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Proof of Life After Death!!

aggle-rithm said:
Hacking credit card records may seem unlikely, but here's the way I look at it:

The probability that he got the information hacking into credit card records: .001.

The chance that he got it by supernatural means: .00000000000000000000001 (if that high.)
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And it's even more likely that neither of those statements are true and that it was all cold reading. There's nothing to suggest otherwise.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
And it's even more likely that neither of those statements are true and that it was all cold reading. There's nothing to suggest otherwise.
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Seconded, but it is still important, I think, when discussing with believers to mention these other possibilities. Cold reading is, in my experience, perhaps the hardest thing to convince a believer that he or she can fall prey to.

The discussion with a believer needs to cover all the possibilities while simultaneously acknowledging that some are more likely than others.

They could have hacked your credit card. If they didn't hack your credit card it doesn't matter; they had your name. If they didn't have your name it doesn't matter; they could have had someone chat you up or pay attention in the lobby or elsewhere. If they didn't chat you up or pay attention it could have been them shotgunning something hoping anyone would respond; it just happened to be you. If they didn't shotgun something it doesn't matter; they could have cold read you, reading your responses and proceeding accordingly. If they didn't cold read you it could have been one of those rare and seemingly miraculous but totally expected coincidences. And oh by the way, the things you call hits aren't really hits; most are just things you have retrofitted the way any of a hundred or a thousand things could be forced to fit.

Still unlikely to sway a true believer, but that's the broad form of the argument which of course should be tailored to the specific discussion.
 
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You know what is strange. Our refrigerator broke on Thanksgiving morning and we had to go buy a new one. LOL
 
My refrigerator was delivered, but didn't fit up the stairs. Some guys with a hoist are coming on Sunday to lift it over my 2nd floor balcony. Or, as we call it, "crossing over." ;)
 
Well, the bottom line on all this is that Robin's blog is dated August 2012, talking about an experience she had which probably occurred two years prior, in the spring of 2010 (Am I psychic? No. I used wikipedia. Valerie Harper played Tallulah Bankhead in "Looped" at the Lyceum theatre in NYC from Feb-Apr 2010).

Anyone that has studied or even read a bit about how our brains work knows that we do not remember things accurately. There are no memories locked in a file cabinet in our brain just waiting to be plucked out and examined. We recreate the images of our memories in our heads according to our beliefs, present knowledge, and our own particular versions of logic and reasoning. Robin was tricked two and a half years ago into thinking that John Edward talked to her dead father, and was amazingly accurate, and any questions or discussion of the event will only cause Robin to recreate the event again in her head, magically "remembering" even more amazing things about the experience.

One of the things that really surprises me in this discussion though, is how many people are unwilling to entertain the notion that John Edward might use more trickery than just cold reading when he performs his schtik. Is it really so hard to fathom that a man that grosses $40,000+ per show, one hundred shows per year, meaning $4 million/year just on shows, not counting book deals, tv appearances, etc. Is it really so hard to imagine that such a person might employ a few highly trusted individuals to guarantee he gets a few downright "amazing" hits a show? Looking up ticket pre-order names on the internet, putting up a small webcam at the "will call" ticket counter capturing peoples' faces as they say their name? Someone noticing that someone goes by a nickname or middle name instead of the name on their credit card they used to pay for their drinks? Notices a woman in the bathroom fixing her lipstick has an unusual item in her open purse? Listening to conversations in the restrooms, lobby, out front where people are smoking?

Number two of Penn Jillette's Secrets of a Magician is "Make the secret a lot more trouble than the trick seems worth." (from here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-His-Secrets.html?c=y&page=1 ) Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Edward doesn't have a whole crew of wired people with hidden cameras grabbing all sorts of tiny bits of information that don't seem worth the effort at all until you start putting them all together, "Your brother goes by his middle name. Did you just go to Disneyland? Is there a yoyo in your purse?" mixed with all the other rapid fire cold reading tricks and the effect is one great big "Wow! How could he *possibly* have known all that?!?!"

