...The problem is that there is SOOOOO much tangible, real evidence that psychic ability is bunk... and not so much as a single documented account of even a personal anecdote about any psychic ever that has held up to any scrutiny once the facts were looked at objectively...
Rosemary's a great case in point. Repeatedly she uses the analogy of how bad doctors don't mean that the entire medical profession is a sham, but then in the same breath refuses to villify Sylvia or even so much as speculate on her motives. What blows apart her analogy is that the medical profession doesn't go out of their way to protect bad doctors. They do everything they can to weed them out...
...It's not that there's fraud going on in the industry that makes it a scam...it's the fact that no "legitimate" psychics have ever been able to clearly demonstrate exactly what they do that is in any way different from how the scammers do it.
Well said, Drudgewire. As a corollary to your point, another difference between doctors and psychics is that doctors are held to a set of professional standards that involve verifiable, observable, measurable results (in addition to ethical standards). Psychics aren't held to any set of standards that I know of -- not by "legitimates", as you point out, and certainly not by any professonal psychic association, with a published set up ethics and a review board. Haven't heard of "psychical" licenses, either; at least none issued by a government-recognized board.
I think that my biggest problem with "psychic powers" is that it glosses over what -- I think -- is the more miraculous ability of all human beings: the human being is, in my mind, the most sophisticated pattern-seeking machine in the world. We humans have the capability to pull the most profound insights out of absolutely nothing at all (well, and BS too, but that's another story).
This ability is innate. It allows us to be problem-solvers, to invent, to come up with connections and conclusions that are mindblowing. It gives birth to both art and science (and religion). We're constantly trying to pull pattern out of chaos and sometimes, intuitively, we manage to actually find a signal there, to come up with completely intuitive solutions for something considered insolvable.
My dismay at the psychic crowd is that, for the most part (because this is a sweeping generalization), they touch on the pattern-seeking ability /but then go no farther/. "I can talk to angels!" "I can talk to dead people!" "I can talk to God!" "I have a psychic connection to other human beings!" And it stops there. I don't see much attempt at scholarship other than coming up with elaborate feel-good hypotheses about their special powers -- I see no actual drive to experiement, to test, to find out the true limits and source of their abilities (which I think is pattern-seekiness) and, in that way, to find out ways to train and hone their ability. It's like they have a special talent in pattern-seekiness but then just stop right there, stuck with no means of self-improvement because they think they've already got all the answers they need.
Some people find they have this knack and instead of thinking they are psychic, know that they have some higher-than-average ability to sense patterns -- they train themselves very carefully, using time-tested techniques, to maximize their abilities. These people are our detectives, our profilers, our scientists, our musicians, our artists, our psychologists, or any one of the amazing number of professions which produce results in an observably positive way (that's another generalization, of course; there are bad detectives, scientists, profilers, etc -- we're all humans).
And what's worse, because the "psychic arts" /inherently/ shun any kind of systematic, careful questioning and observation, there is /no means/ to prevent or minimize things like Sylvia Browne telling people that their dead children are alive or their living children are dead.
No wonder this Forum is often perceived as a hotbed of rudeness and intolerance. I'm actually amazed it's not worse than it is.
