Psychology
Myth 3: Extrasensory Perception (ESP) Is a Well-Established Scientific Phenomenon (50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology)
Almost 70 percent of Americans have reported having an ESP (Extra-Sensory Perception) experience in their lives. ESP means knowledge or perception without using any of the senses.
Almost 70 percent of Americans have reported having an ESP (Extra-Sensory Perception) experience in their lives. ESP means knowledge or perception without using any of the senses. This includes telepathy (minds communicating with each other) and clairvoyance (the mind’s ability to predict the future or to know the past).
Miss Cleo was a psychic who made a staggering $1 billion dollars from people who called in to tell ask for life advice. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) managed to suspend $500 million in customer bills and pay $5 million in taxes. Her psychic powers didn’t warn her of that, unfortunately.
The U.S government invested millions of dollars in the 70’s to investigate the potential of ESP’s but a couple of decades later, they discontinued the research because they could find no evidence that it worked.
This isn’t to say that we know that ESP’s is a busted myth, but so far, the fact that we haven’t been able to scientifically verify it despite the amount of resources that have been invested in its research is a bad sign.
The propagation of belief in ESP has largely been the result of the entertainment industry (Twilight Zone, X-Files, Medium, The Sixth Sense) – this genre has seen remarkable success, and according to Gilovich, the reason why many people believe in ESP may be in part due to the human need to believe that there is a reality beyond the mundane senses. It may be a form of wishful thinking, and indeed, the fact that people often do encounter strange phenomena that is not easily explainable.
For example, if you had a dream about a friend you hadn’t seen or heard from in years, and the next morning, you receive a call from them, you would not be irrational for thinking that something strange just happened, but the fact is, most people have a very poor understanding of statistics. This coincidence of the two events may not be so unlikely.
You may be surprised to know that in a room full of 24 people, there is a higher than 50 percent chance that two people share the same birthday. Statistics are not intuitive, and what may seem highly improbable to us, may actually be far more likely when all the variables have properly been taken into consideration.
If you are interested in reading books about unmasking human nature, consider reading The Dichotomy of the Self, a book that explores the great psychoanalytic and philosophical ideas of our time, and what they can reveal to us about the nature of the self.
YARPP List
Related posts:
- Law 10: Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and the Unlucky (The 48 Laws of Power)
- Habit 1: Be Proactive (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
- Strategy 11: Trade Space for Time (The 33 Strategies of War)
- Myth 10: When Dying, People Pass through a Universal Series of Psychological Stages (50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology)
Keep Reading
Related Articles
Psychology
Strategy 15: Control the Dynamic (The 33 Strategies of War)
## Forcing Strategies In 1833, Mr. Thomas Auld, a slave owner of a plantation in Maryland, called back his slave Frederick Douglass, who was 15 at the time, from Baltimore. Douglass had spent several years in the city, serving Auld’s brother.
Psychology
Some Things Don’t Scale (Skin in the Game)
In Book 1, Taleb introduces an outline of his arguments. ### Hierarchies aren’t so bad Hierarchies are not inherently bad, they are only harmful when they result in bureaucracies that help people separate themselves from the consequences of their decisions.
Psychology
Heuristics: The Building Blocks of Intuition
Heuristics are simple, efficient rules that humans use to make decisions in uncertain situations. We often think of heuristics as mental shortcuts that lead to quick, but sometimes inaccurate judgments.
Psychology
Negative Visualization (Week 10 of Wisdom)
Imagine losing everything you own, your health, and everyone you love. Too depressing, I know. But for the Stoics, this was a daily routine. And not for nothing, the Stoics realized that there was something about human psychology that worked against us.