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How do psychic mediums know stuff about you

Sherman Bay said:
You are much too charitable. Isn't it more reasonable that they are merely frauds?
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Perhaps I am. I have spoken to some in the past and they seem like nice, pleasant people. It just astounds me that they intentionally con people.

Why aren't authorities cracking down on stopping them trade/read?
 
AmyW said:
Perhaps I am. I have spoken to some in the past and they seem like nice, pleasant people. It just astounds me that they intentionally con people.
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Being nice to people is how they run their con. They're like politicians. They're professionally pleasant.

AmyW said:
Why aren't authorities cracking down on stopping them trade/read?
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Because what they're doing is not technically illegal. As long as it is billed as "for entertainment purposes only", most jurisdictions can't touch them.
 
Oh ok, so they have to state 'for entertainment purposes only'?
Do a lot of them go into mediumship school and learn how to con people? Do you think the mediums who know one another admit that it's fake and not real? Or do some generally believe they have some sort of power?
 
AmyW said:
Thanks Dave. This was her original email -
Does this sound like a prediction or just a general statement? Yes I am on Facebook but she doesn't know my full name.
Hi Amy ,*

One more thing . If I am connecting with a loved one who has past I ask them to give me some specific info so there is no doubt who is coming through . So if your mom. were in spirit and she wanted to come through she would need to give some kind of evidence that only you and her would know .

* * * * *Sincerely ,

* * * * * * * * * *Judith Anne*
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It's ambiguous, and purposefully so. They are "if" statements, thus not commital. A person who has lost their mother might interpret it as a sign that the psychic knows something about them personally, while the person who has not will read it as a general statement, not something about themselves specifically. (You'd also think a person in the business of talking to the dead would know that it's "passed" not "past". The grammar is pretty low quality here.)
 
AmyW said:
Perhaps I am. I have spoken to some in the past and they seem like nice, pleasant people. It just astounds me that they intentionally con people.
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That's why they are called "cons," because their business is fooling people for money. Some are very good at it.
Why aren't authorities cracking down on stopping them trade/read?
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They should criminally prosecute someone for telling you, "You will soon meet a tall, dark stranger"?

In some egregious cases, there have been prosecutions and convictions. Psychologists have said, however, that some people want to be fooled, and people who realize they have been duped are too ashamed to go to the authorities.
 
Time was in Jolly Olde when "pretending to be an egyptian" was a transportable offense.

Damn hard luck for Australia, I must say.
 
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AmyW said:
Oh ok, so they have to state 'for entertainment purposes only'?
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They aren't strictly required to. But if their customers get the law involved, it's very difficult to prove that a legally cognizable reliance was created if that disclaimer was made. By that legal jargon I mean that if they say they're only entertainers, then it becomes your fault that you throught they were serious.

Do a lot of them go into mediumship school and learn how to con people?
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Most of the techniques they use fall under the "mentalism" branch of magic, and there are lots of ways to learn magic. Since a certain degree of their professional success relies on keeping the techniques secret, a lot of the instruction is in the old-fashioned style of apprenticing with someone who teaches you personally. But any reasonably large magic store will have books on mentalism. And there's even a free e-book called Red Hot Cold Readings that I found a quick and cheap way to inform myself.

Do you think the mediums who know one another admit that it's fake and not real? Or do some generally believe they have some sort of power?
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I think there are two camps here. There are those who aim toward a sort of show-business presence, even if their practice is strictly one-on-one. These are generally the ones who are going to need the legal disclaimers. Among those types, the ones I know personally absolutely know they are just pretending. A few of this type do what's called "working strong," which is to advertise that one really does have a gift for mediation. But they still bury the disclaimers in the fine print, and their colleagues seem to have mixed feelings about how to treat them. In a certain sense many of these practitioners do genuinely have a gift, but the gift is merely well-rehearsed, well-developed talent at working the techniques.

The other camp seems to be well-meaning people who genuinely believe they have a gift and genuinely want to help people. I've known a fair number of this type personally. The morality of that is still sketchy to me, because you have people giving advice to others on what I would argue are factually false premises. But what it comes down to is that certain people are reaching out to certain other people for help and, for the most part, getting the help that's most beneficial to them. What it comes down to in a lot of the cases I've personally witnessed is that the information and advice given is objectively good and helpful. It's the kind of advice you'd get from professional social workers, counselors, etc. So if, "Your dead mother told me to tell you this," is the sugar that makes the medicine go down, then I should probably just step away and let that happen.
 
