http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/How-Our-Brains-Make-Memories.html

^JB this was a fairly important bit that relates to why your conclusion for your perception of that accident is likely flawed.

What accident?

>>>Apparently he wasn’t alone: a 2003 study of 569 college students found that 73 percent shared this misperception.<<<

apparently that includes George Bush.

The one where you thought you saw the accident before it happened. Memory can literally overwrite itself, and when something happens is not always the order of events we remember it happening.

It is wholly possible you were just lucky in your reactions and remember that luck as something else.

I think being skeptical includes a bucket load of self doubt.

Oh you mean the vision of the accident I saw that never happened because I decided not to turn that second before looking over my shoulder!!

What I remember is a vision of the accident. The accident itself never actually happened. BUT it would have happened if I had not seen the vision and talked myself into looking over my shoulder...time enough to prevent being hit.

I did not see the vision just once. I saw it ten times over and over in ten bright flashes. I am very clear on what I experienced that day. My vision into the future, even though it was just a split second into the future, saved my life (and my little brother's) and I am not likely to ever forget that!

"Skeptics" can rationalize about my story any way that supports their own biased belief that such things are "not possible" all they want. But I know what I know and I know what I experienced.

I have had other various so-called "psychic" experiences that I do question and rationalize about and I may wonder if they were "real" or imagined, but that one is certainly not one of them. That is where my life was almost cut very short.

**

Now I would not even say that I am "psychic." I don't think I would want to know what is going to happen before it happens - all the time. But in that case I think it was just not my day to die and my subconscious mind could see what was about to happen and my conscious mind could not see it. I think my subconscious mind sent me that message as quickly as possible. I'm not sure if I would even call that "psychic." Maybe call it a sixth sense of the survival kind.

Well, we must always ask ourselves . .. what is more likely.

Is it more likely that your memory of this event was rewritten, or overwritten almost immediately, in the same exact way that researchers are finding is quite common, or that you saw into the future?

The reason I think that it is not likely that my memory of this was "rewritten" is because I know what that feels like. I know I do have memories that have been rewritten and some that are not all that clear. This was definitely NOT the same thing. It was something very different.

It is more likely that my subconscious mind saw the future probability which had clearly formed at the moment I had the intention to turn left.

It is my belief that probabilities are created at the point of intention to act. They don't happen instantly. Cause comes before the effect. First cause in this event was my intention to act, and that act was to turn left in front of a fast moving truck.

My own conscious mind did not see the probable crash, but my higher mind or my subconscious mind did see it and it delivered a message to my conscious mind in the form of flashes of this probability in an extremely rapid succession. A conversation proceeded between that higher mind and my conscious self in what seemed to be a space where time stopped or slowed down.

It is not really "magic" or being "psychic" and I think there is a very scientific explanation for it, but it is science that our scientific community has not discovered yet hence they do not understand it.

It has to do with events and the non existence of time. It has to do with how an event happens from start to finish according to cause and effect.

Why would you or anyone decide that a rewritten memory was "more likely?" I think because they are grasping for an explanation that they can believe that is within their own science.

If our memories are "rewritten" that easily then what is the point of relying on them at all for anything, like history, or witnesses, or the remembering of anything?

Why would we only question memories that don't seem to have a good explanation? Why not then question all memories of everything? If we start doing that, then this reality we live in begins to fall apart and has no integrity at all. It all becomes a bunch of dreams that bend and change with every individual.

I will say to you with confidence, that my memory of this event, altered or not, is one where I was shown the result of my intention in the form of a vision and I changed my intention and it saved my life.

Looking at it another way, if there is some alternate universe out there where I died in that crash, and I created a new universe when I decided to look in my rear view mirror, then my memory of the crash was altered in this universe... as it did not happen.

But I personally don't subscribe to string theory and infinite alternate realities.

I lean towards reality as being more holographic and the implicate and explicate orders of the universe as described by David Bohm.

It really does amaze me the mental hoola hoops we will go through to support a given conclusion when it "feels" right.

The simple answer is usually the correct one, your memory of the order of events was overwritten.


Really? So what does it feel like? The answer is it doesn't feel like anything when our memories are written nor overwritten, our emotional response to the stimulus is what we are feeling, not the storing or overwriting of a memory, nor the mistake of order which is so common to memory. The fact that you felt anything means this was an exciting event, one that would get the juices flowing, one that is typical of the kinds of events we see where memory is effected by strong reactions.

I know this is hard to accept becuase this experience supports so much of your world view, but the reality is that this event is explainable with the way memory works, no need to posit any kind of paranormal anything to explain it.

Occums razor.

To quote the song lyrics... How does that work?



That guy Nader's premises are full of "if's", "maybe's", "thinks" and "believes" which of course is still only spectulation, so isn't that some crazy shhit!




