Lisa Williams New show same Stichk

SRW

Master Poster
SRW
Joined
Jul 25, 2001
Messages
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Gotta love On Demand, I can watch a show at anytime. So after the Today Show did a Fluff Piece on Lisa Wild Hair Williams, I was able to watch her show. She is on Lifetime, and does cold readings and ghost hunting. She even has a tin foil hat to keep the dead from bothering her when she does not want to pretend to talk to them.

When The Today Show did the tease for her appearance, I was hoping it was going to be a setup and they were going to expose her as a fake. No such luck. And she is such an easy target, not even and very good cold reader.

She did bring closure to an Iraq war widow sick sick sick.
 
SRW, how do you explain her ability to uncover details she could not have known about that Marine? Are you saying she is a hoax? And if so, shouldn't you try and find proof of that first before calling closure to a widow sick? Just wanted to comment...
 
I think when she walks away with Randi's million dollars she can be said to have been proven genuine. I predict that she can't and won't.
 
reasonmusic said:
SR, how do you explain her ability to uncover details she could not have known about that Marine? Are you saying she is a hoax? And if so, shouldn't you try and find proof of that first before calling closure to a widow sick? Just wanted to comment...
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Yes I am jaded, I cannot explain the specifies method she uses to get her answers, however I have seen people with no psychic ability do the same thing. If she is the real deal set her take the jref challenge, for her to convince me I would need to see some real ability that is demonstrable not fake.
 
reasonmusic said:
SRW, how do you explain her ability to uncover details she could not have known about that Marine? Are you saying she is a hoax? And if so, shouldn't you try and find proof of that first before calling closure to a widow sick? Just wanted to comment...
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No, you have it backwards. Since others can do the same thing without psychic ability, it is up to her to show she is real.

You make a positive claim here, though: "details she could not have known."

How do you know she could not have known them?
 
Just look at her commercial. At one point, she asks a guy, "Who's David?" and his jaw drops. So he's thinking, "Hey! She knew my father's/grandfather's/uncle's/whoever's name was David!"

No, she didn't--SHE ASKED YOU WHO DAVID WAS!!!

Same old cold reading crap.
 
Yeah, same old cold reading crap is right. But I do like her hair! I guess the network hopes her "hipness" (does that make sense?) will catch hold of viewers. I saw one show. Bleh. Her show, that is, not her funky hair!
 
NO abilty?

SRW, You said you have seen people with NO psychic ability do this same thing? How in the hell does that work? If you're saying they find out info beforehand, then that doesn't count. Lifetime makes a disclaimer about no one having prior knowledge before the taping of the show. You're saying she is guilty until proven innocent, right? She is not legit until she comes to James for his money?
 
reasonmusic said:
SRW, You said you have seen people with NO psychic ability do this same thing? How in the hell does that work? If you're saying they find out info beforehand, then that doesn't count. Lifetime makes a disclaimer about no one having prior knowledge before the taping of the show.
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She doesn't need to find out information beforehand. Read up on Cold Reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

I gave an example of this above, where a question about someone was turned around in the person's mind to mean that she had given the information, not been given.

People who have done this without any psychic abilities whatsoever include Mark Edward, Banachek, and even the Amaz!ng Randi himself.
 
reasonmusic said:
SRW, You said you have seen people with NO psychic ability do this same thing? How in the hell does that work? If you're saying they find out info beforehand, then that doesn't count. Lifetime makes a disclaimer about no one having prior knowledge before the taping of the show. You're saying she is guilty until proven innocent, right? She is not legit until she comes to James for his money?
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(Ooh, a disclaimer from Lifetime - with a world wide reputation for journalistic integrity well above that of , say, the New York Times - well it must be true then.....NOT!)
Very good, you finally figured it out. Feel free to search the many threads here explaining this to incompetants/wanna believers. Yes, if someone \claims they can talk to the dead, read minds, bend spoons, got picked up by a flying saucer, can change lead into golld (heh-heh slipped that one in to make a point - it can be done - just need a decent accellerator and some lead.............................and an awful lot of money - and you can knock a few protons off the lead, making it gold. You lose money -big time- but you do make gold out of lead. For lots more money you can turn lead to silver!!). Key is, (try to stop me if you have heard this one - if not follow it closely) extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
That translates as "just saying it doesn't make it true", "the fact that some of us can't duplicate it doesn't mean none of us can", and "you make the claim, you gotta prove it - and demonstrating it in uncontrolled conditions isn't doing it."
 
These people take money for their supposed abilities. Since they also tend to take a LOT of money I do believe they should furnish proof of their professed abilities. Unfortunately, believers do not ask for any reliable proof before paying these people money they sometimes can't easily afford. And the networks and the media just promote and promote and promote these people. That is very sad, I believe. And the trend just seems to be growing.
 
