(2018-10-15, 01:34 AM)malf Wrote: [ -> ]I can only imagine the procession of hayseeds, fruitloops and crackpots they had to sift through
I used to go on the JREF forum a little back in the day, I remember one guy who was in there going "No, you don't understand guys, I'M GOD, I created the universe!" and he wasn't joking, not in the slightest. I've unfortunately had to deal with many, many people like that in my quest to create legitimate methods that get real results in this area and to be honest it was so bad I eventually just dropped off the internet because of it. Choosing instead to hermit myself away and work on my stuff, figuring there was no point talking about it until I had something to show for it because I'd jut be considered one of them since they're the only ones ever talking about this stuff. Those types of people deserve nothing but ridicule and mockery for being so willfully retarded, emotional, and pathetic.
I agree with Linda, the test was never about low level stuff, it was about people who'd claim to be able to levitate or teleport and such. Stuff that you didn't need to verify with statistics. I personally think that psychic abilities only matter when they're large and on the spot. If you say you're a psychic, I expect you to be able to read my thoughts back to me like a fucking news ticker, if you can't, you're not psychic, period. Likewise with telekinesis, as much as I appreciate the work people like Sean Mckenna are trying to do, being able to make a 4 gram piece of tinfoil twitch on a near frictionless pinhead in a sealed container isn't impressive and isn't worth spending years training for let alone calling Telekinesis.
Although these sorts of things are good starting points and shouldn't be thrown out, they aren't worth anything until they've reached a more practical level and should be treated as such. They're at best proofs of concept.
To me it's kinda like calling yourself a martial artists after your first 3 lessons. Personally I only think you're a martial artist after getting your black belt. Likewise I think the standards for thinking of yourself as a psychic or telekinetic should be equally as high, like if you can move around 20kg objects in all 3 dimensions at will, then yeah, you're a telekinetic, anything less than that, or less reliable than that, no. Keep training and come back later. That's why I, for example, am not bothering submitting any of my stuff as evidence yet. It's nowhere near a respectable level and I know it.
If more people took these things more seriously and eradicated all traces of spirituality, philosophy, religion and any other form of the same emotionally childish garbage from the process and just focused on getting results we might actually have high level demonstrations of telekinesis and psychic abilities already. I do think that's coming, but much slower than it otherwise could've.
But the good news is I've noticed a growing trend towards that mentality with more and more people of various ages starting to do their own training from a far more results based and scientific mindset. It's slow but I do think it will yield results in time. I think people are getting tired of the cosmic parent bullshit finally, I mean statistically speaking individualism and atheism is going up in many countries and both religion and spiritualism are going down. It's no surprise that societies are slowly improving as a result. I've certainly noticed the shift, to me the best indicator of that shift is the cartoon series Rick and Morty, a series that would never have existed 10-15 years ago with a main character like Rick Sanchez. A character who, in almost any other story, would be the villain because of how he thinks. Whereas now his selfishness, ambition and individualism is celebrated, sometimes to an unhealthy degree, by the fans. People who are likely fed up with the moral absolutism being thrown at them from every direction because the very idea of moral absolutism has been debunked for so many centuries now.
I think that trend will continue.