Now that you mention it, I hear the 11-year old girl that apparently bombed out on her first try is going to make another attempt.
hmmm
Although it might sound like a lot of laughs to you, I recommend against your idea. There’s an old saying that goes roughly like this: Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
.02
PD,
If Lekatt had proposed something even close to your “solution” you guys would have hammered him for three days straight.
Let’s try another route. I’m sure at least one of these must apply:
**BEATING A DEAD HORSE
**
Dakota Indian tribal wisdom passed on from one generation to the next says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. In modern business, government, and academia factors parameterized as discounted cashflow/return on investment extrapolations and managerial performance evaluations are critical junctures. Other dead horse strategies must be appraised to boost the bottom line:
What dead horse?
Buy a stronger whip and beat the dead horse.
Change riders.
Appoint a committee to study the dead horse.
Assemble a PowerPoint dead horse presentation.
Increase standards to include dead horses.
Attend a Dead Horse Motivational Seminar
Assign the dead horse to Marketing.
Assign the dead horse to R&D.
Point the dead horse in the opposite direction and note how well he maintains his position.
Reclassify the dead horse as living-impaired.
Tighten the dead horse’s cinch.
Factor in dead horse savings re food, water, and maintenance.
Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
Compare your dead horse’s performance to other companies’ dead horses.
Provide additional funding to increase the dead horse’s performance.
Do a time management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity.
Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.
Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore runs faster.
Repackage the dead horse.
Reassign fault to the dead horse’s breeding.
Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.
Survey business school casebooks for dead horse models.
Require at least two more dead horses before this dead horse is validated as a dead horse source. 
Re-engineer riding styles.
Renormalize standardized evaluations of riding ability.
Brand the dead horse and commission a music video for its introduction.
Rewrite the expected performance requirements for dead horses.
Gather other dead animals and announce a diversity program.
Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
If I get to talk to dead people through I’ll get an agent’s fee when we collect JREF’s money.
Couldn’t you just’ve forwarded this crap back to whoever forwrded it to you instead of posting it here?
Hey GOM? Give it a fucking break, okay? Lekatt’s proposed ideas are so unlikely that they’re almost impossible. And yet, you’ll notice, we are not arguing that they are impossible, but that they have no evidence to support them, and that the evidence favors other causes. In other words, we are saying, despite how unlikely it is, and how there is no evidence to support it, that it’s still fucking possible, just the least likely of all solutions. Now will you stop it with these bullshit comparisons already?
And what SimonX said, too. Though I think it should apply more to you, anyway. You’re the one who went on this whole side-track with one single proposed idea, as if it somehow negated my entire point… Which you oh-so-neatly conceeded under the smokescreen of this whole hijack. And despite conceeding that I was right, you’re still trying to say I’m wrong? Like I said, give it a break.
And getting back to the subject of "Would Ed have to cheat in order to convince the Japanese police that he’d remote-vewed a crime scene:
Let’s suppose that the police catch the perpetrator 20% of the time, using normal lines of evidence like questioning the witnesses, dusting for fingerprints, etc…
Let’s now suppose they decide to hire a psychic to help them solve some crimes. The reports of what happened in five randomly-selected cases might look something like this:
Case 1. We didn’t catch the perpetrator.
Case 2. We didn’t catch the perpetrator.
Case 3. We didn’t catch the perpetrator.
Case 4. We didn’t catch the perpetrator.
Case 5. We caught the perpetrator with the help of Ed the psychic.
The fact that Ed did not help to catch the perpetrator, or guessed wrong, or what have you, in cases 1-4 will usually not be reported. Successes are what people remember best, not failures. This becomes a case of counting the hits and ignoring the misses. The police dept.'s actual success rate is no better than it was without Ed the psychic, but now, Ed gets the credit whenever they succeed.
No. The success rate improves, assuming he succeeds (which is not likely, imo, given his track record). If Ed solves even one case the police have not been able to solve that would tend to make objective observers ponder the method he uses and promotes.
Debunkers, on the other hand, will rely on other “explanations”.
Playing the psychic:
-
You will never collect any money by attempting to talk to dead people.
-
You** will **waste some good money on this attempt, and if that’s all that happens you should consider yourself lucky.
.02
Ponder, yes. But, if he offers info on, say, 5 cases, and only one is successful, that’s just a 20% hit rate. Not very good. If his rate of success was more than 50% that would present a much stronger case for investigating his “ability” further.
Besides, as has been pointed out before, there would be other explanations that are much more mundane and probable.
By the way, just curious. What’s the “.02” mean at the end of some of your posts?
When you reopen any case you have “not been able to solve”, there’s always a chance you’ll get lucky and solve it. What we need to know is if Ed’s success rate is any better than that of a police detective who decides to “play a hunch” on a case that would otherwise be closed unsolved.
Now wait a second. Given the inherent unusual nature of the claim “I solved the case via paranormal means”, the obvective observer will take into account the possibility that Ed may not have been totally accurate in his explanation of his methods. Sweet, honest, innocent observers with no belief in the notion of deceit might take him at his word. Frothing-at-the-mouth anti-spiritualists might “rely” on the notion that he is using conventional methods to solve the crimes. And “debunkers”…
“Debunker” means “one who expunges bunk”; by definition this means that he is looking for the truth. To any rational person, this would include at least considering the possibility that one’s facts may not all be in order. Maybe Ed’s an innate deductive genious, whi has been fooling himself all these years with his own frequently correct deductions. Maybe as he consulted with the police, his (perhaps) random comments jogged a notion in their deductive minds. Maybe he’s a lucky guesser. And, maybe, dead people told him. These are all possibilites; a true debunker would attempt to give each the merit it deserves given what data is available.