Sarcasm

SRW

I came to this forum with an open mind. I am truly considering your perspective, but I feel your sarcasm toward me in reference to the lifetime disclaimer makes me want to think less of you. I am sure you have seen a lot of falsehood in regards to the psychic world. But I do not think this will help your cause with newcomers. On the contrary, I wonder that it gives skeptics a bad name.

I will read up on the cold reading info. Thanks.
 
reasonmusic: you do make a good point. As skeptics, we run into this stuff so often and have to explain it so much we end up feeling like, "What, I have to go through all this AGAIN? Why don't you idiots get it?" and we tend to forget the fact that the person we're talking to may never have been exposed to those arguments before.

Also, I think we need to make it clear that the exasperation we feel is mostly targeted at the scam artists like Lisa Williams, not at people like you. When I saw an ad for Lisa Williams's show, I was livid. I was doubly so when I saw that John Edward is now on We, long after being cancelled from the Sci-Fi channel. But those audiences are hardly as sophisticated (as is evident from the normal programming fare), and so are much less likely to have encountered skeptics or learned about the concepts of skeptical thought.

The first time I saw John Edward, I could immediately tell what he was up to, and I hadn't even heard of cold reading at that point. But that's because I have been educated on critical thinking and knew a bit about how scam artists work. Someone coming into this fresh has trouble because he doesn't know what to look for.

That is where we come in. We should be educators, not agitators. Unfortunately, we're human, so it doesn't always work that way. (And it doesn't help that their dogmatic supporters, "woos" as we call them, keep coming back with the same old arguments over and over again and ignore us whenever we present rebuttals and counterarguments and explanations, and even resort to lying and namecalling...a lot of our frustration is at them as well.)

I guess what I'm saying is, we should understand your position and be patient with you; maybe you could also understand our position and what we've been through, and be patient with us, too.

After all, we're all just humans trying to find out the truth.
 
reasonmusic said:
SR, You said you have seen people with NO psychic ability do this same thing? How in the hell does that work? If you're saying they find out info beforehand, then that doesn't count. Lifetime makes a disclaimer about no one having prior knowledge before the taping of the show. You're saying she is guilty until pr oven innocent, right? She is not legit until she comes to James for his money?
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Look up cold reading as suggested. And there is no way to know if she is legit or not unless, she can do what she says she can, under controlled conditions. Therefor taking the REF challenge would be a good way for her to provide proof.
 
reasonmusic said:
SRW, You said you have seen people with NO psychic ability do this same thing? How in the hell does that work?
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As others have mentioned, SRW was talking about the art of Cold Reading.

I see that you have already been given links to some articles on the subject. If you are interested in reading about it in depth, I would recommend Ian Rowland's book "The Full Facts Bok About Cold Reading". It can be purchased on Rowland's web site, www.ianrowland.com.

If you're saying they find out info beforehand, then that doesn't count. Lifetime makes a disclaimer about no one having prior knowledge before the taping of the show.
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The show is not the place to go for an objective analysis of the show. You need to realize, the show has a vested interest in propping up the woman's purported abilities.

As far as that disclaimer goes: I believe it was "Haunting Evidence", but it was one of the many "psychic-detective" type of shows which had a similar disclaimer which was proven to be factually inaccurate (to put it nicely).

The show featured a "psychic", a "ghost hunter" and a third person (I forget what he supposedly was) which would examine "cold cases" and try to solve them.

The disclaimer in the show stated that none of the three had any prior knowledge of the cases they were investigating, prior to the taping of the shows.

It was subsequently discovered that the "psychic" had had extensive contacts with the families in the cases, sometimes for months and years prior to the taping of the show.

You're saying she is guilty until proven innocent, right? She is not legit until she comes to James for his money?
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We are saying that until she proves her abilities in a controlled environment (not through anecdotes, not through a TV show which has a vested interest in making you believe in her abilities), we do not believe she is psychic.

When a skeptic hears an extraordinary claim (such as this woman's claim to be "psychic), they adopt a provisional stance of doubt, pending evidence to the contrary.

And this woman's TV show is *not* evidence. To believe the show would be as naive as believing the woman's own press releases.
 
In fact, I would say that the show is evidence that she is not psychic. The reason why is that it looks exactly like cold reading. A real psychic should be able to perform better than that.
 
Thanks

Thanks for that good and honest reply. I am won over for your consideration and you are a credit to skeptics. Although I must admit, of all the people mentioned on this site, for some reason, I am not yet convinced Lisa Williams is a fraud. We'll just have to wait and see, won't we.
 
reasonmusic said:
Thanks for that good and honest reply. I am won over for your consideration and you are a credit to skeptics. Although I must admit, of all the people mentioned on this site, for some reason, I am not yet convinced Lisa Williams is a fraud. We'll just have to wait and see, won't we.
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One thing you might want to try: Videotape or PVR the show, and when you see a segment that you find suitably convincing of her "power," type up the transcript and post it to this thread. You'll find us all to willing to dissect it and point out the cold reading involved.
 
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