Do you believe in mental abilities? Do you have any?

I can say I dont want to do something and that it wont be worth while, and then it turns out something messed up and its A WASTE OF TIME. Or, telling whats a bad idea.

EG: At epcot once, it was late at night. My family wanted to go on the monorail, but I didnt want to go. I said it would be a waste of time. Then we get up to it, and waited in line, and turns out one of the trains shut down. WASTE OF TIME.

amazing, you have the ability to sometimes guess what'll happen shortly.

Look, I realize that you had some kind of trauma or whatever connected to your mothers' death and now you're making up for it by doing whatever the hell this is you're doing, but look at the facts.

There have been thousands and thousands, millions of claims of supernatural powers.

Proven by experiment? None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Negatory.
Refuted by experiment? All of them. The James Randi foundation offered $1 million to anyone who could prove that they had supernatural powers for years, but not a single person passed the test.
What does that tell you? If you can still think in a logical fashion about this.

I believe so called "Mental abilities" are just normal brain functions. Some people notice them, some people don't.

I highly doubt it's able to perform much of anything like the original poster described..

EG: At epcot once, it was late at night. My family wanted to go on the monorail, but I didnt want to go. I said it would be a waste of time. Then we get up to it, and waited in line, and turns out one of the trains shut down. WASTE OF TIME.

I don't see intuition as extraordinary, if that's what you mean. I believe it's just a form of common sense.

Agreed, and if I recall correctly, a large portion of your brain goes untapped. I don't see how anyone can prove what the unused pieces do. Granted, I highly doubt it's able to perform much of anything like the original poster described..


I don't see intuition as extraordinary, if that's what you mean. I believe it's just a form of common sense.

I didn't say you couldn't talk about photographic memories. That was only my answer in the first post.

But it looks like majority of you say "no". That's fine.

Let's all have positive attitudes, shall we?

Anywayssss. I guess I have a few of these 'abilities'.

I can pretty much guess what other people are feeling, what they're thinking about, etc. I just have to look at their eyes for a split second, and I can pretty much see what they've been going through lately, and it helps me relate to my friends a little bit when they come to me to ask for help.

Another thing is that sometimes my dreams foretell what is going to come in the future. I usually have dreams about meeting with certain friends, talking with them, planning on what to do when we hang out, etc. Then the next day I'll have the same exact conversation with the same exact person, in the same exact clothes, at the same exact time.

And to add onto other experiences/abilities that aren't mine, but people I have seen in action...

There is this substitute teacher that is in my county. She's pretty much a 'personality reader'. You write your name down on a piece of paper, she'll tell you EVERYTHING about you, and you'll end up finding out things about yourself you never really thought twice about. Like when she did my personality thingy, she told me about my deepest darkest secret, which nobody in the world knows.

Then one of my extremely good friends...If you are wearing a ring, and have worn it for a few days, she can look at it, and tell you things that have happened to you in the past few days. She'll tell you about fights you had with your parents, boss, friends, etc, how you reacted, what you felt, etc. It's pretty neat. I <3 Her~

Anyways. I guess these are kind of abilities. They're pretty funnish. :3

The oft-quoted statistic about how we only use '10% of our brain' is a misnomer; in reality we use all of our brains, but only around 10% at any given time. All portions of the brain are necessary for us, they all have specific functions that we need to make use of.

Delete this post please.

Is a photographic memory really a mental ability? It's just how someone remembers something. It's like how people learn in different ways (Visual, audio, etc.) in that people remember in different ways.

I have a slightly odd thing going on with me, but i wouldn't call it an ability. Sometimes when i blink, i can see images of what will happen in the future. It's very, very, VERY fast, as fast as a normal blink. I only catch a quick glimpse of it, but i can tell basically what it is in most cases. Then, years to months later, i will see what i say when i blinked. It's really weird because i always realize, "Hay, i saw this!" As you can see, there is no scientific way i can prove this. The way i remember the images? My photographic memory! XD I always thought this was Déjà vu until i found out what it really was, and their not the same thing. And whenever i would blink for a longer period of time then normal, the scene would go on for just that tiniest bit longer, and those always freak me out even more. Silly, isn't it?

Is a photographic memory really a mental ability? It's just how someone remembers something. It's like how people learn in different ways (Visual, audio, etc.) in that people remember in different ways.

I have a slightly odd thing going on with me, but i wouldn't call it an ability. Sometimes when i blink, i can see images of what will happen in the future. It's very, very, VERY fast, as fast as a normal blink. I only catch a quick glimpse of it, but i can tell basically what it is in most cases. Then, years to months later, i will see what i say when i blinked. It's really weird because i always realize, "Hay, i saw this!" As you can see, there is no scientific way i can prove this. The way i remember the images? My photographic memory! XD I always thought this was Déjà vu until i found out what it really was, and their not the same thing. And whenever i would blink for a longer period of time then normal, the scene would go on for just that tiniest bit longer, and those always freak me out even more. Silly, isn't it?

That's precognition. And no, a photographic memory isn't exactly a mental ability.

I've had precognitive dreams before; a dejavu is very common for me. But I never remember what the dreams are. >_<

I can read minds. I can also bend/fling/explode shit just by twitching my right eye.

I can read minds. I can also bend/fling/explode shit just by twitching my right eye.

