Psychics admit what we already knew: It's bull

Started by trdsf, August 29, 2015, 01:43:19 PM

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trdsf

Lovely little article in the NY Times quoting transcripts from parole board hearings of self-styled psychics who've gone to jail for grand larceny: psychic readings are a scam, and they're only in it for the money.

Duh.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

Hydra009

Quote“You don’t think there’s any legitimate psychics out there?” she was asked.

“If they are taking your money,” she said, “they are not for real.”
Yeah.  It does seem pretty strange that people with such miraculous powers are somehow also terribly hard up for cash.  You could prevent mass shootings before they begin, head off international incidents, and help investors make smart decisions.  Work wouldn't be hard to come by and neither would compensation.

Baruch

Shooting a seance in a barrel?  My tarot card readings were always free.  But then I am the real thing ... Coke!
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

TomFoolery

I think psychics are complete bullshit, but I’ve often pondered the problem of being psychic. Think about just how vast and relative the future really is. The future theoretically extends forever. The amount of information contained in future events is therefore also infinite, and no human brain (even with the help of every computing device on the planet) could make sense of any of it based on the sheer volume.

Imagine I’m a psychic and you’re angry with me for failing to prevent September 11th. If I’m a psychic, at what point should I have been able to reasonably foresee a terrorist act coming? Ten years before? The day before? Would I have been able to identify it apart from all the other shit that was going to happen that day? Sure, it was a hugely significant event, but only relative to some humans. Not the universe. Not to animals. Probably not to isolated tribes in the Amazon.

I imagine it sort of like having a giant list of things that will happen on a given that that is billions of pages long, and having to identify one isolated event. It includes literally everything, from your Aunt Brenda eating a bagel for breakfast to a polar bear drowning in the arctic to even yes, a gross act of terrorism.

I think this is why most psychics claim they only get glimpses or occasional visions because, isn’t that fucking convenient?
How can you be sure my refusal to agree with your claim a symptom of my ignorance and not yours?

Baruch

Don't stereotype ;-)  Those kind of psychics you are straw-manning against, are in National Enquirer ;-))

To practice something, with intelligence, you will learn how such things work.  And I mean psychology, not quantum strings.  Tarot cards are simply an advanced form of Rorschach ink blot.  An even simpler system is the key on the end of a thread.  The trick is for the reader to establish complete neutrality (like honest dice).  If you have any pre-sentiment ... then you will bias the result.  Out of pure randomness and plausible explanation, you get something that people will listen to ... but it is never too specific on date and place ... it doesn't work like that.  What is being probed is ... a shamanism, where the reader is probing the collective unconscious (spirit world) shared by both people.  And randomness works, just ask users of the Monte-Carlo method in statistics.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Solitary

I had a man I worked with as a graphic artist, that was an atheist and got shocked when a fortune teller told him all about him and was accurate about everything. She was using the tricks that any magician uses to do it. I asked him if she held his hands and he said yes, so I took his hands and showed him how she did it. It's called cold reading, and it does work enough to fool people. When I showed him the bump on his finger I told him he must be a writer or artist. He told me that was what she said. I asked him if she said he was married. He said yes, and I showed him the light ring on his ring finger from his wedding band. There was a lot more to it and he was amazed he fell for it. I told him the easiest people to scam are those that think they can't be. I convinced an atheist psychiatrist that I was psychic by telling him things about him that there was no way I could possibly know. It wasn't a trick I used with him, but the ability to get in contact with my unconscious mind that never forgets with meditation. It is actually around 92 percent accurate. He wrote a scientific journal about it. It is actually even creepy to me that it works, but there is a very good scientific explanation from neurological research. One time at this original forum I told everyone I could predict their answer to a question I ask the next day. Everyone agreed I did it correctly accept one guy. If I can remember how I did it, I'll do it again.
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

GSOgymrat

I admit I find psychic and magic tricks entertaining. I'm not talking about faith healing or people being exploited for money, that is clearly unconscionable, but the mood ring, tarot card, fortune cookie, astrology, Ouija board kind of stuff can be fun. I guess I feel like if it is free and no one is taking it seriously then it is a similar creepy, thrill as telling ghost stories over a campfire.

Baruch

So having uncanny powers of observation is proof that Sherlock Holmes was a fake psychic?  Magician tricks aren't real ... but they are, or they couldn't be done.  If you don't understand how they are accomplished, or are not observant enough to catch what is happening outside of the corner of your eye ... that is the fault of the magician?  I agree that they aren't supernatural, the way people here define supernatural.  I don't think any faith healing that a person like Jesus might do ... are supernatural in that sense either ... they just defy the dogma of the Medical Industrial Complex.  And in my own experience, ghosts are quite real ... though only ghost cats.  Anecdotally I have plenty of evidence that the world isn't the way anyone thinks it is ... but that is just storytelling, because it is past tense and not my personal experience anyway ;-)

Now of course one doesn't have to believe in a collective unconscious, or even an individual unconscious.  Psychology is all pseudoscience anyway ;-)
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Termin

Quote from: trdsf on August 29, 2015, 01:43:19 PM
Lovely little article in the NY Times quoting transcripts from parole board hearings of self-styled psychics who've gone to jail for grand larceny: psychic readings are a scam, and they're only in it for the money.

Duh.

If they are doing it for money, I believe the James Randi 1 million dollar offer is still out there, waiting to be claimed.
Termin 1:1

Evolution is probably the slowest biological process on planet earth, the only one that comes close is the understanding of it by creationists.

Munch

#9
The whole slight of hand thing is an interesting allegory for what we grow out of but acknowledge is there. As children, we see magic tricks and are amazed by them, the same as a stage production in how they work illusions around to fool you. Even when we grow up, though we know by then it isn't magic, we can still be impressed by the illusion and how they pull it off, trying to analysis it, but often not figuring it out.

Psychics are similar, yet unlike magicians who perform tricks for amusement, some psychics take their jobs so seriously they are convinced they are doing what they are doing, even when they know its bunk. Many "mediums" get angry when you call them out because they either don't want to be revealed or are convinced they are genuine.

Its not just that though that bothers me about psychics, because while magicians are illusionists who perform for a show, psychics are people who scam money out of vulnerable people who have lost loved ones, who are prepared to pay them so they can talk to there deceased friends or family, and the psychic is all to happy to convince them they are channeling the spirit of a dead loved once, all for a quick cash grab.

Getting money from people for harmless entertainment is fine, I support such arts. Getting money from people who have lost someone is a cruel sport. 
'Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners' - George Carlin

Baruch

Harry Houdini spent much of his life looking for one genuine psychic of the kind that can contact the dead.  He never found one.  On the other hand, have you really grown out of stage magic?  Do you participate in politics at all?  There is endless illusion practiced in politics.  And it costs a great deal of money.  Maybe they will pul a foreign policy out of your ear, instead of the usual location ;-(
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

josephpalazzo

Huh, psychics are entertainers, and as such, have a right to earn a decent living.

Hakurei Reimu

Sure. As entertainment. The problem is that they seriously put themselves up as people with Serious Advice to Give from Beyondâ,,¢!
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