A five-year-old savant who is apparently displaying signs of telepathy is being studied by scientists after his mother posted videos online showing him reciting random numbers 'written in secret'.
Ramses Sanguino - who is already learning seven languages and solving complex mathematical equations - was filmed seemingly demonstrating telepathy at his home in Los Angeles, California.
In the footage, the youngster, who has a 'high functioning' form of autism, correctly recounts the value and suits of playing cards, as well as numbers that were reportedly penned out of sight.
His mother, Nyx Sanguino, 32, later posted the videos on the Internet, where they caught the eye of respected neuroscientist Dr Diane Powell, a former faculty member at Harvard Medical School.
Dr Powell, who trained at John Hopkins University and currently runs a private practice in Medford, Oregon, is now studying Ramses as part a cutting-edge research project into telepathy.
She believes that telepathy may represent an alternative method of communication between autistic children and their parents, who 'desperately want to communicate with one another, but can't'.
The neuroscientist and researcher said: 'If you think about it, if you have your primary language compromised then that would be a perfect setup for telepathy.
'I have found many autistic children who have been reported to be telepathic and I wanted to see it for myself and see if it can be evaluated and actually tested under rigorous, controlled conditions.'
Dr Powell claims to have already seen signs of telepathy in at least seven different people.
She is now dedicating her research time to the subject.
She said: 'I am as confident that telepathy exists as I am a lot of things that have actually been accepted by science. I would never say 100 per cent about anything - but I have seen evidence.
'In terms of other scientists, they don't usually believe in telepathy.
'But I have met privately with many people who have said they would never publicly state that they believe in telepathy but tell me that they have actually experienced it or witnessed it themselves.
'Many of them say the reason they don't come forward and say anything is that they are actually afraid that they would be ridiculed or possibly even lose their job.
'It’s very risky to one's credibility to take on a subject like this - but I knew that when I got into it.'
In Ramses's case, he has apparently been able to demonstrate a degree of telepathy with Dr Powell during three meetings.
She used a random-number generator to pick numbers for Ms Sanguino to write down and think about, before asking Ramses to try and read his mother's mind to guess them.
The little boy did this successfully in the meetings, she said.
Ms Sanguino, who works as an artist, says her son has sometimes been able to recite 38 numbers written out of sight. She vows there is no trickery involved in his 'talent', or her home videos.
In another test with Dr Powell, Ramses was able to correctly guess 16 out of 17 numbers hidden out of sight - including one double digit number, according to his mother.
She said: 'I was amazed when we began testing Ramses. We do have a very close bond which may have something to do with his abilities - but this is beyond anything I would have imagined.
'I don’t know how to explain it.
'I hope Dr Powell will eventually be able to give me some answers.'
However, Ms Sanguino's main concern is helping to find a specialist school for Ramses, whom Dr Powell has described as 'one of the smartest five year olds on the planet'.
Ms Sanguino says her son can understand and recite parts of several languages including Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Japanese.
He can also solve rudimentary algebra problems, she says.
He apparently has a knowledge of square roots - and can even draw the entire periodic table.
Ms Sanguino, who is homeschooling Ramses after he kept correcting his teacher, said 'I knew even before he was born he was going to be someone special who would change the world.
'Even when he was a baby he didn't like toys, he just liked reading. He started reading when he was 12 months old and could even say words in English, Spanish, Greek and some Japanese.
'When he was 18 months old he knew all the multiplication tables in English and Spanish and had learned the periodic table and all the atomic numbers.
'I taught him some of the languages but I have no idea how he learned parts of Hindi, Arabic or Hebrew by the time he was three. It may have been through the house computer that is often left on.
I put him into a school but it was a nightmare. He was the only child who could read in the class.
'The teacher liked him at first and called him the little professor. But soon Ramses started correcting her on some of her spelling and maths and the teacher began isolating him from other students.
'I had to take him out of the school and back home with me.
'He was too far ahead to learn anything there.
'He is different and people cannot understand the way he thinks. He is obsessed with numbers and will count everything, houses, books, letters, and he won't move on until he has counted them all.
'He asks maths questions to the little kids he plays with and sometimes it is hard for him to make friends. I worry that he might end up lonely.'
Dr Powell, who is studying other children around the world as part of her research, hopes to get Ramses sponsored into a special school for gifted autistic children.
