Originally Posted by
Oneironaut
3) You cannot exert control over anything you are conditioned to believe you can't. (Civilized) Human beings live in a world where everything around us suggests that such things are impossible. We are conditioned (whether right or wrong) to believe this physical reality is persistant, and constantly influenced to treat those that feel they can do impossible things as complete nut-cases, even if we have no proof of their inability to. If a skeptic were to, one day, say that they are going to try mental spoon bending, and they "try" and "try," are they really trying? Not hardly, because, deep inside, they already don't believe it's possible. If a skeptic sees a video of someone using Chi to heal someone else, will they believe it's possible? No. They will automatically assume that there is some trick involved. This is not, necessarily, the persistance of physical nature, it may simply be the steadfast belief of such. Until the world, at large, was instinctually convinced that this world was fake, it is hard to say with any certainty, that this wouldn't change the present paradigms of what the human mind is capable of.