John Edward is just a magician, doing the same thing magicians do with the "mentalist" act. The only difference is that a magician makes an honorable agreement with the audience that s/he is going to perform tricks that will amaze them, and the audience agrees to suspend their disbelief for a little while and be properly amazed. Edward works to, quite DIShonorably, in my opinion, convince the audience that if they just pay somewhere between $50 and $300 each for a ticket or $800+ for a private reading, they might actually get to talk to, to spend one more minute with someone who died, and who they are grieving for, and who's passing causes such an ache in their heart, in their life, that they would do anything just to see that person one more time. To hear their voice one more time. John Edward takes this common bond of people, this problem we have, this pain we all share, and turned it into a multimillion dollar enterprise for himself, making suckers out of the grieving and bereft. People leave a good magic show wondering how the heck the magician did that. Greiving people either leave a John Edward show wondering wondering why their loved one didn't show up today, or they leave trying to remember every good detail (and forget the not so good) about a new story about their dad that John Edward just made up for them. Something to do with refrigerators and Valerie Harper. It's not even a particularly good story. Nor is it comforting. It's just really expensive.
 
meg said:
One of the things that really surprises me in this discussion though, is how many people are unwilling to entertain the notion that John Edward might use more trickery than just cold reading when he performs his schtik.
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I don't think anybody is saying that it's impossible or even unlikely that Edward uses such things. In fact, I've seen lots of people explicitly say that he uses hot reading. It's just that there's no evidence of hot reading in this particular case.
 
meg said:
Well, the bottom line on all this is that Robin's blog is dated August 2012, talking about an experience she had which probably occurred two years prior, in the spring of 2010 (Am I psychic? No. I used wikipedia. Valerie Harper played Tallulah Bankhead in "Looped" at the Lyceum theatre in NYC from Feb-Apr 2010)....
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[excellent post snipped, I agree with Foster Zygote and Calebprime]

Lots of good posts here and I love the detective work. The above only piques my curiosity more.

Robin if you are still lurking, I'm curious why now and why this forum?
 
truethat said:
Robin, I have taken the time to read your blog and responded politely.

So before running off can you answer two simple questions.

1. Whose name was on the credit card used to purchase the tickets.

Did you have a reservation with your name on the tickets or did you just get blank tickets?

2. Did John Edwards speak to everyone in the room? How were you selected to be a participant?
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They don't need a name on the ticket, or assigned seating, or anything like that. All they need to know is that a person will be at the show, then they can find out lots of details about them, including what they look like, from places like facebook.

JE's tickets are sold through ticketmaster, and a quick look at their privacy policy shows that they share info with event organizers and venues.

So:

Step 1) Get a list of people coming to the show
Step 2) Look for a few with public facebook profiles who seem to be the true believe type
Step 3) Give their photos to your assistants to find them in the audience
Step 4) Amaze them with things you couldn't possibly have known! You don't even have to ask their name!
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I don't think anybody is saying that it's impossible or even unlikely that Edward uses such things. In fact, I've seen lots of people explicitly say that he uses hot reading. It's just that there's no evidence of hot reading in this particular case.
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Well, I guess my only response to that is that if you see the evidence of the trickery in a magic act, it's not a very good magic act. That's kind of the whole point of the "amazing" part.

If Robin blogged that she saw John Edward saw a lady in half and put her magically back together, would you say that there is no evidence that John Edward did not in fact saw a lady in half?

Magicians do tricks. It's what they do.
 
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Even easier, people regular tell the world what they're going to do on blogs.

Going to see John Edward today!

"I'm sensing the loss of someone close to you Ann, maybe a suicide... Is there a Steve or a Tracey involved. They want you to know that they are OK..."

Sick, sick, sick.
 
meg said:
Well, the bottom line on all this is that Robin's blog is dated August 2012, talking about an experience she had which probably occurred two years prior, in the spring of 2010 (Am I psychic? No. I used wikipedia. Valerie Harper played Tallulah Bankhead in "Looped" at the Lyceum theatre in NYC from Feb-Apr 2010).

Anyone that has studied or even read a bit about how our brains work knows that we do not remember things accurately. There are no memories locked in a file cabinet in our brain just waiting to be plucked out and examined. We recreate the images of our memories in our heads according to our beliefs, present knowledge, and our own particular versions of logic and reasoning. Robin was tricked two and a half years ago into thinking that John Edward talked to her dead father, and was amazingly accurate, and any questions or discussion of the event will only cause Robin to recreate the event again in her head, magically "remembering" even more amazing things about the experience.

