Nonsense. I just saw him ride past on an Invisible Pink Unicorn, in a coy reenactment of Lady Godiva's ride through Coventry.
Montague Keen
- Thread starter arcticpenguin
- Start date
I would have thought that people who talk to the dead for money was a errr dead issue. Guess not.
My personal attitude toward it was made concrete when I personally performed a series of cold readings on Paltalk. The success was generally good (subjectively measured by the pathetic level of affermations and/or excuse making on the part of the rubes). One was outstanding. Given a little experience with human nature and relationships, particularly between chicks and their dads, I had one person in tears. Easy and that with zero practice. From this I was convinced that with practice and better hard knowledge (like designers of costume jewelery, birthstones, sports teams and stuff like that) I could be successful at gulling the public (actually, mainly females for some reason.). Couple an innate quickness of mind with a charming personality and success could have been just around the corner. The problem was, that haveing seen how easy it was it made me feel very, very dirty.
The people who do this for a "living" are reprehensible. They are vampires that prey on grief. The fact is that anyone can perform these "feats". I have challenged various woos to try but I am not sure how many have actually tried. Few if any I suspect.
An interesting area. Reprehensible bastards on one hand and credulous dolts divorced from reality on the other.
My personal attitude toward it was made concrete when I personally performed a series of cold readings on Paltalk. The success was generally good (subjectively measured by the pathetic level of affermations and/or excuse making on the part of the rubes). One was outstanding. Given a little experience with human nature and relationships, particularly between chicks and their dads, I had one person in tears. Easy and that with zero practice. From this I was convinced that with practice and better hard knowledge (like designers of costume jewelery, birthstones, sports teams and stuff like that) I could be successful at gulling the public (actually, mainly females for some reason.). Couple an innate quickness of mind with a charming personality and success could have been just around the corner. The problem was, that haveing seen how easy it was it made me feel very, very dirty.
The people who do this for a "living" are reprehensible. They are vampires that prey on grief. The fact is that anyone can perform these "feats". I have challenged various woos to try but I am not sure how many have actually tried. Few if any I suspect.
An interesting area. Reprehensible bastards on one hand and credulous dolts divorced from reality on the other.
The totally off-topic posts have been split to: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54108 . If you wish to continue those discussion please do so in that thread in that section.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic Posted By: Darat
While proper respect and courtesy is certainly important, peoples own opinion of their personal experiences is half the problem. Personal experience is often shielded from intense skeptical scrutiny, simply because in general, it is taken as rude to pry.
Personal experience is also often given the benefit of being seen as more valid than the anecdotes they are, by those experiencing them. This, simply because said person experienced something personnally. "I KNOW what I experienced!", often being the phrase used. If anything, we should be extra critical of our own personal experiences, extra doubtful, because its obvious that what we experience, and how we interprete it, is far from concrete and reliable. That and our interpretations are directly influenced by what we think we've experienced. We interpret our experiences, via directly experiencing them, meaning that whatever ambiguity exists in the personal experience directly passes onto our intrepretation of it....if that makes any sense.
Now I did a certain amount of discussing with Clancie and Neo and all back in the day as well. And I'll agree that I think I probably got further along in getting details out of them than perhaps via the style that Claus uses. However, I would not say that I got particularily far either. Why? Because of personal experience. People don't want to give up their preferred interpretation of a particular experience, especially when it is related to a deceased loved one. There were many good, logical questions fielded about the process by which John Edwards communicates. It was obvious to myself that there were all sorts of practical questions about his method of communication, that had never been questioned or asked. Questions that seemed rather obvious to me coming from a skeptical stand-point. At the end of the day, the exact mechanisms JE uses for his communication are rather vague, and have seemed to change over time, or by situation. I find that telling.
I've always maintained that JE clearly has some talents. They just don't include talking to dead people
.I think you make some good points, voidx, but I'd point out that Neo has never had her own personal experience.
I'm not sure what is meant by "going far" with Clancie and Neo (or me, for that matter). I think all three of us answered a ton of questions (just because Clancie didn't answer every picky and annoying question from Claus doesn't mean she didn't answer questions) and provided a lot more accurate information about JE and his work than most people on this board. I'm still surprised at the misinformation tossed out about JE and his show in several threads.
I think if skeptics really want to discuss mediumship/JE and try to change a believer's mind, then either stick to arguments that you can back up, or do some research. For example, tt worked for me when people explained cold reading in detail and I got enough of a comprehensive understanding of it to realize that JE's work is similar. On the other hand, it didn't work when someone would say that JE's show is edited to keep the hits and take out the misses, because I know from watching the show that hits are edited out also and misses are included.
I lean very strongly towards that opinion as well.
Which begs the question why she goes to see psychics.
That's true. Clancie did answer some questions (usually after much back-and-forth). She did not, however, answer the pertinent questions.
It took a long time before she finally fessed up to being a full-fledged believer on another forum, despite the fact that she had posed as a fence-sitter here for more than a year.
How do you feel about that deceit, RC? How do you feel about Clancie lying for years?
Feel free to point out the misinformation. With evidence, of course.
Of course misses are included. Because, if we are presented with only hits, we will smell a rat. But do you think that the show presents a true ratio of hits and misses?
It's not merely opinion, RC. We have plenty of natural explanations of what JE does. Nothing he does is paranormal.
Unless you have evidence of the contrary?
