No GOM, I wouldn’t. But I think lots of people would.
I was actually thinking about this and I thought: A psychologists job is to make you feel better (in most cases anyway), this is not a “psychic’s” job (IMO). A “psychic’s” job is to put you in contact with a dead relative. In my opinion, if it were simply making someone feel good about themselves, then fine-I don’t care if the persons a fraud, they’ve done their job and made me happy. However if the person is supposed to put me in contact with dead uncle Lester and they are a fraud then they are potentially destroying my memories of uncle Lester-the only thing of real value I have left. They are tarnishing his name in an effort to make money. I’m not one to say what is evil for everyone, but I will say that this is evil for me.
[hijak]Psychologists job is to help you “function” better.[/hijak]
Bear in mind that most psychic ads I’ve seen come with disclaimers- For Entertainment Purposes Only. To that end I think it’s acceptable for the goal to be one of only making people feel better.
Do you suppose that’s the end of Edlyn?
Except that all the psychics say is that their relative is happy and loves them etc. Very bland stuff. I think you’re exaggerating somewhat about the “destroying of memories”.
My limited experience of people who like to go to psychics is that they want someone to listen to their troubles, have a good old emote, and have someone affirm back to them that everything’s OK.
I think it’s sceptics who are hung up on being certain about the objective reality of the reading.
That theory certainly fits with Lekatt’s definitions and criteria. The whole thing reminds me of professional wrestling.
The JVP moderator did decide to post my question about telling a quality psychic from a phony. See?
I wonder what responses will arrive.
I’ll make one for dylan_73, GOM if you can’t find one.
photopat, I appreciate your civility in your response to me and the points that you made, I have to agree with many of them. I think that psychic ability is more common than now accepted, however, cold readers who present themselves as psychics are more numerous in number.
SimonX said:
For 900-numbers, sure. Because they HAVE to in order to avoid getting sued for exactly what I’ve described. But if you see an ad for a psychic in the local paper (usually the free weeklies like), it is very unlikely to have such a disclaimer. And whenever I’ve talked to people who claim to be psychic, none of them ever say it’s just for entertainment – they claim to have powers.
Edlyn said:
But I’ll bet you don’t have any evidence for that, right?
Yeah, well, any number would be greater than zero…
I don’t sift through cold readers from psychics who give readings because I don’t seek their service. If I did, I would to the best of my ability. I would do the same in choosing a lawyer or doctor, for example.
I specifically stated scientific evidence, not evidence in any form.
I don’t blame him for not saying a lot more considering the environment of hostility, at times, shown in this thread. He’s more open than I would be. As for your last statement, I don’t know if he said those exact words, but if he has some psychic ability, why would he not recognize another could also or recognize a shared knowledge?
Some of the criteria of cold readings (from what I read) concerns emotional cues that are nearly always present in the person receiving the reading. A psychic wouldn’t need to “use them”, but they would most likely still be there. Should that fact alone be used to compare psychics to cold readers?
My issue is, do you require scientific established evidence?
True, I am exaggerating about “destroying of memories”, however I do think that “psychics” are doing harm (I don’t think I properly expressed myself with my previous statement).
Actually, let me put this in better context. I’m talking about what I believe a fraudulent psychic would do to me-if I believed in their abilities. You see a few years ago my grandmother died. I was very close to her. If I believed in psychics and I went to one and they comforted me and did their thing, and I found out that they were doing colding reading and in essence being fraudulent, I would be very hurt. I would feel as though I didn’t know my grandmother well enough to tell the difference, among other things.
I’m not pretending to be the norm, BTW. I take deep offense when people intentionally deceive me on important matters (little white lies are another thing). I’m also highly skeptical on certain matters-psychics being one of those matters.
Meatros, that leads right back to what started this particular sub-debate, namely my comment that if we assume psychics are doing a bit of harmless reassuring and sympathising by pretending to speak to the dead, it all works as long as they never give the game away.
Edlyn, as to evidence, don’t get hung up on the word “scientific”. Any evidence would do us just fine. What have you got?
