Wudang
BOFH
Also, maybe they tell everyone their passion is reading. Easy enough to paste a standard text into an email. Those who don't read don't pursue the matter, those who do think she got it right.
c.f Texas sharpshooter fallacy
How do psychic mediums know stuff about you
- Thread starter AmyW
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Also, maybe they tell everyone their passion is reading. Easy enough to paste a standard text into an email. Those who don't read don't pursue the matter, those who do think she got it right.
c.f Texas sharpshooter fallacy
Delvo
Дэлво Δε&#
Why would you "research" something you claim not to believe in by continuing to fish for excuses to believe in it?
Then just drop the act of being skeptical. Getting "freaked out" by utterly mundane dull ordinary things that you keep fishing for ways to declare supernatural is every bit as skeptical as a Creationist who comes in here saying "I'm really not religious at all and totally accept evolution, but there's just soooo much evidence of Creation at all the Creationist websites I keep going to..."
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
One does wonder how many more times "anecdotal evidence is worthless, only objective evidence obtained using the scientific method yields reliable conclusions" has to be explained to her before Amy stops going out of her way to collect yet another pointless anecdote and then bring it back here, where it is about as welcome as the presents my cats bring me, so we can tell her how worthless it is yet again.
Amy, I defended you earlier but have to now consider that you've duped me.
You've had things explained in depth and here you are again asking the same question. I think you are behaving dishonestly.
My apologies to xterra for railing against him/her earlier, I take it all back.
You've had things explained in depth and here you are again asking the same question. I think you are behaving dishonestly.
My apologies to xterra for railing against him/her earlier, I take it all back.
What that really means is that if you keep trying to test mediums you may eventually find one that dupes you successfully!
wasapi
Penultimate Amazing
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I really understand your frustration. I pretty much stopped participating in this thread, after realizing the OP wasn't learning anything, as illustrated in the repetitive type of posts and questions.
AmyW
Thinker
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Wow, how have I duped anyone? I am not trying to do anything? I am trying to debunk all of the stuff I have previously been taught. Your advice isn't going on deaf ears at all, so you're saying I am not taking it in. I was given a reading by a medium who massively hurt my self confidence and so when it seems psychics are real it freaks me out because it must then mean I am academically stupid like the medium said and therefore loose all the things I once loved. I am not trying to dupe anyone. Perhaps in reality we will never truly know if God exists and I have to live with that unknown.
AmyW
Thinker
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How have I duped you, I appreciate your words and advice. I am in a quandary, you must understand I have been in the midst of religion and spiritually for most of my life, so of course I will bring forth questions. I am sorry for my repetativeness that's OCD seeking reassurance and something Im having therapy for, not me trying to dupe anyone.
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AmyW
Thinker
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How am I not learning anything? It takes time to ascertain and embody new beliefs/non beliefs. I have been in the midst of religion for most of my life and am trying desperately to 're learn and unwrap the crap I have been taught.
AmyW
Thinker
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Because I did once believe that's why, why do you think I went to them in the first place. But it all went tits up and ending up harming my self esteem, so now I am trying to take away/destroy the **** I have been previously taught
Amy, have you read Flim-Flam (or any of James Randi's books) yet? If not, why are you waiting and still contacting psychics when you have no tools to recognize their techniques?
You now mentioned about being concerned if god exists or not. Have you looked up any of the work by Christopher Hitchens? How about Carl Sagan?
Have you looked at the wikipedia entries for logical fallacies?
Have you searched this forum for the thousands of threads similar to this one? There is so much useful information right there.
I don't think anyone here is expecting you to completely change your thought process overnight, but you are still asking the same questions you asked in your first post over and over, seemingly ignoring the thoughtful responses of everyone that answered you while still giving authority to the psychics you're in touch with. The expectation here is that you would start doing some looking on your own outside of your belief bubble (such the authors mentioned above). Making this thread was a good first step, but there's much more to go.
You now mentioned about being concerned if god exists or not. Have you looked up any of the work by Christopher Hitchens? How about Carl Sagan?
Have you looked at the wikipedia entries for logical fallacies?
Have you searched this forum for the thousands of threads similar to this one? There is so much useful information right there.
I don't think anyone here is expecting you to completely change your thought process overnight, but you are still asking the same questions you asked in your first post over and over, seemingly ignoring the thoughtful responses of everyone that answered you while still giving authority to the psychics you're in touch with. The expectation here is that you would start doing some looking on your own outside of your belief bubble (such the authors mentioned above). Making this thread was a good first step, but there's much more to go.
What documentary are you referring to? I didn't mention any in my post. If you mean the Randi one that is on Netflix, that is more about Randi's celebrity and career. It is not an introduction to critical thinking.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
What the members most hope you take away from your conversation here is a better set of intellectual tools to test claims from people claiming to be mediums, or other such supernatural claims. When you say you are in contact with prospective mediums and are still 'freaked out" by them, those members here who have tried to help you feel like they're not getting through to you, and this frustrates us.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Indeed. But I sacrificed a burnt offering of an Eggo to the toaster gods, so I'm optimistic.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Ah. A clear case of "Eggo death"...
I knew that Veronicas (a friend of mine at school) sister was, in fact, her mother; a detail she was blissfully unaware of until she reached 16. My mother told me. Was I a medium up until then?
According, again, to my mother that blind guy who sings and plays keyboards outside Marks and Spencers...... his mothers untreated gonorrhoea is the cause. I'll bet he doesn't know. Does that make me a medium?
According, again, to my mother that blind guy who sings and plays keyboards outside Marks and Spencers...... his mothers untreated gonorrhoea is the cause. I'll bet he doesn't know. Does that make me a medium?
The Shrike
Philosopher
A couple of cool examples in my family:
1) I'm already married and in my 20s when my wife points out to me that my sister (my parents' first child) had been born months too early to have been conceived on their wedding night. So much of the weirdness in my family suddenly fell into sensible place in that moment. I had just never cared to do the math between their wedding date and her birth date. This, of course, would have been common knowledge to every grown-up family friend and relative I had met in my youth, but I hadn't the foggiest notion of it.
2) My dad ~70 at the time relayed the story one night of how his mother would routinely set an extra place at her dinner table. The place setting wasn't described as something like "for all the hungry people out there tonight" or something like that. He said that his mother always said that the extra place setting was for "Brian."
Me: "Wait, did you have a brother who died in childbirth or something?!"
Dad: "No."
Me: (To myself: Holy crap, my dad has no idea that he had a brother who died in childbirth!)
^No confirmation on a long-lost uncle of mine, but it sure sounds like it to me. Healthy childbirth was by no means a given in the 1930s. If true, this is something that would've been known to all of my dad's older relatives and his parents' friends, perhaps nurses, parish priests, etc., but completely unknown to him his entire life.
xterra
So far, so good...
Apology accepted, with thanks.
For the record, I don't thing AmyW is deliberately behaving dishonestly; I think she is fighting very hard to let go of her previous belief in mediums.
Her return to the old belief is rather like probing at a sore tooth, or for a better analogy, at the socket from which the tooth has been extracted.
ETA, perhaps an even better analogy is the believer who deconverts, no longer believes in the Christian god, but can't shake the fear of hell.
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