video | un: Crash Keys

[21stcenturyguy]

Hey. This isn't one of those 'let's all get to know each other and be best friends' posts. I wanna know what you guys know about telepathy.

[Aoi holds a picture up to the camera. 'Picture' is probably a generous description.]



First, anyone know what this picture is?

Snake, before you even start, I fuckin' KNOW you can't see it, so I'm not asking you.

Don't cheat, just tell me what you think it's supposed to be.

If you're not into pictures, tell me about Archetypes from your world. There was a psychologist on Earth who noticed the same ideas pop up in various cultures that had no contact with one another. I want to see if that collective unconscious spans worlds too. So, I dunno, talk to each other about the legends and fairy tales and holidays and shit from your worlds and lemme know what common threads you find

The Follow-Up Video

[A couple of days later, when it seems like the majority of the people who are gonna weigh in have done so, Aoi makes a follow-up post.]

Alright, I know you all think I was tryin' to psychoanalyze you with the picture I showed you the other day, but trust me, you guys aren't that interesting. There's a right answer to the picture. I'll show you.

[He holds up the original picture and the solution to the screen.]

Some crackpot psychologist did an experiment to test the transference of knowledge through unseen means. He showed a picture like this to a population of people, and the distribution of answers was pretty random, same as you guys'. Then he broadcast the answer to that population. When he went to a to a remote location that had no contact with anyone from Population A. When he showed the same picture, there was a statistically significant increase in the percentage of people who knew the answer.

Even though nobody had consciously shared the information, because more people knew it, the answer was somehow transmitted. So that's the theory of Morphic Resonance.

Comments

[rampager]

That's also incorrect, but it doesn't matter.

[He almost, almost laughs in the worst way, though. Almost. Because that question grasps at the heart of his culture with uncomfortable accuracy and speed.]

The latter. "Telepathy" is—...was an idea reserved for writers and scientists.

[21stcenturyguy]

Yeah, that's how most people think of it in my world, too. People who believe in it are mostly considered crackpots.

[He shrugs.]

But there's some things that normal science can't explain, so who knows, right?

[rampager]

[How charming. But not unsurprising.]

One society's....crackpot....can be another's visionary. [Which hits a little close to home, not that his tone betrays anything of the sort.] Or their standard of normal. I've already met someone here with the ability to sense and change another's emotions.

Perhaps telepathy, as you speak of it, isn't too far off from that.

[21stcenturyguy]

Maybe. It's worth looking into, at least. Thus the experiment.

[Aoi's also run into people with legit-sounding abilities here, so he doesn't think he's too far off track.]

[rampager]

And would you say your preliminary results support that?

[Or is it just bullshit all the way down...]

[21stcenturyguy]

Hey, man, you can't judge the results of an experiment from a single trial. That'd be terrible scientific method.

[Yeah, no, it's bullshit. Aoi's got nothing.]