"Nader believes he may have an explanation for such quirks of memory. His ideas are unconventional within neuroscience, and they have caused researchers to reconsider some of their most basic assumptions about how memory works. In short, Nader believes that the very act of remembering can change our memories"

"Some experts think he is getting ahead of himself, especially when he makes connections between human memory and these findings in rats and other animals. “He oversells it a little bit,” says Kandel."




And for the record... Arriving at a particular conclusion regarding the existence of psychics or aliens does stifle the imagination...

No, it amazes me the mental hoola hoops you kind of guys will go through to support your own conclusion that "feels right to you."

You did not have the experience, so you are not really in any position to even speculate about it. My memory of the event was not rewritten or "over written." My memory of what happen to me, is very clear. I have no doubts about it.





The event itself was not the least bit "exciting." Nothing actually happened -- except for my making a left turn.

There were no "juices flowing." My heart barely skipped a beat, and there was no adrenaline at all. None.

If I had not had the vision that saved my life I would not have even known what hit me. I would just be dead, plain and simple. My little brother, who sat in the seat next to me had no idea at all how close to death he had just been in that second. All he experienced was me making a left turn. A very uneventful unexciting event. He barely noticed a truck passing me on the left. Trucks passed me on the left all the time. It was nothing special or "exciting."





Just listen to yourself!! You are doing exactly what you are accusing me of doing. What happened to me is hard for you to accept because you have no explanation for it that actually suits YOUR WORLD VIEW.

It has nothing to do with how memory works.

To add, I did not even say this was a "paranormal" event. In fact, YOU are the person who brought this up in the first place.

I don't need an explanation that satisfies you or any other so-call skeptic. I am grateful that I am still alive and I have a good idea why I am. My memory of the event has not be "re-written." That is absurd. There would be NO REASON FOR THAT ANYWAY.

I have tons of memories of making left turns and even near misses while driving my car. There are no "re-written" memories there.

What I said was that there is a very scientific reason for it, and for everything that you people (skeptics) call "paranormal." It is probably not one that you are comfortable with, but everything is science.

You know as well as I do that our science DOES NOT KNOW EVERYTHING. When and if you can ever admit that, you will stop trying to find an explanation for things that only you and (or our current scientific knowledge) can understand and verify.

P.S. My world view has come to me because of my own personal experiences. I'm sure your world view came to you the same way.

Don't assume that only yours is the correct one.

Bushidobillyclub,

Regarding the above post....

If this guy Nader made a mistake recalling that the first plane hit the north tower on September 11th, and he is a so-called "expert" on memory (which I doubt).. maybe he is coming to his conclusions due to his own bad memory.

He thinks that because his own memory is bad and plays tricks on him that everyone else probably has that same problem.

I've known several people who hear voices in their heads telling them to do bad things. What I found out about these people is that some of them think this is normal. They think everyone hears voices in their heads.

My memory of 9-11 is that no one saw a video of the first plane hitting the tower until a lot later or the next day...

Logic and common sense alone would tell you that unless someone was expecting a plane to hit the tower and had their camera aimed in that direction, that there was no video taken at all.

But low and behold a video turned up later, where in the background, the event appears to have been captured.

As an investigator, I would want to know EVERYTHING about who took that tape and why. EVERYTHING. There had better be a good reason to have been filming in that direction at that time, otherwise I would suspect that the people making the film knew what was about to happen and wanted to get it on tape. But they would have to set it up to make it look like a lucky accident.

Yet I have not heard any real details about that particular tape. I've seen it, several times, but I don't know who made the video or why they were making it.

Every time we remember something, we are overwriting that memory. When we are forming awareness of something we can get the order of events wrong.

Cognitive scientists have developed tests of this. Its troubling to believe our own ability to confirm the world is often flawed, but its true.

The way memory works is that pieces of the memory are stored, and each time you remember/recall the memory it is reassembled.

What we have found in testing is that each time it is reassembled its possible (in fact highly probable) that new features are added, old features overwritten, and details lost or changed without our awareness every knowing at all.

This even happens the first time you are aware of the thing being remembered.

In fact the researchers have shown that the time the brain takes to store the data is not wholly representative of the time it takes to be aware of it. Which means the brain can keep things from your awareness longer than the process of assembling the recalled/experienced event.

Personally my world view is far more a product of what can be tested, then what conclusions I reached about a given experience without the benefit of objective testing.

In my exploration for knowledge I have had to be very honest about what conclusions I can draw about reality without the benefit of double blind tests, this is with great respect and no small amount of humility I admit my own biases and then work to remove them from my own conclusions.

The only honest assessment of any, "I saw into the future claims" are that you really dont know what happened, and chances are you just remember it differently then it actually happened.

I have one of my own.

I woke up after a particularly vivid dream. The dream was me hovering over some kind of accident, a large mountain and a village at the bottom, and soldiers walking around the rubble.

