Asd and psychic tendencies.

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There are plenty of con artists out there.

But I believe that expecting a psychic who isn't a con artist to be able to call out symbols on cards one after the other that they cannot see is, not so much over-estimating their abilities, but rather misunderstanding them.

Personally, I do not think psychics often have that ability; the ability to 'see' inanimate objects and pictures that are our of their usual vision so clearly and at will. What I think we are capable of, on the other hand, is receiving emotions and mental images amongst other things from one another as living beings and common receptors. This is because we are of the same biological material and we carry the same types of fine electrical impulses.

But, we all 'receive' and 'send' quite differently from one-another, albeit some in similar ways to others. We each have the tendency to operate on and with varying vibrational frequencies and wavelengths. This means that one person may be good at 'receiving' the cards and their symbols from one member of their family but not from another. Spouses are commonly good at sending and receiving between one another.

Unfortunately, mere belief does not translate into reality. Until someone wins Randi's millions, or clearly and repeatedly demonstrates psychic abilities without even the possibility of trickery, it's all just wishful thinking and delusion - nothing more.

Guessing those details correctly from an informational poster is intelligent, you sound like the new Sherlock Holmes.

Do you know your Myers Briggs type? Excuse me but I may not have much to comment if you do, it is just something I like to think about at this stage in my life.

Some of the points you made are quite thought provoking and the theory about hyper-noticing of information when especially interested in something leading to confusion and detachment from reality sounds quite plausible. Hmm. But then again, wouldn't the way in which the information is used and processed play a vital role in that scenario?! ! I, for example, do not at all feel confused.

Another question; how would one explain the seeing of auras? Coupled with the facts that there are plenty of psychics who are NTs and plenty of autistic folk who don't believe in psychic abilities?

I am not all that proficient at logically putting together details that I have noticed as you are. For me, that takes a lot of thought and concentration. What you did requires at least a certain level of social understanding and consideration. Although I do believe that my subconscious does a lot of work and 'putting together of details' on my behalf, my natural and general focus throughout my life has been on emotional undercurrents and feelings rather than on practical thought. 'I' came into the material world very slowly; I have only really taken an interest in practically analysing social information (if that's what you can call it??) over the past year or two.

In my life, there has been too many instances in which psychic tendencies could have been the only possible explanation for me to be able to consider another explanation, but there has also been a few that I could relate to what you have said here that, if haven't resulted in confusion, then have at least resulted in detachment. The latter doesn't always feel very nice, either.

During those cases, if what you just said applies to me then I would be sponging lots of information from my surroundings and my subconscious would be taking that and analysing it as well as my conscious. Only since I have attempted to connect my conscious and subconscious together have I begun to understand much of this information hence separate a potential psychic reality from results of over-analysis. Hmm. I am grateful for this down-to-earth view and I think I am currently benefiting from it. The trick is to not over-analyse and to remain open to any possibility.

I understand where you are coming from with regards to what you said about the tarot deck you used. I have always had a keen interest in psychology and I know about confirmation bias (especially with respect to people hearing what they want to hear) and similar phenomenon. That is merely one of the many footings that one can use in order to play another person's wit.

True.

One of my favourite quotes; “it is never a question of belief; the only scientific attitude one can take on any subject is whether it is true. The law of gravitation worked as efficiently before Newton as after him. The cosmos would be fairly chaotic if its laws could not operate without the sanction of human belief" (Yukteswar Giri).

'or clearly and repeatedly demonstrates psychic abilities without even the possibility of trickery, it's all just wishful thinking and delusion - nothing more.'

Also very true.

Ah, excuse me LeLetch, I have just noticed your signature hence the answer to my MBTI question.

[/quote]

I sense I flame war??

Clearly I am missing something.

LeLetch, please do share how you came to this conclusion?

I can't help but wonder how this result came about without the inclusion of the errors in-between the sets of 5, 4 and 3 (and their count).

*Shakes head in disbelief*

I read somewhere that autistic folk are near incapable of lying and are very much concerned with honesty!!

Like any good young liberal arts major, I had quite the dance with belief in the paranormal back in my 20s. I never got quite as far as squinting into pieces of quartz trying to contact the spirits of my ancestors, but I could recite the Major and Minor Arcana forwards and backwards, looked for signs in everything, and made enough dreamcatchers, protective charms, and fith-faths to start a crafts business. Twelve years later, I've got enough candles to never worry about being in the dark when the power goes out. EVER.

It pleased me. For the first time since I was a very small child, I saw myself as Different For A Reason instead of merely miswired. I STILL miss it, especially when I'm laying in bed at night thinking about how much I suck instead of sleeping.

I quit believing in magic (or forced myself to ignore believing in magic), the literal reality and active interest of [God], and all the attendant stuff of religion a few years ago when I found out that autism and schizophrenia are fairly closely related. Nothing against the lot of us that have both, but I just don't want to go there. I'd rather die than lose tough with reality as it is commonly understood and end up back on antipsychotics.