Oh come on. Please be more positive.

Oh come on. Please be more positive.

Who says he's joking? People have been known to believe seemingly odder things.

I can read minds. I can also bend/fling/explode shit just by twitching my right eye.

do you twitch your eye often? what happens if you do it without intending to? do you have any theories on what the mechanism is that causes the bending/flinging/exploding?

I think more scientifically and nothing inclines me to believe in certain things that are supposedly some sort of "supernatural" ability. I'm not saying that everyone is lying, but I'm sure for a few there are simple explanations for them.

The mind can play big tricks on you.

Yea, it's kinetic energy and magnetism.
Once, somebody can actually master it with their brain, we begin a new era in human history.

do you twitch your eye often? what happens if you do it without intending to? do you have any theories on what the mechanism is that causes the bending/flinging/exploding?

having studied this individual extensively, I can say without any hyperbole that his harnessing of kinetic energy is made possible by the immense number of kiloJesuses that emit from his eye whenever he twitches it. Below you see a picture of a kiloJesus particle blown up to 6,000,000,000 times actual size:



This individual was clearly dunked in the water of the River Damascus by his mother who held him by the heel, nearby where Jesus buried his holy excretions. Over the 1,986 or so years, the poisons seeped into the waters, and at that precise time, he was bathed in the waters, causing him to inherit the Holy Wondrous Powers of Jesus's Excrement, and allowing him the ability to harness the magic of kiloJesuses.

this individual will make for many fascinating case studies in the future.

That's quite true. I've never heard of eye twitching triggering PK though. Usually anger does.

This reminds me of the Rain Man.

Is he mentally disabled or is he mentally enhanced?

The ability to remember everything but being a bit slow...

If we could fully use our brain we could be unstoppable.

Also that mother bonding thing is instinct, penguins can recognize their hatch lings call even if they never herd it before, nature is so interesting.

This reminds me of the Rain Man.

Is he mentally disabled or is he mentally enhanced?

The ability to remember everything but being a bit slow...

If we could fully use our brain we could be unstoppable.

Also that mother bonding thing is instinct, penguins can recognize their hatch lings call even if they never herd it before, nature is so interesting.

is that the guy everyone thinks of when they say the word "autistic"?

there is a strong minority of high-functioning autistics that say autism is a mental advancement. if you look at the diagnostic criteria for Aspergers Syndrome (high-functioning form of autism) for example, they talk about "special interests," and Hans Asperger himself described the boys he was diagnosing as "little professors" (for girls this has been more recently adapted as "little philosophers")

it is pretty generally accepted that Aspies at least will usually have one or more very specific areas that they know a lot about, or even excel, so in that sense it is "enhanced" - but only in that particular field, the rest of their functioning can be severely limited.

personally... i would not define autism as anything but a disability, but if it's the right field of interest for that particular person, a given high-functioning autistic can be abreast or even ahead of the flock.

This reminds me of the Rain Man.

Is he mentally disabled or is he mentally enhanced?

The ability to remember everything but being a bit slow...

If we could fully use our brain we could be unstoppable.

Thing is, that's precisely why we can't.

Somewhat lossy, but efficient, versus highly detailed and exact, but inefficient overall.

In some ways, it's like image compression:

 Example

Here's Vathek's image rendered as a PNG (it was originally a JPG, so it's really still only JPG quality... bad example, oh well)

 211 KB

It retains every last pixel, but consumes a lot of space doing so.

And as a JPG, at 80/100 quality according to Paint.net

 14.3 KB

Notice that there's very little quality loss, but much space is saved.

And just for fun, here's 20/100 quality.

 5.74 KB

And now you see how the space tradeoff isn't worth it anymore.

(You can tell I did this more as an excuse to screw around with JPGs than to actually illustrate my point but anyways.)

There has to be a trade-off between quality and efficiency. If the brain operates at higher quality in a certain area, it's less efficient overall.

Other than having a knack for seeing the most obscure connections, while missing the blatantly obvious ones (great for paranoid doomsday theories) and for having almost daily deja vu experiences, nope.

I also think people give the brain too little credit to chalk up cognitive abilities to something supernatural - the brain is capable of quickly processing countless small signals into a cohesive thought or feeling (intuition), so knowing without explanation that someone isn't well isn't much of a stretch. As for empathy, humans are social creatures by nature, so it's only natural that we'd be able to associate another human's pain with our own. I personally believe the only reason it stands out to us is that we are desensitized to a lot of the negative things that go on in our world (for our own mental/emotional safety, as empathy would overload with all of that factored in). In other words, we have grown (or shrank, depending on your perspective) to only allow empathy for those really close to us, or to those who are in plights that hit close to our hearts.

-Edit-
I've also noticed in myself the ability to create alternate personalities, not necessarily at will, but of necessity. I usually end up destroying them, or, to be more accurate, "unthinking" them, and with them all the emotion that I had bottled up inside them. I've had rare moments where I let them go unchecked though, and ended up hurting a few relationships (friendhips, not romantic) in the process. (Please see linked thread for example - to be added soon). I've since saved a copy of a 3-hour MSN conversation with a good friend that basically freaked the hell out of the both of us as a reminder to myself not to let my alternates get to a point beyond my control.