I walk into my kitchen fresh after waking up, probably more than half a asleep. I look down at the news paper and could swear that the image on the cover was the exact image of the dream I had just woke up from.

WOAAAHHHH. Mind blown. Couldn't explain it, but would swear it was the EXACT image.

Well the reality is that the brain is MORE than able to take a past memory, and reshape it to match a future image when that image is presented. No less when your brain is in a state such as dreaming, which we can see from studies can continue past unconsciousness, and we have all experienced "day dreaming". The mechanisms are not well separated.

Imagination as it meets an imprecise memory storage medium is more than enough to explain these events, the reality is unsettling, can we trust our memories? The answer sadly is no, and we shouldn't, and eye witness testimony in large part is the worst kind of evidence.



Seeing the future, a rose by any other name . . .

That's your personal choice, to defer to an authority. While I do respect "objective testing" (if there is any such thing) I don't toss my personal experience out the window and defer to some outside authority which may not apply to my case.



Unless I am personally involved in a double blind test, I don't accept their authority as fail proof.

There was a time when I totally accepted the authority of others, and doubted my own. I have found more confidence in myself now. I trust my own authority more most of the time.



No, I didn't. I saw a vision of a probable accident and I took appropriate action. I remember it clearly and it saved my life.

Your argument is weak and speculative and so is the research that supports it.

The mind can easily create visions just as a person can imagine things. The subconscious mind can be aware of things that the conscious mind does not see. I trust my own instincts and my own mind above and beyond anything any weak speculative research can dispute.




I didn't say I trust my memories completely. But I know WHEN to trust them and when not to. And I have faith in that. That is all that really matters to me.





People like you would call it "paranormal" because you don't understand that it was actually pretty normal.

In reality, there is no "future" so you can't see it. You can only see a probability, which is a mind construct that has not yet manifested. I did not "see" it with my eyes. I "saw" it in my mind. Very clearly.

I thought the strangest part was that time itself seemed to come to a halt during that process. It was only a split second... and I saw a lot, and had a conversation with myself... in a split second.

An event has to form somewhere before it manifests. What scientists don't realize is that we live in a mind world. Part of it is material, part of it is not.

They don't allow for that. They are inside of a material world.

To them, nothing else exists.

A story of "coincidence" for the "skeptics."

Okay here is my most recent story.

I had a dream where my dream guide came to me and asked me if I would take in another cat. I told him I already had six cats and I had decided that's all I could handle. With each cat, I have to have their shots, and spay or neuter and that is expensive.

The dream guide told me not to worry, I would have the money. I told him okay, show me the cat. He took me to a place where I was surrounded by hundreds of cats, but they all seemed like ghostly figures. I asked him which cat should I chose, there were so many. He said "Here is the cat.."

Then I saw a cat that was not a ghostly figure. It was bright and colorful. It was a calico cat, black gold and white. I asked the guide, "Why this particular cat?"

He said "This cat is special."

I picked the cat up and found on its body, under the skin, a tattoo that said "Ruby."

I said, "That must be the cat's name." I said, Okay, yes I will take the cat into my family of cats. Where is it? The guide said "You will find her."

End of dream.

The next day I told my two sisters. "I think I'm getting another cat." They asked, "Why? You said six was enough." I said, I know, but I agreed to take in another one in my dream last night.

Her name is "Ruby and she is a black and gold calico." So I knew here name, her sex, and her coloring, and I described her to two witnesses.

Two weeks later, I was walking my two dogs, and we always go around the same four blocks. I heard the cry of a small lost kitten. She was all alone. Very small, and hungry. There were no other cats around.

I knew when I saw her that she was my new cat. I walked up to her and she did not run away. She came up to me. She did not even run away from the dogs who wanted to chase her. She stood her ground, hiked up like a Halloween cat.

I tucked her in my coat and took her home. I called my sister's and told them. "Ruby has arrived!!"

I am a cat whisperer.



So for you "skeptics" how is that for a coincidence?

P.S. The money came. The next day I sold two decks of my tarot cards that will pay for the cat's vet bills. I hadn't gotten any orders for three weeks.



Ruby:

Ruby does seem quite special. She makes a special effort to make friends with my other cats and they have accepted her well. She is special friends with Prince Blade and they even play and sleep together.

Ruby is also a good house keeper. She maintains the cat litter boxes and makes sure everything gets covered up. Sometimes the other cats don't cover up their stuff and Ruby goes in there and does it. She's very tidy. She's my tidy cat.

Well it is not Current Events and it is also sure as heck not Science and Philosophy!

Wrong. Everything unexplained is potentially science.

It may not be what you perceive as science or what some people limit science to, but everything is science of some kind.

So yes, it is about science.

Sorry, wrong thread.