Sixth Sense?

An Fear Aniar

Not icy dead people but the sort of thing when you know you're being watched or even premonitions.

e.g. you know the phone's going to ring just a second before it does.

How are people on all that?



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orestes

It's generally thought by scientists these days that we don't just have the traditional 5 senses but have a whole bunch of them, including being able to sense when we are being watched and to sense motion behind us and stuff like that. The problem as far as I can tell is that no one really agrees on how many senses we actually have, or even what counts as a sense.

Some people can tell that air pressure is dropping, even though they can't explain how they know it, they just know. I am completely open to the idea of what would be considered "sixth senses", but I do not believe that they are in any way super natural or paranormal or anything like that. They are based in human physiology and our physical make-up, which would explain why they are different for different people.

Zillah

This is so very much the wrong forum.


However, if you predict when a phone will ring in an experiment, say, 75% of the time, I'll be very impressed.

If, however, this is just something that happens merely now and then, then its just coincidence, stop being such a spa.

Pompey Magnus

I would be less likely to believe in the idea of a sixth sense, I have to admit that sometimes I take my mobile phone out of my pocket to check if anyone has texted me just to find that the moment the phone is in my hand a message comes through, I then let myself think "Wow, maybe I was able to subconciously pick up on the radio waves and knew in advance that a message was coming through." Of course the real reason is that I regularly check my phone, 99% of the time no coincidence will occur and I so this is promptly forgotten, but the odd time when it does happen, just by sheer statistical probability, I will pick up on this and let my imagination get the better of me. Similarly for all kinds of premonitions.

That said there was a while a few years ago when an awful lot of similar coincidences happened to me in a short period of time, I would be reading a newpaper or book with the radio or TV on in the background and just as I would read a pretty uncommon word in the book I would hear that same word said on the radio. Once or twice was alright but this happened so often that it began spooking me out. There was also the time when I was younger and during the day I would mention in passing to my brother a funny scene from a random Simpsons episode, come six o' clock that very episode would be on. Again this seemed to happen a little bit too often.

All in all though I would say the sixth sense is probably just some form of pattern seeking which is so inbuilt in humans. We want to see structures where none exist.

JC 2K3

Senses have a tendancy to be useful and function constantly, not just at random and infrequent intervals.

monkeyfudge

I think there is certainly a form of gut instinct that can warn you when you are in danger.

But the human brain processes a huge amount of information on a subconscious level. You wouldn't be able to cope if you were fully aware of all the visual, smell and audio information that was coming in. And on a subconscious level you can pick up cues that you are in danger.

Of course gut feeling isn't much of a match for my rational mind, and I've always ignored it in the past... but I have ended up almost being killed on more than one occasion, which could have been avoided if I'd listened to that sense.

Red Hand

Well, of course we have more than the "traditional" 5 senses-ability to sense heat, pressure and balance ourselves when walking/running etc.

Things like deja vu etc are thought to be mix-ups in the brain where it misinterpretes an event that has just happened for one that happened exactly the same way in the past.

orestes

Depeche_Mode wrote: »

There was also the time when I was younger and during the day I would mention in passing to my brother a funny scene from a random Simpsons episode, come six o' clock that very episode would be on. Again this seemed to happen a little bit too often.

The same thing happened to me all the time, and why the hell was it always the simpsons?!

Red Hand

Cause RTE always repeated the same bloody ones.:)

Zillah

I was actually thinking about the Simpsons thing earlier. Its happened me as well, that I'll think of an episode a few hours before its on, apparently its a very common trait.


My theory is that because the Simpsons has been repeated and repeated and repeated for so many years that we have possibly gotten used to the sequence. TV stations will usually play a season from start to finish in the right order, so its very possible that the episode we saw last night reminded us of the episode we'll see tomorrow.

I think it very interesting that the most notoriously rerun show on television is the one everyone seems to find themselves predicting.

Dades

I'm very open to the idea of a sixth sense.