You are putting the cart before the horse. To the extent we were hostile (and we weren’t really hostile, just demanding) it was precisely because Lekatt insisted on making claim after claim while failing to provide any evidence or answers to pertinent questions. How does saying less help that?
Whether Lekatt indicated that he had psychic ability depends on which of his posts one refers to.
Doc Cathode claims to have certain knowledge and ability that allows him to determine that Lekatt and Jon Edward do not have psychic ability. Lekatt called Doc Cathode a fake, although he never stated any basis for that accusation.
You can see how (as non-psychic observers) it’s easy to become a bit cynical, can’t you? How do we know? We are just expected to accept a bootstrap argument (Lekatt knows he’s psychic because he’s psychic and he knows others are psychic because he’s psychic, but he can’t give any way for a non-psychic to tell if he’s psychic, and another dabbler in the psychic says Lekatt isn’t a psychic).
Ho hum.
Well it comes back to how do you tell, doesn’t it? What you are saying in effect is that cold reading is externally indistinguishable from a psychic reading, it’s just that a psychic isn’t doing a cold reading, 'cos their psychic. OK, there’s nothing logically impossible about that. But how do we tell?
Ducking the question by saying that you don’t know because it doesn’t matter to you is a bit rich, because you’ve said several times now that you believe there are real psychics. You must have come to that conclusion somehow. How?
You say that if you had to choose between real and fake psychic you would do so “to the best of your ability”.
What ability? Which aspect of your ability would you use? It would help us to understand if you could particularise.
Well, obviously that would be best, at it would for anything. The more good quality data you have, the better the decision that can be made.
But even absent hard data, sometimes something looks interesting enough to investigate when all you have is “it looks like there might be something to it”.
In the particular case of believing in psychic ability, however, there is a fair amount of negative circumstantial evidence. Additionally, there is lots of evidence that our current understanding of physics is substantially correct, even if incomplete. Since some of those understandings would have to be re-thought if psychic ability is proven, at least some of that evidence is also a kind of negative evidence against psychic ability.
So in order to believe in psychic ability, there is (IMO) a lot to overcome. Some good evidence is going to have to come to light. Unfortunately, all we have so far is anecdotal or stuff that can’t be distinguished from cold reading or other magician’s tricks. Based on that, I don’t think there is sufficient evidence at this time to say we should reevaluate our current beliefs.
Bring on some better evidence, however, and it may make sense to revisit the question.
Ugly
I see your point. To me though, the psychic never had any game to begin with so I suppose I wouldn’t be led in to start. The fact that they aren’t better than cold readers is very telling IMO.
Even though you don’t, how would you?
Well, try this:
Why do you think it is close-minded to expect scientific evidence for an extraordinary claim?
You can look for yourself as to what his exact words were. they have been quoted repeatedly throughout this thread. He said that the saying “It takes one to know one” applies. Then he added some points that he didn’t clarify about use of words and the feelings he got from the person claiming paranormal psychic abilities. He didn’t clarify that either. He didn’t offer any tips on how someone who doesn’t have paranormal psychic abilities could detect a true psychic other than to go to one and don’t analyze their performance.
Maybe he does recognize other psychics. Who can tell?
You are exchanging the word criteria for properties. This is not an equivalent exchange.
When an outside observer, (without paranormal psychic abilities), witnesses a cold reading or a psychic reading the properties of the two events are indistinguishable. I was asking for criteria that would allow one to distinguish the properties of one from the other.
Scientifically established evidence would be best since it is replicable. But since so many people are asking for/about that already, and a number of other people have said that the realm of psychic phenomena is “outside the realm of science”, I’ve decided that for the pruposes of this conversation to look for the means that non-skeptical observers use to make the distinction between genuine and fake.
My issue is-
How would you make distinctions among a faker, an incompetent psychic, and the genuine article?
