Simple, tell me your ideas concerning why humans aren't capable of telepathy. One I've grown fond of is this:

"The visitors tell me that there is an organic quality in our skulls that dampens telepathy, and that this is going to fade." ~ Whitley Strieber

If true this indicates the aliens have a vastly different internal structure then our own. It also seems to suggest the only reason humans aren't reading minds, talking mentally, etc. is due to our skeletal system interfering someway.

That must be why trepanning was so popular.

I think people are capable of telepathy however we are so concerned with our everyday lives that we don't clear our minds of the garbage in our head and spiritually we are supposed to be on another level(mentally not physically) to be capable of telepathy. Only Monks and few people like them have the capacity.

There's no evidence that telepathy exists in any form.

Technically there is evidence of telepathy, however only in the form of reading certain impulses and converting them into cursor movements etc. I'm sure there are more indepth version however unfortunately I have no evidence to support those claims other than having witnessed it and attempting to reverse engineer the method.

Simply in both cases the suggestion is that there is no Natural Telepathy, only Telepathy thats artificially created.

You're missing the idea, according the aliens telepathy is actually inborn in our species, it's just the skeletal structure somehow dampens its effect. Thus if we conducted experiments by removing the skull of mammals, etc we may find it actually does exist. The only concern I think is they didn't specifically say it was the skull causing this dampening effect, just an organic quailty of it. I think this has some real potential to enlighten us. Ask yourself this, have you ever gotten so close that you looked into someones eyes an could tell what they were thinking? Presumably this would be the result of the skull not dampening telepathy because the eye sockets are holes which the effects are nay.

You're missing the idea, according the aliens telepathy is actually inborn in our species, it's just the skeletal structure somehow dampens its effect.

What aliens?

Ok. Let's assume that aliens exist for a moment and leave that alone.

What kind of effect do you think telepathy is? We know of only four fundamental forces in the universe: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism and gravity.

So, which is it?

You're missing the idea, according the aliens telepathy is actually inborn in our species, it's just the skeletal structure somehow dampens its effect. Thus if we conducted experiments by removing the skull of mammals, etc we may find it actually does exist. The only concern I think is they didn't specifically say it was the skull causing this dampening effect, just an organic quailty of it. I think this has some real potential to enlighten us. Ask yourself this, have you ever gotten so close that you looked into someones eyes an could tell what they were thinking? Presumably this would be the result of the skull not dampening telepathy because the eye sockets are holes which the effects are nay.

Sounds to me like someone with a complete logical fallacy trying to "reverse-engineer" what they believe to be true. Namely such reasoning would be a bit like this:

I believe aliens exist... They are telepathic, I am not... Therefore I must have some difference with the alien to not be telepathic, it must be my skull being thick.

Unfortunately to such a person all forms of evidence are cast out, evidence to support that aliens exist in the first place, or that they are telepathic, or that telepathy in general can be supported naturally, and then of course hypothesis on differences that don't exist without evidence to support the first findings.

we do have forms of telepathy, of the emotional sort.

If you are talking of Empathy that is hardly telepathy. Thats mearly a person placing themselves into fictional representations of what they believe another is going through. You could do a test to prove Empathy wasn't Telepathy by placing two volunteers in sealed rooms and asking one volunteer what the other is feeling while subjecting the other volunteer to a number of stimuli's to create an emotion. (fear, anxiety, lust, love, anger, hate etc)

There's no evidence that telepathy exists in any form.
There is no evidence for things which you don't want there to be evidence for.

So, which is it?
Thoughts are waves (motion) like everything else. Mental waves. And those "four fundamental forces" are all magnetism.

Most often telepathy occurs spontaneously in incidents of crisis where a relative or friend has been injured or killed in an accident. An individual is aware of the danger to the other person from a distance. Such information seems to come in different forms as in thought fragments, like something is wrong; in dreams, visions, hallucinations, mental images, in clairaudience, or in words that pop into the mind. Often such information causes the person, the receiver, to change is course of action, such as changing his travel plans or daily schedule, or to just call or contact the other person. Some incidents involve apparent telepathy between humans and animals.

