Proof of Life After Death!!

[DoomMetal]

However, it is not OK with me when people profess to all who will listen that they know for sure EVERY medium is a fake. Because they are dead wrong. And that could end up hurting someone.

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.c...ohn-edwar.html

Hmmm sorry but this Michael Prescott is not the best of sources to get your information from. He is a convinced spiritualist and a scan through his blog you can see he does not report on the data objectively.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Prescott

Prescott's interests include intelligent design, Jesus, the Bible and parapsychology.

Prescott owns a blog where he posts on paranormal, spiritualism and topics related to life after death but has not actually done any experiments or investigations into parapsychology other than read books on the topic. On his blog he claims that everything from mediumship to levitation is scientifically valid. He usually rants against "materialist skeptics", and even opposes those within parapsychology who are skeptical about certain phenomena. Prescott rejects the psychological explanation for the paranormal, he also rejects hallucinations as an explanation for certain phenomena.

Critics point out that Prescott does not look at the data objectively and that he is a promoter of pseudoscience.

 

[Robin1]

Hmmm sorry but this Michael Prescott is not the best of sources to get your information from. He is a convinced spiritualist and a scan through his blog you can see he does not report on the data objectively.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Prescott

I am specifically talking about that one article that discusses what JE does.

The examples Prescott gives that prove JE is real could just as well have been my examples.

I personally experienced what he is talking about.

I lived it.

And because of that, I know Michael Prescott is dead on with his reasoning as to why those examples indeed prove JE can communicate with the dead.

 

[Pixel42]

If you read it and still cannot see why I believe what I believe then you never will.

We've always understood why you believe what you believe. We understand precisely the nature of the mistakes that you and Prescott are making.

 

[Robin1]

Now, how about those fingernails?!!!

 

[jiggeryqua]

We understand precisely the nature of the mistakes that you and Prescott are making.

Then help me out, please, because I read those Prescott remarks and I'm baffled how they can be explained with anything other than "It can't be true so there must be some other explanation".

Not that I've been converted to belief in something that I hold to be impossible, but I'd appreciate knowing "precisely" what mistakes I'm making in thinking those unknowable, unique and unlikely 'hits' are not easily explained.

 

[DoomMetal]

I am specifically talking about that one article that discusses what JE does.

The examples Prescott gives that prove JE is real could just as well have been my examples.

I personally experienced what he is talking about.

I lived it.

And because of that, I know Michael Prescott is dead on with his reasoning as to why those examples indeed prove JE can communicate with the dead.

There's no solid evidence those examples even happened, most of the Prescott article is unsourced, and he relies on a exaggerated piece written by a journalist Chris Ballard from 2001 (over 12 years ago). It could well be hearsay or misunderstanding by the spiritualists or just Chris Ballard making exaggerations to make his article more interesting to his readers, we must be careful about secondary information regarding matters like this. The sources are unreliable IMO.

Even if these examples did occur they may have a naturalistic explanation such as cold or hot reading or simple guesswork. You are jumping to conclusions claiming that those small amount of examples "prove" JE can communicate with the dead. Most modern parapsychologists do not believe in the spirit hypothesis of mediumship, they claim telepathy is the explanation. Now I am not saying telepathy is the explanation, but how would you distinguish telepathy and communicating with the dead? Remember you said those examples prove JE can communicate with the dead.

According to the Prescott article:

Much of the information is fuzzy -- Edward may get only ''a J or a G'' sound for a name or see ''blackness in the chest,'' which may be lung cancer. But occasionally he says something startlingly specific, mentioning a peculiar family nickname like ''Miss Piggy'' or a long-forgotten keepsake. On this afternoon, such a moment occurs when Edward is relaying information to a young woman who has recently lost her father.

It is just nonsense, if he was really in communication with the dead the majority of his communications would not be "fuzzy", vague etc. If he was really in contact with a spirit very specific and or detailed relevant information would be given to him but none is ever given.

Even Prescott admits many of the statements of JE are off target but seems to have become a "true believer" because of some his accurate hits. Note that the accurate hits are very random. Drinking milk from a cow etc? If a spirit survived death and wanted to communicate with his/her family why mention things like this? So basically your evidence for JE in communication comes down to this:

According to Prescott

But where on the Internet would Edward find the story of a boy drinking milk straight from the cow? The “air traffic control” comment? The stuffed bunny? The family joke, “Get the flock outta here”?

