Belz...
Fiend God
It's a CONSPIRACY!!!!!
Vision From Feeling
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It's a CONSPIRACY!!!!!
Senex
Philosopher
I think it's unrealistic to expect much from this meeting.
VfF attended both the dinner and talk afterwards. I gave the talk, and she listened and asked one question. During dinner (which I only half attended) and after the talk, there was some discussion of a possible test. My experience is that you don't want to perform a test before you have it set up.
She basically said that she is only interested in doing medically related tests, i.e., not chemical tests. I brought up the possibility of vasectomies (because of this discussion), and she said that because she has only ONCE detected a vasectomy, she is not prepared, at present, to perform a test based on this. Think about it - if she has looked at thousands of people over time, and only once seen a vasectomy, think of the sample size we would need to get a statistically significant number of vasectomies that she could see.
In the end, we were stuck, in that there is no particular medical condition that she claims to be able to detect with sufficient reliability to test her abilities. She acknowledges the necessity of her finding such conditions. We all agreed on some of the difficulties - you need to find conditions that are commonplace, not detectable by ordinary means, and definitively confirmable or falsifiable. We'd also have to find a lot of volunteers (difficult) or procure the cooperation of medical professionals who could help us (more difficult). If I ended up acting as the primary organizer of the test, I might also have to address ethical/legal issues involving research involving humans.
VfF reaffirmed her belief that she will ultimately be able to come up with a testable claim, but at the moment, I think the ball is squarely in her court as we await her determining what aspects she feels sufficiently confident enough to allow testing.
@ecarlson: I think that's about what we expected. I keep going back and fourth: troll, self-deluded, troll, self-deluded; I am back to self-deluded.
It's all whittled down to pure cold-reading, and statistical guessing, hasn't it? If a test does ever emerge (which I am highly doubtful it will), it will serve to prove absolutely nothing whatsoever.
I don't even know what VFF is claiming anymore. It was my understanding that she could actually see peoples' tissue, see inside their bodies. In this case, it would be remarkably easy to come up with a test.
If she sees something in someone, say she can see it, and she can't be wrong if she has the ability. If she doesn't see anything, don't say anything. I don't even believe she has synthaesthesia, I just think she has a childish fantasy.
I have to admit, I have a kind of morbid curiosity with self-deluded people; the way they convince themselves, it's quite astonishing.
It's all whittled down to pure cold-reading, and statistical guessing, hasn't it? If a test does ever emerge (which I am highly doubtful it will), it will serve to prove absolutely nothing whatsoever.
I don't even know what VFF is claiming anymore. It was my understanding that she could actually see peoples' tissue, see inside their bodies. In this case, it would be remarkably easy to come up with a test.
If she sees something in someone, say she can see it, and she can't be wrong if she has the ability. If she doesn't see anything, don't say anything. I don't even believe she has synthaesthesia, I just think she has a childish fantasy.
I have to admit, I have a kind of morbid curiosity with self-deluded people; the way they convince themselves, it's quite astonishing.
Belz...
Fiend God
Well, it's a welcome change from those who are always 100% sure of their abilities.
Hopefully this lack of assurance on her part with spark some doubt as to whether she has such an ability or not... but I doubt it.
Anna Karenina
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i have an idea for a test that wont require her to know anything about medical conditions but will conclusively show that she can see into peoples bodies.
just get one person who was born with one kidney (it's not particularly uncommon) and line them up with a bunch of people who have two kidneys and get her to pick them out.
just get one person who was born with one kidney (it's not particularly uncommon) and line them up with a bunch of people who have two kidneys and get her to pick them out.
So, she's basically admitted that her claim boils down to this -
"Sometimes I guess about peoples health/medical conditions, and I only remember the hits."
Why am I not surprised?
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roger
Penultimate Amazing
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I did understand you - you are wrong. Your link is from the psych program - that is their limitation. I gave you a link that explicitly states that you can get two BSc's at the same time. Nothing stops you from getting a Bsc chemistry and BSc physics at the same time.
Here's an example of a man blind from birth who regained his vision:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Bradford
Some more cases mentioned here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquired_vision[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the links... I have read similar cases in the past.
Maybe i was thinking a person's perception was relevant.
It's funny the notions people can have sometimes. Again sorry to disrupt
the room.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Bradford
Some more cases mentioned here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquired_vision[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the links... I have read similar cases in the past.
Maybe i was thinking a person's perception was relevant.
It's funny the notions people can have sometimes. Again sorry to disrupt
the room.
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
I have a question for VfF.
In your opinion, if I were to watch you making your observations, how could I differentiate between your method of determining a medical condition and cold reading?
In your opinion, if I were to watch you making your observations, how could I differentiate between your method of determining a medical condition and cold reading?
