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I'll get to it!!

I suggest you take a moment to reassess your goals for the site and go from there. If you're writing it for your own pleasure, then by all means, write and publish when it pleases you. If you're writing to entertain or educate fellow skeptics, then assign a priority for that in your life and don't feel guilty about sticking to it.

If you're writing to reach the general public, I would suggest that you consider when enough is enough. By my rough count you have over 100 articles, which is way more than most people will ever read. Is yet another article going to make a difference? It's easy to get caught up firing at such a big target, but to use a metaphor, every trial needs to end at some point. You've put together an astounding amount of information, so much so that it borders on being overwhelming. So if you're concern is that you need more articles to be more convincing, I would say not to worry about it. StopSylvia can stand on its own as it is right now.
 
It's okay. Take your time. A few of her supporters have begun to defend some of the "younger" material out there. They seem to be passing over Browne, Renier, McQuary, Coronado, and the 70-year old plus crowd of 1970/1980 psychics. New on the horizon are such psychics as Sunny Dawn Johnston and a corresponding batch of 40-year old to 50-year old believers. Sylvia and Noreen are literally a generation soon to disappear.
 
RSLancastr said:
I have no doubt that it was meant in a positive way, but it still makes me feel worse about the situation.
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Take all the time you need. Feel free not to return to the site ever if you change your priorities or interests, or if other things turn out to require more attention.

Yes, the site is important; but someone in the other thread just pointed out that by now, it can stand on its own. Yes, I would love to read more articles - but that is not because I need to make up my mind about psychics - it is only because I am a fan of the site, of your style and of yourself.

Reading your recent posts here, I find it hard to realize that you have so much left to do about your situation. You've gone from being hospitalized and away to not only putting your pants on backwards, but you are writing about it, too. And you are funny and witty when you do that. I know you are still going through a lot - but you're kind enough to make it easy to forget that.

Please don't feel bad when people ask about the site; we just want you back the way you were and you make it all to easy to think that it won't be much longer. Here's hoping that's true!
 
Edited by Gaspode: 
Removed breach of rule 12.
 
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The line between encouragement and pressure/nagging is always a fine one, especially when you don't know that there are other people doing the encouraging/nagging.

You just keep on looking after yourself Robert. When new articles come, they will be very welcome, but the site as it stands is so good that you really should feel no hurry.
 
Robert, if we seem to be nagging it's only because we miss your writing. You take your time - ant time in the next fifteen minues will do.
 
Just think how many times George Lucas heard "So, when's the next Star Wars coming out?" between 1983 and 1999.
 
alfaniner said:
Just think how many times George Lucas heard "So, when's the next Star Wars coming out?" between 1983 and 1999.
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And look what happened because people rushed him!! We don't want the Sylvia version of Jar-Jar, do we? :eek:
 
UncaYimmy said:
I suggest you take a moment to reassess your goals for the site and go from there. If you're writing it for your own pleasure, then by all means, write and publish when it pleases you. If you're writing to entertain or educate fellow skeptics, then assign a priority for that in your life and don't feel guilty about sticking to it.

If you're writing to reach the general public, I would suggest that you consider when enough is enough. By my rough count you have over 100 articles, which is way more than most people will ever read. Is yet another article going to make a difference? It's easy to get caught up firing at such a big target, but to use a metaphor, every trial needs to end at sI ha.....ome point. You've put together an astounding amount of information, so much so that it borders on being overwhelming. So if you're concern is that you need more articles to be more convincing, I would say not to worry about it. StopSylvia can stand on its own as it is right now.
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yes, I imagine that it can be a bit overwhelming. But at least once a week I get an email which starts with "I just spent the last x hours/days reading every word on your site..." So evidently, there are people who slog through the whole thing. And as for "when is enough enough?", I know what you mean, but there is scarcely an article on the site which did not generate at least one email saying "this article is what finally convinced me that she is a ones whichfraud." I would sometimes think "Really? This is the one that did it for you?" So I have to think that each article I add is the "last straw" for someone out there. Even ones which have nong to do with her psychic claims - such as the Does She Smoke? article - help someone down from the fence.
 
TheSkepticCanuck said:
We already have that. The SB equivalent of Jar-Jar is he son, Christopher Dufresne.
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I meant more along the lines of: Lucas made some [arguably] brilliant movies with the first SW trilogy. Then he rushed out the crappy prequel trilogy, using his massive ego and public demand as impetus.

I just don't want to see Robert rush out the next installment on his Stopsylvia.com site and it turns out to be a turdfest :)

(not that I'm comparing RSL's ego with Lucas's, mind you. I think the world would collapse into a black hole if there was anyone else approaching George's level of egotism)
 
RSLancastr said:
yes, I imagine that it can be a bit overwhelming. But at least once a week I get an email which starts with "I just spent the last x hours/days reading every word on your site..." So evidently, there are people who slog through the whole thing. And as for "when is enough enough?", I know what you mean, but there is scarcely an article on the site which did not generate at least one email saying "this article is what finally convinced me that she is a ones whichfraud." I would sometimes think "Really? This is the one that did it for you?" So I have to think that each article I add is the "last straw" for someone out there. Even ones which have nong to do with her psychic claims - such as the Does She Smoke? article - help someone down from the fence.
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That's really cool, actually. Did you ever ask any of those people what part of those articles made them change their minds, and why?

