dsi@unccvax.UUCP (Dataspan Inc) (07/01/85)
/* Begin excerpt */
( From davet@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel) Sun Feb 6 01:28:16 206 )
Since it's about time to complete my precognition experience . . .
I'll post the main brunt of it now. I would be interested in hearing
reasonable interpretations of how by non-paranormal means I could have
happened upon the things I "picked up."
To summarize: I became friends with a graduate student at U. of Fla. who took
a job offer at Dow in Baton Rouge. Just for fun we agreed that I would try
to tune-in on his future house as an experiment. He had never been to the
city itself and I had only been through it on the Interstate.
The following items I told him, but he did not tell his wife. He let her
pick out whatever house she wanted:
1) The house number which came to me in a dream. Specifically, upon awaking
I wrote down the numbers "99178" with the last two digits underlined and the
following note underneath:
"not sure about the end but something like that"
2) Looking at a map of Baton Rouge I pointed to two different subdivisions
and told him that I felt he would be moving into or very near one of the two.
My driving through Baton Rouge occured long before I knew he would be moving
there.
3)That his house would not be on or near a corner but something like 3 or 4
away from the corner. This was given to me in the same dream with the house
number.
4) An odd U shape turn . . .
5) The specific position of the kitchen . . . (etc)
6) A garage on the right side of the house.
7) Where the TV would be and which direction it would face.
8) That the street name would have the letter "Z" or "X" in it.
After his wife chose the house he called me from Baton Rouge to see if I could
guess anything on the phone AFTER the fact. All that came to me was that
I "felt" there were lots of trees in back of his house. (9)
This was all documented at length . . . (edited for brevity)
1) The house number is 9918.
/*
* #1 could have been determined after #2 (looking at a map),
* in which case precognition is completely bogus. For
* example, if the 'subdivisions' that the gentleman picked
* full of dead end 'courts' you'd have one helluva good chance
* of getting the number. Thinking about the neighbourhood
* where my parents live, the courts all have 3 to 4 houses
* in them, and are 1,3,5,7 or 2,4,6,8. There is probably not
* an arbitrary procedure for assigning these numbers ...
* In the case of straight streets in residential areas with
* relatively few kinky roads (regardless of whether the
* Dow employee selected a kinky road) number selection
* for most streets would be relatively easy.
* Block estimation tasks are something that Beaver Cleaver
* could probably handle.
*/
2) The house is in one of the two subdivisions I had indicated.
/*
* #2 is an effect which is fairly well documented by many social
* psychologists (proximity by common interest)With a priori knowledge of this
* individual's tastes, etc. it probably wouldn't be that hard
* to pick out subdivisions under construction regardless of the
* city involved, given a map, and his location preferences
* by where he presently lives. Most urbanized areas have a
* very strong relationship between 'street locus/shape/spacing'
* and land usage.
*/
3) The house is not near a corner and is fourth from the nearest one (If I
remember correctly.)
/*
* So the gentleman and/or his wife owned a corner lot and
* got tired of cutting the extra grass....
*
*/
4) Several acres directly in front of his home were reserved for a future
school. Thus, no roads cut through there and one does need to make a
U shaped route to travel around to the house.
/*
* Well, either the road is straight, or it isn't. Not
* only does this correlate with the land usage quite well
* but the current trend is towards avoiding right angle
* street planning in new subdivisions. You've got to do
* better than this (say, radius of curvature).
*
*/
5) The kitchen, dining room, living room and bedrooms were all situated in
the respective quadrants of the house I specified.
/*
* Sleeping rooms, in the interest of meeting certain
* engineering standards and local codes, (as well as
* common sense) are usually in a distinct relationship
* to food preparation areas. Propriety demands that
* in most middle class structures that you don't
* put the master bedroom opposite the (normally)
* adjoining bathroom, where when Mr. or Mrs. wants
* to answer a Call of Nature, they must first traverse
* the kitchen . . .
* In addition, unless you own a mansion, formal dining
* rooms invariably are attatched to the kitchen. A good
* architecture student could probably come up with
* statistics on typical floor plans / periods of
* American middle class residence design.
*/
6) The garage was a complete miss. The driveway was on the correct side
but continues on around the back edge of the house into a carport.
/*
* Can you imagine your local zoning board if you proposed
* putting the garage as the frontmost structure with a
* centred driveway? The side of the house is a 50-50
* shot.
* (Perhaps less as adjacent driveways aren't in vogue
* in most new developments, so one could extrapolate
* from an intersection)
*/
7) The TV ended up being in the living room on the wall and facing the
direction I had indicated.
/*
* #7 may be a matter of common sense, as there are usually
* extenuating circumstances controlling the position of a
* TV receiver in a given room. Given prior discussions with
* the subject and/or subject's spouse, there would probably
* be easily determined criteria for TV placement.
*/
8) The street the house is on is "Azrok" with the letter Z.
/* One in 26, perhaps better.
* Most urbanized areas have neighbourhoods
* with 'theme' street names. Sherwood Forest
* (Robinhood Road, Hillandale Drive) is a
* common 'theme' in most cities.....