We already know that the JE shows are strongly edited and only the "hits" are aired. The above information comes from Michael Prescott an unreliable spiritualist who is already known for distorting mediumship data and took and edited that information on his article from an older 2001 article written by the journalist Chris Ballard. As I said not reliable sources and if you want to be taken seriously on this forum regarding such matter, find some better sources.

 

[Pixel42]

Then help me out, please, because I read those Prescott remarks and I'm baffled how they can be explained with anything other than "It can't be true so there must be some other explanation".

Not that I've been converted to belief in something that I hold to be impossible, but I'd appreciate knowing "precisely" what mistakes I'm making in thinking those unknowable, unique and unlikely 'hits' are not easily explained.

http://www.skepdic.com/confirmbias.html

http://www.skepdic.com/subjectivevalidation.html

http://www.skepdic.com/lawofnumbers.html

The short version: there are cognitive biases built into the way in which the brain works which cause us to vastly underestimate the frequency with which coincidences should be expected to occur, and to attach unjustified significance to the ones we notice.

 

[desertgal]

However, it is not OK with me when people profess to all who will listen that they know for sure EVERY medium is a fake. Because they are dead wrong. And that could end up hurting someone.

I know you'll simply ignore this question, but how would that hurt anyone? Seems to me any attempt to educate someone about the fakery of self alleged "psychics" would actually benefit them in the long run.

 

[Stellafane]

One time, in an effort to prove that anyone with a bit of creativity could do what professed psychics appear to be able to do, I made up some predictions for a believer friend of mine. It was stuff I completely pulled out of the air (or some other less healthy place), worded in a way that it cast a veneer of specificity on what were actually fairly broad statements. Well, the first came 100% true (by his estimation anyway) and afterward he insisted that I must in fact be psychic, only I was too stubborn to admit it even to myself.

I realized then how easy it must be for someone like SB or JE, with a more practiced and polished approach, to convince people they truly had "the gift." Heck, with a little effort I myself could probably have become pretty decent at it in time, acquiring a reputation among those with a priori belief. And I'm sure that after a while I'd have enough seemingly inexplicable "hits" to my credit (hell, I was one-for-one right out of the gate) that people would tend to forget all my mistakes, and my fans would go around saying "look at what he's done, no regular person could do that without being psychic." Things would go swimmingly...until, of course, some skeptics who understand the tricks of the trade demanded I perform under controlled conditions. At which point I'd have to of course admit the whole thing was a sham.

Absent that last step -- proving that one can perform beyond chance in a scientifically controlled setting -- I see zero reason to believe that any psychic can perform any better than I potentially could. And I readily admit to zero psychic ability at all. Thus I'm not impressed when someone drops some anecdote down at the feet of skeptics and demands "OK, explain how she did this one." Because frankly, my own bogus prediction was every bit as impressive as any I've ever seen, so convincing it made the subject believe I was gifted in spite of my own protestations to the contrary.

Demonstrate just once...once!...that you can do it under scientific conditions under the watchful eyes of independent skeptical experts, and I'll instantly become the most zealous convert of all time. The fact that this has never been done -- indeed, that most professional psychics carefully avoid ever doing this and offer only the most specious and weak explanations as to why they don't -- convinces me that if true psychic ability exists, it's yet to be demonstrated in any meaningful and valid way. I certainly haven't seen it on stage at any rate, and at this point very much doubt I ever will.

 

[jiggeryqua]

http://www.skepdic.com/confirmbias.html

http://www.skepdic.com/subjectivevalidation.html

http://www.skepdic.com/lawofnumbers.html

The short version: there are cognitive biases built into the way in which the brain works which cause us to vastly underestimate the frequency with which coincidences should be expected to occur, and to attach unjustified significance to the ones we notice.

I am familiar with the subjects of all three links, but they don't seem to amount to more than "we can explain some things adequately, and we know this can't be true, so we can count this as explained too, since something must explain it".

I've not seen JE perform (I chose that word carefully....) at all, so I don't know how often he gets lucky with an unlikely specific guess aimed at an individual. But from what I know of 'psychics' and 'mediums' generally, they don't play it that way. Equally, I don't know how often he gets unlucky with an unlikely specific guess - if anyone can show me a list of similar misses, that would be more compelling than a list of common tricks our brains can play on us.

