Of course, if that’s your worldview, then that’s all you can call it. I believe that psi is real, and hence I would say that psi was a part of what you experienced.
Of course, someone who is doing a reading wants to be right and will also use every “ordinary” method to try to be right: pretty much the things that cold readers are said to do, such as reading body language, etc., combined with basic reasoning and observation skills. I don’t think there is any way to divide such mundane methods from truly “psychic” methods.
It’s all a big slush of reading people, intuition, and psi. Even if mentalists say they don’t believe in psi and are totally using mundane methods to achieve their effects, they can’t turn off their own psi mental functioning, which everyone has to one degree or another.
I do Tarot a lot for a lot of people and mix in the psychic impressions I get. I also offer basic reasoning and my own worldview. (Example: “Should I go live in City X?” “Well, do you want to live in City X?)” Both the readings and impressions have as their basis explicit facts about the sitter (either stated or observed) plus what I can easily extrapolate. The goal is to get to the truth and help the sitter, not prove that the paranormal exists. If a reading accomplishes its goal and yet the amount of actual psi used to achieve that goal ends up being zero, then so be it.
I looked at the link to the artical about John Edward, and although it said the show tends to edit out mistakes, it did not say that the hit rate he ends up with is unimpressive or dismissable. It also did not go into any detail how such a high hit rate is possible with cold reading.
I read a Larry King interview with Edward that jibes with my own experiences of how psi works. He said that the departed don’t just sit there and talk to him. Rather, they seem to be in his presence and send him impressions. Some are clearer than others. Hence, sometimes he comes up with an initial, sometimes a full name, etc. That is what happens to me. To me there seem to be three axes. There is the degree to which I feel a given impression is the truth; there is the degree of clarity of a given impression; and then there is the degree to which the impression gives useful or differentiated information.
The first point has to do with what may be called “psychic discernment.” If a psychic mixes in too many false impressions with the true, then s/he has no discernment and will appear merely as a person with a wild imagination sometimes getting a hit by chance. I will say, however, that I think every psychic now and then will get a strong impression that seems true but nevertheless is not.
So, a psychic with good discernment will be dealing with mostly correct impressions with varying degrees of clarity and usefulness. Let me give some examples about Einstein’s lost memoirs (merely a hypothetical object) are located.
I might get a very clear impression of Einstein in his study; I feel like I’m really there. But if I just see him writing or doing something ordinary, then I have no new information to present about the memoirs or anything else. Clear but not useful.
On the other hand, I might, for example get an impression of the documents being somewhere in Eastern Europe. Not so clear but slightly more useful.
Finally, I might get a very clear, differentiated impression: The street address of the building where the docs are located. A “big hit,” as it were.
Psychics are human and aren’t necessarily any wiser than anyone else. I think John Edward is making a typical mistake: Expecting (and promising, in effect) a great performance all the time. Hence, he is forced to make the most of every little impression he gets, lowering his hit rate and making himself look like more of a cold reader than he is. An analogous situation is a stock guru who always has to have a pick, even if there is nothing at the time that particularly impresses him/her.
I think a lot of the talk about cold reading assumes that psychics are “other”–“they” are pulling tricks–how did “he” do it? But the kind of impressions that psychics use are, at base, the same mental data–whether of psychic origin or otherwise–that we all experience and use to achieve our goals on a daily basis. So, if we drop the accusatory “cold,” “reading” is something we all do; it is merely one’s worldview and native talents that will determine how “psychic” one is willing or able to be.
As for psi, I believe it’s been proved beyond a doubt in the laboratory. Skeptics have a script to counter this, and the argument ends up being a very recondite one about statistics. But the line I saw in this thread that psychics (or even ordinary people) never do better than chance is ignorant or misinformed at best; the argument is in fact about whether it means anything when they do do better than chance.
