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CONNIE SONNE, Dowser

Maybe I'm being delusional, but I just can't see anybody mocking, intimidating or bullying claimants or being nasty or saying nasty things to them.
Why the warnings against this kind of behaviour if it doesn't even take place??!
Why would a claimant be in need of "an easy excuse to walk away from the MDC"?
Are they under any obligation to go through with their claims if, for some reason, they decide that they no longer want to do so?
Does it "work against what the JREF are trying to achieve" if you try to convince somebody (e.g. a claimant) that his or her supernatural beliefs are delusional?
 
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dann said:
Maybe I'm being delusional, but I just can't see anybody mocking, intimidating or bullying claimants or being nasty or saying nasty things to them.
Why the warnings against this kind of behaviour if it doesn't even take place??!
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You think claiming someone has no courage - in the face of them agreeing to test themselves, not privately, or on their own grounds, but away from home and in front of a disbelieving audience of hundreds - and calling them delusional is civil? It's not particularly constructive, is it?

You may call it being a party pooper, however I see it as more than that, and I've explained in detail why I think your comments are out of place in a thread for a claimant who has stepped up to the mark. You don't approve of the party - that's fine. The JREF are the hosts here, and we don't really have the right to work against them. You've voiced your opinion, and I don't see that you need add to that unless you wish to dissuade a claimant from testing, and that is in direct contradiction to what the JREF are trying to acheive.


dann said:
Why would a claimant be in need of "an easy excuse to walk away from the MDC"?
Are they under any obligation to go through with their claims if, for some reason, they decide that they no longer want to do so?
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Think about it.
They don't need an easy excuse if they can do what they claim. Few of us here believe they can, and it is so often that claims do not even reach the testing stage. Sometimes that is blamed on the attitudes of members here, sometimes there are other excuses. The question remains - why hand them an excuse on a plate? We should do whatever we can to support the JREF in getting claimants to a test.


dann said:
Does it "work against what the JREF are trying to achieve" if you try to convince somebody (e.g. a claimant) that his or her supernatural beliefs are delusional?
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Continually insisting that a person is delusional, is not the same thing as trying to show them how their claims/beliefs are delusional. It is closer to name-calling.

If you wish to discuss any of this further there is a thread somewhere about 'welcoming MDC claimants'. I think this discussion will be more appropriately continued there. Let's keep this thread on topic to Connie's claim and protocol.
 
connie sonne - My only advice to you is practice. Do this in front of strangers. Maybe go to a old people's home and entertain them with your abilities. Do the same as what you will do at tam 7. Not only will you be doing a public service, but you will learn about performing in public and developing your skills.

I would hate for you to fail because you suddenly got stage fright or some other minor issue.

Remember the $1m will be peanuts if you succeed. You will be able to earn that every year.
 
rjh01 said:
connie sonne - My only advice to you is practice. (...) Do the same as what you will do at tam 7.
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Since this implies testing yourself, I agree, but I would leave out the "in front of strangers" part of it.
 
chillzero said:
You think claiming someone has no courage - in the face of them agreeing to test themselves, not privately, or on their own grounds, but away from home and in front of a disbelieving audience of hundreds - and calling them delusional is civil? It's not particularly constructive, is it?
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Nobody claimed that "someone has no courage"! But depending on your delusion and the strength of your conviction, courage is not necessarily required for a performance like this. I wouldn't do what CS intends to do, which has nothing to do with courage or cowardice.
And you know very well why I call the actual claim delusional, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the presence of absence or bravery, so please don't turn this into a question of me calling a courageous person delusional!
And, yes, I think that it is actually constructive to clarify the ideas mentioned in this thread. Maybe it took guts for you to do what you intended to do, chillzero, but I still don't see the need for courage in CS's case. She does not doubt her allegede powers!

You may call it being a party pooper, however I see it as more than that, and I've explained in detail why I think your comments are out of place in a thread for a claimant who has stepped up to the mark. You don't approve of the party - that's fine. The JREF are the hosts here, and we don't really have the right to work against them. You've voiced your opinion, and I don't see that you need add to that unless you wish to dissuade a claimant from testing, and that is in direct contradiction to what the JREF are trying to acheive.
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I was not the one to introduce the party analogy; chran was. I don't see anybody working against the JREF in this thread, in as far as the JREF is supposed to be educational. However, trying to encourage CS to perform at TAM7 by implying that her claim is actually possible (and not simply: not excluded by the test design in case she actually had the alleged paranormal powers) is what is "in direct contradition to what the JREF are trying to achieve", unless I'm very much mistaken, and this is what some of the posts have been doing.