AmyW said:
Oh ok, so they have to state 'for entertainment purposes only'?
Do a lot of them go into mediumship school and learn how to con people? Do you think the mediums who know one another admit that it's fake and not real? Or do some generally believe they have some sort of power?
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One of the best sources of information on how to run the psychic medium con is, unfortunately, the books written by psychic debunkers. Just as weapons intended for defense of the innocent can be used by the guilty instead, so to can information about criminal techniques intended as a warning, be used as a tutorial for the criminals themselves.

"Flim Flam" by James Randi is a good text on how fake mediums work.
 
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wasapi said:
Tragedies that happen far away?

I had a baby that died a horrible death when she was less then an hour old. The man I loved died from suicide. Another close friend was murdered.

Far *********** away? How dare you. I guess they are all now getting their groove back and are partying in heaven and receiving their good karma.

This is so offensive from you.
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I am sorry for your tragic losses.
 
AmyW said:
Oh ok, so they have to state 'for entertainment purposes only'?
Do a lot of them go into mediumship school and learn how to con people? Do you think the mediums who know one another admit that it's fake and not real? Or do some generally believe they have some sort of power?
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OK, two personal stories.

First, I am not psychic, nor do I believe in psychic powers.

However, once when I was a college student, I went to my girlfriend's sorority house to pick her up for a date. As usual, she wasn't ready, and I sat in the lobby waiting for her. This was back in the day before cell phones. One wall of the lobby had about six phone booths--not pay phones, they were free for local calls, but old-fashioned dial phones. While I sat and waited for my dream date, a girl I did not know was on one of the phones, and as she didn't bother closing the door, I could hear her side of the conversations. First, she talked to her boyfriend, trying to persuade him that if her parents called him to tell them he had accidentally backed her car up into a post and damaged it. Then she called her parents and told Mom that her boyfriend had been in a minor accident while driving her car--"A motorcycle hit him from behind when he was stopped at a red light."

My date finally showed up, we went out, all was good. A week or two later, I'm back there, waiting for her again, and the same girl was sort of pacing the floor nervously. She sat down and I said hi, she said hi, and I introduced myself as my date's boyfriend. Then I said, "I sense something's troubling you."

She asked "Are you psychic?"

I told her, "I get these flashes. You--you're feeling a little guilty about something. I'm seeing . . . a car. It's backing up and hitting something--a pole of some kind? And I see you getting out and looking at the damage. Wait, are your parents coming to check the car?"

She was flabbergasted. I was the most amazing psychic ever. I said, "I'm getting that you haven't told them the whole truth. Tell them what happened, and they'll forgive you. If you don't, they'll get really mad."

Next time I was in the dorm, my girlfriend told me a bunch of girls wanted to ask me questions. I told her I wasn't psychic and that it was a hot reading. "It can't be," she said. "You were so accurate, even described the damage and told her how much it would cost to fix." Nope. Hadn't done that. But I could have met umpteen girls if I had not been cursed with honesty.

Second time, many years later: I'm now teaching in college, doing a rhetoric unit on critical thinking. Trying to encourage my class to look for deception and trickery, I did an old magic routine called "one-ahead reading." My students handed me folded papers with questions on them. I would hold a paper without looking at it, recite the question, and make up some answer. They couldn't guess how I did it, until I showed them the trick.

Jeeze Louise. Before long, students were coming to me and asking for psychic readings. See, this is why psychics can easily fool people--a lot of the time the people fool themselves because they want to believe. I got so tired of explaining this that I eventually had a sign made for my office door: "No, I am not psychic. I knew you were going to ask."
 
Scorpion said:
I don't claim to be spiritual. I just say there is no good can come, of obsessing about negative events in the world. Most of us do not experience terrible things every day, and watching the news is just taking negative things on board that rarely effect us directly. Most of us live normal lives, most of the time. So why clutter our minds with tragedies that happen far away?
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Those people who watch scenes of people suffering and dying in droughts, floods, earthquakes and hurricanes, who get off their butts and raise money for charities to help those people, who donate,who press their governments to do more for the effected or are motivated to devote themselves to seismology, meteorology, climate sciences, rescue services or join Doctors Sans Frontieres or similar organisations.

Just losers who shouldn't be so negative and stop cluttering their minds apparently. Your philosophy is morally bankrupt.
 
Norman Alexander said:
I'm not sure who said this, but it seems appropriate: Anyone can talk to the dead. It's getting them to talk back that is the problem.
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Perhaps the Bard?

“Glendower: I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come, when you do call for them?”

― William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1
 
You know...

I do wish I had the interpersonal confidence and public speaking ability of these mediums.

They know how to hide their embarrassment quite well in most circumstances.
 
Humots said:
Perhaps the Bard?

“Glendower: I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come, when you do call for them?”

― William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1
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I suspect the Bard was paraphrased by Michael Shermer:
Anyone can talk to the dead — it's getting the dead to talk back that's the hard part.
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https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiritualism
 
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