"We've never had a psychic lead that turns out to be correct," said Lt. Dave Parker, of the Anchorage, Alaska, police department, after 18-year-old Samantha Koenig went missing in February, 2012.
They use cold reading techniques and employ basic common sense- that is, if a child is missing over a certain amount of time, the chances are increased they won't ever be found alive, most people are killed within a certain radius of their homes, so when the psychic correctly 'predicts' these scenarios, it seems to some people they really have these powers of mystical insight. There's nothing to them. It's unfortunate that grieving people looking for answers can still be taken in by this.
There are some who refuse to believe that their loved one is gone. I think this may be one way that they cope. And of course there are many willing and able soothsayers who avail themselves of the situation.
Ambiguous references are a wide open stadium.. used fairly effectively by Nostradamus progenitors and the like.
Joined: Apr 2001 Posts: 121,384PanzerMeyer
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PanzerMeyer
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Isn't "psychic fraud" redundant?
edit: LOL!! I see Dunolde and I were separated at birth.
Last edited by PanzerMeyer; 05/08/1305:52 PM.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
Joined: Apr 2001 Posts: 121,384PanzerMeyer
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PanzerMeyer
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Originally Posted By: Kontakt5
Pretty much- maybe redundancy can reinforce what a con job that industry is.
Anyone stupid and naive enough to hire a psychic deserves to be ripped off.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
There are some interesting cases where psychics have been used to determine locations of a murder scene or body. I am intimately familiar with one such case here in Ohio in the 90's involving officer Jack McCrady, who had killed his wife and buried her. Not saying these psychics are genuinely real, but certainly real enough to lead law enforcement to the correct area to retrieve a body.
"College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life" - Paul Ryan
There are some interesting cases where psychics have been used to determine locations of a murder scene or body. I am intimately familiar with one such case here in Ohio in the 90's involving officer Jack McCrady, who had killed his wife and buried her. Not saying these psychics are genuinely real, but certainly real enough to lead law enforcement to the correct area to retrieve a body.
So, do you think it's kind of like that show "Psych"?
I've heard of a couple of cases where the psychic showed the police where to look for a body- I remember in at least one of these cases, it could have been based on nothing more than deductive reasoning. The body was located in the only secluded lake in that area, pretty much something a reasonable guess would conclude. If these psychics paid enough attention to crime statistics and forensic patterns, of course they can form educated guesses, which increase the probability of being right some times.
I don't think the majority of psychics really believe that they are psychic.
Joined: Apr 2001 Posts: 121,384PanzerMeyer
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Originally Posted By: Kontakt5
I don't think the majority of psychics really believe that they are psychic.
And the ones who believe they are psychic usually have some kind of neurosis or psychosis.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
I don't think the majority of psychics really believe that they are psychic.
And the ones who believe they are psychic usually have some kind of neurosis or psychosis.
Sometimes, but sometimes they are just that sort of gullible person who is so gullible they can deceive themselves, especially when they really really want to be good at something (and people who are that gullible are often not terribly good at anything...).
Is she the one that was exposed during this interview with Larry King? A young woman called in and she claimed that her mother looks upon her from the afterlife, after which the young woman said she was shocked because she had phoned her mother 10 minutes earlier or so. Also, she still didn't react to James Randi's Million Dollar Challenge despite an earlier promise (in 2001!) that she would take part in it. No need to feel pity for her or say she's a poor woman with a neurosis or so. She's a fraud.
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
There are more vids with James Randi worth watching.
"When I saw The Matrix at a local theatre in Slovenia, I had the unique opportunity of sitting close to the ideal spectator of the film - namely, to an idiot." - Slavoj Zizek
Johnathan Edward demonstrating cold reading, the mark is actually supplying all the answers, the medium is just casting a fishing net with general provocations, discarding wrong or irrelevant responses and focusing on those which seem to be leading down the correct path. He even takes a wrong direction with the woman's father 'Robert', and then shifts direction and starts asking questions about the man's mother.