The use of the word “debunker” to imply “one who avoids the true answer via reliance on [implied false by quotes] explanations” leads me to wonder wether you consider thought a valid activity. Must one always take things at their word? Is attempting to exorsize bunk somehow wrong?
What most skeptics can’t seem to realize is that if something is of no value it is used less and less until it ceases to exist.
This is a link of research on police psychics, and 35 percent of the officers say they would use psychics again. Remember this group of people (police) are among the least likely to believe anything one tells them.
http://pac-c.org/police_use_of_psychics.htm
I don’t think this will prove anything to anyone on this board, but here it is for perusal.
Thousands of people have had NDEs, they come from every area of life, all religions and no religion. They pretty much see the same things like bright light, feel love, etc. This changes their perspective of life forever and usually takes about three years or more for them to assemilate the experience and be able to live comfortably in the physical world again. All this means nothing to the skeptics, unless or until they have their own experience.
Not quite.
If something is of no perceived value, it is used less and less until it ceases to exist.
Astrology is useless as a predictive tool. It has no real value. Yet, 4000 years after its invention, it’s still widely used. Why? Because enough people think it has value, or believe it has value, that it’s buoyed up entirely by the believers’ desire for it to work (even though it doesn’t).
Just because 35% of police officers say they’d use psychics again doesn’t mean the psychic’s “powers” are at all useful.
An attempt at Argumentum ad Populum (again) and not even a good fallacy, since even if 35% of the officers polled said they’d use psychics again, that means 65% either said they wouldn’t, or were undecided.
In any case, having grown up around police, I can tell you they’re just as human as the rest of us, with the same flaws and foibles.
Lekatt’s most recent post still doesn’t prove anything except that he continues to use the same invalid arguments.
Value like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You are confusing your opinion with truth. Reminds me of the story of the Umpire.
A newsman was interviewing a baseball umpire, he said: “How can you tell if a pitch is a ball or strike. How do you know what they are?”
The umpire thought a moment then replied: “They aren’t nothing until I call 'em”.
Many people like to believe whatever is comfortable to them.
But for me, when it comes to things that are knowable, I generally prefer to know the truth even if it’s not the way I’d like things to be.
I would like there to be real psychics, which can be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt to be genuine. That would make me happy. I’d dance with joy that life was more interesting than it previously appeared to be.
I welcome any definitive proof you can offer of the supernatural. I would wholeheartedly cheer you on if you won the million dollar Randi test. But until I see proof (extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof) I will continue to doubt such fantastical claims.
Am I skeptical just to be mean spirited? That’s not my intention, even if you think it is.
You choose to have a certain set of beliefs. That’s what they are. Beliefs. Just like any religion. That’s fine, I can deal with that. But sometimes it’s better to have ideas. You can change an idea, but beliefs are trickier to change.
It seems your beliefs are such a large part of you that you aren’t willing to let them go. You had to take a break from this board when the questions started getting too tough for you, especially when others asked what it would take for your beliefs to change. The simple answer to that question appears to be: Nothing can change your beliefs.
Can offer no proof of the supernatural, because nothing exists that is not natural. Those things not readily understood are given such labels.
Beliefs are the trunk of the tree and ideas the limbs. What you say here are your beliefs as I say mine.
I took a break because of the focus on me instead of the discussion, I hope you are not starting it again. The questions I didn’t answer were designed to get a certain response, and had no real meaning except to try to put words in my mouth. I don’t allow people to control my thoughts and/or answers.
I was very skeptical before my NDE, used to say “I don’t believe nothing I can’t see, hear or smell”
My near death experience changed me from skeptical to theist in a few moments. But not the kind usually known as religious. I don’t believe religions any more, but do realize the value of them to others. What I experienced was the most powerful event of my life. I think most NDEers will agree with me.
Now, I suppose if I had another experience that powerful, but showing a different world view I would change my mind again. But this is pure speculation, which I rarely engage in.
Skeptics have shown no evidence or proof to support their denial of spiritual events. They have offered a lot of alternative explanations which are meaningless without strong evidence or proof. But they are entitled to their opinions also.
As for evidence I offered, there were controlled scientific studies, verifiable NDEs, and scientific opinions.
The thing that most upsets me is the disbelief in personal experiences, as if everyone is either dumb or lying.
If I brought that same test to the world of science nothing would be believable.
There is no one single thing we have learned that was not the personal experience of ourselves or someone else. It is the only thing we have to measure the world we live in. There is simply nothing else. Sure people make mistakes, but to toss out personal experience (impossible) is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
If this post results in a continuation of the personal attacks as before I will not answer them.
Love
Leroy
Lekatt do you believe that someone can ever misinterpret their own personal experience?
Another lie, brought to you by the master, Lekatt.
Oh dear, does this mean you are going to leave again? How sad.