Princeton Nukes ESP Department

[omegablue]

But she has other statements that are wrong guesses.

Yes I know.

Why can't this also be a guess that merely turned out correct?

It is not impossible, winning the lotto is possible but not likely at all. Her hit about the rosebush if a lucky guess....hell, what is the chance of that? Not near 50% as suggested above. If i´m dowsing for a specific name from a telephone list which contains a hundred million names, could you say that I have 50% of chance of being correct , just because the only possibilities is being either wrong or right?? Either she spent her luck of winning the lotto by guessing this thing right or she deliberately set-up the whole thing.

 

[CFLarsen]

It is not impossible, winning the lotto is possible but not likely at all. Her hit about the rosebush if a lucky guess....hell, what is the chance of that? Not near 50% as suggested above. If i´m dowsing for a specific name from a telephone list which contains a hundred million names, could you say that I have 50% of chance of being correct , just because the only possibilities is being either wrong or right?? Either she spent her luck of winning the lotto by guessing this thing right or she deliberately set-up the whole thing.

But Altea didn't say a specific name. She threw out a guess.

She has exactly a 50% chance of being right: Either it is two rosebushes or it isn't.

If you know she cheats in several situations, why do you have any reason to believe she could be real in other situations?

She could be real in those situations where she isn't caught cheating?

(You left that out, and I think I know why)

 

[omegablue]

Having been reading this thread and in the interest of avoiding it repeating itself.

Ok Omegablue, Ersby gave an explanation for the data which explains it without introducing any new mechanisms. You said it was ok but not certain.

So now I want to know what your explanation is and why it's more certain than Ersby's.

If by reading my last posts did not suffice for you to know what I think about it, i´ll try it right now again.

By reading the excerpt of the CNN transcript about the issue, you would see that Altea did not fish for this information like Ersby suggested on his examples. Simply this. Now my explanation is that we have two possibilities:

A) Set-up (fraud);
B) Psychic Powers (wooooo)

As the bullsh!t episode suggests, Altea at least sometimes cheats through her agent. And knowing this, I´m much more inclined to go with A for the rosebush case. Note that I left out cold reading or hot reading from my list of possibilities. Hope I did clarify my position to you.

 

[Kage]

But she has other statements that are wrong guesses.

Yes I know.




It is not impossible, winning the lotto is possible but not likely at all. Her hit about the rosebush if a lucky guess....hell, what is the chance of that? Not near 50% as suggested above. If i´m dowsing for a specific name from a telephone list which contains a hundred million names, could you say that I have 50% of chance of being correct , just because the only possibilities is being either wrong or right?? Either she spent her luck of winning the lotto by guessing this thing right or she deliberately set-up the whole thing.

You are assuming that she was picking from among a huge number of guesses (like were there tulips or something else) when in fact she was guessing with an out. People rarely have a single rosebush, and were the guess to be wrong she could simply say that she was getting something about two, a pair, or something like that. Saying that what she did was like picking names out of a phone book is missing the fact that she is making safe, educated guesses. Had she said something along the line of --- your mom's only brother pete planted 4 rosebushes then your analogy would be more accurate.

 

[omegablue]

But Altea didn't say a specific name. She threw out a guess.

Throwing out a name is not throwing out a guess by definition?

She has exactly a 50% chance of being right: Either it is two rosebushes or it isn't.

This is laughable to say the least. Holy bleep Larsen... even one of the two rosebushes planted by the dead guy is more logical than you now. The above statement is not even arguable, it is simply gobbledygook.

If you know she cheats in several situations, why do you have any reason to believe she could be real in other situations?

She could be real in those situations where she isn't caught cheating?

Lets say psychic powers do exist, and in fact after they prove it to the eyes of science, the observed effect is indeed small. Why it would be impossible for a psychic (a genuine one supposing that the powers do exist) to cheat in order to make the powers appear to be greater than they already are? Do you think all psychics would be good hearted and all the way honest?

