Whatever happened to ESP?

Question

You never hear people talk about it anymore. Anyone think that psychokinesis is real?

Answer 1

Oh it's still around.  It is one of the many perennial unsinkable rubber duckies.  No matter how many studies there are which fail to offer any evidence that such a phenomenon exists, you will still find people clinging to the belief that ESP is as real as gravity.

Answer 2

No it's not real.  Anyone who believes any of that stuff is real is either crazy (a few) or gullible (most).  No offense to anyone who is gullible.  I used to think that aliens and ghosts and psychics were real (when I was like 12) so I was gullible too.  But then I grew up and realized what a waste of time that was, being afraid of aliens and c**p.  It is all a bunch of wasted time and I wish people could find better things to put their mind to.

Answer 3

Well, nobody talks about it, it's a sign of the times, you know...

Answer 4

You'll see plenty of people talking about it here.Nothing ever happened to ESP.It''s a myth so is psychokinesis.Some people believe for no other reason then they want to.That to me is very silly.I'm not being mean just telling the truth.If anyone has any evidence to the contrary.I'd like to see it.

Answer 5

A very large number of scientific experiments have been conducted since the 1950s to attempt to find signs of ESP. Most had negative results- that is, they did not find any sign that it existed. A few had positive results, indicating that it did, but these were eventually shown to have major flaws in the way the experiments were carried out.

Eventually, enough negative experiments accumulated that scientists concluded there is no such thing as ESP. There are people who still believe it exists, but these people essentially approach it as a religious belief rather than a scientific theory.

Answer 6

Just as countries go through political cycles (and parties) so does scientific research. For instance space exploration was all the rage in the 60's where as in the 70's research on the human psyche and personal growth was the trend. In the 90's research on the environment and alternative fuels (rekindled from the 70's oil shortage days) took the lead.

ESP research is still continued today although you will often hear what I call "funding speak" with terms like Anomalous Cognition or Anomalous Information Transfer in research studies and grant proposals.

I have included a link to the web site of the Parapsychological Association for you below if you wish to read up on the current scientific research literature.

Psychokinesis has been demonstrated at statistically significant levels (but small real world effects) on random number generators. I have included a link below to the Princeton University program that has studied this for 27 years.

Answer 7

You're hanging around the wrong people. lol

They decided to stop calling it ESP though. They have different names for all of the little categories in it. People are becoming more accepting of certain change, but yeah...the term "ESP" had kind of died though.

Answer 8

You're right, no one talks about it anymore.  Not enough evidence.  Especially telekinesis.

Not in this world anyway!

However, ESP is "Extra Sensory Perception".  It is still possible that we perceive things at a different level than our five physical senses.  This would connect to our desire for spiritual fulfillment.

Reality is probably something bigger than we can experience with our brains.

Part of me insists that I am more than this body.

Answer 9

Well, parapsychology is very fad-driven. "Telekinesis" is out of style, and "psychokinesis" is now in style. "ESP" is currently out of style, and now telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, remote viewing, clairaudience, sixth sense, and other neat-o sounding terms are in style.

In a few years the terminology will change again, I'm sure.

Answer 10

I like to be open-minded and agree that there are many things that science cannot explain. However, with the matter of ESP, double-blind studies have shown that subjects who claim to have ESP did no better statistically than subjects who were randomly guessing. I'm not saying that ESP is 100% NOT real (we can't prove that scientifically right now); I'm just saying that no one has emerged with such a capability as of yet, or at least no one who can prove it in a lab.

That's a good point though about it going away! When I was a kid, we talked about it all the time, saw it on TV, etc. I must say, that stuff was way more entertaining than some of the garbage kids these days watch on TV...

Answer 11

No scientifically conclusive demonstrations of the existence of ESP have been published in scientific journals, although tests have been done!

People in NEW AGE "religion" believe ESP is actually becoming more common.

They point to babies learning to speak later and later, and teach that the children have such strong ESP that they don't need language as soon.

There was a question about Chrystal Children on YA, which I answered in detail.  Click my face, and go to the question that I answered this morning  on Chrystal Children born with ESP.

The existence of ESP abilities is highly controversial in the first place.

Parapsychologists such as Dean Radin say that ganzfeld experiments have yielded results that deviate from randomness to a significant degree, and that these results present some of the strongest quantifiable evidence for telepathy to date.

Critics such as Susan Blackmore say that the results are inconclusive.   She noticed a number of irregularities in the procedure and wrote about them for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.

Answer 12

no, it does not exist. Nobody call see the future or tell what someone else is thinking.

Answer 13

They just call it clairvoyant or psychic.... same old, same old.

Yes psychokinesis is real.