Shannon's Journal Discussion Thread, Vol. 5

[Shannon]

I can create a subliminal to develop and increase telekinetic ability, telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience and other types of psychic abilities.  However, the more I try to make a sub for all of them, the less effective it becomes for each of them, and the more restrictive I must make the safeties on top of that.

The real issue is that everyone has a different set of "psychic strengths and weaknesses", and I cannot know what each is for each person.  So let's say I create a subliminal for clairvoyance development and the person is one who cannot visualize.  It will necessarily fail.  If the person was born deaf and somehow (for the sake of example) managed to use a subliminal for clairaudience without ever developing the ability to hear normally, they could not (to the best of my understanding) clairaudiate.  If they had very weak telekinetic ability, it might take them years of use to develop telekineses to a detectable level.  And so on.

On top of that, the majority of people self regulate their own psychic ability by actively squashing it, ignoring it, denying it because "science says" it doesn't exist.  The conscious mind working against you is a powerful force.

Ultimately, I'm not entirely sure how profitable it would be to create such programs because there are so many factors working against success.

Hmm so in the end it would be more of an issue on the users end instead of the sub itself. As in they have certain abilities that they have an affinity for and some they don't. If they try to dabble in an ability they have no affinity for it might take years of use or if they lack certain skills entirely (such as hearing for example) they will get no where. So if you were to get anywhere the person would need to have some idea of what psychic abilities they have an affinity for. Out of curiosity is there anyway to figure that out by chance? 

I think I have a good idea of what mines are based on certain incidences but I can see where if people don't have many of those incidences or try to consciously forget them it could be a problem. I would also want to know then would making specific psychic subs ever be possible? or is it just the problem that its possible for you to do but you can't guarantee that the person will choose the specific psychic sub that best meshes with their personality?

Most people have relatively well developed empathy - the ability to feel other people's emotions at a distance.  That makes itself known by figuring out that around others, you tend to have your emotions shift, and it can be difficult to know whose emotions you are actually feeling.  I discovered this one day in 11th grade when I walked into math class feeling fine, and sat behind this outcast girl who was severely depressed.  Within 5 minutes I felt "grey", like graphite, depressed and hopeless.  It wasn't unfamiliar to me to be depressed, but I had never felt "grey" before.  And when she left, it went away.  I noted that I only felt like that around her and realized it must be her emotions.  Most of the time, people who are strongly empathic figure it out on their own, but it can be very confusing.

Clairvoyance and clairaudience are probably the next most common psychic abilities that are likely to be developed enough to notice without doing anything to develop them.  Most people mistake clairvoyance and clairaudience for their imagination.  Few indeed realize they can see and or hear things at a distance.  

As for things like the telekinesis, pyrokinesis, manipulating other things... well... who ever really uses those "muscles" except for an extremely rare few who spend years developing them the hard way.  Most people have the potential, but very few have anything more than that developed for the more exotic stuff.

There are some books on how to determine your specific strengths and weaknesses, but I don't remember what they were and I'm sure more have been written since I looked last.

I can make the subs, but the results depend on factors outside of my ability to predict or control fully.