Telepathy seems to be related to the individual's emotional state. This is true of both the sender and receiver. Most women were receivers, as case findings showed, and one possible explanation is that women are more in touch with their emotions and rely on intuition more than men. Geriatric telepathy is fairly common, this may be due, it is speculated, to the impairment of the senses with age.

Telepathy can be induced in the dream state. It appears to be related to some biological factors: blood volume changes during telepathic sending, and electroencephalogram monitoring show that the brain waves of the recipient change to match those of the sender.

Dissociative drugs adversely affect telepathy, but caffeine has a positive effect on it.

Telepathy, like the other forms of psychic phenomena is elusive and difficult to test systematically. Enough evidence is available to reasonably substantiate the phenomenon does exist. But, quantifying it seems to be another matter. The phenomenon is closely connect to the emotional states on both the sender and receiver which creates difficulty in replicating experimental results. Attitudinal factors also influence the phenomenon. The best that researchers can hope for is to have supportive and receptive subjects in experiments that produce similar results

However the most profound and far-reaching implications to be able now to claim that telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition are indubitable hard facts; that the evidence for them is as well-founded and reliable as for the basic facts of physics and chemistry. The second section of this book is designed to outline the sort of evidence upon which this statement is founded, to point towards some of the laws governing para-normal phenomena - or, at least, towards helpful theories of their nature - and finally to consider the implications. What sort of a universe is it in which these things are facts? What do they tell us of the nature of Man himself?

http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/articles/johnson/telepathy.htm

Startrek is fiction but has technobabble based around Science to attempt to make the universe that people see on the television more realistic. I tend to see what you point out as being the same, yes there might be this or that in Chemistry or Physics however it doesn't immediately jump from Relativity and Non-Location to Telepathy exists, to do that is the work of sciencefiction.

Simple, tell me your ideas concerning why humans aren't capable of telepathy. One I've grown fond of is this:

"The visitors tell me that there is an organic quality in our skulls that dampens telepathy, and that this is going to fade." ~ Whitley Strieber

If true this indicates the aliens have a vastly different internal structure then our own. It also seems to suggest the only reason humans aren't reading minds, talking mentally, etc. is due to our skeletal system interfering someway.

"The" visitors?

However the most profound and far-reaching implications to be able now to claim that telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition are indubitable hard facts; that the evidence for them is as well-founded and reliable as for the basic facts of physics and chemistry. That is simply not true. The evidence for telepathy seems to be mainly anecdotal. The more serious research appears to be plagued with dubious testing protocols, allegations of cheating or results that are unable to be replicated.

The evidence mentioned in that survivalafterdeath link is the work of Rhine, Tyrrell and Soal. The results are from early to mid last century. A quick look for these tests on the internet will show similar problems mentioned above. From a csicop article by Susan Blackmore..... "For example, in the 1950s the London University mathematician Samuel Soal claimed convincing evidence of telepathy with his special subject Basil Shackleton, with odds estimated at 1035 against the effect being due to chance (Soal and Bateman 1954). These results convinced a whole generation of researchers and it took more than thirty years to show that Soal had, in fact, cheated (Markwick 1978). Promising animal precognition experiments were blighted by the discovery of fraud (Rhine 1974) "
http://www.csicop.org/si/2001-03/conciousness.html

Now before you accuse me of being a close minded sceptic, I am not instantly dismissing their work. The point I am trying to make here is that the quality for the evidence to support telepathy does not compare to that of physics or chemistry. Not even close. School children can do basic experiments to validate chemistry and physics and will get the same results each time.

So there may be some encouraging results for telepathy or there may be some people fudging data. Either way the evidence at the moment is not good enough.


Interesting article. http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/JSPR1988.htm

it is known.... that the eye..... emits... light... in the form of images which are flashing threw the mind.

thats why when you look at someone in the eyes... you can almost read their mind.

not quite... but you can see the images their mind is flashing threw.

but you still need highly advanced skills of preception to notice what those images say...... or tell about what they are thinking...

i work on it regularly... but my brain is to damm slow.

-MT

Even if your brain is slow, you should be able to capture these images on a high-speed camera. It would be convincing proof!

shaman_ ....

