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She said the raw data was sitting on her desk, early in the kidney thread. She's had the papers for months and could scan them in a few minutes. I give up, I won't ask again
are you aware that Anita has altered her website to say the following about you:
Correspondence between me and LightinDarkness
"LightinDarkness has declined taking part in the test where I attempt to heal his migraines. To give the best and unaltered version of this Skeptic's reasoning behind his choice, earlier I posted the correspondence that took place between us. He now objects and so I have removed the PM's. I will provide a summary of the conversation later on, since our correspondence was by no means intended as private, it was LightinDarkness who had asked us to discuss it in the public forum but the discussion page was at that time closed while moderators removed inappropriate posts, so the only reason our conversation was done in PM (private messages) was because the Forum was closed. Not because it was private."
...My paranormal claim is detection of medical information through means of extrasensory perception. What you are saying here, is like asking an expert marathon runner to instead enter a swimming competition, just because they swim sometimes and because it is easier for you to stand and watch beside the pool rather than invest on covering the several mile long track. You test the claim that is submitted for testing, and not try to search for something else that is most convenient for you. ...
As far as we know, VfF has 'perceived' a missing kidney once.
How then is she to be compared with an 'expert marathon runner'?
I think it's important to remember VfF's strongest claim is for something she's claimed to have done once and once only.
As far as we know, VfF has 'perceived' a missing kidney once.
How then is she to be compared with an 'expert marathon runner'? I think it's important to remember VfF's strongest claim is for something she's claimed to have done once and once only.
To expand on this, VFF said that this was her strongest perception to date. However, it was not strong enough for her to say anything about it while doing a reading to test her perceptions. She didn't even mention it in person after the test. She only made her postdiction a day or two later via e-mail - long after she was told that her subject was missing a kidney.
She has done what typical paranormal claimants do. Remember, she contacted the IIG over two years ago claiming she had an ability worth testing. Well, what prompted her to make that claim? We really don't even know, and apparently, neither does she. Her belief was totally unfounded, which is typical. It's like somebody showing up at an American Idol audition and not singing a single note. "But, Simon, I really can sing! I know it! I really can!"
We've heard about perceptions she has had after she contacted the IIG, but none of them were reliable enough to be tested. Yet she still stuck to her guns that she has some special ability. Then six months after this dubious missing kidney detection story, she claims it is her strongest perception yet and will suffice as "proof" of her claim. Right. Her proof for her claim of two years ago is something that happened six months ago. Needless to say, no protocol or date for a test has been established. It's all quite typical.
Simply put she's just like every other paranormal claimant in many ways. The only difference with VFF is that she doesn't seem to want to crawl back under her rock.
I don't think she's running a deliberate deception in the same way, say, you or I would. By that I mean I don't believe that she's a rational skeptic who invented some claims with the intent of deceiving others. I think there's a lot of self-deception going on in order to prop-up her deep-rooted desire to be special.
The fact that she spends so much effort trying to convince the skeptics and not the woos of the world is telling. You see, convincing the woos of the world is incredibly easy. They want to believe. They believe in all sorts of obvious charlatans. If the goal were merely to get attention, she could have loads of it by hitting the countless woo websites. She doesn't value their adoration much in the same way that I don't feel "special" because my toddler is impressed that I can blow in an empty bottle and make it whistle. Sure, I love that they smile and laugh at me, but I don't feel special.
She could lie about the results of her self testing, but instead she reports numbers that one could get by flipping a coin. She could invent all sorts of stories that would not be easily explained or dismissed as inaccurate, but instead she gives us dubious anecdotes. Note: I do think that she has been less than honest in her anecdotes - it's the manner in which she has been dishonest that I'm looking at.
The reason she persists with the skeptics is because convincing them would make her special. Getting attention, even negative attention, from them makes her feel special. She has also revealed a safety net now that she has realized how badly she is failing. Should she "falsify" her claim, she says she will be a role model for other paranormal claimants. In other words if she succeeds, she's special, and if she fails, she's special.
Longtabber PE disagrees with me on this. He sees her as trying to perfect her act before taking it on the road, so to speak. I think that's wrong for the simple reason that nobody has been able to point to any other woo who has even attempted such a thing. Fraudulent woos avoid skeptics because the woo-believers of the world don't rely on skeptics in the first place. There's just no upside to it. You can make millions without ever once dealing directly with a skeptic.