Well she went to readings if I remember correctly. And seemed to be convinced of the validity or the claimed validity of mediumship. I just often found a strong desire for belief in mediumship that always was held slightly higher than any potential mundane explanation.
Well most of my interaction was with Clancie. And yes she would answer questions and consider points. While she considered many of my points, it never really did anything to dent her overall belief in JE in general. Even though in my opinion, the very fact that she had not asked or considered certain questions about his abilities, would have made it necessary for some level of doubt in it all to be introduced. While we were able to perhaps make her feel less confident about certain aspects of his claimed abilities, or her interpretations of them, he didn't seem to lose any of his luster. Or rather, we'd jump to a different medium. Ms. Piper for example, as someone who was really good, but as often as not was dead, or not doing readings anymore, and so had nothing new to analyze for performances.
I personally found that at the end of the day, we'd sort of backed her into a corner where personal experience was really the only aspect of her belief we couldn't make any impact on. Cold reading, all the work on transcripts we did, and especially, JE's horrible performances on Larry King Live; I think it did a decent job of showing that what JE seems to do so well is the result of a lot of practice, polished editing at times, unwarranted sitter validation, and just a pinch of luck.
I, for one, thought for certain that JE's performances on LKL would introduce some form of doubt in his abilities. But instead it simply brought forth unwarranted theories about things effecting his abilities, such as him not doing well with phone readings, and the short time he was given. Basically, given any number of examples where someone truly skeptical would go, hmmm yes, that's a little telling, that seems a touch mundane, there was instead a tendancy to create imaginary excuses or limitations to JE's paranormal abilities. In the end, mundane explanations got somewhat short shrift because there was a want to believe. Which is why I say that I never got particularily far, because how does one convince someone out of a belief like that.
I'll be the first to admit that it would be challenging dealing with the barrage of posts that often resulted in those threads. However, I often found Clancie all too easily distracted and pulled into pointless arguements. As often as Claus has been accused of harrassing and hounding her, there was as often an example of Clancie get pulled into it.
She did, but it took some prying. Her describing the different forms of mediumship was something important I took away from it. I personnally found that it opened up more doubts and more unanswered questions, but it furthered my understanding of what different mediums claim to be doing. I'll admit that most threads about JE these days mostly just bash him, without a lot of detail that we had in the threads back in the day when we was a hot topic. But that's really not that unusual. There isn't really anyone around these days arguing in JE's favor, so those threads don't get very far anyway. Or don't get challenged.
While I agree in general, we have an example of it working for you. But I'd argue it didn't do much in convincing or introducing doubt to either Neo or Clancie. Even acknowledging at times that cold reading was similiar to JE's schtick, there was always some really great reading, or some single great hit that just erased all doubts. Even considering that great hits are to be expected given enough readings and when fishing enough, or, by having a good understanding of the types of people that were likely to show up for a reading and what they were looking for.
Well you have to admit that there is still a point there. Of course some misses are included. It'd appear far too much like simple hot reading if he was flawless all the time. The point really was, and always has been, is that you are not seeing the entire dialogue that JE has with any sitter from start to finish, and so any hit or misses context is really hard to comment on because of that. That's why there was so much attention and time spent around analyzing whole transcripts of JE and other mediums performances. You can only judge a reading by seeing every single thing that was said, in the order it was said. You don't get that necessarily by watching mediums on TV, JE included. The only examples that we all could see where he was completely unedited (so far as we know) were on Larry King Live....and he was not very good in that context.
I think most people involved in those threads back then got some valuable insight into mediumship. To me it laid it bare that while mediums at times seemingly get very good hits, that there really is nothing that screams anything paranormal about it. It all seemed quite mundane when all said and done. While others were able to hold onto their belief in mediumship throughout, because there was no 100% damning counter example to what JE was doing persay.
She may not have "belief in JE" but rather be unconvinced by all explanations of what mediums do from people calling themselves skeptics.
Shouldn't she ask for evidence that JE is psychic, instead of explanations of why he isn't?
What do you think?
I think you didn't answer my quesiton.
I think I'm not on trial here, so I'm free to answer any question I deem worthy of answering.
Hellbound
Merchant of Doom
There, fixed it for you.
A very telling post.
That's fine. Maybe some other time I'll ask a more "worthy" question. Any tips on what kind of questions are worthy? Any topics I should avoid? Should I avoid alltogether all questions that might expose your opinions?
She believed that the information produced by JE was more than mere chance and cold reading. She held the paranormal aspect of speaking with passed spirits as a potentially valid explanation. She seemed to favour it over any of the mundane explanations we put forth, at least in regards to certain mediums, JE being one.
Now it's fair to say that she was indeed unconvinced by our various explanations. But you miss the point. The point is why did she remain unconvinced? While nothing was a 100% damning expose of JE, there were many points that should have made anyone being completely critical more than a touch doubtful. And as pointed out, why was JE's ability being paranormal communication with passed spirits the default position for her that required disproving? In what manner was she justified in taking the paranormal hypothesis as the most likely? Especially with the wide range of mundane questions that had not been considered until we all got into an in-depth debate over it.
A lot of self-proclaimed skeptics and members of skeptical organizations believe that too, since they believe JE is not doing it by chance (because he knows what he is doing) and at times doesn't use cold reading (but warm or hot).
Again, who are these people and organizations, and what, exactly, did they claim?