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Are all mediums con artists then?

Interesting Ian said:
I suggest you purchase yourself a half decent dictionary and look up the word "meaningless". Either the testing produced evidence for anomalous acquisition of information, or it didn't.
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Ian, it is meaningless. It's not a case of either/or (false dichotomy). For example, if you test a psychic in a single-blind study, with odds set at 1 in 5 of them getting it right by chance, and the psychic gets it right, how does that support the psychic hypothesis?

The reason that such testing is meaningless is because it's not possible to tell whether the result was down to psychic ability or luck.

I point out that such flawed and meaningless testing is actually unfair to the psychic ;) as there's no way that their ability, if it were real, would have a chance of showing up.
 
cabby said:
I used to believe I had psychic abilities. I gave tarot readings (for free), and I consulted my spirit guide, and heard my (dead) grandmother speak to me when meditating once.

So, I would not consider the old me to be a con artist - I was not intentionally deceiving people. I honestly believed I was given the ability to interpret signs, and that I was using it for good. So I believed I was genuine, and so did plenty of other people.

However, even as I did all this, I constantly came up with questions about what I was doing, and how I managed to do it. Why could I only get instinctive flashes about things? Why could I not use this 'power' when I concentrated hard on something important? What about the times I was wrong (although they were freakishly few - even looking back as a hardened skeptic) - what happened then?

I soon realised that I was very good at picking up subliminal signals from people, or noticing things in the distance. My specialty was knowing when a driver was about to turn suddenly, or not turn where they signalled to. I could read the traffic around me uncannily. I tested myself on what external information I could possibly have noticed, and realised I am more of an expert on body language, or verbal subtleties than most.

I suffered some severe abuse from new agers and 'healers' over several years, but without this I still had a questioning nature and would have arrived where I am now anyway. The fact that others in my niche did not have any patience for my curiousness, and did not ask the same things of themselves is what finally made me take that final scary step out of the new age community. Otherwise I would still be living in la-la- land, and believing things about how my inquisitive nature was denying me an easy path in life, or my injuries and years of incredible bad fortune must be something I deserved, whether from something I had done in this life, or in another.

There are no genuine mediums. There are people with genuine intentions, but not psychic powers. There are people who could be helpful if you were discussing difficult choices you needed to make, but some friends can do that for you without the mumbo jumbo. It's a matter of reading, yes, but not reading cards, or signs, or what spirits show you - it's a matter of reading the environment and the person before you.

And then there are the con artists who read the newspapers, audience listings, area information, web sites, etc to glean what they need - as well as reading the people around them.
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That's very interesting. So when you consulted your spirit guide what do you think was really happening?

I've often wondered if the phemominion(sp?) could be explained by enviromental perception.
 
Bob Klase said:
And what does the believer side of you believe (or not believe)?
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Well i've seen enough to know that somethings going on so i guess a part of that belief comes out of something that i percieve as being miraculus(sp?). Alos i think a part of me wants to believe it because at the end of the day doesn't everyone?
 
Pal2 said:
That's very interesting. So when you consulted your spirit guide what do you think was really happening?

I've often wondered if the phemominion(sp?) could be explained by enviromental perception.
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There are things I am still not certain about, but then, I am not a scientist of any description. :D
When I consulted with my spirit guide, I believed I heard a voice from somewhere just behind my right shoulder, speaking to me. I guess this could be my own thoughts, as even today I have a tendancy to 'chat' to myself to work things out in my thought process, but I don't assign the 'other' voice to another person/entity.
 
Pal2 said:
at the end of the day doesn't everyone?
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No. not any more.
Not after the abuse I suffered regarding worthiness for abilities, karma, and deservedness of anything bad that happens to me.
 
Interesting Ian said:
I haven't kept the programmes so am unable to provide details now.
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Gee, you could read through the link that John gave you. It describes each episode and test. That would refresh your memory and you could provide the information that people have asked for.

