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Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
I'm talking about "psychic" ability, like when people sense danger yet there is no obvious or apparent reason for it, or like how 2 people who are related, will often think about the same things at the same time.
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There's no indication though that these things happen any more than they should due to random chance.
It's easy to get caught by confirmation bias and think that an instance of this happening is evidence of something going on, but if you take into account the huge # of people and the pure amount of time and events in a day, of course randomly some people are going to "sense" danger before it happens (they of course forget all the other times they sensed danger and nothing came of it), or randomly think about the same things at the same time, or call each other at the same moment, or whatever.
I do agree with you that our subconscious can pick up on things and influence our conscious mind's thoughts (though I don't think the difference is nearly as wide as we'd like to think, I don't think we're as nearly in control of our own thoughts and decisions as we'd like to think we are).
I saw a study where they created a game that looked simple but the rules were very complex. They got a bunch of people to play the game without knowing anything about it. At first everyone did poorly because they didn't understand the rules. After a bunch of turns (50 say) people finally started to understand the rules of the game and did well.
The interesting thing was before this conscious understanding came about (say turn 30), people started to do better, even though they didn't notice it and didn't understand why. Part of them understood the rules enough to influence their conscious decisions, but not enough to actually grasp it in their minds.
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Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
I have a very personal experience when it comes to this. About a week before my mother passed away suddenly, both my sister and I had dreams about trying to save her from danger. We were both really anxious all week, but couldn't really figure out why. It was a feeling like knowing something was wrong, but not being able to put your finger on it. It turns out that our mother had an undetected heart defect, and in reality, there were probably some subtle changes in her behaviour or expression that subconsciously told us that there was a danger even though we couldn't figure out what it was. It's not "psychic" ability in the paranormal sense, but I think it is something that is real and often makes people think they are psychics.
I believe that things like that do happen, but they're not "paranormal". It's a natural ability that just isn't understood.
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Sorry to hear about that.
In your example though I can agree that subconscious observations may have given rise to the anxiety. Or it's also possible it was just a random occurrence that you both had a similar dream at the same time and it randomly happened close to a terrible thing. It seems unlikely, but given 6 billion people, 365 opportunities to dream, and tons of significant events occurring all the time, it's going to happen a lot.