ok, I need a book that basically destroys what Silvia Brown has written, BUT… it can’t be obviously antagonistic and it has to be both easy to read and at least mildly entertaining/interesting.
I have a good friend who is enamoured of Brown’s work and I am unable to provide counterarguments in a manner she can process/accept.
Any help?
Hehe. Are you freakin’ kidding?
How could a book destroying or even accurately portraying Sylvia Brown’s “work” not be antagonistic? And, however easy to read, I doubt that anyone enamored of her is capable of reading a book at all. You and your friend will be much happier if you just agree to let this one go.
Just have a poke around her own website and let Sylvia poker herself in the eye. How much of the following came true?
Sorry, the overall irritation I feel towards brown is colouring my thought process. My friend is WILLING to be persuaded, is smart enough to understand that what brown says is probably not all correct, but she’s quoted some of Brown’s pseudo science and she lacks the academic background about such things to be able to tell that its all crap and why. Writers like Brown gain the following they do because they write about stuff in a way which SOUNDS plausible if you don’t know better.
I have an incredible lack of skill in explaining things or teaching (I go into too much detail and I generally loose my audience halfway through).
SO…
what I’m looking for is someone that explains why silvia brown is full of crap better than I can do so.
one final thing, she doesnt beleive in the fortune telling bits, so that’s not really important. Its the stuff she tries to pass off as “facts” that Im trying to tear down.
The example that triggered this particular posting is a claim that the Atlantis legend exists in all religions worldwide and therefore there has to be some truth in it. (That is, Atlantis exists).
Hehe, come on. Is “smart” the word you want to use here?
You’re searching for unicorns.
First of all, you cannot rationally argue out what wasn’t rationally argued in. There are no facts or rational arguments supporting the type of assertions (e.g. ‘Atlantis exists’) you are referring to, and hence you cannot ‘argue’ their merits in any sort of rational or logical manner. You are talking about statements and assertions that exist outside of rational debate and reasoning.
Secondly, you are unlikely to find one book or source that will address all of the things that Sylvia talks about. She covers a lot of topics, and ‘irrational drivel’ is a broad subject. There are books that address many different kinds of pseudo-scientific beliefs, and that can help the reader to understand, in a general way, how to start evaluating whether things are worth believing in or not. Here are some good ones:
Flim-flam, by James Randi.
The New Apocrypha, by John Sladek.
Irrationality, by Stuart Sutherland.
Why People Believe In Weird Things, by Michael Shermer.
The New Age, by Martin Gardner.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds, by Charles Mackay.
The Skeptics Guide To The Paranormal, by Lynne Kelly.
But if your friend is the kind of person who thinks that ‘Atlantis is real’ might be worth considering as fact, without any other supporting evidence, it is unlikely he or she will be inclined to learn much from any of the above.
You say your friend isn’t swayed so much by the psychic / fortune-telling side of the Sylvia Brown persona, but just in case you want to know more, remember there was a Staff Report on this very subject.
Johathan Edwards was skewered in an episode of South Park. Get that and show her. You can google it. It was the biggest douche in the universe episode. It gets at him and the people whio blindly follow too.
I had no idea who she was before checking out this thread, but I did find this video of her getting skewered on Montel Williams (she tells a woman her husband’s death was water-related… before learning her died in the WTC on 9/11). Painful.
Some people would bathe in snake oil if they could afford it.
Try Lost Continents by L. Sprague de Camp.
Or just show her a topographical map of the Atlantic seabed. Ya see anything there that might be a sunken continent?!
(Actually Atlantis was real, as you can learn from revealed holy scripture, but we don’t necessarily want the Pinks to know that.)
**22. NASA finally cuts back on the space program realizing that every time they send up a space vehicle they are tearing the ozone layer.
**
!!!
Actually, this may be the origin of some of my relatives’ stranger views about atmospheric physics.
Relevant ongoing Pit thread.
Incidentally, since it seems relevant to the OP, let me pass on a tip about ‘discussing’ Sylvia Brown and other ‘psychics’ wiht true believers.
If you try to disagree and criticise, you will get nowhere. It just becomes a pintless heat-butting contest between their beliefs and your ‘facts’. People are naturally very protective of their beliefs, and tend strongly to resent anyone trying to ‘take away’ or harm their belief system.
The key is to agree and to praise. And the to dangle the carrot of ‘inside information’. The following might be rather idealised, but this is how to massage the conversation.
Believer: ‘I think Sylvia Brown is amazing, she knows so much and she’s so accurate and she helps so many people’.
*You: ‘Oh yes, I agree, I’ve seen her to. She’s really good at it. All those in the know say she’s one of the best when it comes to cold reading. You can tell she’s been doing it a long time. She’s really convincing. I bet it takes ages to learn to do it so well’.
*
Believer: ‘Yeah, I saw her once and… excuse me, what did you say? Cold what?’
You: ‘I was just saying, she’s really really good at cold reading. Definitely one of the best. Really convincing. Her act almost had me fooled for a while! All credit to her, she really knows what she’s doing’.
Believer: ‘What do you mean? ‘Act’? What are you taking about? You don’t think she’s for real?’.
You: ‘No no no, she is for real. Of course. That’s what I’m saying. She’s really good and skilled at cold reading’.
Believer: ‘I don’t understand. What’s cold reading?’
*You: ‘Cold reading? You haven’t heard? That’s what she’s doing. That’s how it’s done. How she does the whole ‘psychic’ thing. That’s why she’s so convincing. Because she’s really good. I admire her technique.’
*
Believer: ‘I don’t get it. You saying she’s not psychic?’
You: ‘Well, I’m saying she looks psychic. And she does it very well. Like I said, she had me well and truly fooled for a while, so all credit to her. And even now when I know how she does it, I still say she’s one of the best at cold reading.’
Believer: ‘There you go again with this ‘cold reading’. What the hell are you talking about?’
*You: ‘Look it up. It’s all over the internet. Just google on ‘cold reading’, and you’ll find it all explained. How you can talk and look like you’re psychic. Anyone can learn it. But like anything else, it takes time to learn how to be really good. And Sylvia is pretty good at it. It’s amazing when you know how it’s done.’
*
Or something along those lines. Now, as it happens, Sylvia Brown - whatever other merits she may have - is not actually very good at cold reading, and her technique is appallingly poor. But that’s beside the point.
I know the OP said the friend was not primarily interested in the ‘fortune-telling’ aspect of Sylkia’s work, but the above is a pretty good generalised template for handling any discussion of anyone who uses cold reading techniques on TV. It gets a lot further than the ‘yes it is’ ‘no it isn’t’ type of discussion. Professional psychis know how to handle attacks and criticism. Praise is far harder to handle.