Or you could post something inane.
 
cabby said:
There are things I am still not certain about, but then, I am not a scientist of any description. :D
When I consulted with my spirit guide, I believed I heard a voice from somewhere just behind my right shoulder, speaking to me. I guess this could be my own thoughts, as even today I have a tendancy to 'chat' to myself to work things out in my thought process, but I don't assign the 'other' voice to another person/entity.
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I get that sometimes, where i hear voices inside my head. Although i do suffer from several different mental illnesses. :D
 
John Jackson said:
Ian, it is meaningless. It's not a case of either/or (false dichotomy). For example, if you test a psychic in a single-blind study, with odds set at 1 in 5 of them getting it right by chance, and the psychic gets it right, how does that support the psychic hypothesis?
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Let's just ignore everything they said shall we? Anything to support your ridiculous interpretation.

And how many 1 in 5's should we ignore before you would come to the conclusion that something interesting is happening.

No don't bother answering.

I watched the programmes. I can't give a definitive statement that cheating wasn't going on, obviously. But no way could they have produced what they did by guessing. Now I am not interested in debating the bleeding obvious. Go and preach to your fellow skeptics because they're the only ones who will be interested in hearing such absurdities. The rest of the human race will simply move on, accept the reality of this phenomena, and ask themselves what the implications are for what it implies about human beings and our ultimate relationship to reality (well, at least the intelligent ones will).
 
Pal2 said:
I get that sometimes, where i hear voices inside my head. Although i do suffer from several different mental illnesses. :D
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I don't.
Although I did suffer from major post natal depression, which blended nicely into undiagnosed abused wife syndrome.
 
Just as a side note. I did come up with one therory. Mediums claim that spirits can always hear us and that the problem is we can't hear them when they talk to us. So i figured if i spoke to a dead relative before i went to see a medium, for example i asked a question, the medium would be able to give me an answer.

Any thoughts?
 
cabby said:
I don't.
Although I did suffer from major post natal depression, which blended nicely into undiagnosed abused wife syndrome.
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Oh i am sorry to hear that. It was abuse that caused my illnesses. :(
 
Ian,

You have let your desire for psychic ability to be true hamper your rational processes. This was a TV programme that was inherently biased, the tests were deeply flawed, the programmes were clearly edited down, there was going to be a "winner" by design, and 1 in 5 tests or not - none of the "psychics" scored consistently anyway.

If you consider yourself a deep thinker who's looking for the truth of reality, well I'm afraid you've a long way to go.

I explained confirmation bias in my commentary - perhaps you should start with that. ;)

I alluded to 1 decent result. A psychic named Diane Lazarus did 2 find the body tests where she did remarkably well. Of course we can't rule out collusion of some sort because the tests and conditions were flawed, but I happen to know that Prof. Chris French is going to invite Diane Lazarus for proper scientific testing for this specific ability in the near future. What will be truly interesting is whether she accepts.

If she passes proper testing then I will accept it - I have no emotional need not to.



Edit - silly spelling mistake.
 
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Pal2 said:
Just as a side note. I did come up with one therory. Mediums claim that spirits can always hear us and that the problem is we can't hear them when they talk to us. So i figured if i spoke to a dead relative before i went to see a medium, for example i asked a question, the medium would be able to give me an answer.

Any thoughts?
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Why don't you try it out?

I think you will find that your message will not be repeated back to you, unless you feed the 'psychic' some clues, or give them leeway on their responses to you.
 
John Jackson, you fail to understand this fact. If Ian saw it on TV, then it MUST be true.
 
Diane Lazarus did well at hide and seek,if we rule out collusion etc. for the sake of example,so people will say(Ian)she is psychic.But why then couldnt she "see" a pair of clogs in a box? Why does psychic power fail every participant on that occasion,and on the occasion of naming John Mcririck(sp?) whilst blindfold? Hmm?
I have emailed Diane Lazarus regarding the $1 million dollar challenge,she hasn't replied.
 
thaiboxerken said:
John Jackson, you fail to understand this fact. If Ian saw it on TV, then it MUST be true.
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Oh, I hadn't thought of that. :(

Does that mean that I'm a sKeptic and not a skeptic then? Or worse still... not even a sceptic.:eek:

Oh dear, it's worse than I thought. :D
 
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