I agree enitirley with the lack of valid data, but surley the lack of critical rigour in the analysis of data plays a large factor? As parapsychology, along with transpersonal psychology and for that matter even humanist psychology (which can hardly be called 'out there') are largley overlooked by the main body of the psychological accademic community, how can such rigour exist? What tends to happen with these special interet groups is that a little self sustaining intellectual community develops, naturally this limits critical perspectives.

Sceptisism is healthy, but as you rightly say open mindedness is essential to be a true sceptic, dogmatism has nothing to do with rationality. What i guess im saying (and see posts under 'parapsychology?' thread for a better idea of my views on the subject in genreal) is that our knowlege creation industry, accademia, dances to a certain philosophical tune. That is a deterministic, materialistic and secular world view, typically post enlightenment modernism. Culturally though we seem to be radically post modern, and thus people are naturally drawn to the mystical, aliens, telepathy and the like as the very antitheisis of the instutionalised wisdom.

So views polarize, and the loser is honest, rational critical debate. Who knows if telepathy exists; i have experienced some odd things myself, such as having a very vivid dream that a space shuttle was lifting off and then hovering back to the pad, only to see on the news days later that the latest launch was delayed. Or thinking i havent seen an old friend for years, before bumping into them the next day. Of course when you look at the variables- number or thoughts in a lifetime, number of dreams- i suppose logically some coincidental incidents of this nature are possible, but is that the ONLY reasonable explanation?

Therefore its the culture of science, and more importantly the philosophy of science, that limits parapsychologies progress at least as much as it is dishonesty or incompetence of parapsychologists (not that im saying that dosent exist!). We need proper debate, and even the harshest critics of parapsychology seem to identify with that statment as, having taken time to read the work, they are engaged in that debate already. The more perspectives, the more falsfication and the better Popperian science we have!

I think people are capable of telepathy however we are so concerned with our everyday lives that we don't clear our minds of the garbage in our head and spiritually we are supposed to be on another level(mentally not physically) to be capable of telepathy. Only Monks and few people like them have the capacity.

Maybe it is literally garbage in our heads with aluminum, manganese, mercury, lead, and other stuff getting into our brains.

I don't trust Csicop not to lie. When talking to them before I have noticed that they can't get two sentences out without sliding around the truth and leaving a trail of slime. If they didn't act like that they would have had a believer in me a long time ago and it does make a big difference.

It doesn't matter about all the poisons that go in your head if you are spiritually advanced. Nothing physical can hurt you if your mind is clear and focused. I mean on a high level.
There is a story about a saint who never ate when she became one. She died old and everyday she had communion bread. Her stomach had shrunk from lack of use but she died of old age healthy.
Its either humans can or they can't. I think they can because spirituality makes you do anything you want to do that physical laws say you can't do.

Most of us are never going to reach those lofty heights, Sgal. Do you mind if we don't poison ourselves into insanity while futilely trying to attain heights of spiritual development?

you can only reach these spiritual goals if you set your mind on it. People are almost always concerned with their own lives to set these goals. That's why they will never reach them.
What do you mean by poison ourselves into insanity. Taking steps during the process of spiritual development would not make anybody crazy!
Before I was refering to the poisons you mentioned before (aluminum and the other garbage)
Its true that this stuff in small amounts usually depending on where you live probably gets into the body but it doesn't stop someone from spiritually progressing further because spirituality fights the physical things we get sick from. If someone gets too sick from a diease for example they might make the decision to stop fighting because they don't feel well to fight it off. And that is of their own choice.

It doesn't matter about all the poisons that go in your head if you are spiritually advanced. Nothing physical can hurt you if your mind is clear and focused. Thats a bold claim. Do you know someone who can demonstrate this to me?

you can only reach these spiritual goals if you set your mind on it. People are almost always concerned with their own lives to set these goals. That's why they will never reach them.
What do you mean by poison ourselves into insanity. Taking steps during the process of spiritual development would not make anybody crazy!
Before I was refering to the poisons you mentioned before (aluminum and the other garbage)
Its true that this stuff in small amounts usually depending on where you live probably gets into the body but it doesn't stop someone from spiritually progressing further because spirituality fights the physical things we get sick from. If someone gets too sick from a diease for example they might make the decision to stop fighting because they don't feel well to fight it off. And that is of their own choice.

