Last week, I wrote about a carnival ride I took on the Octopus. I was spared from serious injury or death because, during the ride, I suddenly became concerned about the possibility that the door would fly open and pull me out of the car. Mid-ride, I transferred my grip from the rail on the door to the rail along the seat back. When the door of my car suddenly slammed open, I stayed safely inside. You can read the full details here.

     I have shared this story with a number of people over the years, and some seem to believe it is an example of prescience, or supernatural knowledge of the future. Others dismiss it as coincidence. I don’t think either interpretation is correct.

     It is fun to believe that we are gifted with supernatural talents. It makes us feel special, and gives our egos a little boost. Pretending to have these types of abilities is part of what makes Halloween such a popular holiday.

     But wishful thinking and the desire to feel good about ourselves do not make something true. It would also be fun to be able to fly without mechanical assistance. Experience in the real world has already convinced most people that unaided flying is not one of their abilities. An idea is not very useful if it deceives you into believing or doing something that can harm you.

     While prescience is one possible explanation for my sudden concern about the door flying open, there are some substantial problems with that explanation. The existence of prescience is highly disputed. While there are many people who believe in, or even claim to have, this ability, there is no scientific theory that would explain how such an ability could exist. Many people who claim to have this ability have been shown to be frauds or con artists.

     The evidence from rigorously controlled scientific tests of this ability is weak at best. Some tests show results that are indistinguishable from random guessing. Some tests show results that are correct slightly more often than random guessing would predict. Some tests show results that are incorrect slightly more often than random guessing. It is not the type of ability that you would want to rely on to save your life.

     Fortunately for me, there are other possible explanations for what I experienced on the Octopus. Pure coincidence is one possible explanation. I can’t rule that out entirely, but it appears to be pretty improbable. There are much more likely explanations available.

     For example, I could have been thinking about the risk of injury or death because I was in a ride that is deliberately designed to stimulate the fear of injury or death. There have undoubtedly been many people who have had thoughts similar to mine during a carnival ride. For most of those people, the door never opened, and they quickly forgot that they had such a concern. There have most likely been a large number of incorrect predictions of this type. The fact that the door flew open during my ride does not mean that my concerns were based on direct knowledge of future events. We don’t say that a person who wears a seat belt and gets in an accident is more prescient on that occasion than he or she was on the many occasions the seat belt was worn and there was no accident.

     There is another possible factor that may help explain what happened to me. I may have received information through one of my normal senses that triggered my concern. Perhaps I saw something wrong with the door, or heard an unusual noise which made me think that the door might fly open. I do not have any specific memory of this happening, but in the excitement of the subsequent events, I could easily have forgotten about it. The sensory input that triggered my concern may not even have risen to a conscious level in the first place.

     There is a limited sense in which we are all prescient. We all have the ability to imagine how future events could play out, based on our sensory input, our prior life experiences and our ability to understand cause and effect. Often we get it right, perhaps more often than we may realize. If I step on the brake, I can avoid hitting that car. If I run over there, I can catch that baseball. In this limited sense of the word, I was prescient. I imagined a possible bad future event, and took steps to avoid the consequences.

     I don’t feel any need to pretend that I benefited from a supernatural talent. Our brains give all of us some entirely natural abilities that I think are truly super. I’m pretty grateful that they do.

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