I would love, LOVE to be wrong

RossFixxxed

I'd like nothing more than for some to prove anything, ANYTHING at all 'supernatural', psychic, medium, afterlife, anything. Seriously. In a controlled neutral environment. (As you may gather I'm not a man of faith)

I mean what I say, someone prove me wrong that all if it is one big ridiculous scam for money and attention and power over people's grief and stupidity.

Thanks.

iamhunted

someone prove me wrong that all if it is one big ridiculous scam for money and attention and power over people's grief and stupidity.

I can see how mediums fit into that, but I dont see how the rest of things classed as paranormal can be a 'ridiculous scam for money and attention and power over people's grief and stupidity'.

Besides, what exactly are you looking for here? Someone to take you by the hand and prove these things are real? That isnt going to work in the real world. you want proof then the best advice is start looking.

Is this a Skeptical thread or another one of those threads looking for the impossible?

Pedanticnerd

Im a sceptic when it comes to most things however saying that..A medium was recommended to me so I went to see her. She was very accurate about 95% of the stuff she told me. She knew nothing about me before I went to see her except my first name. Id have no hesitation in recommending her!!!

RossFixxxed

I'm more just stating where I stand as a skeptic. I've looked, but maybe I'm a bit blind/unreceptive(lol)/stupid...

iamhunted

to be honest, most of us would be skeptics. Its those one or two experiences in a lifetime that keeps me wondering - otherwise I'd be completely cynical about it all.

komodosp

Pedanticnerd: Are you allowed record the conversation? I would be interested in doing it, and listening back later...

I'd like nothing more than for some to prove anything, ANYTHING at all 'supernatural', psychic, medium, afterlife, anything. Seriously. In a controlled neutral environment. (As you may gather I'm not a man of faith)

The point though is that once it's discovered to be real, it's not supernatural! The word supernatural is like the word magic, in that it defines that which is not real.

Take for example magnetism. If we had no knowledge of magnets, but there were claims around about a special "supernatural" rock that could move objects by telekinesis. The skeptics would be around saying "Nahh that's not real".

Now someone comes up to James Randi and says, "I can prove the supernatural with my magic rock", takes out a magnet and starts moving things around without touching them. Randi about to hands over the million dollars, and suddenly a scientist discovers and researches the magnetic force. So now it's accepted by Science. Does Randi get his money back?

Any "supernatural" force or object which actually exists, would be shown by a knowledgeable enough scientist to be a real, just previously undiscovered, force and so we couldn't call it supernatural.

Pedanticnerd

komodosp to be honest I dont know...I didnt ask her. I almost wish I did because she was so accurate that Id like to be able to hear it all again

briany

RossFixxxed wrote: »

I'd like nothing more than for some to prove anything, ANYTHING at all 'supernatural', psychic, medium, afterlife, anything. Seriously. In a controlled neutral environment. (As you may gather I'm not a man of faith)

I mean what I say, someone prove me wrong that all if it is one big ridiculous scam for money and attention and power over people's grief and stupidity.

Thanks.

Ross, Komodo touched upon the name of James Randi there . He is a stage magician and skeptic of the paranormal who has set up an organisation called the James Randi Educational Foundation that has put a sum of one million dollars to be awarded to anyone making supernatural claims. The tests are done in a controlled environment like you say, with the terms of the test agreed upon between the interested party and Randi's people beforehand.The tests are sight unseen for the person making the claim and are specific to the type of claim they are making. No one has ever passed the tests and no one has ever even come particularly close to passing them. You would think for a million dollars, they would have to be fairly confident of their abilities, wouldn't you?

Molly22

My Mother went to a fortune teller a few years back. I dont know if you'd call my Mother a sceptic but she just treats all that stuff like a bit of a laugh (except ghosts which she believes in) Anyway, when she came back she told me that the psychic had been freakishly accurate. She knows that I am completely sceptic of all these people claiming to have psychic powers, so she started listing out all of the things she predicted or got right about our family. She got the amount of kids correct, in the right order, and she said that my eldest brother would have an easy life as his career will bring him financial gain (he's a barrister) and she correctly said that my sister has a child.Not that amazing or anything. I put it down to good/lucky guessing. The weirdest one of all was me.

She said that she had a very strong 'feeling' about my hair. She kept saying that I was having problems with it and that it was giving me alot of stress. That year, I had had my hair bleached and it had started getting noticably thinner. I was worried it would all end up coming out. As well as this, she had gotten it right that my Mother was a nurse. She told my Mother that she was in charge of minding the keys for an important cabinet (my mother held the keys to the medicine cabinet in the hospital) and if she didnt mind them carefully, alot of trouble would come Luckily, that didnt happen. and my hair ended up fine too!