*/
9) My friend said on the phone that my remark about the trees was on target
since there was a thick 20 acre forest butting his small backyard.
/*
* Again, a matter of land usage. I've got a topo map of
* Derita quadrangle (Charlotte) here, and the developing
* areas have streets which end abruptly. Provided that
* you don't live in a desert, and the map is fairly up
* to date, it is obvious that there would be forest in
* this region of the country.
*/
The first question to ask is what things could I have guessed just by knowing
their personalities. Conciously, none of the items were obvious to me. But, I
can see where 3, 5, and 7 could be put in that catagory.
The next question is trying to ascertain just how improbable the guesses were
from random chance guessing. Not easy to do but here is my conservative
estimate:
/* end excerpt *
IT IS NOT A MATTER OF GUESSING OR PARANORMAL PSYCHOLOGY. The
behaviour you describe is something acquired. . . you aren't reading
anyone's spouse's mind but rather a set of reinforcers based on
knowing an individual for <epsilon> increment of time.
I do not know what kind of real estate predominates in Baton
Rouge, but a grad student who is going to work for Dow probably
is going to be fairly well off. You didn't mention if his spouse
intended to work, but people tend not to make radical changes in
house preference and location; people also tend to buy as much
house as they can afford.
I've had mindblowers, too. No fooling:
1) One and one half years before Asylum Records released
'The Hissing of Summer Lawns' by Joni Mitchell, I had
a dream about the album cover of her (then) new album.
Not suprising, as I probably drove my parents insane
listening to her albums whilst in high school...
2) The former location of the Burroughs B6900 computer
at UNCC (centre of first floor, Smith hall) is where
I began research in teleradiography. A couple of years
before, I thought I would be given some space down there
to do some experimentation. Now, you could say this is
ESP; but knowing that the new A15 is to be delivered
to the basement of the library; and an expanding graduate
program, it wouldn't be that hard to want that for yourself...
3) Working at Consolidated TV, Greensboro NC one summer,
I glanced at a Zenith 19CC19Z chassis and got the
distinct impression that the 39K ohm plate load resistor
for the 6U10 triode 'horizontal discharge' stage was
the problem. I had not been involved with or serviced
this set in any way. Two days later, another technician
reported (after intense searching) that it had drifted
to a very high value and that specific resistor was
in fact the problem.
4) When I was a freshman at UNCC, and while home over Christmas,
I placed a list of predictions for the coming year in
an envelope, to be opened the following new year's day.
All of them were wrong, except that WKZL, Winston-Salem NC
would be sold to Nationwide Communications for $4M in
June. I have never graced the premises of WKZL or Nationwide.
ALL OF THESE EPISODES SEEM AMAZING, but I hope that they
are just times when the neurology worked great rather than ESP!!!
I think that any scientific inquiry into ESP/PK is fine,
though not enough effort has been put into attempting to achieve
the same sort of repeatability as quantum physics or image enhancement
through convolution. What I meant was was that most ESP stuff
can be reduced to behavioural scenarios. When people go way off
the deep end with ESP and particularly psychic pheonomena, it
creates a nationwide philosophical crisis. People, for some
completely unfathomable reason, seem to find it reinforcing to
attribute anything which is remotely psychic or ESP to something
other than their own neurology.
Perhaps research into behaviourism, and particularly becoming
aware of other nontraditional reinforcers as an adjunct to learning
and 'creative behaviour' would pay off far more dividends to
a pragmatic society.
At the very least, it would save many (and I do mean MANY)
persons the incredibly sad experience (or behaviour which is
ordinarily described as a 'feeling of extreme sadness) of watching
a loved one go down the tubes and make a complete wreck of their
life because they feel that ESP/psychic pheonomena are more significant
than their own neurology. Where is the line between a paranormal
experience and schizophrenia (or other psychosis) drawn? If you
believe all the papers written about DSM-III, quite a few people
lean in this direction. I have personally known one multimillionaire
wreck her career, marriage, and social standing; as well as one
very bright individual who was indoctrinated with this stuff by
said multimillionaire (and the girl's remaining parent) in an
attempt to deal with the loss of the girl's father.
What started as a stetch of the Smurf's credibility to a few
'interesting pheonomena' now has resulted in a 24 year old woman
suffering daily under this burden; her brother who is serving 8 - 11
years in prison for an offence committed for some psychic
'justification,' and so on. WHEN YOU ARE DEALING WITH THIS TOPIC
IT IS EXCEPTIONALLY IMPORTANT TO REALIZE THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO
EAT THIS STUFF UP, and who wreck their lives BY ANY STANDARD
in following it rather than that which cats and dogs do on their
own just fine. We're not talking parlour games or scientific
research to some end, but real, raw, human lives being screwed
up every day by this stuff. Want to get a Navane or Stelazine
buzz? Just keep following this stuff to your local mental ward...
I feel much better now. . .it's just that the downward side
of ESP/PK/psychic pheonomena in general has adversely affected
my real, discrete, concrete life too often. Even my spouse's boss
uses numerology, astrology, and tea leaves to make decisions
affecting the largest retail colour portrature organisation in
the world.
David Anthony
DataSpan, Inc.