The aluminum and stuff are the poisons I was talking about. It's going to take more than most people have left to live to even start detoxifying their bodies by spiritual means. If we do not help ourselves by physical means we will wind up with a lot more illness and dementia than is necessary.

I think that most people who try the spiritual means will find themselves in futile mental traps serving human masters who suck the life out of them for pleasure and profit.

If you are talking of Empathy that is hardly telepathy. Thats mearly a person placing themselves into fictional representations of what they believe another is going through. You could do a test to prove Empathy wasn't Telepathy by placing two volunteers in sealed rooms and asking one volunteer what the other is feeling while subjecting the other volunteer to a number of stimuli's to create an emotion. (fear, anxiety, lust, love, anger, hate etc)

Actually people have done these tests with twins and family members and actually, the results have been surprising. You should look it up.

It doesn't matter about all the poisons that go in your head if you are spiritually advanced. Nothing physical can hurt you if your mind is clear and focused. I mean on a high level.
There is a story about a saint who never ate when she became one. She died old and everyday she had communion bread. Her stomach had shrunk from lack of use but she died of old age healthy.
Its either humans can or they can't. I think they can because spirituality makes you do anything you want to do that physical laws say you can't do.

I think, if you are spiritually advanced, you'll evolve beyond the need to eat sure, just change your genetics so you can get food from the sun.

The aluminum and stuff are the poisons I was talking about. It's going to take more than most people have left to live to even start detoxifying their bodies by spiritual means. If we do not help ourselves by physical means we will wind up with a lot more illness and dementia than is necessary.

I think that most people who try the spiritual means will find themselves in futile mental traps serving human masters who suck the life out of them for pleasure and profit.

That is correct, most people who try to be spiritual, still take advance from other so called experts.

MK, I didn'tsay you should stop doing the things you need to survvie. It takes a long time to become spiritually advanced. If you stop eating or drinking then of course you will die before you reach a higher level.
"I think that most people who try the spiritual means will find themselves in futile mental traps serving human masters who suck the life out of them for pleasure and profit."
What does this statement mean?

"Simple, tell me your ideas concerning why humans aren't capable of telepathy."

My telepathic theory:
The Law of Symbolism; Everything that seems like something else is, in fact, to a small degree that object. Two televisions that look alike are, in fact, the same television to a insignificantly small degree. All crosses are connected. Can I prove anything? Of course not! In a lame attempt I point at Harmonics, but that is only a shade-reflection of the bigger theory. (Also! Magnetism AND gravity!)

At this point it should propably be noted that factors such as Time, Space, the construct of individual atoms and molecules and all that is also to be counted when considering "the similarities" of two objects, so two objects are RARELY actually closely connected. The history of the object is, for example, a dividing quality.

And in human telepathy, this means any person who shares experiences, or thinks alike, or has similiar principles, are connected. Telepathy is the ability to send OTHER thoughts through this link, to induce movement or electrical signals. Sort of brain-harmonics. Telepathy is strongly present in all social behaviour; we seek people we can "connect" with, call people we like (or "are alike") and during conversations sense the thoughts of others. Most people are so reliant on this that they cannot well understand what someone said if they cannot connect. Or they easily misunderstand.

As to why people CANNOT do telepathy...
1) The small "movement" that telepathy causes is easily suffocated in the avalanche of sensory data, emotions, calculations and orders that flow inside the brain. Most likely any out-of-place communiques are ignored as data send to wrong section of the brain, or something unnecessary. Silencing the mind and data, or at least monitoring it's flow, can improve chances of receiving signals.
2) As humans, we receive signals ALL THE TIME, from everywhere around us and from further soul-buddies. Opening the floodgates and accepting "weird data" would propably make us insane. Without context, random thougths flitting in our mind would confuse us. Words without noice, images without sight are often interpreted as hallusinations.
3) People don't believe it's possible. How can you learn how to do something you don't believe is possible? And they're afraid of 2). And "what if i'm wrong everyone will laugh buuhuu". And, of course, their teachers and leaders tell there's no such thing, so they'll believe them before taking responsibility over their own actions.

