Is the development of psychic powers the next stage of human evolution? According to brain studies, this is not likely to happen.
It’s not all terrible news, either. Human telekinetic talents, which are unexpectedly distinct from their near cousins, psychokinetic powers, might be made possible by emerging technology. This article examines the differences between these two methods, the implications of parapsychology for human potential, and how technology can enable these abilities.
Read More: Oren Zarif
Mind Over Matter
What distinguishes telekinesis from psychokinesis? First of all, both depend on your ability to manipulate the environment with your thoughts. What you’re controlling is where they diverge, though. In other words, your abilities cause someone’s mind to behave when you use psychokinesis. Direct manipulation of items is possible with telekinesis.
To illustrate the distinction, consider this example:
After a hard day, you and your spouse finally settle down on the couch to watch TV and unwind. You don’t want to watch the next program when the one you’re watching finishes, and you’re surprised to find that the remote control is on the other side of your coffee table, out of reach. Yes, it is possible to get up, go all the way to the remote control, and then walk back. You might also make advantage of your abilities.
Psychokinesis involves subtly suggesting to your spouse that they should obtain the remote control. Additionally, they might as well have a food while they’re at it.
You can levitate the remote control off the table and into your palm if you have telekinesis, which allows you to control it directly. After that, you pull out a dish from the pantry, load it up with goodies, and carefully carry it over to the sofa. Although the mental method is different in both situations, the result is the same.
An Introduction to Parapsychology
Psychology Today defines parapsychology as the study of psychic abilities and other extrasensory phenomena. In the 1930s, Joseph Banks Rhine of Duke University started the first attempts to evaluate the human potential for psychic abilities objectively. In order to determine if individuals could forecast results in advance, Rhine and his colleagues experimented with dice-rolling and card-guessing.
In addition to telekinesis and psychokinesis, parapsychologists frequently examine precognition (seeing the future), telepathy (mind-to-mind communication), and clairvoyance (the capacity to sense events occurring in faraway places).
However, despite almost a century of research, parapsychologists still have very little proof. Some tests, like Daryl Bem’s word recall trials, suggested that people could “feel the future,” but later study was unable to confirm the findings, according to Psychology Today. This is a persistent issue for the field. Repeated trials conducted under the same settings provide different results, even if one-off tests sometimes yield encouraging findings.
Research into psychokinesis and telekinesis has also produced disappointing findings. Although people may affect the thoughts of other people around them through body language and emotional intelligence, this is more appropriate for mainstream psychology than parapsychology. On the other hand, purported magicians like Uri Geller have been trying to convince audiences that they can use their thoughts to bend spoons for decades. Warning: He was unable to.
According to a Medium article, our ideas themselves might be regarded as telekinetic since they move when neurons are activated. You’ve essentially “moved” something with your mind since these neurons have mass and influence other parts of your brain.
Telekinesis Gets Technological
Although para-powered telekinesis has not been shown to exist, technology provides a means of realizing the fantasy of manipulating objects with our thoughts. According to Scientific American, the technology is called brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and is based on electrode grids that are implanted into the cortex of the brain. These electrodes capture the activity of neurons during firing and convert that activity into ideas and actions.
BCIs enable patients to manipulate prosthetic devices or communicate with software programs, so this isn’t simply conjecture. According to recent Caltech study, sophisticated BCIs can accurately anticipate a patient’s internal monologue, or the thoughts we have but don’t express, which may aid in the creation of gadgets that enable non-vocal patients to talk.
It’s important to remember that BCIs are still being developed. Remember that removing a piece of the skull to implant electrodes is presently necessary to obtain correct BCI readings. However, efforts are being made to create non-invasive substitutes that can gather information about the brain using layered materials like skin and hair. Concerns have also been raised over the broad effects of BCI development on humanity. Mass-produced alternatives might make limited telekinesis accessible to nearly everyone, despite the fact that current frameworks are extremely specialized and that training algorithm models takes years.
Philosophers John Kendall Hawkins and Sandy Boucher of the University of New England write on the rise of the “technological singularity,” which holds that humans and AI technology are inextricably linked, in an essay for The Conversation. They argue that there is no turning back and that BCIs may be the first step toward this singularity.
In conclusion, new technology may provide a means for human minds to interact with and manipulate the environment around us, even if there is no proof of underlying psychic talents that enable psycho- or telekinesis.
