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Proof of Life After Death!!

It would seem due to the compounding evidence that robin did not wish to participate in this thread any longer.

I do wish her well and earnestly hopes she can see through JE's shtick.
 
pakeha said:
Astrology?
Really?
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I can understand why someone like Edward would encourage his followers to look into other kinds of woo. After all, to someone unfamiliar with confirmation bias and the Forer Effect the apparent accuracy and hit rate of astrology are as impressive as those of any psychic or medium. It all helps foster the belief that the mark's judgement of what is and is not impressive accuracy is reliable, and that the sceptics are just dismissing evidence without even looking at it.
 
kerikiwi said:
Perhaps it is rude and unkind to ask that
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I don't see how. Robin said she would find it impressive and definitely psychic if someone could tell someone else what word they were thinking of. In that video, Jodie Kidd is told not just a word she's thinking of, but a specific memory, with the details that it's her birthday, that she's 10, that she's outside, that she's somewhere that's not her home but close to it, that she's really excited about a present from her parents, and that that present is a horse. That's more impressive than the word "radio", surely? Also more impressive than having bought a new fridge.

If she doesn't believe that to be a supernatural event, then it's fair to ask her why not (and "because he said it was a trick" isn't a good answer, or at least not if you're going to claim that John Edward is genuine). And if she truly knows all the tricks, then it's not unfair to ask her how that trick is done.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I don't see how. Robin said she would find it impressive and definitely psychic if someone could tell someone else what word they were thinking of. In that video, Jodie Kidd is told not just a word she's thinking of, but a specific memory, with the details that it's her birthday, that she's 10, that she's outside, that she's somewhere that's not her home but close to it, that she's really excited about a present from her parents, and that that present is a horse. That's more impressive than the word "radio", surely? Also more impressive than having bought a new fridge.

If she doesn't believe that to be a supernatural event, then it's fair to ask her why not (and "because he said it was a trick" isn't a good answer, or at least not if you're going to claim that John Edward is genuine). And if she truly knows all the tricks, then it's not unfair to ask her how that trick is done.
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I agree with you.
What I meant was, perhaps she thinks it rude and unkind to ask
 
I'm still curious to know if Robin would have considered Edward's "hits" proof of life after death if he had claimed to have obtained the information using telepathy (or astrology, or tarot cards, or by reading the entrails of a freshly slaughtered goat). I guess I'll have to wait at least 3 days to find out.
 
tsig said:
I wonder why these speakers for the dead don't solve more murder mysteries they could go right to the horses mouth.
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The dead could speak for themselves via JE and his like. Why haven't the victims of Jack The Ripper revealed his identity? They seem more fixated on fridges and other meaningless trivia.
 
I hesitated posting before now, but the controversial suspension from this forum of my beloved voice in the wilderness sister, Robin, has, I am sure you will all understand, left me no other choice but to dive fearlessly/fearfully into this otherwordly abyss. Please rest assured that I have followed the thread closely, despite having a million other things to do, and could comment on many aspects of this fascinating discussion. But I feel it is most productive - and, hopefully, will insulate me from too much suspicious and vicious blowback - to limit my input now to only what I experienced personally in my interaction with John Edward.

I accompanied my very own S.J.C. (Stupid JokeMaking Clown) sister to the John Edward reading with an open mind, obeying her ridiculous, non-negotiable demands to avoid any conversation anywhere outside or inside the venue for fear of being eavesdropped, recorded or pitied for being so shockingly uninteresting. My name also was not on any registration list, nor was there any indication that I would be using one of the tickets. Robin has described the course of our meaningful and specific reading, but I will cut to my own particular chase...

After John requested that I stand up, which I was terrifyingly reluctant to do, the very first thing he asked of me was if I had a Valerie Harper connection. Before I responded, he immediately qualified this by saying that it would not simply be my having seen and enjoyed the Mary Tyler Moore Show or knowing that she had played the character of Rhoda. It would have to be more significant than that. He insisted upon it to the point of being annoying. What I am absolutely convinced of is that John Edward could not in any earthly way have known or even guessed that three hours before, I had been sitting in my mother's kitchen waiting for S.J.C. to pick us up for the John Edward event and was mindlessly thumbing through the newspaper. I noticed there was an advertisement in the theatre section for Valerie Harper's new Broadway play, Looped, along with many other theatre ads highlighting various celebrities of the stage and screens, both large and small.