I think that UncaYimmy does make a very good case for some reasons why it's still worthwhile to keep examining the issues surrounding VFF's claims. It's clearly not because of the likelihood that the claims themselves will be proven to be legitimate, because I don't anybody can possibly still believe that this is going to happen (except Anita herself, I guess.) It's a chance to observe a fascinating phenomenon-- why does someone keep coming back to a forum where she has to know with 100% certainty by now that nobody has any trace of belief in her abilities anymore? Is it actually true that nobody else has ever done this? (I don't know enough to say yes or no.) Why on earth would anyone do it? I'd never want to stick around under those circumstances for one single second; I'd slink away as fast as possible (although I don't really know if you can slink quickly...) Even if I wanted to stay for a short time just to try to prove something, it would NOT last long-- but this has gone on for years, and her attitude has apparently never changed.
My considered opinion is that there's probably some kind of neurological explanation underneath it all, as I've said before, but even so, that doesn't explain why VFF has kept it up for so long when other people haven't done the same thing. I'm not so sure that it can just be all about wanting to feel "special", either, although I can see how that's a legitimate idea. Again, it goes back to the same problem: if that's all it is, then why haven't others done the same thing? I really don't know what the answer is, but I'd like to hear what other posters think.
We have discussed VFF in regards to Narcissistic Personality Disorder on www.StopVisionFromFeeling.com as well as here. We really got into it on this thread. Included are her responses. Of course, a doctor cannot make a diagnosis over the web, so we laypersons don't stand a chance. That doesn't mean we can't discuss it. I think it's pretty interesting.
Anyway, if you step back a bit, I don't think what she is doing is all that unusual. At any given time over the Science forums we have what I call physics cranks. They either have a theory that replaces a widely accepted theory or they think they can prove a widely accepted theory to be wrong. The threads can go on forever it seems. If you use a little Google Fu, you can often see that they have been hitting various science forums for literally years, rehashing the same arguments that no scientists support.
Sure, they could convince laypeople with their arguments, but that's not who they are after. These people feel they are special because they know what nobody else knows or associate themselves with a small group that knows what the establishment doesn't know.
I can think back to high school where a few people exhibited similar traits. They were loners who tried to fit into a specific group despite repeated rebuffs and even ridicule. They were different than those people desperate for a group - any group - to accept them. They were different than the people who morphed into whatever they thought others would like.
For the first time VfF has posted on the Stop VfF forum. I have no idea why she would do that after stating that she never would because it would become a mess just like the JREFF discussions.
Ok, so I am guilty of the non-scientific principle of testing and not telling. This principle is about gathering information and for privacy reasons not revealing it. Anita and I did the haunted motel study over last Labor Day weekend I have previously posted about and she passed double blind tests with flying colors The best weekend of my life provides evidence that someone can tell a crime scene motel room from a non-crime scene motel room
Ok, this isn't true but it's only because that rascal Anita has a boyfriend. It's not because I couldn't imagine it or Anita couldn't do it, or agree to be with me (or I couldn't pay for all those rooms ) I've have communication with Anita and I believe she is sincere.
Of course this story is BS. Anita happens to be pretty and a conspicuous poster so I noticed her and have posted on her threads. She is claiming to be what we think of as a woo but she shows up every thread and explains herself so I'm not dismissing her.
My point is that she deserves being treated with respect no matter what the outcome. Anita is a beautiful and sincere person - not someone to be rude to.
Look at James Randi's videos on youtube. He gets his point across without dismissing the other persons sincerity or being rude. You post here you should aspire to be like Randi. Be polite and be driven by polite description of logic.
I've been guilty of judging other people's sincerity and mocking them, but Anita is sincere.
My point is that she deserves being treated with respect no matter what the outcome. Anita is a beautiful and sincere person - not someone to be rude to.
<snip>
I've been guilty of judging other people's sincerity and mocking them, but Anita is sincere.
Anita's physical appearance or sincerity is irrelevant to the question of how a protocol to test her claims should be designed.
I also strongly disagree that "We should treat sincerity differently from not". (Logically, that's a kind of ad hominem fallacy. A person's sincerity does not affect the soundness of his or her arguments.) As I keep saying, a test of a paranormal claim should be designed to be conclusive. The sincerity of a person in no way affects that design.
Information leakage doesn't have to come in the form of intentional cheating or deceit, but a well-designed test should rule it out.
In the famous Clever Hans story, the horse's handler genuinely believed the horse had mathematical ability; he was not intentionally cuing the horse.
