believe in those things. It's just for fun.

I disagree because once you've gone through it so many times, it's no longer just something to ignore. It's one of those things that if you don't experience it yourself, naturally you aren't going to believe it because it's not happening to you.

I just created a post that has some connections to this post. I am diagnosed with AS. What you think is ESP is simply the result of an Aspie that has either;
a) Been through extensive therapy, thus gaining a very deep understanding of the psyche.
b) Taken on a keen interest in psychology.
There are no "unexplained phenomena". Sorry, I wish I was wrong as the world would surely be a lot more exciting. There's only science, the rest is an individuals desperate need to believe there "must be something!" It's a typical symptom of depression. The person is disenchanted, unsatisfied with the fact that "this is all there is" i.e. civilization, nature, death. Some can't accept that.

But anyway, I'll explain the "ESP". I have an acute sense of this "ESP". I can look at your face and tell you what you are like. And I've done this so it's not just hot air. A friend of mine was considering getting serious with a certain guy. She wanted to show me pictures of him. I immediately told her all about him. I proclaimed he was a narcissist, enjoyed making women feel sorry for him simply to gain their sympathy and last but not least.... I told her he enjoyed dressing in women's clothes. I'm serious. She right away accused me of knowing him personally. When she finally realized I had never as much as seen the man prior to her insistence of me looking at his photos she validated every last thing I said. Do I have "ESP"? Absolutely not. The problem with magical thinking is that it requires no elbow grease. One wakes up one morning and knows all! No, no.

After developing an "Aspie obsession" with psychology + 10 years of therapy I gained this unexplainable ability. Doctors say someone with AS cannot "read" people even on a fundamental level. Well I couldn't either until I underwent my therapy and continued my intense studies of the mind. It's not magic. It's a side-effect of Asperger's Syndrome. Just like how a 6 year old with AS can play an advanced Bach piece with the greatest of ease, that is normally considered a challenge for even a seasoned concert pianist.

True, Aspies are sometimes born with a great aptitude for certain things. However, it still involve a certain amount of work to achieve excellence. We just have a head start.

Not everything can be explained by science if the person explaining thinks everything revolves around only logic minus intuition.

to the non-believers posting on this thread:
do you know anything about quantum physics??? what sense does it make that a subatomic particle could be in two places at once? but it follows an accepted scientific principle that it is so.

point being: sometimes logic really cannot explain things.

if you're skeptical of precognitive abilities or paranormal phenomena, that's perfectly sensible. but if you disbelieve someone who tells you in all sincerity that they have had such an experience, i think that is disrespectful. it is possible to prove things scientifically; but how do you *disprove* anything? you can believe or not believe, but don't invalidate someone else's experience. if you think it's bogus: read it, roll your eyes, move to a different thread.

in a way, we all have different realities and different ways of framing our experiences to make sense of them. and the whole point of WP is to bring together lots of people who have had experiences outside of the norm and yet have discovered many of these strange behaviors and traits are actually shared by a lot of other people.

so ... bring on the stories about suspected psychic abilities. who cares if it's possible or proven or true? would an NT think it was possible that someone could hear sounds so high pitched most people do not hear them? no; because they haven't experienced it themselves. but it is a truth for some aspies.

some people experience things others do not.

i like this thread, and i would like to hear these stories, whether they are universally accepted as "true" or not.

I'll try to stop posting non-believer type things in this thread, because you're right, I'm not being fair. Just as it's unfair to go to a christian after school club and explain why religion is wrong, it's also very rude to do the same thing to any faith based belief.
Though your post about quantum physics intrigued me
I know almost nothing about quantum physics outside the layman's view, but I've been working on expanding my knowledge. I do think that using quantum physics as an example of why logic can't explain things and thus psychic phenomena are real is pretty silly. Just because we don't yet have a unified "theory of everything," as they like to call it, doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. It doesn't mean that quantum physics is inexplicable and magical. Before we discovered oxygen and gas exchange systems, fish breathing water was not magic.

