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John Edward - psychic or what?

Resume said:
That's a good question. We're just accepting this anecdote on face value without any knowledge of extenuating circumstances. It's just the urban legend.
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Somebody else posted this earlier:

No, they aren't. The brain controls the way that the muscles contract. It limits the strength of voluntary muscle contraction (thought to be protection against damage). The number of muscle fibres simultaneously stimulated by the nerves dictates the overall strength of the contraction. Some people are stronger than average simply because they can activate more muscle fibres at a time. In emergencies, surges of adrenalin and stress hormones can cause this restriction to be overcome and temporarily allow a much larger number of muscle fibres to contribute, resulting in abnormal feats of strength (at the risk of joint damage and even broken bones).

So, no great mystery there.
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Urban legend?
 
batvette said:
You know those stories about someone in an emergency needs to lift a car off a relative pinned underneath, and they have an instant of "superhuman strength"?
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I suspect that these events go something like this-
Victim is pinned under vehicle.
Pinning force is on the order of ~20 lbs.
120 woman applies ~25 lbs of lifting force to vehicle.
victim crawls/is pulled out.
Witnesses 'remember' 120 woman "lifting a WHOLE GODDAMN CAR off the victim".
 
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wardenclyffe said:
. Either his techniques actually work and there should be superstars who've been trained by him or you just got lucky.

Ward
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That may be the case, as I don't pretend to understand any of the mechanics of this possible phenomenon. I did employ a crude form of his meditation theory, with the belief that Silva did do a lot of research into the field and may be on to something.

The meditation thing is not entirely Silva's, a number of so called "new age" beliefs and techniques toward well being employ similar means, many of them may even have a scientific basis. If it actually required some commitment or being at all serious about it, or gathering with like minded fools wearing Birkenstocks and chanting on a hot New Mexico mountainside at dawn, I'm sure I'd run away from it like the plague or mock and ridicule it with all due disrespect.
 
batvette said:
If it actually required some commitment or being at all serious about it, or gathering with like minded fools wearing Birkenstocks and chanting on a hot New Mexico mountainside at dawn, I'm sure I'd run away from it like the plague or mock and ridicule it with all due disrespect.
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If it involves a sweat lodge you should damn well run away, then call the police.
 
batvette said:
Why would you think that when I said this?
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Why would I believe you about what say that you remember about what you say that she said about her feelings? Why are all of the paranormal people on the JREF the only ones that have infallible memory, in the face of everything we know about memory? Why are they above all human foibles like lying, confabulation, confusion?


batvette said:
In fact what you've done is insist that the event can be explained as an prior exchange of signals that my summary of the event and my relationship with this person, just explained were not consistent with that at all.

She did not want to return, she left as soon as we had that brief exchange and we never became intimate.

It further does not explain her statement when she returned. She did not say "Gee I think I won't go at all and will stay longer". She exclaimed "What?" as if I'd yelled at her.
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That's your story, yes.

Crazy thought - she saw a look on your face and said "what?" And you are now remembering it as something else?

batvette said:
My recollection of this is quite accurate, it's not something you just forget about.
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Even if this were true (and it's not), so what? You think that one time ten years ago you projected your thoughts through a door? A woman said "what?" Why are these psychic experiences so unimpressive and boring? Couldn't she even guess the name of your refrigerator?



batvette said:
Again any of you are free to assume someone is coming in here to yank your chain and I don't expect to convince you to abandon your beliefs- but stop and think that adding assumptions to modify my recollections of this are not going to cause me to abandon mine- and from a logical standpoint can be taken by me as eroding the position many of you have that no evidence of it existing could prove a null.

(to wit, is it possible many times in the past people had events of this phenomenon verifiable by witnesses but skeptics were so insistent about dismissing them they were all written off?)

It is accurately noted that many people offering an anecdotal tale could have, over time, twisted some details to get it to fit their requirement for validation. It can be said that the same thing is going on here, but from the other side.