Think about it.
They don't need an easy excuse if they can do what they claim. Few of us here believe they can, and it is so often that claims do not even reach the testing stage.
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And I don't think that's bad. I don't have the need to see more people fail at these tests.

Sometimes that is blamed on the attitudes of members here, sometimes there are other excuses. The question remains - why hand them an excuse on a plate? We should do whatever we can to support the JREF in getting claimants to a test.
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Yes, many claimants are in need of excuses when they fail, because they need to believe in their delusion. They don't believe in it, as you may have done in yours, merely because of a blunder, an accidental misinterpretation of certain phenoma. They intentionally misinterpret them. So if there is one thing that is certain in a case like that, it is that they never lack excuses for why it went wrong! They don't need to have them served on a plate. They are fully capable of coming up with excuses of their own invention.
And if nothing else has become obvious to CS in this thread, I think that she must have understood at least this much:
I am the one who has been telling her that going to TAM7 is not a very smart move and I don't in any way whatsoever represent the JREF. And furthermore I would like to add that I won't be present at TAM7.
See, chillzero? Excuse removed from plate! :)

Continually insisting that a person is delusional, is not the same thing as trying to show them how their claims/beliefs are delusional. It is closer to name-calling.

If you wish to discuss any of this further there is a thread somewhere about 'welcoming MDC claimants'. I think this discussion will be more appropriately continued there. Let's keep this thread on topic to Connie's claim and protocol.
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The necessity of "continually insisting that a person is delusional", in this case, arises because many posters, contrary to what they actually know about reality, insist on treating CS's winning the 1.000.000 $ as possible!
If they didn't, I wouldn't find it necessary to point out the mistake to them. And I don't even think that it's an honest mistake! But you are probably right: It would be better to keep this thread on topic to Connie's claim and protocol and keep it free from dishonest encouragements and the discussion of those.
 
dann said:
I was not the one to introduce the party analogy; chran was.
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I didn't mean to introduce a party analogy, I was merely making a comment on your perceived personality based on your posts and the PM's I've exchanged with you.
 
dann said:
No, it's impossible, but to encourage CS you pretend that it isn't.
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It might come down to semantics, but it is not impossible. A couple millenia of data suggest though that it seems very, very, very unlikely. Do you realise that we are basically saying the same thing?

If you want to insist that it is impossible, we'll have to agree to disagree.

dann said:
but to encourage CS you pretend that it isn't.
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Please do not strawman me or put words in my mouth.



This is Connie's show. She said she can do something, now let's see if she can do it. Nothing more. Nothing less.
 
dann said:
Yes, I have no doubt that I'm a party pooper in this case, but then again: I don't really approve of the party.
The contradiction in chillzero's attitude is that she is so keen on having CS perform at your 'party' that she tends to forget what is actually going on: CS goes there believing that she has powers, and a lot of people look forward to seeing her fail - which appears to be the reason why we should not point out to her the delusion but instead pretend that it isn't one, thus making her feel "welcomed".
And that's the 'party' that you don't want me to spoil.
In this discussion CS is not the one that I don't respect. You are!
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Yeah, it looks like some people are looking to be entertained by schadenfreude. Not terribly nice, is it?


M.
 
GzuzKryzt said:
It might come down to semantics, but it is not impossible. A couple millenia of data suggest though that it seems very, very, very unlikely. Do you realise that we are basically saying the same thing?

If you want to insist that it is impossible, we'll have to agree to disagree.
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OK, we'll agree to disagree: You say very, very, very unlikely, I say impossible. The odds at the bookie's would be the same, though, wouldn't they?
Please do not strawman me or put words in my mouth.
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It seems to be your intention. If it isn't, I apologize for misunderstanding you.
This is Connie's show. She said she can do something, now let's see if she can do it. Nothing more. Nothing less.
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Well, she can't, and you know that she can't (or at least that it's very, very, very unlikely that she can), nothing more, nothing less.

chran said:
I didn't mean to introduce a party analogy,
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But you did.
I was merely making a comment on your perceived personality
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Let's try to avoid rule-12 breaches, OK?
based on your posts and the PM's I've exchanged with you.
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Feel free to make public our four PMs from 19th to 20th of Jan. Since they were in Danish, they might help CS understand what's at stake.