Can't say I've ever experienced anything that couldn't be seen as a coincidence, but I would not be surprised if down the line we discovered there was something other than five we accept.

Dave!

Well you're in luck Dades, because we have quite a few more than 5!

rowlandbrowner

Cleary there is a God, and rather than curing disease and preventing wars, he has decided to make use aware in advance of phone calls and tells us what song is going to come up next on the radio.

OK-Cancel-Apply

You know I always find that when I get interested in something, I start seeing it everywhere. Say, for example, if I suddenly developed a keen interest in hammers - I 'd start seeing ads for them, films about them, and I'd see hammers on the news.

Of course, this type of thing is an illusion. Just like the feeling of somebody watching you. There have been times when I thought I was being watched, only to find nobody was there, and other times when I had no clue, and then someone WAS there. I suppose if you're doing something secret you might feel like you're being watched, and then when somebody IS watching, you have your feeling confirmed.

Dades

DaveMcG wrote: »

Well you're in luck Dades, because we have quite a few more than 5!

I never knew "smell" was a sense!

I always thought "Making it Home While Completely Pissed" was the fifth traditional one!

Popinjay

OK-Cancel-Apply wrote: »

There have been times when I thought I was being watched, only to find nobody was there...

GOD was watching you. He's always watching you and just you. He's not interested in the rest of us but he knows when your hand wanders where it shouldn't.

Pompey Magnus

OK-Cancel-Apply wrote: »

You know I always find that when I get interested in something, I start seeing it everywhere. Say, for example, if I suddenly developed a keen interest in hammers - I 'd start seeing ads for them, films about them, and I'd see hammers on the news.

Coincidently a similar thing has just happened to me. Over the last few days I had been doing alot of reading on the resurrection claims in the New Testament, in fact I had one browser window opened on a essay entitled "General Case for Spiritual Resurrection:Evidence Against Resurrection of the Flesh" by Richard Carrier (by the way it is very well researched which is critical of th accounts of an empty tomb and eye witnesses seeing Jesus after death, if anyone is interested: Link)

Anyways, I just wandered over to the Christianity forum and what do I find, This new thread has just been posted advertising a talk in Dublin promoting the historical truth of the resurrection claims. Spooky. That said it is coming up to Easter so I suppose it isn't too strange that there would be some talk about Resurrection, but still this wasn't the reason I took an interest in the historical accuracy of the events.

Xhristy

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An Fear Aniar

Xhristy wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Simple. Because some people report feeling an awareness of God (God Consciousness) which entails "an awakening and development of faculties dormant in the ordinary human" to quote the Wiki.

So if we imagine the five material senses as the active faculties (the ones necessary for survival of the organism), is it possible that we also have dormant faculties which might be necessary for the further development of the organism?



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aidan24326

Depeche_Mode wrote: »

Of course the real reason is that I regularly check my phone, 99% of the time no coincidence will occur and I so this is promptly forgotten, but the odd time when it does happen, just by sheer statistical probability, I will pick up on this and let my imagination get the better of me. Similarly for all kinds of premonitions.

What Carl Sagan called 'remembering the hits and forgetting the misses'. We remember those couple of times when we were thinking of John/Mary/Jane and lo and behold the phone rang just then and it was them! But we neglect the countless other times when we fleetingly thought of John/Mary/Jane and nothing at all happened. We attach unjustified significance to events that can be explained by statistical chance and just random coincidence.

bogwalrus

i was watching one of those pop quantum/spirituality movies recently enough. it was called the secret. They had loads of people talking about how they focused their minds on what they wanted and believe that they could have it and (so they say) they eventually achieved their goals. I think the idea was that a persons future reality gets determined by the persons present mind set and positive view on what he/she wants etc. I believe they called the underlying factor "the law of attraction".

OK-Cancel-Apply

Popinjay wrote: »

GOD was watching you. He's always watching you and just you. He's not interested in the rest of us but he knows when your hand wanders where it shouldn't.

Come to think of it, it was probably Ceiling Cat :P