(You left that out, and I think I know why)

Sigh. Again, you and your blind thirst for "exposing frauds" like me huh? This is getting simply tedious and pointless. What the heck is your point, viking fella?

 

[omegablue]

You are assuming that she was picking from among a huge number of guesses (like were there tulips or something else) when in fact she was guessing with an out. People rarely have a single rosebush, and were the guess to be wrong she could simply say that she was getting something about two, a pair, or something like that. Saying that what she did was like picking names out of a phone book is missing the fact that she is making safe, educated guesses. Had she said something along the line of --- your mom's only brother pete planted 4 rosebushes then your analogy would be more accurate.

Ok, so by definition , having two rosebushes is the default situation you see in real life? Like we could set the odds to 50% or more? It doesn´t make any sense.

If I say to you: "My aunt died yesterday, she was taking her daughter to school, and after that she visited one of her customers, and then she suddenly passed away according to what an old guy that was just passing by told me."

Throw out a guess, and explain me why this guess would have a great great chance of being true, and then let us compare that to the rosebush issue.

Still I do not think it was a lucky guess, but a set-up.

 

[Ersby]

Well, you got me. I can't demonstrate with CERTAINTY that Altea was cold reading. So you dismiss it. Similarly, I can't demonstrate with CERTAINTY that you are actually a believer in Altea's powers and are offering the "fraud" explanation only because (a) it makes you look like a critical thinker and (b) you know it is highly unlikely.

By reading the excerpt of the CNN transcript about the issue, you would see that Altea did not fish for this information like Ersby suggested on his examples.

I did not suggest this. She didn't have to fish for information - the sitter gave it to her.

One more time, boiled down to individual parts:

a) sitter offers information about an event
b) medium suggests that this event happened twice

This is the pattern we observe in the other examples I gave. You seem to think that there is some big difference in quality between Altea's guess and the other guesses. There aren't. They clearly follow the same pattern. You choose to ignore that, or pretend otherwise. That is your choice.

Now my explanation is that we have two possibilities:

A) Set-up (fraud);
B) Psychic Powers (wooooo)

I've seen this before: someone (a believer) ignores the obvious explanation to a phenomenon (in this case, guesswork) but rather then seem like a gullible believer, they consider a much less likely explanation (fraud). So they then explore this less likely explanation, which turns out to be highly unlikely, and then they decide it must be the third practically impossible option (voices from the dead/superpsi/whatever). They come to this conclusion, having "debated" it in their mind, and so their self-image of a skeptic is intact.

Hmph.

 

[thaiboxerken]

I think Omega is completely ignoring the fact that Altea is simply getting a person to tell you something about themselves and then taking credit for "knowing" it.

For some reason, I get the feeling that Omega keeps ignoring the power of a good cold-reading. At any rate, it is entirely possible that Rosemary used other methods of fraud to gleam information about her victims. She was caught doing so on P&T's "Bull's hit" TV show.

 

[Baron Samedi]

Ok, so by definition , having two rosebushes is the default situation you see in real life? Like we could set the odds to 50% or more? It doesn´t make any sense.

If I say to you: "My aunt died yesterday, she was taking her daughter to school, and after that she visited one of her customers, and then she suddenly passed away according to what an old guy that was just passing by told me."

Throw out a guess, and explain me why this guess would have a great great chance of being true, and then let us compare that to the rosebush issue.

Still I do not think it was a lucky guess, but a set-up.

Here's a guess to throw out there:

I see your aunt, and she's showing me two.. two... is there some greater significance with two clients perhaps? Did she see two clients that day, or was about to see a second client and wasn't able to make it, or was there a second person there when she met with the first client, or was this the second time that week or this month that she met with this client, or did a client cancel that day so she was able to see that first client? What, none of this is making sense to you? Don't worry, you can think it over in the back of your mind and we can come back to this later when you realize what this second client means.

Based on this phrasing, I'm guarenteed to never miss. If it looks like I miss, I just blame it on the person I'm reading for.

