Micah Hanks was recently writing insightfully about the possibility that musicians, who have been demonstrated to be more able to pick out words masked by noise, might not have a better-than-average capacity for psi. It’s a reasonable idea that people trained to pick out specific streams within an overall flow… like listening to a specific conversation in a noisy room… might develop other useful offshoots of such a skill, including, by implication, one that might pick out useful streams of evidence whose symbolic or metaphoric nature one might interpret… formally or informally… but there are so many areas of life where this kind of skill is useful. To be able to hone in upon, recall, and examine specific threads within the sensory environment, and/or to be able to discriminate what is most useful or powerful amongst the growlings of noise. To understand how the current situation is most likely to change. These are the heartbeat of the predictive behavior we do all the time.

I agree that musicians could as a group be more sensitive, but anyone can train their attention to perceive those threads within our sensory flows that are all but invisible to nearly anyone. One can even turn this skill upon its own practitioner! And I think the idea I most favor here is that we can do something similar with our own intelligence… by learning to identify and capitalize upon those threads within the noise that are intrinsically more insightful, useful, and lead beyond themselves to further discovery and awareness.