I'm not trying to troll here, and if validation were my sole purpose I'd be in a paranormal sycophant forum. (I came to JREF for the purpose of finding arguments for debunking 911 conspiracies, for several years seeing some great discussions on that)

If I'm going to bend here it would be that by some of the explanations given here, the second example I offered with the neighbor attempting a possible break in, did have a more rational explanation. Perhaps I suspected him all along and his trip to the bathroom was a bit longer than usual. That's what I'm looking for in rationality.

However this woman was never interested in me in that way at all, not that night or any other- and her reactions were consistent with what we both believed later, happened. There was no sexual tension or escalation of intimacy prior to her leaving-no signals, no dopey eyed looks- it just didn't happen that way.
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Yes, this is your story. Again, so what?
 
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Resume said:
The oft-repeated anecdote certainly is. The mechanic you quote might, or might not explain that anecdote.
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Okay thanks for clearing that up.

To Old Man: that indeed explains some claims of that. There is a scientific explanation for the plausible nature of said events, though.

The analogy is more to explain that lack of repeatability is not necessarily proof of null. If you like the example of rogue waves is also a possible analogy- though lacks the variable of human physiology using a tool for necessity.

Rogue waves were claimed, but never documented for decades. All the cameras in the world could be waiting for one to happen and would never catch one. In time, satellites with high resolution radar mapping huge expanses of oceans at once caught them. Waves 100 feet tall or more, cresting in the middle of the north sea or off of cape horn, with little explanation to their formation.

The wiki article on rogue waves describes:

Once lacking hard evidence for their existence, rogue waves are now known to be a natural ocean phenomenon.

And also describes them as long thought to be a matter of "folklore".

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

Yet John Edwards IS still a fraud, lest that be forgotten.
 
batvette said:
Okay thanks for clearing that up.

To Old Man: that indeed explains some claims of that. There is a scientific explanation for the plausible nature of said events, though.

The analogy is more to explain that lack of repeatability is not necessarily proof of null. If you like the example of rogue waves is also a possible analogy- though lacks the variable of human physiology using a tool for necessity.

Rogue waves were claimed, but never documented for decades. All the cameras in the world could be waiting for one to happen and would never catch one. In time, satellites with high resolution radar mapping huge expanses of oceans at once caught them. Waves 100 feet tall or more, cresting in the middle of the north sea or off of cape horn, with little explanation to their formation.

The wiki article on rogue waves describes:

Once lacking hard evidence for their existence, rogue waves are now known to be a natural ocean phenomenon.

And also describes them as long thought to be a matter of "folklore".

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

Yet John Edwards IS still a fraud, lest that be forgotten.
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Waves in the ocean are known to exist. Telepathic waves, not so much.
 
carlitos said:
Yes, this is your story. Again, so what?
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So you insist you know my recollection is wrong about an event I witnessed and you did not. Just because you cannot accurately catalog an event in your memory for a decade does not mean this handicap extends to the rest of the population.

Your adulation and amazement is hardly a prerequisite for me to get through my day. However I do thank you for your time expended in reading this and your thoughtful replies.
 
batvette said:
So you insist you know my recollection is wrong about an event I witnessed and you did not. Just because you cannot accurately catalog an event in your memory for a decade does not mean this handicap extends to the rest of the population.

Your adulation and amazement is hardly a prerequisite for me to get through my day. However I do thank you for your time expended in reading this and your thoughtful replies.
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Through Facebook I got in touch with old comrades from thirty years ago. We met up in Wales for a reunion and you would not believe how different our memories were about shared events.
 
batvette said:
So you insist you know my recollection is wrong about an event I witnessed and you did not.
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That's correct.

Just because you cannot accurately catalog an event in your memory for a decade does not mean this handicap extends to the rest of the population.
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It's not a handicap. It's how the brain works. No one can "accurately catalog" a memory. That is the point you are apparently choosing to miss. Perhaps you would care to read up on this. Here's a short article on the subject. Since you're interested in 9/11, you might find this interesting too.