 

[jiggeryqua]

It is just nonsense, if he was really in communication with the dead the majority of his communications would not be "fuzzy", vague etc. If he was really in contact with a spirit very specific and or detailed relevant information would be given to him but none is ever given. [...] Drinking milk from a cow etc? If a spirit survived death and wanted to communicate with his/her family why mention things like this?

Is that how it works then? The dead communicate clear, specific, detailed, relevant information? No, of course they don't, they don't communicate at all. But it's not a refutation of a claim that they do to pretend they'd do it differently.

 

[pakeha]

Here you go, jiggeryqua.
Fooledmewunz wrote this post which has a link to a JE performance
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8810259&postcount=558

 

[jiggeryqua]

One time, in an effort to prove that anyone with a bit of creativity could do what professed psychics appear to be able to do, I made up some predictions for a believer friend of mine. It was stuff I completely pulled out of the air (or some other less healthy place), worded in a way that it cast a veneer of specificity on what were actually fairly broad statements. Well, the first came 100% true (by his estimation anyway) and afterward he insisted that I must in fact be psychic, only I was too stubborn to admit it even to myself.

I realized then how easy it must be for someone like SB or JE, with a more practiced and polished approach, to convince people they truly had "the gift." Heck, with a little effort I myself could probably have become pretty decent at it in time, acquiring a reputation among those with a priori belief. And I'm sure that after a while I'd have enough seemingly inexplicable "hits" to my credit (hell, I was one-for-one right out of the gate) that people would tend to forget all my mistakes, and my fans would go around saying "look at what he's done, no regular person could do that without being psychic." Things would go swimmingly...until, of course, some skeptics who understand the tricks of the trade demanded I perform under controlled conditions. At which point I'd have to of course admit the whole thing was a sham.

Absent that last step -- proving that one can perform beyond chance in a scientifically controlled setting -- I see zero reason to believe that any psychic can perform any better than I potentially could. And I readily admit to zero psychic ability at all. Thus I'm not impressed when someone drops some anecdote down at the feet of skeptics and demands "OK, explain how she did this one." Because frankly, my own bogus prediction was every bit as impressive as any I've ever seen, so convincing it made the subject believe I was gifted in spite of my own protestations to the contrary.

Demonstrate just once...once!...that you can do it under scientific conditions under the watchful eyes of independent skeptical experts, and I'll instantly become the most zealous convert of all time. The fact that this has never been done -- indeed, that most professional psychics carefully avoid ever doing this and offer only the most specious and weak explanations as to why they don't -- convinces me that if true psychic ability exists, it's yet to be demonstrated in any meaningful and valid way. I certainly haven't seen it on stage at any rate, and at this point very much doubt I ever will.

What a shame you didn't include the 'prediction' you made, so we could compare its broadness and veneer of specificity with some of the examples from JE.

I appreciate that this is not exactly 'scientific conditions', but you can have as many chances as you like to address a remark to me that is pure guesswork but is as unlikely, unique and unknowable as any of those JE examples. Rest assured, if you should eventually get a hit I will bear in mind Pixel's helpful links and not accuse you of psychic ability. While you're thinking of them, consider whether you'd take that route as a performer. I am a performer, and generally prefer to be a little more certain of my material (or play it safer, generally speaking). That said, I've never tried pretending to be psychic (beyond an occasional magic trick).

Again, I'm not advocating for JE specifically, nor psychics/mediums generally, I'm just intrigued by those unusual hits and don't find 'your sources are poor' or 'coincidence!' to be adequate explanations (they're not rebuttals, they're refusals). As for scientific testing and 'doing better than chance', what are the odds of someone having the nickname Miss Piggy, for example? Or are you merely saying that a tested psychic would need more hits than misses?

 

[Apology]

I didn't find the Prescott article particularly amazing or convincing. It seems to me that Edwards is simply good at getting people to talk, rather than receiving amazingly accurate information from the dead. It's important to note that even in Prescott's examples (which may not even be an accurate account of what Edwards said), misses are still counted as hits because it's merely close or vaguely related, rather than "right on the money". For instance,

''Is there a joke between them with the celery or something?'' Edward asks her, looking puzzled.

She gasps, then laughs and corrects him. ''It's onions.''

''The chopping of it?''

''No, they have a nickname in Italy,'' she explains, smiling. ''It means like a running onion.''

''So if they show me the vegetable joke, you know what it means?''

