Some mentally ill people don't understand that they are not supposed to be able to see the thoughts around the heads of other people, which can lead to "creepy" events (e.g. the muttering weirdo on the bus who replies to your inner voice.)
The social convention is that our thoughts are ours and private to our heads, but this is just a convention. It's pretty easy to extend the faculty that lets you see the thoughts around your head that you consider "yours" to be able to see the thoughts around other people's heads. It's also easy to send/receive thoughts to/from others at any distance. Thoughts themselves are independent of the mind (like how TV shows are not in the TV.) One of the fascinating things is that you can do without thoughts entirely. Your body continues to perform its actions without them. Empty mind is extremely pleasant, blissful.
Only to the extent that psychics are often frauds.
If "psychic" powers go away on medication, but come back if it is reduced, is that evidence to you that they are a type of symptom? If not, then what is the evidence that convinces you?
Again, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Mental illness and the ability to see thoughts are orthogonal.
> If "psychic" powers go away on medication, but come back if it is reduced, is that evidence to you that they are a type of symptom?
I'm not a psychopharmacologist nor a psychiatrist so I can't really comment in any depth. I would assume that some drugs would mute the ability to see thoughts, while others (such as LSD) make it easier. But this is a vast and complex subject about which I know very little.
> If not, then what is the evidence that convinces you?
Convince me of what specifically?
I mean, some people are delusional, and they do experience a myriad of phenomena involving thought transmission, insertion, etc.
So what is it that tells you it's real and fundamentally different in quality?
Being able to see thoughts of someone who is operating a combination lock might be handy.
Hmm... That is an interesting question.
FWIW, there have been times when I've wondered, "Am I just insane?" but not for years now.
You would have to have some sort of record of most of my life, from say, age ten on. Especially the time I was homeless. (I dropped out of high school and lived on the street for about 4.5 years.) So many things happened during that time that would not be accepted as real by, uh, mainstream conventional viewpoints. "Mind reading" or "being psychic" was one of the more pedestrian aspects.
So you would have to have some sort of video recordings covering most of my life, and I'd have to go through them and see for myself how hundreds of "episodes" or events were just coincidences or hallucinations.
Interestingly enough, I was also suffering from depression during that time. However, that didn't seem to interfere with the, uh, esoteric stuff that was happening with and through me. As I said, mental illness and "psychic" phenomenon are orthogonal.
> I mean, some people are delusional, and they do experience a myriad of phenomena involving thought transmission, insertion, etc.
Oh to be sure! Schizophrenia is a hellofa thing. I remember reading a book written by someone who became schizophrenic and then healed from it, and they e.g. thought that all bus drivers formed a sinister psychic cabal that ruled the world!
I hasten to point out that you don't have to be crazy to fall into the trap of erroneously believing that you can "read minds", although we seldom call it that. It's a pretty common hallucination that we know what the other person is thinking, eh?
> So what is it that tells you it's real and fundamentally different in quality?
I was raised in a pro-science way (although I'm not a scientist myself) and some of my personal heroes include noted skeptics like Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov. So as I began to investigate the wider world beyond convention I did my best to test these things.
I should point out that, although I can (or believe I can) see thought forms that are not my own (and really, as I said above no thoughts are properly "our own") I didn't try to read other people's minds. It seemed voyeuristic, y'know? Also, for my own weirdo reasons, I wasn't really interested in what other people were thinking, I was driven to find the truth about reality and most folks are just "watching TV" in their heads.
Anyway, there were just a lot of confirmations, over and over again. To the point where it was almost ridiculous. Getting back to the original question (about developing intuition) I was living in a stream of "coincidences" that happened all day every day. For example, for about two years, I never hit a red light. What I mean is that every time I came to an intersection the light was green in my direction. I was walking a lot back then, all day, all over the city, green light green light green light.
As a counter-example (not of my personal experience, but of fraudulent "psychics") I once went to visit a friend of mine and saw the sign of a local psychic shop in his stairwell. Asked why it was there he told me, "I was drunk and I figured that if they really were psychic they would have known I was gonna steal it and they wouldn't have left it out." Impeccable reasoning, if a bit mean.
My deal was the opposite of that. Everything fell into place, over and over again. I could go to a city I'd never been to before, walk straight to a "random" bus stop, board the first bus that came by, and arrive at my destination. No map, no schedule, just "following my feet." Call it intuition.
> Being able to see thoughts of someone who is operating a combination lock might be handy.
What? To steal from them? That's criminal. What do you want from knowing that combo? Money? What do you want that money for? Food? Just get food. :)
Some people with schizophrenia experience exactly this as their principal symptom (it may vary with medication and other unknown factors). This is where paranoia comes from - the coincidences can seem to form a compelling pattern unless one's mind is sufficiently tranquilized.
It's a misconception that hearing voices, hallucinations, or multiple personalities define the illness.
I was only curious whether you understand what it is (can be), and have good reasons for thinking you are not.
If physical abilities go away when you take medication, does that mean the ability was a “symptom” or that the loss was a “side effect” ofbthe drugs? Usually, the latter.
Why would it be any different for psychic abilities, except from the perspective of one who takes as given that the ability doesn't exist and that discussion of it is merely discussion of the delusion of having the ability?
Being able to see and speak in a land of blind mutes is an unmatched advantage. A handful of folks with this ability could form the most powerful entity in the world and change it to their taste. I can’t think of such an untouchable group - do they all live in the shadows, or is this skill not that easy to develop?
Yes. (Boredom and loneliness are the only problems.)
> A handful of folks with this ability could form the most powerful entity in the world and change it to their taste.
Yes. And they do. ("nine unknown men")
> I can’t think of such an untouchable group
Of course not.
> do they all live in the shadows
They live in light, the "blind mutes" live in the shadows.
> or is this skill not that easy to develop?
Everyone already has this skill.
Part of the answer is that control and (individual) free will are illusions. All are One. Only That has free will.
Yes, but everyone can, I'm not special.
> If so what methods led you to having that ability.
As corny as it sounds I first learned it from a pamphlet on "How to Read Minds" that I ordered from the back of a comic book.
There's no specific method to it, your brain already does it, you just have to practice and develop your "psychic" muscles.
> I catch peoples thoughts sometimes, it's like they're being yelled into my head.
Yeah, if that bothers you imagine a reflective egg surrounding your body, that should help.
This subjective experience is the principal aspect of schizophrenia, or clinical paranoia, that I am aware of.
The issue with paranoia or magical thinking is that it's not really a matter of what facts are real, but what they mean - is something "just" a coincidence or not?
Being correct with hindsight does not mean you necessarily knew in advance.
One tends to assume that mental illness involves a failure to reason logically. But I believe it's more about seeing too many correlations, which are in fact frequently there, but a normal mind automatically filters out as meaningless.
A sane mind is no better at rejecting them through logic, which is why insanity can be very frightening in an existential way.