ETA: However, in regards to her participation in these discussions, I have to disagree with you. I don't think her participation in these discussions has always been "sincere". She has frequently been evasive and sometimes has denied making statements that she has in fact made. I still say that should not change how we treat her, especially wrt to a protocol for a test of her claimed paranormal abilities.
Yes, that might be true but she came out on this site and I was one of the first members to respond to her and I am a great believer in loyalty. Let's not test my ability to antagonize the people who antagonize the woman I might have checked motel rooms for spooks with.
I just had an experience of a kind that I have never ever had before!
I just had a spontaneous image of internal organs in a way that they have never manifested before! At first I was surprised and had to think for a while before I realized what it was!
I was lying in bed and just woke up from a nap. I was just thinking various things to myself, about schoolwork, and the upcoming Preliminary. I've been eating raw uncooked oats, and ever since, I've had bit of a tummy ache. So I was lying in bed, and felt a cramp from my intestine. But what happened next is amazing.
A section of the small intestine shifted all together as part of the cramp, and all of a sudden, an image emerged from my abdomen, made up of little pixels of tiny light vibrations. The image floated above the abdomen and I was seeing it as a vision in my mind but with a sense of location to it of it being above the abdomen and not in my head.
I have never ever before had a medical perception in this manner. In the past, I have the perceptions and I am awake and my mind is concentrated. Medical perceptions either appear on their own when there is some health information that is significant or feels strongly, but then it has always been different from this. Or, I can choose to look into someone and form the images.
This time was different, because I was observing the process in a way unlike anything before. At first when the image appeared, my mind was occupied with my own thoughts and this one was not part of my own thoughts and the experience truly was as if this information was something coming to me from outside of myself. Kind of like if someone shines a light on your face, you feel it and you see it, but you know it isn’t coming from your head. Since I was still sleepy, it took me a few seconds to figure out what that image was. I was seeing an about seven inch long section of the small intestine. The color was interesting, kind of a gray brown on the outer surface, and with an orange pink on the inside. I think this experience was different because I was as relaxed as I was.
This was a very interesting experience, to me, because the perception depicted something from my own body and not from someone else. And because I was resting and not even looking with my eyes on a person. My eyes were up to the ceiling and not even focused on the ceiling but on my thoughts, so this was a perception without me looking at the body at all. And it was interesting how I felt and saw the image come to life and enter my mind.
Usually, I have been feeling patterns of vibration that form an image in my mind, and even when the perceptions are spontaneous rather than something I search for, I have had the image based on feeling strands or sections across it. Let me try to explain how I feel those strands or sections of information.
Imagine what is called a scalar field. A scalar field is simply a mapping out of various points in space that each have their own magnitude, or extent, of something. One example of a scalar field is a temperature range map, that shows in color how the temperature varies across space. A warm color is depicted as red, and the coldest is blue, and then you have all the other colors and temperatures ranging in between. Here is a scalar field that illustrates the temperature variations across the United States in terms of color, http://weather.unisys.com/upper_air/ua_con_850t.gif.
Another example of a scalar field is a topography map that illustrates the changes in altitude across a landscape. The direction of circles and lines, and the density of how many lines are close to one another, illustrate the shape of the landscape and the altitude variations. Here is an example of such a topography scalar field map http://www.virginiaplaces.org/classschedule/graphics/mountains2.gif.
A scalar quantity is something with simply a magnitude, or extent, to distinguish it from vector quantities that are also directed somewhere, or going somewhere. Scalar quantities for instance temperature and altitude, those numbers stay in place. Vector quantities such as velocity, acceleration, force, displacement, have magnitudes but are also pointing in a direction. By looking at a scalar field map, you get an idea of for instance what the three-dimensional mountain landscape looks like.
Calculus uses something called the gradient in order to process the information that is contained in a scalar field. When you compute the gradient of a scalar field, you are calculating the direction of the greatest increase across the many individual point-values. For the temperature map, the gradient would find you the place that goes from the coldest to the warmest temperature in the shortest amount of distance traveled, and on the mountain landscape you would find the steepest slope where the altitude goes up the most in the shortest amount of horizontal displacement on the map. So you get a sense of feeling how the point-values come together into a shape or a structure so to speak.
A math professor once told us something briefly about how it is thought that insects navigate by performing gradient calculations to make choices about which directions to go to that have preferable conditions.
