And let me just add, even if you are going to give equal credence to John Edwards and Pope John Paul II, I still don’t want my news source reporting what either of them says as fact.
Wow… looks like this took off when I was out of town.
Stoid, I will keep this to the point.
I think religion is bullshit as well.
But… my here are my thoughts on faith and this will reveal where I seperate John Edward and his ilk from (at least some) religion.
Faith is believing in the absence of evidence.
Believing in spite of all evidence to the contrary is just insane.
If someone wants to believe that there is a loving God, and he started the whole thing, and is waiting in heaven for him/her… fine with me.
If someone wants to claim things (especially making an effort to convince or scam other people) that are clearly contrary to what we know to be true… That is an entirely different ballgame.
Religion in itself is fine with me, but there are many excesses of or in religion (especially as it is commonly practiced in my area of the world) that I will speak up against as well.
When religions try to push clear bullshit onto the masses, I step right up.
Finally, the jackasses that claim to be psychic on TV (and elsewhere) clearly aren’t… not even a maybe they are. They prey on the gullible. It has the appearence that they are waging a media war to convince people that don’t know better that they are legit. And, they are fucking winning because nobody in the media is doing anything significant to oppose them.
Hi, Scott. It looks like you Miller and I all just made essentally the same points. Great minds think alike, I guess.
Well argued, everyone, your points are sound.
However, I am brought back to this: “They prey on the gullible.” Prey? Did they eat them for dinner? Did they destroy their lives?
I can appreciate that you might not like a supposedly reputable news outlet treating them as though they are for real, but alot of the noise being made here goes beyond that, calling out for these people to be tarred and feathered. (And they HAVE been exposed, or you wouldn’t have known about it, so one can only assume others have access to the same information you do.) It still comes down to belief.
I won’t argue for anyone or anything in particular, but I will say this: There are many things in this world that have not been explained by science and may never be. That is a fact. So long as that remains true, people will have beliefs that others will find ridiculous. So long as no one is hurt, and in fact some people are helped, ** what is the good to be had ** in discrediting those who provide comfort? And I’m not talking about the SDMB, I’m talking about life. Why bother? Why concern yourselves? If it makes some people happy to think that someone talked to their dead daddy or dead kitty, what is the harm in it? I see none.
It’s like rushing to tell a kid there is no Santa. What’s the point? As long as it makes him happy, let him believe.
For the record, by the way, I think that of all the whacked out beliefs there are in the world, Christianity actually is a chart-topper. And it never ceases to astonish me how many otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people buy into it.
Mortality’s a bitch…
I don’t mean to be churlish here, Stoid, but could you give an example of this?
Where’s the harm? Where’s the harm?! In a world where the Sci-Fi Channel cancels Farscape but keeps paying good money to John Edwards’ fraud-o-rama Crossing Over, you have the gall to ask “Where’s the harm?!”
Incidentally, I never believed in Santa when I was a kid. And I got a real kick out of knowing what was “really” going on, while all the other babies were buying into that Santa crap. This probably explains more about me than I’d like to admit. On the plus side, I can say with absolute certainty that my parents never lied to me about anything. Ever. (They’re wrong about all sorts of stuff, but that’s a seperate issue)
No, because I’m not interested in doing a line-item debate on these matters. You cannot be revving up to argue that science has proved or disproved everything, can you? Because I know you are no dummy, either.
Fair enough.
Here is my position and I’m sticking to it.
An uncomfortably large portion of the population are extremely dependent upon the mainstream media for their views on what is factual or not. (This is very sad, but that seems to be the way it is)
If a person bases his belief on what he sees and hears the most, the obvious choice would be paranormal claims. TV gives hugely preferential coverage to stories of the paranormal and treat them like they are legit. If we are lucky, they will spare 2 minutes at the end of an hour of BS letting someone who actually knows something about the subject shed some factual light on it. The media is doing the population a HUGE disservice. People believe what they hear over and over, and that appearently is that people like Edwards can perform. The don’t cover the other side appearently because the truth isn’t interesting enough.