One of the things that really surprises me in this discussion though, is how many people are unwilling to entertain the notion that John Edward might use more trickery than just cold reading when he performs his schtik. Is it really so hard to fathom that a man that grosses $40,000+ per show, one hundred shows per year, meaning $4 million/year just on shows, not counting book deals, tv appearances, etc. Is it really so hard to imagine that such a person might employ a few highly trusted individuals to guarantee he gets a few downright "amazing" hits a show? Looking up ticket pre-order names on the internet, putting up a small webcam at the "will call" ticket counter capturing peoples' faces as they say their name? Someone noticing that someone goes by a nickname or middle name instead of the name on their credit card they used to pay for their drinks? Notices a woman in the bathroom fixing her lipstick has an unusual item in her open purse? Listening to conversations in the restrooms, lobby, out front where people are smoking?

Number two of Penn Jillette's Secrets of a Magician is "Make the secret a lot more trouble than the trick seems worth." (from here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-His-Secrets.html?c=y&page=1 ) Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Edward doesn't have a whole crew of wired people with hidden cameras grabbing all sorts of tiny bits of information that don't seem worth the effort at all until you start putting them all together, "Your brother goes by his middle name. Did you just go to Disneyland? Is there a yoyo in your purse?" mixed with all the other rapid fire cold reading tricks and the effect is one great big "Wow! How could he *possibly* have known all that?!?!"

John Edward is just a magician, doing the same thing magicians do with the "mentalist" act. The only difference is that a magician makes an honorable agreement with the audience that s/he is going to perform tricks that will amaze them, and the audience agrees to suspend their disbelief for a little while and be properly amazed. Edward works to, quite DIShonorably, in my opinion, convince the audience that if they just pay somewhere between $50 and $300 each for a ticket or $800+ for a private reading, they might actually get to talk to, to spend one more minute with someone who died, and who they are grieving for, and who's passing causes such an ache in their heart, in their life, that they would do anything just to see that person one more time. To hear their voice one more time. John Edward takes this common bond of people, this problem we have, this pain we all share, and turned it into a multimillion dollar enterprise for himself, making suckers out of the grieving and bereft. People leave a good magic show wondering how the heck the magician did that. Greiving people either leave a John Edward show wondering wondering why their loved one didn't show up today, or they leave trying to remember every good detail (and forget the not so good) about a new story about their dad that John Edward just made up for them. Something to do with refrigerators and Valerie Harper. It's not even a particularly good story. Nor is it comforting. It's just really expensive.
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Nominated.
 
truethat said:
I have to say Robin I'm a teeny tiny bit cynical in thinking you are being paid to promote John Edward on blogs and forums. If you google your name you've got the same thing over and over again, on your blog, on the Anderson Cooper blog you have a post in a contest to win free tickets to see John Edward.

Just curious why you are promoting him so much? Generally this would be something you would share with your friends and family not tons of people online. I don't get it.
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She does appear to be spamming as many places as she can with the same copied and pasted directions to her blog. Something's fishy.
 
Robin Stettnisch said:
Wow, another completely closed-mind! "Not interested" in even reading my link? How does anyone expect to learn ANYTHING without being open to a new opinion and experience?
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I consider myself to have an 'open-mind' but it's not so open that my brains fall out...
 
xterra said:
Frequently, I write a post in a word processor or text editor rather than in the box at the bottom of the page. This allows me to feel less pressure to post immediately, and allows me to reflect a bit on what I am writing.

YMMV, of course, but it's worth a try.

xterra
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I try from time to time.

But then the word processor start underlining all my words in red, all my sentences in green, just before crashing "Winword crashed. Reason STOP 0x00000666 That is not even valid engrish" and then remove itself from my harddisk.
 
Skeptic Ginger and all....Of course I'm still lurking!! This is fascinating stuff AND addicting! Started blogging at all only recently...for years had health issue next door,
35+ feral cats, and a crazy neighbor who feeds anything and everything who then ended up getting attacked by a rabid raccoon. Since the rabid raccoon fed from the same bowls as the colony of cats and there was possible physical interaction there also was the possibility that the cats could be infected with rabies. Are you sorry you asked? More to the story but to make a long story short...sort of... someone suggested a blog would help draw more attention to the issue. And so my very first blog was born..."Rabies Outbreak in Westchester County and the Connection to Feral Cats." It quickly became very popular on the blogsite, a local paper published it as a guest commentary, and a well-reputed animal clinic/ hospital asked for my permission to copy it and distribute it to their clients. Then I realized that this blogging stuff could really be helpful and significant in spreading the word...and that word later evolved into "Proof of Life After Death." And so here I am today...just tryin' to spread a little light.
 
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