Since Ms. Harper had been a favorite of mine since her 1970s days starring on the sitcom, Rhoda, I immediately called my best friend and told him that we should coordinate a date and buy tickets. Please understand that this was just a conversation, an idea, and no tickets were ever purchased or charged that afternoon. My friend also had no clue I was attending a John Edward event later that evening because I knew that if I shared that with him, he would react as charitably as most of the posters on this site. It was simply an exciting item to add to my mental "to do" list. And it departed my immediate consciousness as soon as we left for the reading. And also let me reiterate that the Valerie Harper comment was said specifically to me by John Edward and not floated to every member of the audience who perhaps had seen the newspaper ad that day and then made a plan to purchase tickets to the show. And since the play sadly closed after approximately fifty performances, I doubt there was an overwhelming awareness or demand for seats by the general public, living or dead.

I do shamefully admit, however, to not acknowledging John Edward's unbelievable "hit" with me in that extraordinary moment. I had heard of subjects often freezing and becoming unable to remember or acknowledge obvious details about themselves when in the thick of a reading, but thought that was absurd and could never happen to someone like me with an IQ, hopefully, in double digits. Hi, I'm Occam Jr. and I have a problem.

Perhaps this, in the end, really was an against all odds, when hell freezes over, one-in-a-million, when pigs fly, Mardi Gras in Mecca, when chicken have teeth cold reading success by John Edward. I, personally, find it easier to believe that there were indeed other forces at work. And, honestly, my jumping into the fractious fray here is also about that wonderful woman, Valerie Harper, who recently is gallantly and joyously facing challenges of her own that make debate over these issues seem small - but, yet again, oh so large.
 
Hi OccamJR2.

There is one thing that has nagged me about the Valerie Harper incident.

My first thought, on hearing it, was that it must have been a local event mentioned in local newspapers, advertised on bulletin boards, or some such thing. My thought was that he must have caught sight of such an advertisement before the show. Did you have to travel to another city for John's performance or was he there in your own town?

At any rate, welcome to the forum!

ETA: Browsing through local papers is something he might be in the habit of doing anyway, and perhaps it occasionally serves as a source of cold reading material.
 
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OccamJr2,

Welcome to the forum.

Despite the frustration Robin engenders (in herself and us), most of us put it down to her absolute unwillingness to see that she can't convince us on anecdotal evidence alone, no matter how true, and smack-in-the-face obvious it appears to her, and we (most of us) don't hate her for that. It is clear to me that she doesn't hate (most of) us either, and just doesn't understand why we can't accept her judgement that JE is the "real McCoy."

In particular, people are incredulous that Robin believes she "cannot be fooled," even in the face of assertions by people like Garrette, who is a professional-level amateur magician and who can be fooled, and freely admits it.

Unfortunately, she and you are stuck with this situation as long as you participate in the forum.

I do not doubt that you described the incident as you remember it. However, I do doubt that JE reached into some other realm, or read your mind, or has any psychic powers.

If there is life after death, and if there are dead people trying to reach us, most of us believe that evidence of this would have been obtained long before Edward and his ilk arrived. Even before the Fox sisters began their tricks.

In his stories, Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes proclaim several versions of the maxim that "when the impossible has been eliminated what remains is the truth."

Most of us tend to operate under a similar but reversed maxim, "when all the mundane, normal things that could cause an event have been eliminated, then we will look for the paranormal."

Rephrased, "as long as an effect can be caused without paranormal means, there is no need to explain the effect as paranormal or supernatural."

I will repeat what I have said in this thread and others: I would be thrilled to find evidence for telepathy and similar psionic abilities.
 
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Elind said:
It seems telling that Robin1 (suspended) chose to post this in General Skepticism and Paranormal instead of science, or even religion.
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Her suspension ended about half an hour ago. Maybe she will return and finally address some response-worthy questions.
 
OccamJr2 said:
I hesitated posting before now, but the controversial suspension from this forum of my beloved voice in the wilderness sister, Robin, has, I am sure you will all understand, left me no other choice but to dive fearlessly/fearfully into this otherwordly abyss. Please rest assured that I have followed the thread closely, despite having a million other things to do, and could comment on many aspects of this fascinating discussion. But I feel it is most productive - and, hopefully, will insulate me from too much suspicious and vicious blowback - to limit my input now to only what I experienced personally in my interaction with John Edward.

I accompanied my very own S.J.C. (Stupid JokeMaking Clown) sister to the John Edward reading with an open mind, obeying her ridiculous, non-negotiable demands to avoid any conversation anywhere outside or inside the venue for fear of being eavesdropped, recorded or pitied for being so shockingly uninteresting. My name also was not on any registration list, nor was there any indication that I would be using one of the tickets. Robin has described the course of our meaningful and specific reading, but I will cut to my own particular chase...