I am going to stand up and bitch about that.
Wanna know what harm it causes? Read the thread on Miss Cleo.
She did over 1 Billion (say it with me, BILLION) dollars of business. I would like to think that if people knew they were being fed pure bullshit, they would have preferred to keep their money in their pocket. Surely the pleasing sound of the voice on the other end of the line wasn’t worth a billion dollars.
When people are told and believe that these jackasses can perform, they are left wide open to be defrauded.
When this kind of crap shows up in a “news” source, I am gonna stand up and bitch, twice.
People are bamboozled out of their life savings every day because they have been told all their life that psychics work.
You have not made your case, Scott. Miss Cleo was busted for ripping people off in the deceptive way they billed, it had nothing to do with the legitimacy (or lack of same) of the service being offered.
You seem to be claiming that people are, in the main, too stupid to make these decisions for themselves, and I think you are doing people a gross disservice, as well as grossly overstating the media’s participation. Apart from the OP article, can you give other examples to support your claim? I believe you will be hard pressed to do so. I think I would have noticed if the news regularly sounded like it was telling me that soothsaying was the latest in scientific breakthroughs.
You also have failed utterly to adequately define what you mean by “defraud” - I will remind you that overall, the people who buy these services * enjoy it. * They want to believe, and they are perfectly aware that they are making a leap of faith and they are ok with that. Why do you want to insinuate yourself in the process? Why does it offend you so? If they are happy with the service, who are you to tell them they have been defrauded?
As for “life savings” bamboozling, again, I must insist on a cite. Perhaps there have been one or two unusual cases of someone being aggressively pursued by some con artist, but most of the psychics out there are strictly nickel and dime.
Are you arguing, that Miss Cleo was and all her minions on the phones were real psychics? I realize that wasn’t what she got busted for. If you believe she is a fake, and did a billion dollars worth of business…
I don’t know if too stupid is what I am claiming, I would say that many people believe because that is what they are exposed to in the media (constantly) with little or no contradiction. Do you watch Larry King Live, Stoid? Do you know how many times he has had psychics on spouting there claims completely unapposed? You know he is a “soft ball pitching” interviewer, right? He did have them on with opposition recently, (transcript), which was an improvement… but damn, every time a tough question was put to the psychics, he let them off with complete non answers. The veracity of any answer given is never challenged. And this is by far the most critical of the numerous times Larry King has done a show with psychics on. I am sure you can critique it for yourself… Larry does let critical claims be made, but when the claims between the two parties are directly contradictory, Larry pretty much lets the psychics get the last word calling the skeptics liars, and no attempt to find out who is telling the truth is made. Still pretty dissappointing.
Clearly, what is called for here, is a formal large scale poll/study on people attitudes on psychics. Key questions be along the lines of, if you believe in psychics, tell us how the coverage in the media affects those beliefs. Maybe I will work on doing this myself. Care to help me compose the questions so that you will feel confident that they are not “leading”?
I will strenously object to this. I have talked to people personally, people in my office building, familiy, people in the airport, I tend to bring this up in coversation when I can to find out what people think on this. The conclusion is unescapable, many people believe because they are seeing one side of the evidence. When I mention the opportunity for fraud and how it could be done, the reactions generally go two ways:
- I must be wrong, the TV networks wouldn’t participate in anything that open for fraud (usually not put nearly so elequently, but that is the gist of it) or
- They are pissed that the stuff would be presented in fashion that they have recieved it.
I will repeat again, I hear the line, “The couldn’t put this on TV if it wasn’t true.” all the time.
Clearly, the continuous barage of uncritical presentation of this stuff is telling alot of people that there must be something to this or they wouldn’t be showing it all the time.