She said: 'Ramses is one of the top five savants in the world. He needs to be in a school for special students so they can utilise his intellect and help him achieve his potential.'
His mother is also keen to expand his horizons - and hopes he may one day change the world.
'I really hope one day that Ramses will invent a cure for cancer or something great like that,' said Ms Sanguino. 'He is so smart that sometimes he scares me.'
'I really want him to have the best education in the world and be happy.'
I admit that he has me beat--I was reading my older brother's first-grade books when I was 4 and I could add or subtract numbers in my head; however, to guess numbers created by a random number generator and then having the mother think the numbers? Either she is giving off subtle physical cues to let the kid know the number or there really is something fringe going on. His other abilities--picking up languages, memorizing multiplication tables or the periodic chart--are standard and well-documented for other people with varying degrees of autism.
I will note that "-7 + 3b = 6" isn't "a complex math problem"...but for a 5-year-old it would be--it requires knowing that 'b' stands for a number whose value is currently not known (the essence of algebra).
I find it very fascinating, though, that Dr. Powell claims that other psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists claim to have witnessed demonstrations of telepathic-like abilities (which may actually be clairvoyance if the test involves seeing things which are obscured or out-of-sight) but are all afraid to mention or publish it for fear of being ridiculed out of their community. If there really is something there they should be researching it furiously, not running away from it out of fear of ostracism.
Still...to claim "telepathy" would require a test scenario which rules out any other possibility. For example, have Ramses sit in a chair in front of a curtain then have the mother walk in quietly and sit in a chair behind the curtain and think of a number she was shown in a different room. If Ramses correctly guesses the number more often than not then something out of the ordinary is happening. The test needs to go farther, though--have someone else quietly take the mother's place and think of other numbers or symbols; if Ramses correctly guesses their numbers more often than not then strong evidence of telepathic abilities will be demonstrated. He should also try to guess the identity of the person behind the curtain---lie to him and tell him "your mother is behind the curtain" and see if he knows whether it is her or not.
You could also play a few games of "what's in the box?"--to rule out telepathy the person bringing the box into the room doesn't know what is in the box, either; correctly guessing the contents would be evidence of clairvoyance.
Either way...don't treat the kid like a trained monkey or a lab rat but do study his abilities to gain more understanding of how our brains actually work. Maybe someday we can start wiring our brains to activate these sorts of abilities on purpose--if one scientific or musical genius can change the world, imagine what can happen if we had thousands of them.
I've been around for sixtyish years. If telepathy does exist then it is pretty well hidden for what would be a fantastically useful attribute for humans to possess and this in itself might be telling. Why would such an advantageous ability not spread throughout the population in successive generations in a normal Darwinian manner? I'm not absolutist in my denial - but I am sceptical. Scientists have been hoaxed on this score many times before: the trickster has an instant advantage over the hopefull right from the outset.
President of Peace? You fucking idiots!
"I know what America is. America is a thing that you can move very easily. Move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way." (Benjamin Netenyahu 2001.)
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
Much in line with peter:
Telepathy doesn't exist.
Or, if it DOES exist, it is incredibly rare, and even when it works is useless [or has way too many false readings, making it harmful].
Of course...MAYBE everyone who has it is intentionally keeping it to themselves. [and joining the Masons] And killing/driving crazy anyone who tries to reveal it.
The kid may well be extraordinary in any number of ways---but telepathy ain't one of them.
[spoiler]Sig-man, Libtard, Stupid piece of shit. change your text color to brown. Mr. Reliable, bullshit-slinging liarFucker-user.[/spoiler] the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass. "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
"I know what America is. America is a thing that you can move very easily. Move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way." (Benjamin Netenyahu 2001.)
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
Thoughts are simply electrical signals traveling in the brain; because the neural impulses are electromagnetic that means they induce magnetic fields as they travel. The problem, though, is that the fields are so weak that you would have to have sensitive devices designed specifically to detect them. Although the first steps in this direction have already been taken--we can already capture images of "thoughts" as patterns of electric activity in the brain--our ability to translate those images back into the thoughts or ideas they represent is impossible at this time. Telepathy, then, would be the ability to remotely detect the electromagnetic fields given off in someone's brain as well as the ability to correctly interpret those fields so that you know what the subject is thinking.