First of all, if the woman had said "No, there's nothing like that," Edwards would have simply moved on to another subject. Secondly, Edwards was completely wrong, celery had nothing to do with it, it was onions---two vegetables that look nothing alike and are completely unrelated. Thirdly, Edwards asked if it was about "chopping onions" (after he was told it was onions, not celery), and the woman volunteered the facts that a) it was a nickname, and b) the answer was running, not chopping. To me it's clear that Edwards was hinting at a chopping onions/crying joke, and it just so happens that his line of inquiry lead to a personal anecdote involving a nickname. Edwards was completely wrong on all counts, but he managed to elicit specific information from his subject by vaguely hinting around about food and jokes, so believers count that as a hit.

Another thing that bears noting about the Prescott article is his strawman portrayal of a cold reader:

Fake Psychic: Has your father passed?

Subject: Yes.

Fake Psychic: I see your father. Did he pass suddenly?

Subject: Not really.

Fake Psychic: Right, I’m seeing that it was drawn-out. Painful?

Subject: Yes.

Fake Psychic: He’s saying there was pain. But not at the end?

Subject: At the end, no.

Fake Psychic: He says it was peaceful at the end.

Prescott is completely underestimating the skills that a talented cold reader can develop. A talented cold reader like Derren Brown can drag out a ton of information from a subject and use that information to hazard surprisingly accurate guesses---and he admits openly that he's simply using cold reading. Brown's cold readings aren't nearly as transparent and wooden as the strawman example Prescott provides.

Much like Stellafane, I also had a few people believing that I was psychic when I was a kid. My predictions were along the line of "That couple is going to break up" or "That person is going to have an accident". Of course, it wasn't hard to guess that a couple was going to break up when I saw the husband and another woman making out in a parked car in front of my house during a party. Nor was it hard to guess that someone who was extremely intoxicated at all times would eventually have an unspecified accident. Add in a few cryptic statements like "I just knew," and presto! I had amazing powers.

 

[jiggeryqua]

Here you go, jiggeryqua.
Fooledmewunz wrote this post which has a link to a JE performance
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8810259&postcount=558

Ooh, shocking sound quality, but thank you anyway. It is clear from the start that he's working like most psychics work, with a probable relative being honoured and the usual "I have a common initial" (at one point he's flat out telling the first guy that his refusal to recognise an 'R' person is that guy's fault...). Ah, I say 'first guy', I'm typing this as I watch it, there's only one guy. Oh, now he's telling the wife she's wrong about the socks. Confidence is an important tool for a con artist, eh?

But I don't doubt that in order to make a living out of this he's got to play the same games they all play. Note again, I'm not advocating for him, nor am I prepared to believe he's talking to the dead (or practising telepathy, for that matter). But I am interested in those unlikely, unique, unknowable 'hits', and a specific explanation of how he pulls that off. 'Just guessing, and banking on marks placing undue significance on coincidence' doesn't, to my mind as a performer, adequately explain them (though it will explain much of his work). Nor does 'he clearly spends a lot of time cheating', though I appreciate that ought to make all of us rather wary of those moments when we wonder if he's not cheating that time. Equally, 'this is a video of him getting it wrong' isn't evidence that he never gets it right.

Again, since earnest enquiry here has had me at various times labelled a truther, a godbotherer, probably a kiddyfiddler and now almost certainly a gullible fool, I do not believe his strange hits indicate any paranormal ability (I tend to define 'paranormal' as 'things that dont actually happen'). But I do find them intriguing, from the point of view of a performer, and unusual in his field.

 

[Pixel42]

I am familiar with the subjects of all three links, but they don't seem to amount to more than "we can explain some things adequately, and we know this can't be true, so we can count this as explained too, since something must explain it".

I've not seen JE perform (I chose that word carefully....) at all, so I don't know how often he gets lucky with an unlikely specific guess aimed at an individual. But from what I know of 'psychics' and 'mediums' generally, they don't play it that way. Equally, I don't know how often he gets unlucky with an unlikely specific guess - if anyone can show me a list of similar misses, that would be more compelling than a list of common tricks our brains can play on us.

As long as people like Randi and Derren Brown can produce equally convincing performances purely by exploiting these common tricks I see no reason to look further for an explanation. Only if Edward produced hits consistently better than would be expected by chance under circumstances where the chance success rate can be determined in advance and cold/warm/hot reading are ruled out would I think his performances (which are mostly abysmal - he isn't even a particularly good cold reader) worth further consideration.

