You know what's funny to me about skeptics? Other than that "skepsis" means "looking" not "blindly, unreflectively incredulous"? Well, the most famous shallow-empiricist asshole-atheist skeptics, like Randi, Penn, and Teller, or the two dudes who do Mythbusters, are stage magicians or special effects guys. That is, professional fakers: therefore their skepticism is merely, disappointingly, projection. Also empiricism is self-refuting—"only scientifically verifiable assertions are valid" is not a scientifically verifiable assertion—and Mythbusters' experimental methodology is uniformly invalid. Not because of their perpetual lack of controls, etc., but because they come in with inaccurate assumptions—i.e. and e.g., "bulletproof" is not a real industry term, sorry dickheads.
Finally, this, the famous Myths of Skepticism. This is absolutely vital reading for anyone interested in the field.
A bunch of idiots have said, "if psi existed, why aren't people using it to get rich/conquer the world/etc."? Isn't it cute when they argue from blind stinking pig-ignorance? As it happens, DARPA had a project to study psi, especially remote viewing, for spying applications; it was called Project Stargate. Their results, and it's not like they had some elaborate system for training ESPers, were a full 9-11% better than guessing: that is, they really had remote viewings, and their subjects' training consisted of a little practice. DARPA, however, and in my view rightly, concluded that the investment necessary to make remote-viewing into a methodology comparable to conventional recon—which, remember, is usually a lot more than 1/10 better than a wild guess!—would be prohibitively large, and (given that psi is by definition not a well-understood method) might not ever bear fruit. After all, even if you can train your guys till they can do remote-viewing reliably, for a number of applications regular recon is much more convenient, useful, and in many ways reliable, since you're not just relying on some dude's reports of his visions.
However, that we've pretty much established that remote viewing occurs, and have a federal agency on the record saying so, is huge. It's certainly sufficient wiggle room for an SF writer to include psi in his stories—"can I get away with this in a story" is a far lower threshold than "would I support federal funding for research into this", I'm fairly sure you'd agree.
Personally I like clairsentience (clairvoyance and clairaudience, D&D taught me the word), precognition, telepathy, psychometry, telekinesis, and biokinesis. Teleportation, aside from being the only psi power without even anecdotal evidence for its existence, would also have to involve a number of secondary telekinetic powers if the teleporter weren't just going to be ripped apart by angular momentum. So I tend not to like it.
Anyway, here's my take on each, from a fiction standpoint. Thought I'd go alphabetical.
- Biokinesis
This is a hard one to put limits on, and it's hard to explain its workings without delving into "life force"-type nonsense. Do me a favor if you do decide to frame it in life-force terms, go read up on Chinese or Indian traditional medicine, and put it in those terms. At least if you have to use Sanskrit technical terms you won't sound like such a hippie.
Personally I limit this one to stopping bleeding, mending broken bones, and being able to cancel things like nausea. Oh, and I guess maybe the ability to control your adrenaline more precisely, giving you a sorta Rock Lee's Eight Gates thing (quite probably with similar attendant dangers). I don't get people whose biokinetics can turn their fingernails into claws or even transform wholesale into animals. I got no problem you wanna set a fantasy story in a spacefaring civilization, but kindly know the difference. - Clairsentience
For some weird reason people put limits of distance on this one, but guys, it's thoughts. As Aquinas said, you can think of France and then think of Syria without ever having to think of Italy. The limit should be familiarity; a person should only be able to remote view somewhere they either know well, or can see. In my book, they use a satellite video. Then their clairsentient moves her viewpoint to another spot she can see from the first one, and so on—line-of-sight is what they use, in unfamiliar places. Being clairvoyant just makes line-of-sight highly versatile.
I also have it be impossible to remote view a space-fold's spacetime distortion. Because you can only remote view regions whose geometry your brain can cope with. - Precognition
This is the one the idiots always say "well why aren't people using it to make money?" Well, because realistically, this thing would be pretty weak. The future, after all, doesn't exist, except potentially.
Basically the limits of precog in my book are premonitions, only moments before a dangerous event, and the ability to sense what others have formed the intention to do. However, they don't know whose intention, and they're usually sketchy about the precise time-frame and location, so no "Pre-Crime" type thing. Minority Report's still a great movie, though, check it out if you haven't seen it—be warned, part of it is incredibly gross. - Psychometry
Really this ought to be the psychic ability to do well on IQ and other aptitude tests, but it's used for the people who can get psychic impressions from objects or areas by touching them. I just had a brilliant idea that lets me "De-chickify" one of my characters, and make another thing make more sense. Note to self!
Anyway. That's pretty much it with this power, but my felinoids' psi-user school, when it adopted their monotheistic religion, had to put the most restrictions on the use of this power, since a bunch of the older uses of psychometry involved their cultures' version of black magic—like using the resentment lingering in a murder site to strengthen one's attacks, that kind of thing. In my book I have an amusing discussion between one of them and a layman, about how that practice ("necromancy", basically) was banned, and the psi-user's very specific that it's not ghosts, but then he pauses and says, basically, "Well, come to think of it, is the lingering resentment at a murder site not a ghost?" Because, think about it, if you're gonna say that, don't you need to be sure you know what a ghost is? - Telekinesis
This is the rarest power, because, let's face it, it's a game breaker. Since the limit of psi isn't physical, but mental, you basically get guys tossing skyscrapers at each other if you're not careful. Though, still, the more mass something has, the more mentally exhausting it could be to move it. The evangelical Heideggerian aliens move all their ships this way, but they need equipment (which is not mechanical) to do it.
By the bye, though telekinetics can make shields of spinning rubbish around themselves, etc., they can't stop bullets—you've got to be able to perceive the thing you're telekinetically effecting, and you simply don't see a bullet, sorry.
I have a pyrokinetic, later, but I still need to figure out the limits of the powers. - Telepathy
This is the best one, hands down. With it, not only can you see what a clairsentient sees and sense what a precog or psychometer senses, but you can also "nudge" a telekinetic or biokinetic's power to go how you want.
But, still, limits. In my thing, a telepath can only affect someone he knows or can see, or someone who can see him. Basically becoming aware of a telepath is like shooting off a flare to him. They can also contact other telepaths, and other psi-users can send thoughts to telepaths with their psi power.
They're also not able to contravene free will; they can send powerful gut-level responses like "Sleep" or "Fear Me", but in order to really manipulate people's actions they have to manipulate their perceptions. That is, they can't make you drop your gun, but they can make you think it's empty and you need to swap magazines (then make you forget to put in a new one, once you drop the first one); they can't make you shoot yourself, but they can make you not notice which way your gun's pointing.
Like clairsentience, telepathy's not limited by distance—not even interstellar ones. Again, since you can think of α Circinus without ever thinking of α Centauri, your thoughts don't have to actually cross the distance in between. There is a limit, though: if the target is far enough away that time is moving at a markedly different speed, you can't contact them (and contacting people on fast-moving ships feels weird).
1 comment:
Nice font! Also, that myths of skepticism thing is awesome! I particularly like myths 12 and 13.
Post a Comment