After John requested that I stand up, which I was terrifyingly reluctant to do, the very first thing he asked of me was if I had a Valerie Harper connection. Before I responded, he immediately qualified this by saying that it would not simply be my having seen and enjoyed the Mary Tyler Moore Show or knowing that she had played the character of Rhoda. It would have to be more significant than that. He insisted upon it to the point of being annoying. What I am absolutely convinced of is that John Edward could not in any earthly way have known or even guessed that three hours before, I had been sitting in my mother's kitchen waiting for S.J.C. to pick us up for the John Edward event and was mindlessly thumbing through the newspaper. I noticed there was an advertisement in the theatre section for Valerie Harper's new Broadway play, Looped, along with many other theatre ads highlighting various celebrities of the stage and screens, both large and small.

Since Ms. Harper had been a favorite of mine since her 1970s days starring on the sitcom, Rhoda, I immediately called my best friend and told him that we should coordinate a date and buy tickets. Please understand that this was just a conversation, an idea, and no tickets were ever purchased or charged that afternoon. My friend also had no clue I was attending a John Edward event later that evening because I knew that if I shared that with him, he would react as charitably as most of the posters on this site. It was simply an exciting item to add to my mental "to do" list. And it departed my immediate consciousness as soon as we left for the reading. And also let me reiterate that the Valerie Harper comment was said specifically to me by John Edward and not floated to every member of the audience who perhaps had seen the newspaper ad that day and then made a plan to purchase tickets to the show. And since the play sadly closed after approximately fifty performances, I doubt there was an overwhelming awareness or demand for seats by the general public, living or dead.

I do shamefully admit, however, to not acknowledging John Edward's unbelievable "hit" with me in that extraordinary moment. I had heard of subjects often freezing and becoming unable to remember or acknowledge obvious details about themselves when in the thick of a reading, but thought that was absurd and could never happen to someone like me with an IQ, hopefully, in double digits. Hi, I'm Occam Jr. and I have a problem.

Perhaps this, in the end, really was an against all odds, when hell freezes over, one-in-a-million, when pigs fly, Mardi Gras in Mecca, when chicken have teeth cold reading success by John Edward. I, personally, find it easier to believe that there were indeed other forces at work. And, honestly, my jumping into the fractious fray here is also about that wonderful woman, Valerie Harper, who recently is gallantly and joyously facing challenges of her own that make debate over these issues seem small - but, yet again, oh so large.
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So John Edward is pressing that the connection was something significant and you count considering buying tickets to a show as such? In following your setup I was expecting some kind of family relation or something significant. Your story seems rather underwhelming to me.

When John singles out an audience member of the right age to have watched her popular show how many other kinds of hits might others have found? You are right they may not have seen the ads but a fair few of your demographic would have noticed and some may have even booked. It could also have been a departed loved one's favourite show, someone might posses memorabilia, have actually met Tyler Moore, have a child/friend/relative named Rhonda after the character (bonus spooky points if she recently passed on) ... If Edward selects the right demographic then he has a good chance that the person involved will be able to draw a bullseye around any random shots he fires out like this and declare a perfect hit.

Take a quick read of this link for an idea of what I am getting at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy

ETA: And where are my manners? Welcome :)
 
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@OccamJr2

Lets assume for the moment that the events you described actually happened as you recall.

Why would it be unreasonable that someone could make a lucky guess about you rather then the 500 questions, mad libs game that Sideshow Johnny so often uses to be the explanation?

I would like to stress I don't think John needs any luck, Just very gullible victims.
 
Hi OccamJr2, and welcome.

Please understand that an anecdote like yours is not something a sceptic would consider evidence of Edward's genuineness, not because we're being deliberately awkward, but because it really isn't such evidence. Throwing out intelligent guesses based on some basic local research and the age/attire of the target is what fake psychics and mediums do, in the knowledge that anything that resonates will be seized on and anything that doesn't will be ignored. Occasionally insisting that whatever they've thrown out is significant and the target will realise it later even when the target isn't reacting is also a standard trick, designed to reassure the rest of the audience (the fact that it happened to be true in your case is neither here nor there; it's bound to be true occasionally).

What you and Robin experienced was in no way exceptional, you were just unlucky that enough of what Edward said happened to hit home for you to be convinced. But if that never happened then conmen like Edward wouldn't be able to stay in business. You only need to watch some of the videos posted on this thread to see what his average hit rate is, and it's nowhere near what it would be if he were genuine.
 
