the "lucent is ranting about educational things" thread

[LucentTear]

Rule number one: I will be wrong. Not everything I say is backed up with a Ph.D, but I will put sources where sources are due.


Now, to go on, this is basically another freestyle tangent thread similar to the "lucent complains about life" thread. Instead of making satirical comments though, I'll either A.) be teaching something in Lucent's terms or B.) ranting about some philosophical shit that I believe in because I made them up and they're correct for me.


As a general notice, my field of educational "expertise" lies around social science, psychology, mental disorders, dreams, comas, culture, extrasensory perception, and languages. Ask me questions and sure as fuck I won't be sure how to answer them but I'll answer anyway.

[LucentTear]

Today I'm covering Extrasensory Perception which will now be referred to as ESP for the rest of the lesson.

Brief Overview

Whether it's that thing with the weird kid bending spoons or "having eyes at the back of your head", ESP is a wide term used to categorize phenomenon that cannot be explained by the five senses. You may have heard of ESP as the "sixth sense" and that most humans possess a sixth sense in varying degrees and types.

How is ESP Measured?

Much like psychology, ESP is considered a pseudoscience, and involves research that cannot be proven through repeated experiments with results that vary per person. The idea of ESP is often rejected in the scientific world due to researchers being unable to accurately record results, but not to go without saying that it is still measurable to an extent.

From a realistic standpoint, one can attempt to measure ESP through the use of Zener Cards. They typically come in packs of 25, five cards per symbol as shown below.




The ESP traits Clairvoyance and Telepathy can be tested through correctly guessing the cards in different situations.

In brief, Clairvoyance is tested through sensing which card is chosen from the deck, while Telepathy involves two people trying to silently communicate the card chosen.


Open Decks and Closed Decks refer to the behavior of how the cards are chosen.

Open Decks do not take into consideration of the cards that have been already drawn. In other words, cards are REPLACED after they are picked. Drawn cards do not affect the probability of what the next card is going to be.

Closed Decks make sure that each symbol is drawn an equal amount of times, and that they are NOT REPLACED after they are picked. One can more easily guess what kind of card will be drawn due to the nature of rarer cards being picked less.


You can practice a computer-generated Zener Card test here. The website also gives in-depth explanation of how the procedure works for each criteria being tested in the card game.

Wikipedia also gives a good overview of the history behind Zener Cards.