And while we're at 3), someone knew the world was round before 0 AD, but it was not accepted as reality before 1600AD (or something). Everyone knew about gravity before Newton could prove it. You need to think in order to have a theory, and you need a theory in order to prove the theory. In order to prove you need evidence, but in order to HAVE some you'd already need someone who CAN do telepathy, instead of "sometimes maybe". And in order to do that, you already need proper, systematic research on what telepathy is.

I would imagine it as more of a minds eye that is evolving(If it is evolving) apparently we have some abilities the some might label as telepathy, like precog, and lucky guesses. I have even convinced myself that I had telepathy(while playing drinking games nonetheless. . .) But to say that we are slowly loosing a telepathy jamming organ in our brains is a little out there. To say that the aliens told you this doesnt do your argument a whole lot of justice. I would be very surprised if humans saw evolution take place in our entire population(besides the evolution of the internet, which I fully believe could evolve us all into electrical impulses) . It is the evolutionary theory and those surrounding it held tightly by most scientists around the world that argue the testable hypothesis about genetic veriation, gene flow and adaptation.

How would this better our fitness(ability to reproduce) into an adaptation such as this? I dont know. But another possibility(by possibility I mean almost as crazy as the aliens talking to you) is that the constant means of communication over long distances(i.e. internet, telecommunications. . . primarily cell phones) is giving us all a bit more precog abilities. It has been proven in Brittan (or a scientific study done) that showed that most people could tell when their cell phone was going to ring, and most knew who it was going to be. Now if any of you have a cell phone, which I'm sure most of you do by now, you probobly know exactly what I'm talking about. For I too have experienced this many a time, it actually happens more than not for me to expect a call within 10 or so seconds of receiving the call. This is a new element of study that will probobly become very interesting in the future, but as of now people have more important things to worry about, that is why we have caller I.D.

Most often telepathy occurs spontaneously in incidents of crisis where a relative or friend has been injured or killed in an accident. An individual is aware of the danger to the other person from a distance. Such information seems to come in different forms as in thought fragments, like something is wrong; in dreams, visions, hallucinations, mental images, in clairaudience, or in words that pop into the mind. Often such information causes the person, the receiver, to change is course of action, such as changing his travel plans or daily schedule, or to just call or contact the other person. Some incidents involve apparent telepathy between humans and animals.

Telepathy seems to be related to the individual's emotional state. This is true of both the sender and receiver. Most women were receivers, as case findings showed, and one possible explanation is that women are more in touch with their emotions and rely on intuition more than men. Geriatric telepathy is fairly common, this may be due, it is speculated, to the impairment of the senses with age.

Telepathy can be induced in the dream state. It appears to be related to some biological factors: blood volume changes during telepathic sending, and electroencephalogram monitoring show that the brain waves of the recipient change to match those of the sender.

Dissociative drugs adversely affect telepathy, but caffeine has a positive effect on it.

Telepathy, like the other forms of psychic phenomena is elusive and difficult to test systematically. Enough evidence is available to reasonably substantiate the phenomenon does exist. But, quantifying it seems to be another matter. The phenomenon is closely connect to the emotional states on both the sender and receiver which creates difficulty in replicating experimental results. Attitudinal factors also influence the phenomenon. The best that researchers can hope for is to have supportive and receptive subjects in experiments that produce similar results

However the most profound and far-reaching implications to be able now to claim that telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition are indubitable hard facts; that the evidence for them is as well-founded and reliable as for the basic facts of physics and chemistry. The second section of this book is designed to outline the sort of evidence upon which this statement is founded, to point towards some of the laws governing para-normal phenomena - or, at least, towards helpful theories of their nature - and finally to consider the implications. What sort of a universe is it in which these things are facts? What do they tell us of the nature of Man himself?

http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/articles/johnson/telepathy.htm

I stole this and put it in my thread in general philo, hope you dont mind :)

Telepathy is real, but it's more of a trick than a science, if it's the type of telepathy I think you are all talking about.

The real telepathy, the scientific version, is likely still top secret, or just in a lab somewhere. I don't think the world would be ready for telepathy although it would be a good thing at some point.

Everybody speaks about telepathy as a well-known think. What is telepathy? Is telepathy a method of communication? If you speak about telepathy do you mean communication between living and living or between living and not living (inanimate)? In topic http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=57319 is meant a site where can be seen a fascinating device (device = not living). What is telepathy if this instrument is able to work?