Ok so anyhow I'v been searching and waiting for someone most my life to explore the power of minds with. I have kinda realized that people irl rarely ever want to talk about things other then football and food. So I guess I'll try searching on physforum right here Anyone wana help explore the powers of the mind over at least a few weeks?


If so lets first find out what we already know about our own minds abilitys and what we think minds can have for abilitys. So if you wana take part in this feel free to post some of your minds abilitys and things you think minds can do.


For starters... I can make about any shape or color in my mind. By doing so I have determined that my mind has lots of room in it because every time I try to create bigger or more things in it im able to.

Neat question, magpies. Most of us appear to have a brain, and it's our primary tool for scientific exploration. Understanding how it works helps, and no doubt your question will set the guys off and running.

There is a huge body of data from basic neurophysiology through neuropsychology (brain/mind). I've had decades of involvement with it, but experience is beside the point here.

A couple thoughts:

The imaging capacity of an ordinary cerebral cortex has limits (it's a biological system) but it is gigantic, way more than most people realize. It can image far more complex sequences of events than the narrower range of conscious logic and verbal and mathematical description.

This a reason many people get into the idea of mystical psychic powers, but oodles of research has demonstrated there is no supernatural. Of course this is meaningless to people who don't understand scientific method.

Basic strategy is turn your mind loose and explore the images, but if you come up with something that looks good, it must be verified with valid and reliable data.

Should be an interesting thread. Thanks

I have a copy of The Amazing Kretzkin's book somewhere.
I think I'll read it again.

He is amazing. And claims we can all learn to do what he does.

He doesn't believe in esp or anything like that.

So whats something you guys can do with your minds and where do you think the limits of your mind are?

I find myself always trying to think or consider most things, lets just pretend everything, but in the process ... I always seem to misplace, forget, lose track of a small detail or two.

This is one of those things, that my name wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme or Meem as it sounds, has lead me to this, wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetic_algorithm, by way of becoming interested in this ... neural correlative consciousness youtube.com/watch?v=eX8xtUORDh4 Dr. David Chalmers ... perhaps it's the other way around ...

Correlation.

This picture taken from Hubble ... too bad I can't actually link, makes me look at things in a way I never thought possible. With an open mind.

nasaimages-dot-org

Fits nicely with a song by Snow Patrol that I like too, Open Your Eyes. Listen to the song, and look at the picture.

Ordinary example of brain function: If something falls out of my hand or out of the cupboard when I open the door, I can usually catch it before it starts accelerating very far toward the floor and before I am aware of what is taking place. Most other people I know can do the same thing.

That is called a reflex arc Sporacle. It's when you have a simpler pathway for a common or reflex action rather than having to route it through the brain. You can get the same thing with any movement if you practice it a large number of times.


One of the things I do is teach martial arts. The reason why you have to repeat the moves you learn so many times is so they become reflexive, and therefore much faster. I think that it is a truism that the brain can do some very amazing things. I have seen some extraordinary feats ... and done a few that look pretty neat myself. None of that is magic, or esp or any of that. The reason a trained person can do a number of moves much faster than it would seem possible is simply ... repetition. Do the move properly about 10 thousand times and it will become a reflex.


The brain is far more complex than we normally realize.

There are certain reflex actions which are especially fast because the signals do not have to go all the way to the brain. Pick up a hot plate and you'll drop it before you've even registered the pain consciously. It's because your spinal cord is sufficiently advanced that it knows a few reactions to such things as "PAIN!!". Obviously the reflex action of dropping something which is hot isn't quite as complicated a motion as being able to do the entire Van Halen collection on Guitar Hero on expert with your eyes closed while hanging upside down (I can just about do 'Eye of the Tiger' on medium), but it's an example of faster than normal actions which require no concious thought.

I have come to accept that I have an unusual ability.
It seems I have a grasp of complex mechanical systems that is beyond most.
While I have always felt "normal" I have had to accept this ability.

A chance glance at an approved drawing of a pump housing led me to comment that a certain bearing would be uninstallable.
Designers spent 40 minutes on the computer only to discover I was correct.

A walk through a shop that rebuilt huge electric motors caused me to cringe at the
inefficiency of the layout.
30 second conversation with the super caused a 45 minute process to be cut to 8 minutes with greater safety at 2 stations and got him a big bonus.

My Mom tells me that this ability has always been used since I was about 3 years old.
Apparently, I was a whiz at helping put up groceries!
Mom also related that at age 6, when we were building a new house, I walked through and made comments about a door opening the wrong way, a fence gate too close to the house and poor placement of several windows!
This was when the house was about 20% framed and they adopted all my changes.

The examples are numerous, but I never felt unusual until I got a car at age 13.
As I was rebuilding the automatic transmission it hit me that not everyone saw things as I did.

Shame I have never been able to translate this into electronics....that stuff is just magic to me!

Bruce

The mind only exists in your imagination.

I call that "recursive thought."

I can make you all pay attention to how your left foot feels right now, and how you hadn't been paying attention to its sensory input until right now.

Most people know about the reflex arc. The information processing takes place at the spinal chord level. The example everybody knows is the doc tapping a knee tendon, to stretch it abruptly and then alpha motor neurons cause a twitch of the muscle. By themselves spinal reflexes will not enable you to catch something with your hand.

When you manage to catch something falling out of a cupboard before you are aware of what is taking place, it involves far more than the reflex arc. In the brain the visual system, other cortical areas and the cerebellum are also involved in the process, and some aspects of what takes place are not specifically trained beforehand. The process does not require conscious awareness, which usually follows immediately.

Alcohol degrades this process in all it's aspects. It is interesting that LSD and some other drugs do not affect the ability to catch something falling off a shelf. However your mind may tend to remain on the shelf for a while.

Bruce, your ability is standard brain function, but is not common and probably genetically determined. Wife and I used to climb (younger then) across high altitude boulder fields with miles of rocks of all sizes in all directions. We could spot cairns, route markers made by stacking three small rocks, at 50 meters or more. With some experience a tiny brain image of a stack of three rocks in a mass of chaos is instantly recognized as artifact.

BTW whatever you do, do not think about Petunias, especially when you are on your way to bed.