 

[jiggeryqua]

As long as people like Randi and Derren Brown can produce equally convincing performances purely by exploiting these common tricks I see no reason to look further for an explanation. Only if Edward produced hits consistently better than would be expected by chance under circumstances where the chance success rate can be determined in advance and cold/warm/hot reading are ruled out would I think his performances (which are mostly abysmal - he isn't even a particularly good cold reader) worth further consideration.

Hey, don't forget Stellafane, he can do it too

I'm still curious as to how 'chance' hit rates could be determined (specifically in relation to what seem unlikely, unique and unknowable 'hits').

I have to agree, from what little I've now seen of him, that he's not very good at all. What gave me pause to consider his performances further was the reported UUU 'hits' - but I'm certainly not going to call him psychic just because I don't yet have a specific explanation for them. I can most certainly understand a position that says "well it's some kind of trick, at any rate".

 

[Pixel42]

I'm still curious as to how 'chance' hit rates could be determined (specifically in relation to what seem unlikely, unique and unknowable 'hits').

The way it's usually done is that the psychic writes down readings for, say, 5 different people who take it in turns to sit behind a screen. Each subject is then given copies of all 5 readings and asked to pick out the one that they think is theirs - the one that resonates the most and has the most impressive hits. If all that's going on is the Forer Effect all the readings will seem roughly equally accurate, and the one that has the most hits will be the correct one as often as would be expected by chance, i.e. on average only 1 of the 5 subjects will correctly identify their reading. A psychic who can consistently produce readings which significantly more than 1 in 5 subjects can identify as theirs would have produced objective evidence of genuine psychic ability.

 

[jiggeryqua]

The way it's usually done is that the psychic writes down readings for, say, 5 different people who take it in turns to sit behind a screen. Each subject is then given copies of all 5 readings and asked to pick out the one that they think is theirs - the one that resonates the most and has the most impressive hits. If all that's going on is the Forer Effect all the readings will seem roughly equally accurate, and the one that has the most hits will be the correct one as often as would be expected by chance, i.e. on average only 1 of the 5 subjects will correctly identify their reading. A psychic who can consistently produce readings which significantly more than 1 in 5 subjects can identify as theirs would have produced objective evidence of genuine psychic ability.

Again, thank you for your post, but I'm familiar with the Forer Effect. It relies on generalisations, which does not seem to cover those UUU 'hits' from the JE article. Nobody writing fake predictions to demonstrate the Forer Effect is ever likely to include 'You once drank milk straight from a cow', for example. But we could do this all day - I'm prepared to accept that the reporting of them is probably at fault and leave it there.

 

[Robin1]

I am familiar with the subjects of all three links, but they don't seem to amount to more than "we can explain some things adequately, and we know this can't be true, so we can count this as explained too, since something must explain it".

I've not seen JE perform (I chose that word carefully....) at all, so I don't know how often he gets lucky with an unlikely specific guess aimed at an individual. But from what I know of 'psychics' and 'mediums' generally, they don't play it that way. Equally, I don't know how often he gets unlucky with an unlikely specific guess - if anyone can show me a list of similar misses, that would be more compelling than a list of common tricks our brains can play on us.

I would be careful thinking that a list of JE's similar big misses would automatically mean he was a fake.

Case in point....my brother told JE he had NO connection to Valerie Harper. JE kept insisting he did. My brother kept insisting he didn't. The two of them back and forth. It wasn't until the next day that my dopey brother made the HUGE connection that he actually did have to Valerie Harper merely hours before the event. HUGE.
The point being, everybody at JE's event that night would think JE had a big miss.
But, he didn't.

Another case in point....Tooth Guy. JE asked if anyone on my side of the room had a big tooth in their pocket. Dead silence. JE repeats himself. Everyone is shaking their head no. JE insists and even demonstrates by pretending to pull a tooth out of his pocket. Nope, sorry John ...you are wrong again. JE is clearly frustrated and finally after a few more tries moves on...leaving yet another big hit unvalidated.

It wasn't till after the show as our new friend pulled money out of his pocket that Tooth Guy realized he actually had a big tooth in his pocket!!!! He had forgotten about it.
The point being, everybody at the JE show thought John had another big miss that night.
But he didn't.

If any of you were there that night and witnessed those unvalidated unusual statements you would be jumping up and down screaming, "FAKE!"

But you'd be wrong.

If anyone is interested I could direct you to more detailed posts about those stories.

Oh, the point....sometimes, misses are indeed really hits.