I think our government used testing…
Uh oh! I think I just found out why our government program was such a hot potato…
"1 October 1972
CIA Office of Technical Service Contract 8473 is issued. It is marked CONFIDENTIAL. It is a $50,000 research contract with “the physicists at SRI.” That includes former NSA employee, now Scientology OT VII, Hal Puthoff, but the contract also allows for the hiring of two other Scientology OTs, Ingo Swann and Pat Price. The contract is for an “expanded effort in parapsychology.” A CIA agent, “Ken Kress,” is assigned as the CIA “Project Officer” for the contract. [NOTE: The program is greatly expanded over the ensuing years, split between CIA and DIA, and is managed under the auspices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One strange note: the date of the contract is a Sunday. But there is an even stranger note: the CIA contract is issued by the CIA’s “Office of Technical Services,” which goes under the acronym OTS. Yet prior to this contract with the Scientology-trained OTs, the same division of CIA had been called “Technical Services Division,” the acronym being TSD.]
SOURCE: A report, “Parapsychology in Intelligence: A Personal Review and Conclusions,” by Dr. Kenneth A. Kress; appeared in the Winter 1977 issue of Studies in Intelligence, the CIA’s classified internal publication; report released to the public in 1996; Book, “Remote Viewers, the Secret History,” Chapter 14"
http://www.sc-i-r-s-ology.pair.com/documents/1972-10-01ciacontract.html
No mention of Ed Dames so far. Interesting…
“Continuing successes in the CIA’s top-secret Scientology-based Remote Viewing program–including a sensationalistic remote peek into a top-secret installation of the National Security Agency (NSA)–result in new CIA contracts to expand the program with the Scientology OT VIIs Hal Puthoff, Ingo Swann, and Pat Price. This includes not only a new contract with CIAs Office of Technical Services (OTS), which had been running the program, but also with the Office of Research and Development (ORD). The new contract with ORD heralds the CIA’s intention to have Swann start using the Scientology techniques to secretly train in-house CIA personnel.”
http://www.sc-i-r-s-ology.pair.com/documents/1974-02-01ciacontract2.html
Now I see why nobody wants to touch this stuff.
The thread Simonx posted on the JVP forum, How can I tell a fake from the real thing? has received three answers so far, tho answer #3 is only a compliment to poster #1 from the warm & fuzzy moderator (“thank you for sharing such wonderful insight”).
From the other 2, I gather here is how you tell:
[ol][li]“follow your ‘gut’ feelings”[/li][li]Avoid low-priced psychics[/li][li]“look for not a ‘psychic’ but someone listed perhaps under Medium, or Spiritualist”[/li][li]“ask friends and aquaintances if they know of someone reputable and reliable”[/li][li]“ask the person…what their background is and what sort of readings they feel they do best”[/li][li]Check with the Better Business Bureau about complaints[/ol][/li]Now that’s a real objective list. 
Those criteria generally satisfy me if I’m trying a new restaurant, (except #3. I assiduously avoid Spiritualist cafes. The buffet sucks) but beyond that forget it.
GOM,
Can you find examples of the actual studies so that we can examine the structure of them ourselves? I’ve heard that the studies weren’t well designed. I also read:
Utts said there was “a statistically robust effect,”… Utts said the “psychics” were accurate about 15% of the time when they were helping the CIA.
I still haven’t heard back from the National Personel Records center in St Louis. (I don’t expect to for a few more weeks. IIRC they say 4-6 weeks.) I’ve read that McMoneagle says he has 28 citations of various sorts.
- Doubtful. The CIA probably won’t help at all. SRI might, if they are still around. Maybe the Scientologists would, but it would probably cost a lot.
“In 1972 Dr. Hal Puthoff, a physicist at SRI-International, a California-based research institute that had been spun off from Stanford University, expressed his interest to a researcher in New York in conducting research into a form of non-conventional communications. The New York researcher was an acquaintance of Swann’s, which fact eventually led to Swann and Puthoff getting together to conduct an experiment that ultimately attracted attention and funding from the Central Intelligence Agency. Research physicist Russell Targ soon joined Swann and Puthoff at SRI, forming the core of a team that researched and refined understanding of what had now become known as “remote viewing.” For the next two decades most remote viewing research was funded by the government and performed in secret. But a few less-secretive sources also provided support, and a limited amount of non-classified information about RV was published.”
http://www.irva.org/papers/CRVHistory.shtml
- I had not heard about Joe’s 28 citations. I’m looking forward to your posting of any results you get back.