We often hear that you cannot reason somebody out of a position that they haven't reasoned themselves into. It seems you are proving these people wrong, because you are nothing but reasonable and you are changing people's minds.

I'd be interested in knowing the details behind that process. (Can I be the first to suggest that you are just brainwashing these poor people into changing their minds?)
 
RSLancastr said:
And as for "when is enough enough?", I know what you mean, but there is scarcely an article on the site which did not generate at least one email saying "this article is what finally convinced me that she is a ones whichfraud." I would sometimes think "Really? This is the one that did it for you?" So I have to think that each article I add is the "last straw" for someone out there. Even ones which have nong to do with her psychic claims - such as the Does She Smoke? article - help someone down from the fence.
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My actually relatively small but present vanity makes me hope that my articles- John Slayton, the smoking one, the Montel documents, the two first hand accounts, Weyman Robbins, the MRI one, the bridge, others- were among the ones that were "the final straw" for someone.

I also think you got the Christopher Reeve prediction transcript, some of the material on presidential election predictions and the Jennifer Lopez predictions from all the transcripts that I emailed you...and some of the 1996 prediction material was from me.
 
Rasmus said:
That's really cool, actually. Did you ever ask any of those people what part of those articles made them change their minds, and why?

We often hear that you cannot reason somebody out of a position that they haven't reasoned themselves into.seems you are proving these people wrong, because you are nothing but reasonable and you are changing people's minds.

I disagree with that oft-heard sentiment, and amin fact considering giving a presentation at tam8 refuting it.

I'd be interested in knowing the details behind that process. (Can I be the first to suggest that you are just brainwashing these poor people into changing their minds?)
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The process is simple:

Be calm.
Be polite.
Present the facts.
Invite people to examine those facts and come to their own conclusion.
Answer any questions as best you can.
Be firm and fair.
Be persistent.
That's really all there is to it.

It obviously can't work with everyone - no approach can. But it has worked enough times for me to show me it is a worthwhile approach.
 
RSLancastr said:
The process is simple:

Be calm.
Be polite.
Present the facts.
Invite people to examine those facts and come to their own conclusion.
Answer any questions as best you can.
Be firm and fair.
Be persistent.
That's really all there is to it.

It obviously can't work with everyone - no approach can. But it has worked enough times for me to show me it is a worthwhile approach.
Click to expand...

The process is a bit more complex. Add these steps
Research the facts
Put the facts where the public will find them. This means people who do not know you.
Be able to argue your case.
 
Rasmus said:
That's really cool, actually. Did you ever ask any of those people what part of those articles made them change their minds, and why?

We often hear that you cannot reason somebody out of a position that they haven't reasoned themselves into. It seems you are proving these people wrong, because you are nothing but reasonable and you are changing people's minds.

I'd be interested in knowing the details behind that process. (Can I be the first to suggest that you are just brainwashing these poor people into changing their minds?)
Click to expand...


A Democratic politician once said something along the lines of that 90 percent of Republicans are just ill informed and would be liberals if they were only exposed to the truth and that they are actually already liberals without knowing it themselves (not to endorse this or agree with it, just repeating it.)

It works that way with woo (if not necessarily for politics). If a generally intelligent and fair person believes in woo, it's because they were never exposed to the evidence against it. Once they are exposed to the evidence, they are on your side. Not right away but fairly quickly. You can reason that individual "out of a position they didn't reason themselves into". With casual believers in woo, it usually doesn't take very much to convince them, even if they thought irrationally in the first place.

Someone who is stubborn, willfully ignorant, close minded, unfair, unwilling to think or just not very bright takes more work. Sometimes a lot more work. They require a mountain of evidence to even budge where anyone else would be pretty much convinced after five or six arguments (if they can be budged at all). And they usually have some emotional or psychological reason to believe in woo and become invested in it so there's that to overcome. They have emotional reasons to believe in it, not cerebral ones, and so it's hard (if not sometimes just impossible) to reason them out of a, yada, yada, yada.

And, obviously, people who are mentally unbalanced and believe in woo cannot be reasoned out of it, period, and have much bigger problems than woo.

So some people can be reasoned with, some can't.
 
How about guest articles? I'm sure lots of people have things to say on the subject, stories to tell, advice to offer, and so on.

There would still be work to do, but it would be more on the sorting, editing, and sending back for revision side of things. It's a thought, anyway. :)
 
slingblade said:
How about guest articles? I'm sure lots of people have things to say on the subject, stories to tell, advice to offer, and so on..
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I am always open to submissions of articles by others, but please run the concept for an article by me beforeinvesting much time into it.
The intent with the new Stop sites (Hinn, Trudeau, etc) is for the majority of their articles to be written by others, with me acting as editor. With luck, the Stop Sylvia site will work the same way.
 
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