There was lots more too. my Mother was ok with it all. She asked me how I could be sceptic now. I asked her did the fortune teller get anythng wrong and she said that yes, she had gotten some minor things wrong, and had spent more time predicting the future than telling her facts about her family. My view is that my Mother probably made it very obvious to the 'psychic' once she started guessing different things by looking excited or surprised and the 'psychic' just continued on then, knowing she was on the right track. I still do not believe in any of this but I'm just providing an example of what some people might believe to be psychic powers!

Zombrex

Molly22 wrote: »

My Mother went to a fortune teller a few years back. I dont know if you'd call my Mother a sceptic but she just treats all that stuff like a bit of a laugh (except ghosts which she believes in) Anyway, when she came back she told me that the psychic had been freakishly accurate. She knows that I am completely sceptic of all these people claiming to have psychic powers, so she started listing out all of the things she predicted or got right about our family. She got the amount of kids correct, in the right order, and she said that my eldest brother would have an easy life as his career will bring him financial gain (he's a barrister) and she correctly said that my sister has a child.Not that amazing or anything. I put it down to good/lucky guessing. The weirdest one of all was me.

She said that she had a very strong 'feeling' about my hair. She kept saying that I was having problems with it and that it was giving me alot of stress. That year, I had had my hair bleached and it had started getting noticably thinner. I was worried it would all end up coming out. As well as this, she had gotten it right that my Mother was a nurse. She told my Mother that she was in charge of minding the keys for an important cabinet (my mother held the keys to the medicine cabinet in the hospital) and if she didnt mind them carefully, alot of trouble would come Luckily, that didnt happen. and my hair ended up fine too!

There was lots more too. my Mother was ok with it all. She asked me how I could be sceptic now. I asked her did the fortune teller get anythng wrong and she said that yes, she had gotten some minor things wrong, and had spent more time predicting the future than telling her facts about her family. My view is that my Mother probably made it very obvious to the 'psychic' once she started guessing different things by looking excited or surprised and the 'psychic' just continued on then, knowing she was on the right track. I still do not believe in any of this but I'm just providing an example of what some people might believe to be psychic powers!

That is a pretty good example of how cold reading works. A couple of my friends have had similar experiences to your mother and have come to me (knowing I'm sceptical about these things) saying that they believe because this person was really accurate.

They say he or she was able to tell stuff about them that they couldn't possible have known and my first question is always Did you know it? Which they always do. They never seem to say anything specific that one of my friends didn't also know. Which is cold reading basically, careful subtle prodding and gauging of reaction. You can find out huge amounts of information from this, but you won't get information that the person themselves doesn't know.

komodosp

Molly if you were having trouble with your hair she could probably tell by looking at it!

she had gotten some minor things wrong

Two things on this: How can a psychic get anything wrong? Minor or major?

The other thing is, that the things she got right might have been just as minor, but we put more emphasis on the things they got right.
My sister was told she was going to have her first child soon, but she already had one.

Now I know you could say "well there's going to be a few charlatans but that doesn't mean they all are", but this was one of the usual, "Oh my God she was right about so many things!" ones that everyone raved about.

komodosp

In any case, in response to "I would love, LOVE to be wrong", the world is full of wonders from the tiniest sub-atomic particles to the most massive galaxies and everything in between. Relativity, Gravity, Electromagnetic radiation, Chemical reactions, Evolution. All these things are just as "magical" as the supernatural stuff... but it's a case of, who cares? The only difference being we know that stuff is true!

Why are we so desperate for these few things - ghosts, telepathy, precognition, etc. to be true?
OK we don't have telepathy, but we do have radio! Is that not as wondrous as telepathy anyway?
OK we don't have astrology and can't use the stars to predict someone's personality, but we do have psychology and can use that!
Analysis of the past (e.g. statistical analysis) and common sense can predict the future at least as accurately as any fortune teller claims to (remember even they will tell you that the future isn't guaranteed but don't tell you how to ensure it, making their prediction pretty useless anyway)
As I said before magnets and gravity and other forces like that are forms of telekinesis.

Molly22

komodosp wrote: »

Molly if you were having trouble with your hair she could probably tell by looking at it!


Well I wasnt there with her
It was the only thing that I couldnt really explain to my Mother but my guess is probably that my Mam wanted to believe her and so she interpreted it differently afterwards
The woman probably said something vague and ambiguous about my hair and my Mother remembered it differently because she wanted to?? But I didnt want to offend mam so I just left it at that
I'm only saying what my Mother told me was said to her`She knows I dont believe any of it I think alot of people believe because they want to not because theres any real evidence