Thank you for the background of the case. I generally do my own research on things instead of taking them at face value, but there is a language barrier there and online translation tools are very unreliable.
We are also generally skeptical (as in the literal definition of the term, not the ideology) of public displays of macro-scale psi, and that includes the legit parapsychological associations, due to people like Uri Geller. What intrigued me was that it somehow made it to a USAF report.
Hello E.Flowers, no matter whatever, the link provided by you is valuable and interesting to read. I have no idea on why the editorial author who wrote that article seemed to be in an affirmative and positive stance regarding to self-claimed Chinese superhuman in 1980s. Anyway, perhaps there are somethings I don't know.
I got a bad mood these days, I couldn't organize my mind to be orderly. But I want to communicate with people in this kind of forum badly.
I don't want the others to agree with my opinions, I don't wish the others to believe what I say, rather, I want to tell the others how I have drawn my conclusions, and listen to the others' feedback about where of what I said are reasonable and where are not.
Only if the others understand my meaning, I will be happy, my major purpose is to successfully make the others understand what I mean, and then I will welcome and be waiting for any agreement, consensus, or disagreement, refute, retort, etc.
I said in my previous posts that I thought it is highly possible that most or all of the Chinese superhuman mentioned in that hyperlink were highly possibly frauds and charlatans, and there were never trustworthy Chinese paranormal phenomenon discovery or research breakthrough heard by me since my birth. But I haven't made it clear that how I had drawn those conclusions.
Now I want to say why, and I will propose my personal relevant analysis.
First, China is a country where frauds and charlatans are ubiquitous.
Take an example, nearly every Chinese people who has a cellphone, receive this sort of telecommunication messages daily:
"Daddy, I've arrived there, but my money has been stolen, together with my cellphone, I'm using my companion Little Lee's cellphone to send you this message, please transfer some money to this bank card number: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX, I'm starving, explain more later."
"This is a court summon: we have intercepted a bunch of smuggled goods and the receiver phone number printed on the package is yours, please call this number: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX to cooperate with illegal transportation seizure police, without your response in 24 hours we will take compulsory measures."
If the one who received this sort of messages started to worry that what they said might be true, there would be a series of consequent trickery to bilk money from this victim by the frauds who sent those messages.
Someone would say these deceptions are very low and meaningless, no one would believe them and be going to be trapped by their guile. China has a tremendously large population, and people are tremendously various, there are people who live in a relatively claustral region, they are low-educated, thoughtless, and have scarce information import channel, some people even do not know how to use bank card. When they come out of their claustral hometown and visit a relatively more developed and civilized town, and try to apply bank services, they need bank clerks' instructions step by step. Sometimes they dread the bank clerks or the other clients would mock at them so they incline to do the business as quickly as they can. Due to various reasons and factors, these people can be deceived.
Telecommunication frauds use some illegal apparatuses to massively send short messages to phone numbers in a chosen number range. One specific person won't be deceived, but the wider number range to which the frauds send messages, the higher possibility that there may be a hapless and credulous person. Several months ago, there was a news about a university student, who lived in a very poor family, he or she (I don't remember the gender of the victim in that news) studied very hard in middle school and entered a good university, and his or her family expected him or her to find a good job when he or she would graduate, and earn money to alleviate the family's economic difficulty, and perhaps there were younger brothers or sisters in that family, waiting for tuition to enter university themselves. This diligent and excellent student was bilked a large amount of money by telecommunication frauds and then committed suicide. This news stroke the whole society and after it happened our government made an iron fist strike against domestic telecommunication frauds.
This is only one example. Deceit saturates all aspects of our society. There are many many self-claimed superstition masters. I have immersed into this kind of deceiving society for more than thirty years. It is like that if many insects were tossed into an incubation dish which was full of insecticide, the survived insects out of many which died, could gain an immunity. I (and many Chinese people living in my region) saw too many these trivial trickery (they are not big conspiracies), so I have generated an immunity inside of me, to incline to ignore something sounds not very true, immediately after I just hear its initiation. Otherwise, even if I hadn't been bilked a large amount of money, I would have wasted too much time to distinguish and deal with whether those were true or fake. Strangers say this, ignore them, strangers say that, ignore them, hypes recommend me to buy their merchandise, ignore them, superstition masters say they can what what, ignore them. The hoaxes' quantity is in astronomical scale so as to that you would spend all of your time even if you just initiated to pay attention to them when you received them everyday.