Moochie said:
Yeah, it looks like some people are looking to be entertained by schadenfreude. Not terribly nice, is it?
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Well, some people prefer Schadenfreude to no Freude at all, and in this case I find it important to point out that CS already went public with the Madeleine story on the largest TV channel in Denmark, so in that context very little Schade can be expected from her performance in front of the relatively small audience in Las Vegas. I also think that chillzero or somebody else from the JREF will do their utmost to avoid any kind of teasing or gloating at TAM7.
But let's move further discussions of this to the thread suggested by chillzero.
 
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Always so many different flavors of skeptics. I think dann just feels it's ingenuine to encourage the formality of a test if one actually believes it is destined to fail.

I've always encourage self-testing for the same reason. A skeptic of such a bent would expect a rational applicant willing to self-test will discover with proper controls nothing paranormal seems to happen, and then (with enough study to satisfy curiosity) will eventually come to the conclusion that other more mundane things are going on afterall.

Perhaps dann would be more comfortable if the focus of a failed test were agreed to be "Rats, we were hoping to find something unexpected, but alas we learned nothing new of the universe today. This is why we encourage lots of self-testing, things don't always work the way we expect them to. Feel free to study the matter further and let us know what you find someday!" rather than "Ha Ha! You were wrong!"
 
connie sonne said:
Erlando, I allready have answered that like Pixel42 told you.
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Connie, do you understand why your answer is completely unacceptable to sceptics?

The whole point of this test is to establish whether or not you have the powers you claim to have. If you succeed you expect everyone (including dann) to acknowledge that you do indeed have those powers, and rightly so; but the quid pro quo is that if you fail we expect you to acknowledge that you do not have those powers.

If you are not prepared to acknowledge failure, if you already have your excuse prepared, then erlando is quite right: there is no point in you taking the test.

Suppose I made it clear before you even took the test that if you pass it I will simply assume that you cheated in some way, and would refuse to acknowledge that you do indeed have the powers you claim. Would you consider that an acceptable attitude? Because that is the equivalent of what you are expecting sceptics to accept.
 
Let's not forget that no tested applicant ever walked away from a test saying, paraphrased: "I really learned something today. My abilities probably were imagined. Thank you JREF."

At the end (I think) in this video Randi says that despite their failure(s), most dowsers still believed they could do what they claimed.

Do not underestimate the power of belief.



One can only try to plant seeds. There are a lot of factors governing the growth. But sometimes seeds do grow, do they not? ;)
 
The Professor said:
I thought that the JREF MDC was to help FIND something Paranormal?
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Well, then you thought wrong. Perhaps that is the basis of your problem here. You really don't have a clue what you are talking about.

But what you've stated is exactly the biased truth of the matter.
The JREF wants to prove that there isn't anything Paranormal, unlike their claim of neutrality :)

OPEN MOUTH INSERT FOOT ... LMAO

Hang in there Connie. The truth is coming out!!!!!!

Don't worry about them attacking you. They do it to all applicants :)
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Please provide some documentation of the JREF's so-called "claim of neutrality." I am unaware they have ever made such a claim. They have always said, right up front, that they are an organisation whose goal is the promotion of skepticism and critical thinking. They are not a research organisation. The million dollars is not a reward for evidence of the supernatural. It is simply an enticement for the deluded and the fraudulent to come out of the woodwork in order to demonstrate that claims of the paranormal cannot be supported in the cold, clear light of rational examination.

Not that any of this refers to you, The Professor. We all know that you never actually made a testable claim.
 
Pixel42, as I told you, I have answered that. And I have a lot more to tell you, but it will come, I don`t have the time here, and it`s NOT the right place. I told you...more will come, the challenge is between me and JREF, not between me and you,:):D. And what I`doing.. about everything...No, I`m NOT cheating, I can`t...If this was not true, I would`nt have spent more than 200.000 danish crowns on this, it`s about 3400$.
 
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