We are so eager to conform to the collective, to fit our little lives into the arc of history, that we end up misleading ourselves. Consider an investigation of flashbulb memories from September 11, 2001. A few days after the tragic attacks, a team of psychologists led by William Hirst and Elizabeth Phelps began interviewing people about their personal experiences. In the years since, the researchers have tracked the steady decay of these personal stories. They’ve shown, for instance, that subjects have dramatically changed their recollection of how they first learned about the attacks. After one year, 37 percent of the details in their original story had changed. By 2004, that number was approaching 50 percent. The scientists have just begun analyzing their ten year follow-up data, but it will almost certainly show that the majority of details from that day are now inventions. Our 9/11 tales are almost certainly better – more entertaining, more dramatic, more reflective of that awful day – but those improvements have come at the expense of the truth. Stories make sense. Life usually doesn’t.
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The more you tell your ten year old story, the more it changes. Sorry.
 
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carlitos said:
That's correct.


It's not a handicap. It's how the brain works. No one can "accurately catalog" a memory. That is the point you are apparently choosing to miss. Perhaps you would care to read up on this. Here's a short article on the subject. Since you're interested in 9/11, you might find this interesting too.



The more you tell your ten year old story, the more it changes. Sorry.
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That's ABSURD. The morning of 9/11 I was sitting in my workshop at home watching the news on one television while playing a video game on the second. I watched the first plane's hit as reported with curiosity, when the second hit I quietly shut the TV off, got on my computer and checked what the cutoff age was for re enlisting in the military. (I was one year over) I was hoping I'd finally get to write my name on the nose of the nuke we didn't drop on the Ayatollah when I enlisted in the Navy in 1979.

Your argument is silly. It may as well prove that 50% of us remember everything about that morning.

As I said, your acceptance of the facts as I presented is not a requirement for me to get through my day, but it says a lot when the argument is presented that people offering these stories have augmented them to validate their position. You have to augment them to validate your own.

I accept that telepathy has no scientific documentation. If you think I'm going to let some anonymous person posting under a pseudonym in an internet forum convince me that a very well recalled event should be discarded as just that much confusion in my head you are delusional.

Funny enough you have the easiest position of all to argue: "I don't believe it" until it's your argument people forget how they heard about 9/11.

I don't believe it. Do you forget how you heard about it?
 
carlitos said:
The more you tell your ten year old story, the more it changes.
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This is something that I initially found hard to believe - that every time we remember something (let alone recount that memory to someone else) we essentially take it out of storage, change it a bit, and then put it back into storage with those changes incorporated. The more I've read about the subject the more I've had to accept that my memory of past events is nowhere near as reliable as I'd previously assumed.
 
carlitos said:
That's correct.


It's not a handicap. It's how the brain works. No one can "accurately catalog" a memory. That is the point you are apparently choosing to miss. Perhaps you would care to read up on this. Here's a short article on the subject. Since you're interested in 9/11, you might find this interesting too.



The more you tell your ten year old story, the more it changes. Sorry.
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Haha, note that the author of your article about people not recalling how they heard about 9/11.....

I remember where I was — at work — and I remember everyone gathering around the TV that morning with others, watching the second plane hit. And I remember just being in shock.
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Despite surrounding that quote with vague terms of doubt to support his story, actually seems to have perfect recollection of how he heard about the event!

Please spare me the BS. The author of your link can't even reliably back up your argument. Joke.
 
Pixel42 said:
. The more I've read about the subject the more I've had to accept that my memory of past events is nowhere near as reliable as I'd previously assumed.
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Same here. Chatting with old friends has proved that to me.
 
Resume said:
Oh most certainly, nearly universally

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/13/our-memories-tell-our-story?newsfeed=true

Just one of many articles available on the fallibility of memory.
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Wow, that's amazingly relevant and also convenient you've provided the argument for me better than I could have.

The author of that article, while also describing others' bad memories, also has no problem with his own recollection of where he was and what he was doing on 9/11:

One factor must be that remembering is always re-remembering. If I think back to how I heard the awful news about 9/11 (climbing out of a swimming pool in Spain), I know that I am not remembering the event so much as my last act of remembering it.
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And he doesn't offer any further contradictory anecdotes about his whereabouts that day.

It seems both of your "substantiating" articles were written by incredible hypocrites. The world has such bad memory capacity, but not us.
 
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