Comment by almosthere
3 months ago
I haven't watched the TT but anecdote. One of our friends has an autistic child, but fairly high functioning. When he was about 6 or 7 one morning this child complained he didn't want to go to a weekly playground and told his mom the slide was broken and it wouldn't be fun. Mom said what are you talking about - when they arrived, the slide was literally broken. The friend said there was no possible way he should have known that (I don't know the details) but this child does not have a phone and is under non-stop supervision.
Of every story you've ever heard about this child, this singular event is your evidence for telepathy? Shouldn't that alone be strong evidence against your interpretation?
I'm reminded of the anecdotal, arbitrary miracles attributed to Jesus in the gospels of the New Testament. An omniscient, all-powerful son of god chooses to prove his infinite power by providing wine at a party.
Or maybe there was another, much more likely and mundane explanation.
No it's not, it's just anecdata. That's a common thing in HN. Yes it absolutely does not rise to the level of "the truth". I just thought it would be interesting to share.
There are other possibilities, the most likely being that the slide was already in the process of breaking when the child used it last, and he noticed that before others did.
Selection/confirmation bias. Think of all the times the child told their mother some other random things which turned out not to be true. Those incidents don't stick out because children say nonsense all the time.
Or, perhaps the slide was cracked the previous week and now had completely failed.
My pre-adolescent child says all sorts of things, occasionally some of them turn out to be true!