(ps) To be clear, I'm not trying to be argumentative (I know I sometimes come off that way), I'm just trying to make a point.

psychic abilitys do exist asny thing and every thing is posible to the human mind,

but as for my experiance with it, i have had premonitions of events wich happend latter on either aday to almost a year in advanced, i have played with moving objects and find it esy to move a dows(apendulum held in the hand in front of you whilst you hold still and not move the hand or body most ask it questions and get awnsers corectly) i like to take the dows and think of it swinging in one direction and it moves in that direction i can change wich direction i want ti to swing and it will change direction.

one big thing iam not sure if it is true any more is i was able to feel others emotions, now i cant realy tell by seeing them but there is always somthing a thought or voice that tells me that what i feel is not always my own feeling and when i examin it, the feeling is right it belongs to some one else some times it is the person near me or over the net whomei am talking to this one is known as being an empath.

i have with my brothers played with telepathy with one of my siblings and suprisingly it is verry esy in my family for us to just pick this kind of stuff up, we would take turns picking somthing collor shape and have theother person guess what it was we had in our minds, and if you can guess we were rarly wrong on it.

if its linked to autism spectrom i duno i have not been profesionaly diagnosed but have found lots of conections to it so i canot oficialy say i have an autism but i can say with my family geans psychic abilitys are kinda comon .

You're absolutely correct. There are many phenomena that currently exist and are unexplainable. But, it's a folly to think that just because they cannot be explained (yet) then they must be "inexplicable" or even "mystical" etc...
We used to believe the earth was flat until great men of science risked their lives to prove otherwise. Thus, I don't think there's any reason why scientists won't be able to explain why, "a subatomic particle could be in two places at once" given enough time, funding & research. It may take 10 years, may take 100. Many ancient civilizations could not comprehend nor quantify thunder & lightning. Since they did not understand and could not control it it took on a highly mystical significance in their culture. Our culture does the same exact thing present day (but not with lightning because we can understand & quantify it). Can't be explained = spiritual, mysterious and inexplicable.



I'm actually not that skeptical of precognitive abilities. Maybe in the traditional sense I am, but just like you I believe there are things that exist but are yet to be explained. Also, why do you deem it sensible for me to be skeptical of the two above mentioned topics but not the topic that the OP was inquiring about? It doesn't strike you how disrespectful and insensible it is to choose what is right or wrong for a person to be skeptical about? That's your will trying to make others fit into your preconceived notions of what you see as "right".



First I want to ask you, why must I believe? Because someone is expressing something with "sincerity"? Liebling katzefrau, disbelief doesn't equal disrespect.
For me it's not as simple as, "I must be disrespectful if I don't believe someone who's truly sincere". For example, I have no religious beliefs, yet I have total respect for all religions and the people who are believers. I even attend services at different places of worship on occasion with the friends I have who are believers. I think there's something good to be said about the majority of beliefs. I'm also interested in their traditions, ceremonies, etc...
Disrespectful would be if I hurled a barrage of words at my friends who believe, trying to convince them that their feelings are invalid. The friends I speak of know where I stand and there is a mutual respect for one another's opinions. That's my personal ideal.



There are myriad ways of "disproving" things. Every time something is proved there are x100 things disproved. Isn't that part of the scientific process? Gathering info to eventually form empirical data, thus ruling out (disproving) many things in the process? The process of elimination can be used to disprove, etc.. But for me that's not the point. What do I gain by disproving someone else's beliefs? I have no need for anyone to validate what I hold as truth, nor am I so unsure of my beliefs that I would go to such great lengths to disprove all the others. I'm all for everyone having the right to their own opinion.



Why? This is a forum meant for discussion, as all forums are. The OP asked a question regarding something he had been pondering. All I did was add my 2 cents. It wasn't my intention to rebuff him or anyone with similar beliefs, but rather to give my POV and god forbid, possibly give food for thought and conversation. I really did not mean to ruffle any feathers (or hairs in your case Kat woman . I apologize if I have.



