So, I promised that I'd get into a bit of opinion-tossing on psychic phenomena today, and I plan to. But as a preface, I'd just like to make two things plain; first, that I really have nothing to back up my beliefs (I guess at that point, it wouldn't really be a belief-system so much as just faith) and second, that I don't expect you to agree with me. That all said, let's dig in.
I already mentioned a while back that I'm pretty agnostic about the concept of the afterlife and paranormal phenomena as a whole. Do I believe it's possible that either or both of these things exist? Yeah, why not. Am I sure about those beliefs? No way. But while I may be aggravatingly ambivalent about a couple of the foundation areas of parapsychology, one thing I believe and have always believed in is luck. I simply think luck exists. I know that statistically, it shouldn't. I also know that may determinists/deeply religious would argue that there's no such thing as luck, just divine will. But, human logic and attributions aside, however irrational a belief it may be, I have it. I think that regardless of where you think it comes from or how subjectively constructed it is, every person has a certain level of luck in any given situation, luck being defined as the ability to have larger than normal probabilities of a positive or desired outcome in that given situation. I also think that this level of luck in a specific situation tends to carry over into other similarly-structured situations. Like different areas of aptitude or knowledge, some people are luckier at certain things than others...like one may be luckier at financial gambles, whereas another is better at socio-political risks, where yet another takes on physical chances with a fearless demeanor...
I sort of conceptualize it like this: all actions with multiple outcomes have a certain level of probability associated with each of those outcomes. In certain philosophical and (if I remember correctly) physics frameworks, all of these outcomes occur in parallel universes, leading to the idea of divergent realities, where everything is the same to one point, then the paths diverge around the different resolutions to that situation. So, if every action has multiple outcomes (because let's face it, "meteor to the face" is always a possibility), then those who have luck have the ability to "nudge" a decision in their favor, basically altering reality around them. The stronger the level of luck, the more ridiculous the level of probability shifting they can undertake with a reasonable level of increased odds...some things will always be out of reach, but the luckier you are, the greater the spectrum of possibilities open up to create that "positive outcome", relatively speaking.
So what does this have to do with psychics, magicians, and/or the paranormal? Well, looking at luck as a simple probability-boosting field, then maybe it stands to reason that many of the proclaimed psychics and magicians aren't exercising arcane art so much as just a natural ability of "luck" in a specific area or set of areas. Divinatory oracles may not speak to gods so much as have a higher than statistically reasonable level of luck in predicting events, though they reason their abilities come from divine sources. Magicians that can control the weather and move objects over distances without touching them just have incredible innate powers of probability shifting, sometimes to the extent of flying in the face of the laws of physics.
Now, most of this was just getting some mind-babble on the interwebs, and for the most part, is purely speculatory. The only thing I really believe in is luck as a concept and a part of our reality...and I wouldn't really hold it against anyone else to disbelieve that, though. It was, as I said at the beginning, a sort of leap of faith, and like all faith, some make the jump, others don't. But whether or not you believe in luck, I still wish it in abundance to you all the same :)