Another thing that may be key to the difference in perception that we seem to have on the coverage of this stuff. I freqently work in my house during the day. I frequently have day time TV on in the background while working. If you work during the day and never get to see what happens on daytime TV, you may not have a good grasp of just how pervasive this is.
http://internettrash.com/users/infection/mesg10.html (quote of a LA times article.
http://internettrash.com/users/infection/mesg12.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/psychics_homeless000925.html
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/txw/Evanssen.htm
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/txw/Evans.htm (this is more on the above, not two seperate events)
http://www.eightballmagazine.com/diatribes/diatribes004/diatribes63-82/diatribes68.htm
http://www.junebug.com/personal/psychic/ (this one gets interesting about the middle of the page)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20020904-2003-ca-psychicfraud.html (be sure to read the last paragraph of this one)
http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/Crimes/InPerson/MajorPerson/psychic_scams.htm
http://www.metamind.net/enigmaipsysur.html (psychic surgery scams, people very lives are on the line with this shit)
http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/roeder.html
http://www.bccancer.bc.ca/PPI/UnconventionalTherapies/PsychicSurgery.htm
http://www.netasia.net/users/truehealth/Psychic%20Surgery.htm
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-psychic080902.story (another on linda marks, but it details how much money alot of people lost)
http://query.nytimes.com/search/full-page?res=9B05E7D91139F935A25756C0A9649C8B63
http://fox.phpwebhosting.com/~dideas/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=24 (murder on the advice of psychic)
http://fox.phpwebhosting.com/~dideas/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=54
http://fox.phpwebhosting.com/~dideas/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=32 (not as strong, but interesting anyway)
And fraud of this type is HUGELY underreported. The victims (when they realize they are victims) frequently don’t come forward out of embarassment, and some never really catch on that they are victims.
No, I was not arguing that Miss Cleo was for real, and I think you know that. You offered the recent legal troubles as some kind of proof that she (they) had been busted for ripping people off with the implication being that “ripping people off” meant offering fake services, when that was not the case.
It is evident that you are more committed to this fight than I am, so I tip my hat to you and nominate you for SDMB CiteMaster of the Month.
The point of the Miss Cleo site was to point out the amount of money involved. $1Billion is a damn lot of money… The point was that if that one group could do a Billion dollars in revenue, this is a huge problem and alot of people are being defrauded. It was not to prove she was a phony… I pretty much considered that stipulated between us.
Posted too quick there.
Had another question for you Stoid.
Do you believe that:
- The media doesn’t influence large numbers of people to be more credulous of these claims, (and consequently leave them open to easy fraud) with its very one sided coverage of paranormal claims?
- The media does have that influence, but these people deserve it if they are stupid enough to buy into it?
- The media doesn’t really have much influence on people in this area of their lives?
- Some combination of the above?
It is hard to tell with your closing line if you were convinced there is a real problem here or I was just burying you with sites and you just didn’t want to play anymore (but your opinion hadn’t been modified)
Off the subject, perhaps, but I just wanted to say that this story provides yet more evidence for my assertion that Fox should be required to put the word News in quotation marks.
Okay, lemme be as clear as I can:
It is obvious you’ve done waaay more research on this than I have, and I was acknowledging that. The few cites I followed looked to me like what I was talking about: aggressive con artists targeting a few people. And the crimes they were accused of were things I don’t think I’d find myself having much tolerance for, chiefly charging people everything they have to remove imaginary “curses”. The OP you wrote was not ranting about those types of things, it was ranting about John Edwards, who is not raping anyone of their retirement in exchange for voodoo curse removal, he’s on a free TV show. You are lumping it all together, and I don’t feel that’s entirely legitmate.