So it is. It is better this way, even if I like it less. I suspect that's most of what all the "articles linking ASD to psychic abilities" are-- autistics trying to find a raison d'etre, trying to make ourselves feel better about ourselves.

That's an interesting piece of social commentary right there, but I digress.

There is a quote I am rather fond of. I believe it's from Terry Pratchett. "Sometimes, magic is knowing just one extra fact."

I think that's what most, if not all, "magic phenomena" really are-- the knowledge of one extra fact, or a few. The most astute of us are aware that we are in possession of the extra information. The rest of us don't consciously realize that we know these things-- that we're intuitive (able to make leaps, correctly, without a few of the pieces, because we can synthesize/analyze the data and fill the pieces in), that we recognize patterns that most people never notice and even we aren't totally aware of, that we see or hear things that "NTs" filter out.

Some days, once in a great while, I comfort myself with the possibility that those things ARE magic...

...but not in a "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" sense. Not in an "Abracadabra, forces above, make that guy I've a crush on fall madly in love" sense. That's not real (actually it is, I have seen it work, but it's psychological prestidigitation, the bending of YOUR OWN MIND through the performance of a confidence trick on yourself, not the bending of someone else's mind through the powers of the unseen ethers or some rubbish).

It's the Carbonaro Effect, only it removes the sleight of hand and relies entirely on the sleight of mind. To borrow again from the very astute Mr. Pratchett, it's "headology."

Maybe that IS magic, and the problem is that we've been taught to think of magic in the whiz-bang, Tarot salon, crystal ball, love spell, bend-a-fork-with-my-mind sense.

And maybe it IS a gift from God/The Universe/The Diversity Fairy/Dumb Luck. A gift that comes with a price, because the laws of physics still apply-- for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; matter is neither created nor destroyed, it merely changes form.

A gift that we'll be able to appreciate better when we finally learn to stop seeing everything in terms of clannish, auto-centric, value-judgment-loaded binaries like "normal/disordered" and "typical/diseased" and, in general, "like-me/needing-to-be-fixed."

Like any good young liberal arts major, I had quite the dance with belief in the paranormal back in my 20s. I never got quite as far as squinting into pieces of quartz trying to contact the spirits of my ancestors, but I could recite the Major and Minor Arcana forwards and backwards, looked for signs in everything, and made enough dreamcatchers, protective charms, and fith-faths to start a crafts business. Twelve years later, I've got enough candles to never worry about being in the dark when the power goes out. EVER.

It pleased me. For the first time since I was a very small child, I saw myself as Different For A Reason instead of merely miswired. I STILL miss it, especially when I'm laying in bed at night thinking about how much I suck instead of sleeping.

I quit believing in magic (or forced myself to ignore believing in magic), the literal reality and active interest of [God], and all the attendant stuff of religion a few years ago when I found out that autism and schizophrenia are fairly closely related. Nothing against the lot of us that have both, but I just don't want to go there. I'd rather die than lose tough with reality as it is commonly understood and end up back on antipsychotics.

So it is. It is better this way, even if I like it less. I suspect that's most of what all the "articles linking ASD to psychic abilities" are-- autistics trying to find a raison d'etre, trying to make ourselves feel better about ourselves.

That's an interesting piece of social commentary right there, but I digress.

There is a quote I am rather fond of. I believe it's from Terry Pratchett. "Sometimes, magic is knowing just one extra fact."

I think that's what most, if not all, "magic phenomena" really are-- the knowledge of one extra fact, or a few. The most astute of us are aware that we are in possession of the extra information. The rest of us don't consciously realize that we know these things-- that we're intuitive (able to make leaps, correctly, without a few of the pieces, because we can synthesize/analyze the data and fill the pieces in), that we recognize patterns that most people never notice and even we aren't totally aware of, that we see or hear things that "NTs" filter out.

Some days, once in a great while, I comfort myself with the possibility that those things ARE magic...

...but not in a "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" sense. Not in an "Abracadabra, forces above, make that guy I've a crush on fall madly in love" sense. That's not real (actually it is, I have seen it work, but it's psychological prestidigitation, the bending of YOUR OWN MIND through the performance of a confidence trick on yourself, not the bending of someone else's mind through the powers of the unseen ethers or some rubbish).

It's the Carbonaro Effect, only it removes the sleight of hand and relies entirely on the sleight of mind. To borrow again from the very astute Mr. Pratchett, it's "headology."

Maybe that IS magic, and the problem is that we've been taught to think of magic in the whiz-bang, Tarot salon, crystal ball, love spell, bend-a-fork-with-my-mind sense.