In the eyes of many Chinese people, westerners are generally very honest, their commerce is credible, especially compared with our nationals. It is ironic that many Chinese people choose to purchase merchandise in foreign countries. Many, as they do not find an opportunity to go abroad by themselves, they ask their friends who happen to go abroad to do a favor of bringing foreign merchandise for them.
I don't mean, the phenomenon that there is a statistically high rate of deceiving activities in China, can in any sense logically deduce that the self-claimed superhuman in 1980s were frauds. I want to emphasize that, by being immersed in this kind of society for more than thirty years, I seem to have generated a kind of subtle subconscious ability to distinguish a Chinese people (only Chinese people, not any westerner)'s genuineness, by his or her visage, characteristics, disposition, temperament, temper, facial expressions, gestures, postures, attitudes, actions, accents, way of speaking, movements, niche adaption, and many other human traits which I don't know their English language nominalization. This subtle subconscious judgement ability can't always be right or reliable, however, its significance is that it helped me from being deceived to death in this kind of society because of its statistically high rate of correct judgement proven in my history.
Another reason is that telekinesis is a concept easy to be understood and utilized by an illiterate fraud, and this concept's effects would be shocking if being true, so for frauds telekinesis is one of the favorable.
I didn't investigate any self-claimed special power superhuman in China, so I do not have the right to claim that their anecdotes are fake. It is the experience living in this kind of society for more than thirty years which gives me a subtle subconsciousness sense that I incline to believe that Zhang Baosheng's cases have a high probability of being a hoax. To be responsible of what I say, and to be responsible to the people who would be so kind to read my awful (not satisfied by me firstly) English sentences, I do not insist my judgement.
Second, I would like to propose my opinions about the relationship between Chinese people's general and wide-distributed practicality mentality and many Chinese people's high inclination of enjoying being a fraud. Being accustomed to be practical has some relation with being accustomed to bilk money by deceiving, under Chinese people's specific traits.
I said that most Chinese people are practical and pragmatic. By your enlightening, I learned that this can also be described as "lives the here and now" in English language. From first glance, one might sense that I was praising Chinese people by using those words, after all, "practical and pragmatic" is a positive epithet. Now I would like to say that I meant to use these words in their most neutral senses. Having a general practical mentality has drawbacks as well as advantages. Sometimes it helps one avoid daydream and focus on the serious and imminent problems. Many Chinese people are diligent and they concentrate when they work. This is one of the good aspects. However, their inclination to avoid deep thinking results that Chinese theoretical physics research lags behind that of westerns. In a long term, this is very bad and disadvantageous.
Behind the superficial curtain of most Chinese people's practicality mentality, they do not choose this way of thinking, this way of life by careful strategic game theory consideration. Rather, the reason that Chinese people seem like being practical, is that their refusal, rejection to think deep, think far is embedded in their physiological, psychological, or genetic structures. Many Chinese people would do inferior and meaningless entertainment out of work, rather than think the essence of consciousness, etc. I don't think Chinese people's general practical mentality is a kind of wisdom. And of course, I never think westerners are generally impractical. I never think that deep thinking (relevant to philosophy, epistemology, paranormal phenomenon, consciousness research, etc.) is a waste of time. I think Chinese people innately incline to shun thinking deep and as a parallel consequence, most of them are less imaginative, creative, inquisitive than westerners, and I think this is not good. Being practical at the right time is preferable, but Chinese people are practical all the time.
Sorry I tend to be verbose, I'm going to sleep soon, and I will try to be concise ^_^. I think Chinese people's general practicality, or more precisely, their hatred to think deep (about philosophy, epistemology, paranormal phenomenon, consciousness research, etc.) plays a role in their wide-range inclination of being deceptive.
Imagine that a person is eager to cure his discomfort and he looks for a doctor, he will tell everything to the doctor in the most honest and detailed way. Eagerness to find the answer to the truth of consciousness, paranormal phenomena, ultimate fate of mankind, something higher who arranged our fate, is like eagerness to cure a sickness. On the opposite case, if a person has no discomfort, he will have no problem to tell every lie to a doctor, because he won't care. Chinese people are like that, because they take no interest in the things other than mundane trivial affairs (including both important ones and meaningless ones), they have no problem to tell various lies. They don't care about making a communication with the others on the topics which are both profoundly thoughtful and meaningful, they never worry about something higher, further, more inextricable.
I think it is right to say that I'm a bit different from the typical traits of Chinese people, in the sense that I think relatively deeper than most of our nationals, but I have no idea why.
Going to sleep, chat another day.