I think it is wrong and actionable to scare the shit out of people and then charge them insane and destructive amounts of money to quell the fear you created. That’s pretty clearly a criminal act that intend to harm others for one’s own gain. Charging people $100 for a reading to tell you if you are gonna find your true love, or give a seance and tell you your dead husband is watching over you and loves you, is harmless and even helpful and I don’t judge the people who do it or begrudge them their fee. They are providing a service for which there is obviously a market, and I will even go so far to say that I don’t necessarily assume that all of them are frauds. I don’t know. Neither do you. I don’t know that there is no god or that there is a god. Neither do you. Go back to my statment about perceptions.
Finally, to answer your questions directly: no, I really don’t think that the NEWS media (which is the only media that has any responsibility to avoid promoting bullshit, entertainment media is in thebusiness of doing exactly that) promotes paranormal claims as legitimate, but I don’t notice the news media discussing paranormal issues much at all.
Secondly, if people look to * entertainment * for clear, well-researched, unbiased information, then they pretty much get what they deserve. Not to the extent that they deserve to have their lives destroyed, but if they get fleeced out of a few hundred bucks, I’m not especially concerned about it. I am not a big supporter of the idea that people must be protected from their own stupidity, ignorance, foolishness and self-destructiveness. This is why I’m for legalizing all vices, including hard drugs.
On the other hand, when it comes to fraud, I think our society would be better served to take a closer look at things like miracle fat cures that contain harmful ingredients, and things of that nature.
Does that answer your questions?
Pretty good, Stoid.
I agree with most of what you put up there, except that paranormal stuff isn’t in the news much. CNN has covered repeatedly the “hospital haunting”, in the last week. Larry King as I mentioned regularly has physic guests on with no rebuttal at all. Fox ran that sucky story right up front. The Discovery Network shows on the paranormal have been getting worse and worse (yeah, I know… this isn’t news… but they promote themselves as “factual” entertainment, and a place for learning while in front of the tv), and I regularly see local news promoting paranormal stories that are “based on a true story” airing later in the night. (Actually, that would be fine if they didn’t use language like, “find out what really happened when so and so…” making it sound like the news people considered it news as well.
I would completely support the legalization of all vices as well, provided that complete factual information was clearly provided about all of it.
I also get really pissed with the diet scams, and other alternative health scams in general. But, this rant wasn’t about those. It was about one particular piece carried by a purveyor of news, that was presented just like the rest of their news.
Maybe I am wrong, but the link seems clear that soft journalism and such contributes to the gullibility of the people that are getting taken by the “agressive con artists” in your words.
Probably the reason the link seems so clear to me is that I have asked these people why they believe it, and that damn answer, “they couldn’t put it on TV like they do if it wasn’t real” pops up so often (I know, I have about beat that phrase to death by now).
I would happily admit that the root causes of this problem are poor eduction, poor parenting, other religious beliefs, and plain stupidity. Still, it doesn’t seem right to me to watch the media feed these people B.S. that could be truly harmful to them later on. Of course… I would much prefer to tackle the root causes, and I do what I can in that area as well… it still seems like getting the media to stop reinforcing ignorance would be a useful tactic.
Not even when James Randi and Sylvia Browne were on the same show!
I don’t know John Edwards’ entire life history, but I;m sure he was making a living with this con before he got the TV show, else he wouldn’t be so good at it. I have to assume he was taking people’s money in exchange for giving them “readings” or conducting seances or some damn thing. Maybe he wasn’t taking people’s entire life savings, but I’ll tell you right now he wasn’t doing it pro bono. I wouldn’t be the least surprised to learn he was continuing to do this now to supplement his TV paycheck.
As for all this being a “small price to pay for peace of mind,” I can only speak for myself. If I were offered the choice between being lied to and robbed, or not having peace of mind, I would choose not to have peace of mind. I can find “peace of mind” (however you choose to define that) through honest means. Maybe not everyone in John Edwards’ audience agrees with me, but they can’t make the choice if they don’t know it exsists.
And even if money doesn’t figure into it at all, John Edwards is still a liar. He knows he doesn’t have psychic powers, he says he does, he tries to convince others that this is true. He’s a liar. That alone is reason enough to revile the man.