And maybe it IS a gift from God/The Universe/The Diversity Fairy/Dumb Luck. A gift that comes with a price, because the laws of physics still apply-- for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; matter is neither created nor destroyed, it merely changes form.

A gift that we'll be able to appreciate better when we finally learn to stop seeing everything in terms of clannish, auto-centric, value-judgment-loaded binaries like "normal/disordered" and "typical/diseased" and, in general, "like-me/needing-to-be-fixed."

This:

And this:And this:Belief in being psychic is all about the desire for a reason for being 'different', the desire to be 'special', and the tricks that the mind can play on itself.

Only this, and nothing more.

Perhaps not so profitable when you eventually realize you're unable to stop consciously "conning" people in some fashion (as you have been conned?).

When you find you've eventually become the "con" man you were "cleverly" trying to emulate (but secretly despised?).

It is possible you can change yourself, but this statement may not mean much to a "con" man (who already has "all the answers").

I wish you success.

Oh, I gave up running the psychic con decades ago, once I was able to go legit and get a respectable job. Funny thing ... for years afterward, my former clients kept begging me for readings, sometimes offering as much money for one reading as I made in one week on my regular job! (I'm an electrical engineer.) My guess is that they were seeking guidance and affirmation.

And there's a 'seeker' born every minute ...

It's a little over 3000 to one. It's only million to one if you exclude the errors you made between your 5 set 4 set and 3 set. In that case, i think it hits 9+ million to one. I'd have to use/make a freaky formula or something to give you the real stats on this.

It's obvious to a mathematician you, again, don't have a clue. A "freaky formula" indeed.

I'll have to reference this on a Math board someday. Thanks for the laugh.

Try another one?....:Tell us what a "sock puppet" is?

Like any good young liberal arts major, I had quite the dance with belief in the paranormal back in my 20s. I never got quite as far as squinting into pieces of quartz trying to contact the spirits of my ancestors, but I could recite the Major and Minor Arcana forwards and backwards, looked for signs in everything, and made enough dreamcatchers, protective charms, and fith-faths to start a crafts business. Twelve years later, I've got enough candles to never worry about being in the dark when the power goes out. EVER.

It pleased me. For the first time since I was a very small child, I saw myself as Different For A Reason instead of merely miswired. I STILL miss it, especially when I'm laying in bed at night thinking about how much I suck instead of sleeping.

I quit believing in magic (or forced myself to ignore believing in magic), the literal reality and active interest of [God], and all the attendant stuff of religion a few years ago when I found out that autism and schizophrenia are fairly closely related. Nothing against the lot of us that have both, but I just don't want to go there. I'd rather die than lose tough with reality as it is commonly understood and end up back on antipsychotics.

So it is. It is better this way, even if I like it less. I suspect that's most of what all the "articles linking ASD to psychic abilities" are-- autistics trying to find a raison d'etre, trying to make ourselves feel better about ourselves.

That's an interesting piece of social commentary right there, but I digress.

There is a quote I am rather fond of. I believe it's from Terry Pratchett. "Sometimes, magic is knowing just one extra fact."

I think that's what most, if not all, "magic phenomena" really are-- the knowledge of one extra fact, or a few. The most astute of us are aware that we are in possession of the extra information. The rest of us don't consciously realize that we know these things-- that we're intuitive (able to make leaps, correctly, without a few of the pieces, because we can synthesize/analyze the data and fill the pieces in), that we recognize patterns that most people never notice and even we aren't totally aware of, that we see or hear things that "NTs" filter out.

Some days, once in a great while, I comfort myself with the possibility that those things ARE magic...

...but not in a "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" sense. Not in an "Abracadabra, forces above, make that guy I've a crush on fall madly in love" sense. That's not real (actually it is, I have seen it work, but it's psychological prestidigitation, the bending of YOUR OWN MIND through the performance of a confidence trick on yourself, not the bending of someone else's mind through the powers of the unseen ethers or some rubbish).

It's the Carbonaro Effect, only it removes the sleight of hand and relies entirely on the sleight of mind. To borrow again from the very astute Mr. Pratchett, it's "headology."

Maybe that IS magic, and the problem is that we've been taught to think of magic in the whiz-bang, Tarot salon, crystal ball, love spell, bend-a-fork-with-my-mind sense.

And maybe it IS a gift from God/The Universe/The Diversity Fairy/Dumb Luck. A gift that comes with a price, because the laws of physics still apply-- for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; matter is neither created nor destroyed, it merely changes form.

A gift that we'll be able to appreciate better when we finally learn to stop seeing everything in terms of clannish, auto-centric, value-judgment-loaded binaries like "normal/disordered" and "typical/diseased" and, in general, "like-me/needing-to-be-fixed."

Were you ever dealt a perfect poker hand? Did you ever know/hear of anyone that had been dealt such a hand? Do you say this is impossible?