Hi OccamJr2,

Please also be aware that memory is very selective, and it is common that people think that the cold reader zoomed right in on them, when a real transcript shows that a lot of false hit preceded and followed the hit that is the only one remembered afterwards.
 
tsig said:
I wonder why these speakers for the dead don't solve more murder mysteries they could go right to the horses mouth.
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Unfortunately the dead often have great difficulty in remembering / saying their name, preferring to remind themselves via syllables. Oh, and they can only tell you information you already have.

Dead horses have even more difficulty.
 
xterra said:
--snip---
people like Garrette, who is a professional-level amateur magician and who can be fooled, and freely admits it.
---snip---
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Point of clarification because I don't like to oversell myself:

First, I am not a professional-level amateur magician. My knowledge regarding magical methods but especially mentalism methods approaches professional level but does not achieve what an actual working professional has.

Second, I possess performance skills that approach that of a bumbling amateur.

I am not saying this to be humble, but to point out that real expertise is beyond most people, even those who--like me--dedicate much of their free time to it. It is certainly beyond people who--like Robin--decided to take some time and do some serious research for a while based on their skills as a librarian.


OccamJr2 said:
--snip--
he immediately qualified this by saying that it would not simply be my having seen and enjoyed the Mary Tyler Moore Show or knowing that she had played the character of Rhoda. It would have to be more significant than that.

--snip--

What I am absolutely convinced of is that John Edward could not in any earthly way have known or even guessed that three hours before, I had been sitting in my mother's kitchen waiting for S.J.C. to pick us up for the John Edward event and was mindlessly thumbing through the newspaper. I noticed there was an advertisement in the theatre section for Valerie Harper's new Broadway play, Looped, along with many other theatre ads highlighting various celebrities of the stage and screens, both large and small.

Since Ms. Harper had been a favorite of mine since her 1970s days starring on the sitcom, Rhoda, I immediately called my best friend and told him that we should coordinate a date and buy tickets. Please understand that this was just a conversation, an idea, and no tickets were ever purchased or charged that afternoon.

--snip--
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Welcome, OccamJr2! Thanks for joining us. We do seem strident here, and we get frustrated, but mostly we are a friendly bunch. Robin would likely disagree, especially about me, but that’s another topic.

I would like to address a couple of specific points about your experience followed by some generalities which I hope will help explain why we don’t fall all over ourselves to join in your conclusion about John Edward’s supposed authenticity.

You point out that JE himself insisted that the “Valerie Harper connection” would have to be more than simply having liked her and the shows she was in, yet your entire connection rests entirely on the simple fact that you liked Valerie Harper and the shows she was in. The phone call with your friend discussing the Broadway show doesn’t add anything except that you talked to somebody about liking Valerie Harper and the shows she was in. Later, you got tickets to another show she was in. Is that really a “connection?”

Here is the entirety of your connection: You liked Valerie Harper. You bought tickets to see a Valerie Harper show.

According to you, even JE himself said to discount this. So where is the amazing hit?
I’m sorry, but even without all the other factors that detract from the wow-factor, this is simply not impressive.


Now for the generalities. This is what I call my “Even If” analysis (for the record, I do not believe that you are lying or being in any way intentionally deceptive in your account, but that is not always the case so I include the first step below to be complete):

1. It is possible that you are lying, or shading the truth just enough to make the story that little bit more convincing.

But even if that is not the case, it is still possible that

2. You have remembered the experience wrongly. The fact that your family supports you in your recollection doesn’t help; eyewitness testimony is empirically unreliable, and it gets worse when a group of eyewitnesses have the time and inclination to discuss the experience before formally committing their accounts to paper. More than that, memory itself is both flawed and malleable, inexact at the moment of formation and becoming more flawed as time passes and the memory is repeatedly accessed and reconstructed (not intentionally; this is just how memory works).

But even if that is not the case, it is still possible that

2. John Edward “hot read” you. This means that somehow he gathered information ahead of time through mundane means and fed it back to you in a manner intended to deceive. Frankly, I think that hot reading and you lying are the least likely explanations, so I won’t go into it, but bear in mind that to be really intellectually honest, this possibility would have to be considered.

But even if that is not the case, it is still possible that

3. You are engaging in one of the most overlooked and least understood (by those not experienced and well-versed in it, and sometimes even among those who are) logical fallacies: Confirmation Bias (related to the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy someone has mentioned already). Without getting into a formal definition, what it means is that you look for ways to make your hypothesis seem true as opposed to formally analyzing what really happened. The Valerie Harper connection is a nearly textbook-perfect example of this.