Humans can certainly "feel" gradients in many types of situations. You can feel temperature in your surrounding and feel what direction the most heat is coming from. It is like being able to compare all the various individual bits of input information and to quickly decide on where the ones of greatest extent are coming from, and to map out the variation as a landscape.
When I perceive "landscapes of vibrational information", it is like a three-dimensional scalar field. Each tiny point, or pixel, that make it, has its own quantities. And this is a lot of information to process. Luckily, I automatically feel something across those landscapes that is similar to gradients. That is how, a large amount of pixels group together into field lines and sections. Pixels group together into tiny particles and vibration, those group together into atoms, those into molecules, those into larger structures in the body, those into cells, those into tissue, those into organs. Vibrational substance that is structurally connected, comes together, and makes composite sections and groups.
The construction of a medical perception goes through many levels to get from a vibrational feeling into an image. The finished product is an image with also felt information, and the beginning is the vibrational information. If I am walking past someone and they happen to have a significant health problem, the finished image will jump into my head all at once and on its own. And if I am choosing to feel into someone to search for information and images, it starts as a vibrational landscape consisting of gradient-like sections that build up into the image. But this time, lying in my bed, it begun at a more fundamental stage than I had ever experienced before. It begun as tiny little light pixels that were swirling and I experienced the rendering of the image in a brand new way.
Most importantly, I was not even looking at a human body, and my thoughts were occupied on whole other things.
This is promising before my Preliminary. And here I had been trying to let some of your comments get to me, and had been critically questioning myself as to whether any of this really is true, but this came as a convenient reminder that something strange really is going on! I for one can't wait to see what happens at the Preliminary!
Derail moved from "The VFF Test is On!" thread.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic Posted By: Locknar
I just had an experience of a kind that I have never ever had before!
I just had a spontaneous image of internal organs in a way that they have never manifested before! At first I was surprised and had to think for a while before I realized what it was!
I was lying in bed and just woke up from a nap. I was just thinking various things to myself, about schoolwork, and the upcoming Preliminary. I've been eating raw uncooked oats, and ever since, I've had bit of a tummy ache. So I was lying in bed, and felt a cramp from my intestine. But what happened next is amazing.
A section of the small intestine shifted all together as part of the cramp, and all of a sudden, an image emerged from my abdomen, made up of little pixels of tiny light vibrations. The image floated above the abdomen and I was seeing it as a vision in my mind but with a sense of location to it of it being above the abdomen and not in my head.
You have previously said you experience atomic vibrational patterns and can do vibrational algebra to match medicines and illnesses. I explained what vibrational energy of atoms and molecules was. Either the molecules are moving around fast, or the electrons bounce back and forth in the molecule. Neither of these tell you anything about organs or bacteria.
... the quantum physical wavefunction description of the atom as a whole, involving all the qualities of the nucleus and the electron distribution, and also other related parameters such as temperature, pressure, motion, etc. ...
To my knowledge you had never mentioned the quantum physical wavefunction before with regard to your powers. I then explained that the quantum wavefunction is not mysterious, it only means the distance from the atomic nucleus where the electron has a high probability of being. We all know that electrons are a teeny tiny distance from the nucleus. This tells us nothing about bacteria or kidneys.
Now, you have a new revelation that you see neither the quantum wavefunction, or vibrations but a scalar gradient field. You are trying to impress us with technobabble, because you can no longer use the excuses of atomic molecular vibration, or the quantum wave function. Do you think none of us have a highschool education, or can look up simple science concepts on wikipedia?
A Scalar is nothing special- It is a quantity. A scalar field is the quantity varying over distance. I look at mountains, I see a scalar field of altitude, some mountains are tall, some are short.
A gradient- is nothing special- it means the slope of the mountains, If I drew a map of the slopes, some would be steep, some shallow.
So anything we see involves scalars and gradients. Right now I have a scalar and gradient field in my mind of what my face looks like, a steep nose, shallow holes for eyes, etc.You are stating the obvious in a ridiculous way to try to impress people. These are HIGH SCHOOL math concepts!!!!!
Please answer:
If you see vibrations: What is vibrating? Atoms? Molecules? Bacteria? Whole organs?
If you see quantum wavefunctions? How does knowing where the electrons are tell you about kidneys or bacteria?
If you have another scientific explanation: What is it?
All your talk of scalars and gradients is another way of saying you see glowing shapes. Just admit it.
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The best weekend of my life provides evidence that someone can tell a crime scene motel room from a non-crime scene motel room 
) I've have communication with Anita and I believe she is sincere. 