Remember, these people get paid by the minute ($4.95 per minute for the cheap ones), so they're trained to keep you on the phone as long as possible. One trick is to throw out these small comments and fish around for a while. At some point I find a hit which allows the person to be fooled by me. Plus the longer we talk the more the client feels a 'rapport' with me, and easier conned by my tricks. But the biggest one, the longer I talk, the more money I make.

 

[Kage]

Here's a guess to throw out there:

I see your aunt, and she's showing me two.. two... is there some greater significance with two clients perhaps? Did she see two clients that day, or was about to see a second client and wasn't able to make it, or was there a second person there when she met with the first client, or was this the second time that week or this month that she met with this client, or did a client cancel that day so she was able to see that first client? What, none of this is making sense to you? Don't worry, you can think it over in the back of your mind and we can come back to this later when you realize what this second client means.

Based on this phrasing, I'm guarenteed to never miss. If it looks like I miss, I just blame it on the person I'm reading for.

Remember, these people get paid by the minute ($4.95 per minute for the cheap ones), so they're trained to keep you on the phone as long as possible. One trick is to throw out these small comments and fish around for a while. At some point I find a hit which allows the person to be fooled by me. Plus the longer we talk the more the client feels a 'rapport' with me, and easier conned by my tricks. But the biggest one, the longer I talk, the more money I make.

Beat me to it. Two is a very popular number for psychics given that a majority of people think that the number 2 is significant. I wasn't saying that she said there was exactly two rose bushes. If there had been more she would have said that oh, that is why I am seeing a lot of them. Had there not been two she would have talked about doing two things with them etc. You are correct that she may have set the whole thing up, but I do not think that this was such an incredible hit that that was the only possibility.

 

[CFLarsen]

Throwing out a name is not throwing out a guess by definition?

Of course it is, but throwing out a specific name is a hell of a lot more risky, than throwing out a guess that there is two rosebushes, once you have been informed that there are rosebushes involved.

Never forget that Altea doesn't say anything about the rosebushes until the sitter mentions it.

This is laughable to say the least. Holy bleep Larsen... even one of the two rosebushes planted by the dead guy is more logical than you now. The above statement is not even arguable, it is simply gobbledygook.

Not at all. She throws out a guess, she has 50% chance of being right. Either it is two rosebushes or it isn't.

Lets say psychic powers do exist, and in fact after they prove it to the eyes of science, the observed effect is indeed small. Why it would be impossible for a psychic (a genuine one supposing that the powers do exist) to cheat in order to make the powers appear to be greater than they already are? Do you think all psychics would be good hearted and all the way honest?

That doesn't answer the question. Why would she cheat, if she has real powers? To enhance a very weak effect?

Do you understand what you are saying here? You accept that Altea is sometimes a fraud, only to point to those situations where we can't say if she is a fraud, because we don't have enough information.

You are giving Altea a carte blanche to cheat:

If she cheats, and she is found out, you shrug it off - she could be real anyway.

If she cheats, and she is not found out, you take that as evidence that she could be a real psychic.

Sigh. Again, you and your blind thirst for "exposing frauds" like me huh? This is getting simply tedious and pointless. What the heck is your point, viking fella?

Why do you have a problem with exposing frauds?

You are constantly dancing around the issue, avoiding pertinent questions. Stop playing games and answer the questions that are put to you, when they are put to you.

Still I do not think it was a lucky guess, but a set-up.

What would be a lucky guess, then?

 

[Zep]

Thought this thread was about PEAR being liquidised...

 

[CFLarsen]

Thought this thread was about PEAR being liquidised...

Going down the toilet. Same thing.

 

[Moochie]

Going down the toilet. Same thing.

Well, I hope it's not being recycled.

M.

 

[omegablue]

Well, you got me. I can't demonstrate with CERTAINTY that Altea was cold reading.

So, if I was as rigorous regarding evidence as you are, then we had to be done over here, and period! It would be put up or shut up. But ok, even if this off-topic discussion is getting “a bit” boring, I´ll try showing you again that you are just assuming, and not doing anything nearly as rational as you may think of. In fact I could call bullbleepings over you too, you are being to silly suggesting that by discussing this problem with you , i´m being a believer in Altea´s psychic powers.