You said: ”What I am absolutely convinced of is that John Edward could not in any earthly way have known or even guessed that three hours before,…”.


And that’s the point. John Edward was not aware of this. Not at all. He never mentioned anything about your phone call, about you being in the kitchen, about tickets, about a show. You are the one who relates that and then recount it here as if John Edward said it. He didn’t. He said “Valerie Harper connection,” which others have pointed out could be one of a dozen or two dozen things. Just as importantly, you attribute significance that JE told you not to attribute: He said that it would have to be more than simply liking Valier Harper or seeing her shows, yet all you have is liking Valerie Harper and seeing her show.
There is not as much there there as you think is there.

But even if that is not the case, it is still possible that

4. The odds of getting a hit are far, far greater than you imagine, and I use “imagine” intentionally. Have you bothered sitting down to do even a rough estimate of odds? Even a back-of-the-envelope shows it isn’t astronomic.
(a) What would constitute a “Valerie Harper connection?” It would include you getting a ticket to the show later, having already gone to the show, having bought tickets before but not gone yet, having been comped tickets in one of the myriad ways that that happens in New York, having bought a Valerie Harper coffee mug, having bought a Valerie Harper biography, having bought a Mary Tyler Moore book because it talked about Valerie Harper in it, having done a web search on Valerie Harper, simply having had a phone conversation with your friend to reminisce about Marty Tyler Moore and how Valerie Harper really made that show funny, or a thousand other variations.
(b) How many people in the audience could be expected to have some Valerie Harper connection? You said yourself that her Broadway show was a short run, so when you were there it was still a new thing; it is not a stretch to imagine that visitors to New York would consider seeing a new show with a relatively big name star or that they would like Valerie Harper or have one of a thousand other “connections” to her. Picking one person to single out for this, someone whom it would not be difficult to pick out as a person in New York not as a native, was hardly a gamble for JE.
(c) What are the odds of getting a hit or three hits in the show, enough to convince someone who will publicly sing JE’s praises. Since JE rattles off statements at lightning speed and feeds the vast majority to the group as opposed to an individual, the odds are extremely high that something will hit (and yet, as has been shown in videos here, he still fails at times). How many misses are forgotten when the hits are praised to the heavens? Nearly all, and the misses far outweigh the hits.

And so you have forgotten misses and surprisingly high odds for hits.

But even if that is not the case, it is still possible that

5. There is still the Law of Large Numbers. This simply means that even things that have odds of millions-to-one against happen multiple times every day. Others have pointed out that if something is shown to have only a one-in-seven-billion chance of happening then it happens seven times a day. If it has a one-in-a-million chance of happening then it happens 7,000 times a day. How many things have a one-in-a-million chance of happening? Well, truthfully, it numbers in the millions if it isn’t an infinite number, but let’s say there are only a thousand things that have a one-in-a-million chance of happening. That means that there are seven million one-in-a-million-chance things happening every single day. If the Valerie Harper connection was one of those things (and we know it wasn’t), then there is still no big mystery to explain.

But even if that is not the case, it is still possible that

7. You simply got fooled. Have you read the rest of thread, particularly the descriptions of what performing magicians and mentalists can do? Have you seen the video of Derren Brown? Read the story of Harry Kellar in Hong Kong? Read about me telling people what word they are thinking of? The story of Richard Osterlind with President Ford under the eye of the Secret Service? Each one of these things is far, far more impressive than telling you that you have a “Valerie Harper connection,” and yet each one can be explained without resorting to a supernatural talking-with-the-dead story.

Those are seven “Even Ifs.” Do you really, after careful and objective consideration, think that John Edward speaking with your dead father is more likely than one of them?
 
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OccamJr2 said:
I hesitated posting before now, but the controversial suspension from this forum of my beloved voice in the wilderness sister, Robin, has, I am sure you will all understand, left me no other choice but to dive fearlessly/fearfully into this otherwordly abyss. Please rest assured that I have followed the thread closely, despite having a million other things to do, and could comment on many aspects of this fascinating discussion. But I feel it is most productive - and, hopefully, will insulate me from too much suspicious and vicious blowback - to limit my input now to only what I experienced personally in my interaction with John Edward.
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Which in the end is just "Cool story bro."

Literally in this case.

This type of anecdote is less than useless in establishing the rather lofty hypothesis of this thread. Which is why a carefully controlled, properly observed experiment involving John Edward is necessary; this will never happen. And I think with both suspect why.

Oh, Hi.
 
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