In this instance, I still suspect the child is picking up on subtle physical cues given by the mother so that he "knows" what number she is thinking. Either that or she shows him a deck of cards, "shuffles" it, then sits back while he correctly recites the "shuffled" deck in its current order. We can rule out that possibility by having a stage illusionist show the kid a deck, "shuffle" it, then switch the deck for another one (an easy trick for a trained illusionist) and see how well his "telepathy" reads the cards.
I doubt telepathy will ever be possible but detecting thought patterns with sensitive detectors is very possible, as is the ability to artificially create memories or thoughts by inducing neural circuits in the brain.
SerScot wrote:Okay, if this were real would telepathy suggest that matrialism may be wrong and that thought is something substantive but not material?
I don't think so...it would simply point at a place where we still have things to learn/discover.
Even if thought were substantive but not material [and it might well be, we don't know much about what perceptions/thoughts in the brain are "made of"] such would still be an effect generated by/produced from the material basis.
I can imagine a thought/mind potential that has no material basis, that moves through/expresses itself through the material [at least once the material is complex/complicated enough, like a brain].
But imagining it is one thing...believing it exists something else.
I don't think telepathy is theoretically/philosophically/materially impossible.
I think it is practically impossible. And, like all things only impossible for practical reasons, technologically achievable at some point. [[though I can't imagine---which may well be just the limits of my imagination---how it would ever achieve the "price points"...be long-range, fast, cheap, reliable, secure, and easy...to be worth doing.]]
[spoiler]Sig-man, Libtard, Stupid piece of shit. change your text color to brown. Mr. Reliable, bullshit-slinging liarFucker-user.[/spoiler] the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass. "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
Hashi Lebwohl wrote:Thoughts are simply electrical signals traveling in the brain; because the neural impulses are electromagnetic that means they induce magnetic fields as they travel. The problem, though, is that the fields are so weak that you would have to have sensitive devices designed specifically to detect them.
E/M radiation may not be the only means that thought information can travel. However, science tends to look in this medium and no others. I think we should stipulate that it's possible (not probable) that something might be happening in a heretofore undiscovered medium. (The discovery of quantum entanglement should be sufficient to compel such an admission.)
I concur. I would be inadvisable to rule out any possibilities at this point.
Consider twins--how similarly are their brains wired? If two brains are "close enough" does that allow them to tap into each other? What if the two brains are unrelated genetically?
What about trauma causing new circuits to be wired in the brain?
The soon to be introduced UK surveillance laws in which all email, browsing texting and phoning history will have to be kept by service providers for a 1 year minimum for on demand state access will achieve pretty much that.
(Apologies Hashi for the off topic rant!)
President of Peace? You fucking idiots!
"I know what America is. America is a thing that you can move very easily. Move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way." (Benjamin Netenyahu 2001.)
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
wayfriend wrote: that something might be happening in a heretofore undiscovered medium.
(The discovery of quantum entanglement should be sufficient to compel such an admission.)
on the first, if something were happening it would pretty much HAVE to be in an undiscovered medium---since it doesn't seem to be possible with any of the known ones.
I'm not sure entanglement or similar is the answer, though.
Something just as weird would be happening, though, if this was entanglement-like:
They wouldn't be reading each others minds---they would, instead, be having exactly the same thoughts.
That starts out not so weird, but rapidly becomes insane.
[spoiler]Sig-man, Libtard, Stupid piece of shit. change your text color to brown. Mr. Reliable, bullshit-slinging liarFucker-user.[/spoiler] the difference between evidence and sources: whether they come from the horse's mouth or a horse's ass. "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." the hyperbole is a beauty...for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth...and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.
In that A Beautiful Question book I read I'm sure the author was referring to a medium that was a new one on me. IIRC it pertained to how em waves propagate through space: Sort of like a quantum version of the aether of old. I've probably got it all wrong but there was definitely something.........
President of Peace? You fucking idiots!
"I know what America is. America is a thing that you can move very easily. Move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way." (Benjamin Netenyahu 2001.)
....and the glory of the world becomes less than it was....
'Have we not served you well'
'Of course - you know you have.'
'Then let it end.'
That was me - sorry!
you guys are missing out 