So you dismiss it. Similarly, I can't demonstrate with CERTAINTY that you are actually a believer in Altea's powers and are offering the "fraud" explanation only because (a) it makes you look like a critical thinker and (b) you know it is highly unlikely.

Yes, again you fail to demonstrate something through your biased “critical thinking” and intimidation artifices. Bullbleep over here too please.

I did not suggest this. She didn't have to fish for information - the sitter gave it to her.

You did suggest that she used the same methods of your vague examples.

One more time, boiled down to individual parts:

a) sitter offers information about an event

Simply wrong, the sitter did not offer just the rosebush part, it was inserted in the setence and it is very hard for the cheater to spot the specific part to go for a lucky guess. I mean, the chances are really small, so I may call for fraud through set-up as being way way more tenable. In your examples the cheater keeps askin to fish for the specific information in order to throw out a general guess with a lot of possible outs.

b) medium suggests that this event happened twice

She did not suggest , she stated firmly that there was two. And there was, and set-up is clear cut for me as she did it before like on the bulsh!t episode. So I think suggesting that was cold reading, in my opinion is not tenable in this case, and it appears to you that this opinion of mine is a heresy to your already established set of beliefs about cold reading. I suspect cold reading is not nearly as effective as you might naively think of.

This is the pattern we observe in the other examples I gave. You seem to think that there is some big difference in quality between Altea's guess and the other guesses. There aren't.

There are! Those fuzzy generalities has a lot of alternative scape routes. This rosebush not, either it is or its not the right number. It is not relater to “the number of men of her life” , or “two loved persons” and other fuzzy stuff. No , I cannot agree, and if you want to keep discussing it further , it is your choice as it has no importance at all to this thread and only shows that we have different points of view towards something that is not provable nor demonstrable through unquestionable ways.

They clearly follow the same pattern. You choose to ignore that, or pretend otherwise. That is your choice.

This is just your impression about what I am doing. I´m not ignoring anything but I do not agree with you and again you suggest that i´m ignoring, being a believer and etc etc, just because I do not share your view about this.

I've seen this before: someone (a believer) ignores the obvious explanation to a phenomenon (in this case, guesswork) but rather then seem like a gullible believer, they consider a much less likely explanation (fraud).

Much less likely? Ask Penn and Teller and see if they share your points of view, and ask them the why. Seriously, if you really think about it, then it is your choice, I think you are wrong, and this discussion could go ad infinitum here. Anyways, I am not saying that Altea is paranormal, oooh hell, i just dont think that cold reading is that powerful as you skeptics naively think just because Randi tells you. This is simply a sad case for you all. Sorry.

So they then explore this less likely explanation, which turns out to be highly unlikely, and then they decide it must be the third practically impossible option (voices from the dead/superpsi/whatever). They come to this conclusion, having "debated" it in their mind, and so their self-image of a skeptic is intact.

The same problem, you think that your set of beliefs inherited from you dear skeptic gurus are right, and I think this is bullbleep, clearly. The extent which you imagine you can push cold reading as alternative explanations is really fringe and dubious, and you agreed that you cant prove it with certainty so cut the crap off. What is the big deal? I´m sorry but you are the one being a believer here.

 

[omegablue]

I think Omega is completely ignoring the fact that Altea is simply getting a person to tell you something about themselves and then taking credit for "knowing" it.

For some reason, I get the feeling that Omega keeps ignoring the power of a good cold-reading. At any rate, it is entirely possible that Rosemary used other methods of fraud to gleam information about her victims. She was caught doing so on P&T's "Bull's hit" TV show.

Do me a favor kenny, read my latest posts and see my opinion about the Penn And Teller exposure on Altea´s cheating. Do not simply say what you want to say without some reasonable basis.

