The use of the term "cold-reading" seems to prevent you from understanding what we are saying, so I think we should simply stop using the term and use a description instead. Our claim is that the pattern of asking questions and making statements that Rosemary exhibited makes it likely that she will be able to make statements that are perceived as correct by the sitter.
To answer your questions about percentages....I decided to put numbers to these guesses in order to prevent waffling about what you would consider "likely" or "unlikely". It's a useful exercise to try and figure out how to assign a number and range - basically you can start by estimating the frequency with which these characteristics would be present in the population under consideration (e.g. male who was elderly when he died).
You found the following statements unusual - "hits" that lead you to think that Rosemary Altea has special abilities. (I'm going on memory so the words may not be exact.)
"He was thin with a gaunt face."
"I see two special rosebushes."
"She died from cancer."
Based on the kinds of things that you have accepted as "hits" in this thread, the statement "she died from cancer" would be accepted as correct if she had cancer when she died. And it would probably be accepted as at least a partial hit if she had cancer at some point in her life, especially if it was near the end of her life (say a year or two). Using the table that I referenced, her lifetime risk of cancer was 42 percent, and if it occurred was most likely to occur when she was older. So the chance that Rosemary's statement would be correct was around 40 percent.
From my own experience and from published research, most elderly people lose weight when they are ill. And the normal changes to the skin (thinning and sagging) and uneven growth of facial features (continued growth of bony prominences, such as the nose) as we age increase the likelihood that the word "gaunt" can be an apt description. I would guess that the description "slim with a gaunt face" could be made to be correct 60 to 90 percent of the time (taking into consideration that only one of the two needs to be correct to be considered a "hit").
It is more difficult to assign a number to the rosebush hit. We do tend to have special routines - an example would be celebrating the birth of each grandchild by planting a tree. And after someone has recovered from an illness that would limit their activity, it seems more likely that if they exert themselves, it will be for something that is important, rather than trivial. Plus we are more likely to recall events that had some importance attached to them. So that the daughter recalled that he planted the rosebush suggests it may have been a memorable event to her, and because he exerted himself (after having a problem with his heart) it suggests that planting the rosebush was important to him for some reason. And if it was important it suggests that it was something that would be repeated. I'm going to guess that if the sitter mentions an event, like the rosebush planting, that the psychic gets a hit by mentioning the number two at least one time in five. And we see from analyzing readings by psychics (including Rosemary's) that many statements are made and a small number are selected by the sitter as "hits", consistent with the idea that a lower probability statement will be found to be correct in many of the readings.
Which were the experiences you had, and which is the general level of awareness involved? What do you think about it? Do you feel so aware that you could question where is the "real reality"?
The ones that I think you specifically mentioned - lucid dreaming and OBE. I've had other experiences that typically get put under the umbrella of paranormal, as well. I'm not sure why I've had so many of these experiences, as most of the time they are not something that I purposely forced or learned. For example, I lucid dreamed naturally from when I was a child. I did experiment and practice ways to induce and control the experience on my own, but it wasn't until later that I learned that people could also teach themselves to do it (with variable results).
Yes, some of these are so real that I cannot answer which is the "real reality". Some I've only been able to answer by looking for evidence or testimony (e.g. whether my mother recalls a particular event) that would make it very unlikely to have occurred in reality.
I bet that just a few here had or have these experiences, or at least have a minimum interest on them , as to try to induce them themselves. And I risk saying that the ones who have had, are not presenting as completely dismissive to psi and paranormal.
Some/most of the experiences are uncommon in general. If I didn't have them naturally, I don't think I'd necessarily invest much effort into trying to induce them. I don't see anything special about what I've gained from them compared to other ways of gaining insight (although admittedly it's not like I can consider these things separately), other than first-hand experience. There's lots of other things that I don't have first-hand experience with (like bungee jumping).
And which are the alternate constructions you place upon them in general Linda?
That they reveal assumptions that we have made about how our minds work that are wrong. Taking OBE's as an example....instead of concluding that our mind is separate from our body and has left the body during this experience, it reveals the assumption that we always perceive the world from the perspective of what light is entering our eyes. Once we discard this assumption, we realize that we really operate within a 2-1/2 dimensional mental visualization which is intimately tied to our memory. For example, right now I am sitting behind a TV in the middle of the room and my youngest daughter is sitting on the other side watching TV and talking to me. Later on, when recalling this episode, I will think that I saw my daughter watching TV, but in actuality, I have not seen her at all. It's just that my mental visualization from what is going on around me allows me to view the scene from various perspectives. Trying to choose a perspective so that I will be looking at myself induces a sensation of dizziness/nausea (no jokes about my appearance
), though.
Its not about producing evidence in favor of my impression, but rather ask for evidence about cold reading being behind Altea´s hits. Which would be the alternate construct for the rosebush issue? I´m really interested in this one. Perhaps Larsen should produce a special graph just on this little issue.
You want evidence that Altea's pattern of asking questions and making statements is likely to lead to some statements that are perceived as correct? I hope that I was able to do that above.
Science is walking side by side with the materialistic framework, so if parsimony is used to decide whether between the two competing theories is the most suitable, most likely the one that is outside or contradicting the current paradigm will be cut off, and this specifically generally dictates the trends in researching. Talk about funding priorities. Of course it does not imply that no one will be able to research what is against the paradigm. But you know how science in general treats tre "fringe" group of researchers.
The two aren't independent, though. The "fringe" group tends to be, by definition, ideas with low explanatory power dealing with something that is already explicable by something with high explanatory power - i.e. those areas least likely to be fruitful. They are on the fringe not because of an a priori assumption that it's not useful, but from an a posteriori demonstration that it's not useful.
I did not state that it IS outside. But,If psi does exist, possibly yes, it is outside our current framework in my opinion. No one has a vague idea about quantifying mind and its activities, and perhaps it will never be possible. But again, I might be mistaken. There are no known physical forces that could be behind psi, other than the claimed and highly rejected bio-energies, qi, and those the skeptics consider woo stuff.
I meant that our explanations for phenomena that are presented for evidence of psi have fit within our current framework or have not been demonstrated to necessarily be outside our current framework.
Oh it has been shown to be compatible with the naturalistic approach? How?! This is interesting stuff. For materialistic I mean from the contrary of Idealistic. Those two are the extremes. Reductionism has been kind of a paradigm, specially in physics and biology. The more you reduce a thing the more you are understanding it in its most basic levels. The opposite would be "Wholism" or Holism, which is the principle that everything as to be taken as one great thing, that understanding is achieved when you take everything as a whole. So as far as I know, reductionism copes with materialism and Holism with idealism. What do you think about it?
Both reductionism and holism are part of naturalism. Idealism does not contain enough precision for the qualifiers "reductionism" or "holism" to apply, unless by "holism" you mean "vague".
By science´s perspective. They do not even know from where to start understanding and measuring mind. Let alone formulating a theory for psi and paranormal using the current scientific framework. So , a naming a big failure is being kind.
You really need to get out more. Science is making tremendous progress in understanding and measuring mind.
Ah but they make the person believe the experience! Or not? And please define a believer.
I think first-hand experience of any experience makes it easier for someone to understand. A believer is one who thinks that the experience is evidence of a mind separate from the body. Or alternatively, that our sensations are always an accurate judge of reality (i.e. our senses cannot fool us).
Linda
