Tuesday, April 23, 2013
#1. A PERSONS GUESS IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN ODDS WOULD ALLOW.
Table for the Four Rules of the Para Psychological Method:
In the order of their proposition;
1st. A PERSONS GUESS IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN ODDS WOULD ALLOW.
2nd. EVERYONE HAS BLIND SPOTS AND EVERY ONES BLIND SPOTS ARE DIFFERENT.
3rd. SOME PEOPLE ARE VERY DIFFERENT, VERY DIFFERENTLY.
4th. EVERYBODY NEEDS LOVE.
These may be trite truisms that might be hard to prove or disprove, but the data that can be used to analyze these assertions are fruitful and exemplify the diversity of tools and resources at my fingertips.
Ah statistics. I was 9 yrs. old (1966) when I proposed the first one. Growing up in one of the best school districts in So. Calif. the parents of my chums were brilliant. Our schools were chosen for us on the basis of academic promise. So when I proposed to prove the 1st. proposition by guessing at cards shuffled randomly from across a room, Mrs. "X" said that the Monte Carlo Method of calculating odds was tailor made for this kind of a test. Here's where things got out of hand.
Guessing just the number; Ace, Deuce, three, all way up now through ten, Jack, Queen and King, Rusty started guessing way too many right. Oh Oh. We had him wear a black cloth blindfold with cotton under his eyes.
1st Rusty guessed just 6 or 7 guessed right. Within a reasonable margin of error. Then over 10 guessed correctly out of the whole deck, it didn't stop there. Then Rusty guessed over 15 right. He then managed to get 36 out of 52 cards right. Rusty was a very bright kid, but there is still no justifiable explanation. Suffice it to say, Mrs. "X" made us stop playing that game and made us go outside to play. I realized early on that as absurd as these results were, for me it had proved 2 very important points. 1st, My primary assertion might have been right, and to add even more evidence, I had also made a profound intuitive leap. A persons guess may indeed be better than odds would allow. But when? Was my beginners luck hold up?
I'll get to "blind spots" next. Also a bonanza of statistical "Magic."
This one is even more interesting from an analytical perspective. In the same way different people see color differently, we also have preferences that skew our tastes and perspectives away from or toward unique awarenesses obscuring other sensitivities. This whole notion of personal bias arose from my observations about people often having no awareness of things they choose to ignore, deny, disbelieve and/or avoid. One of the most extreme cases I've seen was a man who believed that the change of season was from the earth moving closer to the sun. He even made an elliptical calendar like a race track around an off center sun. Nothing could get him to look at the angle of the sun or the January summer in Rio De Janeiro. I have even had a Astrophysics Professor who insisted the tides only come in and go out once a day. We do live in a land locked state.
What is most significant about this variability of perspective isn't just right or wrong but the way nature insists that we see things very differently. Yes. Signature and fingerprint, by 24, I started using this basic assertion as a Systems Analysis for the Transformative Medium of shifting Opinion Biases. As we learn our perspectives can change. In my short life of 57 yrs. I've gone from mocked for my views on Alternative Medicine to being grilled by doctors and medical professionals for my secrets. They want to know how I dragged myself back from the edge of the grave and what I do professionally. I've learned not to persuade people. As my Christian Scientist Grandmother would say, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." Go Granny. (She would also say, "Know the truth." But that often was just her obstinate denial of hard reality.)
This is particularly important when understanding perceptual barriers. This observational science of the perceptual differences necessitates honesty, subjectively for us as individuals, and also objectively as witnesses. We can hope that as these issues of personal differences of perspective can be understood, so we may be able to build better bridges for communicating between one person and another. Mine is a thankless job of finding the points of access to the broken commonalities.
As an expression of our shared intelligence, I believe nature makes our individual perceptions as distinctive as a fingerprint or a signature. And besides, if everyone saw everything the same way there would be no point in lying, as any deception would be obvious. Hence there would be nothing to learn from understanding peoples personal evasions. (More on Styles of Evasion and the means of deception later as we examine further the personal differences and their extremes/outliers in the next chapter.)