I couldn't agree with you more. I only joined recently and hearing from other people with AS has been very positive for me. And like I said, it's a forum. I'm sure many members here do not share the exact same opinion on every topic. If I think a topic is "bogus" I don't think I should roll my eyes and move on. In fact, I don't even think what the OP said was bogus to begin with. Coincidentally I read his post directly after I finished typing mine which had a lot of similarities but from a different POV. And since the OP was pondering something and asking questions (aka, soliciting people's experiences, opinions, etc.) I joined in. Are differing opinions generally frowned upon here? I assumed I might find a bit more of an analytical group here open to differing views.



True. They have subjective experiences. The experience belongs to them and others might have even been through similar. Either way.... why judge?



I have plenty of stories that can be looked upon as "psychic". But they are all ultimately grounded in psychology and logic. None of them will make people feel magical or hopeful of such things and I don't want to ruin anyone's fantasy. Plus, most of them contain topics that are intrinsically "politically incorrect" and that can be even more upsetting than exposing the logic behind "magic" for some people so I will respectfully refrain.
Here's to future healthy discourse!!

ok, so first off i am a christian. 2nd I'm not Bible thumping any of you, but there are scriptures that talk about prophesy and psychics,mystics, ect...
for a prophesy to be a prophesy it has to be 100% true and all the things in it must come true. 2nd there is talk about psychics actually picking up on entities that influence them. and that although they have ability's their ability's are demonic not divine, and they don't even know.

Precognition however, is something completely different and i would like to share my most current one.

About 3 weeks ago i had a dream my grandma was hurt/dead. i couldn't tell because all i could see was a hazy image of her just laying there. and i had images of a hospital from the outside. I am not the least bit close with this grandma, but i saw her in my dream . well i told my mom that it was going to happen in a few weeks if my dream was correct. she told me not to talk like that.

1 week ago i was on this very forum reading about heightened senses... my mom called me, she said "Grandma is in the hospital, she had a stroke, they found her lying on the floor"

I was a little freaked out, but then i said mom. i already told you it was going to happen. and although she is freaked out, she is still very skeptical like some of you on this forum.

all i can say is, i do not claim to be psychic. i occasionally get precognitive dreams. and i even had some about the end of the world. but to be honest, those ones seemed like divine messages about my own fate rather than everyone elses.

if someone believes in ESP because they have dreamt something before it happened, that's not a faith-based belief; it's an experience-based belief.



i guess "sensible" was the wrong word. i guess it's appropriate / understandable for anyone to be skeptical of the validity of something they haven't experienced, whatever that is. but skepticism without invalidating someone else's experience is pretty easy to express, no?



no. who am i to say what's right or wrong or true or not? i was just asking for respect on this post.



same. i just thought it would be nice if the people who are moved by this post and wanted to share experiences could do it comfortably.

i actually was hoping to quell argument about it a little bit .. not start a debate.

hope that clarifies.



no.
i hope i haven't given you that impression.

ive had this happen to me a few times but i go to bed and have a dream it feels real but its not i wake up next day and what i dreamt about came true a few times

although what happened to me i believe that its a phycological thing you make it come true without realising it

Another reply.
I'm not trying to target you specifically, it's just that re-reading your post reminded me of a very good mini-essay by Carl Sagan (that's a link).
I feel like it's on topic with the current discussion.

One could say the same thing about religion visions, exorcisms, etc.
There are two types of psychic premonition: the deja vu effect, and the coincidence.
Most of them are coincidences; when one's had a dream or thought of something happening, and something very similar happens in the near future, we will remember it and put great importance on it. If nothing happens, we don't even think about it. The times when a coincidence occurs it stands out to us.
The deja vu effect can also explain the "feeling" of a premonition. Yes, I have had these too, as has almost everyone. When I was much younger I believed them to be psychic premonitions as we all usually do. In a nut shell, it's caused by sensory information to be directly "wired" (so to speak) into the long term memory instead of the short term memory. We are pulling the info back for consideration from our long term storage, giving the illusion of "memory" instead of "new experience" and so most come to the conclusion that they've "seen it in a dream."


Goddamit I'm posting way too much in this thread. I just keep seeing points that stand out to me. Sorry.