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Michael Estrin's avatar

This was fun! And really cool to see Alex create some interactive fiction!

Do I believe people can possess psychic abilities? Yeah, I think so, but I'm also skeptical. My wife is a big fan of tarot, which is very different from a psychic reading. I was skeptical of tarot, but then she had a reading for her and a few friends for her birthday one year. I was impressed that the tarot reader seemed to be picking up on a lot of stuff about our friends. Then it was my turn and I tried to throw the reader off, but she saw right through that and right into some of the stuff that was really on my mind. Another time, we were at a hotel in Palm Springs and there was a tarot card reading class, so I learned a little about how tarot works, and I gotta say it's really interesting, but also it's a system for reading people that isn't all that different from a system that a detective or a reporter might use. Is it perfect? Nope. But it is a methodology, and like any methodology, those who practice it can become rather skilled with the toolset.

Have I ever bounced back from a bad situation? Hell yes! Story of my life. Actually, I think that's the story of most people's lives. If you're still kicking, you're probably more resilient than you think.

When you close your eyes, what does your “mind palace” look like? It's a lot of open space, there are a lot of snacks, and questions fly at me from all directions. There's also a bidet, for some reason.

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Trin's avatar

I'm a die hard skeptic, who doesn't even remotely believe in psychic abilities. Age (and marriage to a believer...) has taught me to be more accepting when people do believe, but I only contain my skeptical face for those I love.

Bad situations and I are BFFs. I had this problem for a good 10 years where if I got too happy, I immediately needed to find a way to burn my whole life to the ground. Found a good therapist, fixed it, and now I spend all that anxiety on planning ahead for bad situations so I'm rarely in them.

I'm really jealous of people who have a "mind palace." I discovered recently that when people talk about picturing something in their head, they can actually SEE the picture with their mind's eye, not just know they're thinking about it. Looked it into it, and it's called aphantasia when you don't have a mental picture. I'm always curious about it, so if anyone reads this far: if you do artsy things, do you have a mental picture? I haven't met an artist yet with aphantasia, so I'm super curious to know how many of them there are in the world, and how it works for them.

Bonus challenge: My psychic abilities tell me that I will be unable to come up with a single witty answer for this question, until I wake up at 2am, with an absolutely genius answer, which will be forgotten by the time I get out of bed, and the loss of that answer will bug me for days.

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