Worlds in Collision: Applying Reality to the Paranormal

Paranormal claims are a double-edged sword, and many believers would likely be unhappy with the logical implications of their beliefs. Our world would be a very different place if paranormal abilities truly existed. Psychic powers, if they were real, would raise serious ethical and philosophical questions regarding individuality, privacy, freedom, and free will.

The paranormal world and the real world are two separate domains, and odd things happen when the two meet. Skeptics live in a world without unnatural causes, where unexplained phenomena can be attributed to a lack of information instead of mystical forces. Skeptics see coincidences as a natural result of a random world and personal experience as subject to myriad distorting influences, including belief systems, mood, and expectation. Many believers, on the other hand, live in a world where miracles exist, meaningful coincidences are guided by higher powers, and personal experience is the ultimate truth.

But on one level, we all share the same world; we drive on the same highways, eat the same food, see many of the same films. A skeptic might watch Poltergeist or The Sixth Sense and enjoy the film as good fiction, while a believer might say, "Well, it's a movie--but that really does happen," much the way a film about, say, a murder case is clearly fictional, yet based in reality.

Skeptics are often accused of not raking psychic powers seriously, of having closed minds regarding the paranormal. So let's take the believers seriously and picture what the world would be like if certain psychic powers really did exist.

The Double-Edged Sword of the Paranormal

Psychic phenomena are claimed to have many variants, prominent among them precognition (knowing the future); clairvoyance ("clear seeing," also called remote viewing); and telepathy (mind reading). Imagine that such psychic powers did exist: What would it mean in the "real world" if psychics really could read minds and "see" events far away in time and distance?

Telepathy and Clairvoyance

* The use of psychic power would be a gross and unethical violation of privacy. What right does anyone else have to read your mind, to have access to the most intimate details of your life? Would you want to associate with people who had such an ability? Any psychic could watch as you make love, scold your children, or fill out your taxes. You could have no secrets; no details of your life would be private or personal. Anything you think, feel, or do could be accessed, reported to others, or used for blackmail.

* If psychics were real, professions that involve deception would be worthless, including undercover police and detectives, industrial and international spies, etc. Furthermore, criminal organizations would employ them to stay a step ahead of the law. Organized crime would have psychics on hand to screen new recruits for police informants, and bank robbers wouldn't need to case their targets, simply going right for the richest safe-deposit boxes or bank customers.

* There would be few or no mysteries or accidents if psychic powers existed. No one would wonder why EgyptAir 900 went down; we'd have clear, accurate answers from psychics and confirmed by science. They would have warned us about problems at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and with the Challenger space shuttle. Of course, psychics wouldn't be expected to necessarily solve the problems; after all, they're nor nuclear or rocket scientists. But surely they would let us know if a national (or international) tragedy is looming ahead.

* Psychics would be held responsible for the powers they claim. Along with power comes responsibility; if psychics really did have powers, then they would know that Tim McVeigh was going to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma. If they didn't sense that, then they aren't psychic, and if they did sense it, they didn't warn anyone and are just as culpable as McVeigh. Having prior knowledge of a crime and failing to report that information can be considered conspiracy, a felony offense. Perhaps following a terrorist attack police would do well to incarcerate psychics until they can prove they didn't have foreknowledge.

* In a similar vein, psychics would be held liable for incorrect information. Just as engineers and scientists who give police or the FBI false or misleading information can be prosecuted, so could psychics. When police psychics name the wrong suspect or direct search teams looking for a body to an empty lake or woods, they should be held responsible. During the TWA 800 investigation that began in 1996, the FBI was told by a psychic that the explosion was a result of a bomb near the left wing. The psychic was found to be wholly incorrect, and should be held to the same standard as other "experts."

* Most psychics would be very, very rich; a handful of correct predictions on the right stocks or in a casino could easily make a gifted psychic wealthy. The common answer for why that doesn't occur, that psychics "don't use their powers for personal profit," is both insulting and laughable. If they don't use their powers for profit, why do they charge $40 or more for an hour-long reading? It's incredibly naive to assume that all psychics would adhere to such a code of ethics. There are thousands of people around the world who claim psychic powers. Are we to assume that all of them have taken such a vow of relative self-imposed poverty? That question aside, the whole problem could be avoided by psychics simply donating any money they make to help the homeless, feed the hungry, or shelter battered spouses.