 

[omegablue]

Here's a guess to throw out there:

I see your aunt, and she's showing me two.. two... is there some greater significance with two clients perhaps? Did she see two clients that day, or was about to see a second client and wasn't able to make it, or was there a second person there when she met with the first client, or was this the second time that week or this month that she met with this client, or did a client cancel that day so she was able to see that first client? What, none of this is making sense to you? Don't worry, you can think it over in the back of your mind and we can come back to this later when you realize what this second client means.

Based on this phrasing, I'm guarenteed to never miss. If it looks like I miss, I just blame it on the person I'm reading for.

Remember, these people get paid by the minute ($4.95 per minute for the cheap ones), so they're trained to keep you on the phone as long as possible. One trick is to throw out these small comments and fish around for a while. At some point I find a hit which allows the person to be fooled by me. Plus the longer we talk the more the client feels a 'rapport' with me, and easier conned by my tricks. But the biggest one, the longer I talk, the more money I make.

But this example of yours if compared to Altea´s statement is inadequate. She stated firmly that there was TWO ROSEBUSHES and did not play this game you suggested above. There was room for missing, but yours, as you suggested, doesnt. I´m not saying that Altea do not use this kind of game you suggested above, i´m just trying to show some people here that cold reading might not be as powerful as they think it is just because their dear favourite magicians tells them so. So I could suspect fraud through set-up would be way more likely in this case, and psychic powers seems to be dubous on and on, as Altea was exposed by P&T on some of her cheats. I hope you understand my points, even if you do not agree personally.

 

[Baron Samedi]

But this example of yours if compared to Altea´s statement is inadequate. She stated firmly that there was TWO ROSEBUSHES and did not play this game you suggested above. There was room for missing, but yours, as you suggested, doesnt. I´m not saying that Altea do not use this kind of game you suggested above, i´m just trying to show some people here that cold reading might not be as powerful as they think it is just because their dear favourite magicians tells them so. So I could suspect fraud through set-up would be way more likely in this case, and psychic powers seems to be dubous on and on, as Altea was exposed by P&T on some of her cheats. I hope you understand my points, even if you do not agree personally.

Oh, certainly, I can see your point. Under my list of possible scenarios, I have:

A: Truly talks to the dead
B: Fluked out with a guess due to cold reading
C: Outright fraud/hot reading

If I had to put probabilities to each, I would say {0.00000001, 70%, 30%}. I can actually see how fraud may be a possibility. I'm sure that Larry King does not let random people get on the air and talk, otherwise you'll have drunken college students phoning up all the time to say that they like those photos of Britney Spears in the limo, or just saying that the Broncos suck. There has to be some sort of pre-screening done for these shows, and since we do not know this process, and who's involved, this opens the door to trickery. There may be some way that during the prescreening process, the caller already told the story, but that first time she mentioned two rose bushes. So Altea seeing someone holding up two fingers wasn't the dead father, but her manager who did the pre-screening.

I lean towards cold reading because the statement she makes isn't as definite as you state. Remember, she said

ALTEA: May I just say there -- you mentioned a rosebush, and he holds up his hand and tells me that there were two special rosebushes. You only mentioned one, and he tells me that there were two.

Altea just says two in a very ambiguous way. She herself does not say how or why or even when there were two rosebushes, the caller answers that for her. That's the key trick in cold reading. You're going to miss now and then. When you hit, you look great. When you miss, it's how you spin your way out of that mess that makes you a true professional. The way these experts spin just blows your mind.

 

[Ersby]

The extent which you imagine you can push cold reading as alternative explanations is really fringe and dubious, and you agreed that you cant prove it with certainty so cut the crap off.

Omegablue, people here have explained patiently why the hit wasn't so amazing, and all you have said was that you choose not to take it seriously. No arguments in your favour, no details, just a constant demand for certainty. You can see why I'm so tired at your faux critical thinking.

 

[CFLarsen]

omegablue,

Why would Altea cheat, if she has real powers? To enhance a very weak effect?

Why do you have a problem with exposing frauds?

What would be a lucky guess?