I'm not clear why the term "cold reading" is being bandied about. When I think of cold reading I think of a series of questions and vague educated guesses used to guide the reader to more detailed information. We've seen Anita do a couple of readings here on photos. Nothing like that happened.
Of course, as has been repeatedly stated she could be gathering plenty of information visually and through prior conversations.
Could you elaborate on what you mean?
Yes... and they can run a series of these tests to rule out lucky guessing.
How does a person differentiate between the products of their own imaginations and what they believe is actually some sort of ability to either read minds etc, or be able to see medical conditions in other bodies, other than the conventional way of using medical science. It would be interesting to see a viable test for these abilities.
I feel like people are overlooking a huge element in all of this: medical ailments are inevitable. Statistically, people between certain ages will likely have certain conditions.
There are lots and lots of common conditions that someone could name in their guessing game. You are going to get some of them right.
It is cold reading, just a milder form of it. You're looking at someone, what gender they are, what age they are, how they stand, how they move, how they interact, and already you have tons and tons of information with which to figure out what likely ailments they have, or have had.
Someone with a background in medicine will be able to do this with much more ease.
There are lots and lots of common conditions that someone could name in their guessing game. You are going to get some of them right.
It is cold reading, just a milder form of it. You're looking at someone, what gender they are, what age they are, how they stand, how they move, how they interact, and already you have tons and tons of information with which to figure out what likely ailments they have, or have had.
Someone with a background in medicine will be able to do this with much more ease.
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
Ian Rowling is probably the best resource for information on various cold reading tactics. It is much more than a form of 20 questions, and often relies solely on visual cues such as body language. For example, VfF could fire off a list of potential ailments (as she did with the two photographic readings on here), and notice that the subject's eyes widen, head leans forward, or the subject even slightly nods when one issue is mentioned (such as "heart trouble"). Bingo, VfF knows which ailment to focus on. By including enough options in the shotgunned list, it is almost impossible to not have a hit (and hence, a 100% success rate).
As has been mentioned, cold reading can also be done by knowing someone's general age, gender, physical condition, ethnicity, marital status, and even how they dress.
There are two people who either currently post here or have posted here (chillzero and Miss Anthrope) who used to be practicing psychics. I don't think either of them did so for money, and both learned that they were using cold reading techniques and never knew it. When they controlled for these techniques, they couldn't perform as they expected, and eventually came to realize there was nothing paranormal about what they were doing.
My question was meant to find out how much VfF knows about cold reading, how best to control for it, and what an experienced observer can do to detect such techniques.
Nobody is overlooking that. It has been pointed out a number of times. We're just not at the stage where statistical analysis is much of a factor.
Thing is, Anita is claiming 100% accuracy in the sense that when she says it's there, it's there 100% of the time. She has no idea how often she misses seeing something she has seen in other people. This has been done under very relaxed conditions, and is meaningless for forming any type of testable claim.
The first step is to introduce some control to confirm or deny her 100% accuracy claim. At the same time this will tell us her accuracy in terms of what she fails to see. If you look at the Testing Protocol for Vision From Feeling thread you'll see a document I created that will help us do that.
I have listed nearly 100 conditions for her to try to detect. I'm very confident her 100% accuracy claim will not hold up. If it does, this could get very interesting.
Once we know how many conditions people checked and how many she read, the numbers people here can give us a good idea of what we're seeing. If she seems to be accurate in certain areas, we can investigate further to see if there are an visual cues that could have tipped her off.
If we see something worth investigating when that is done, we can construct a more structured test with a narrow set of conditions over a larger pool of people.
If the numbers people look at it and say, "If every condition listed had an equal chance of being checked by the volunteer, then Anita did no better than chance in her readings" we can close this thread entirely.
It definitely did happen - Anita made guesses - even though the guesses were completely incorrect attempts were made by her to interpret her own comments as hits in some way.
These are all from her post responding to your post detailing that she was incorrect:
Every one of these comments she seems to think indicates a hit when in reality none of them did.
Who knows how this instance would have been described if not documented clearly for everyone to see at all stages.
If it was one of the attempts made in Anita's general stories that happen outside this forum it may have been that the subject and Anita herself remembered the hits (as interpreted) and forgot the misses.
Both might have afterwards described the reading as successful.
Anita is obviously quite forceful in pushing descriptions in the directions she wants.
This is all part of cold reading.
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desertgal
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Yes. Still, I maintain that Anita is delusional, and self deceptive, so I have to ask myself:
Is she is deliberately cold reading to convince others that she has an ability that she does not?
Or is it part of the self deception, and she is unknowingly using cold reading techniques while believing that it is her "ability"?
In all fairness, I have to go with the latter. As well, it does seem that she came here, not to seek attention for attention's sake, but to seek some validation that her "ability" is real, or might be real-the ultimate goal being that, if she received that validation, especially from skeptics, she wouldn't have to let go of the self deception.
Just my $.02 worth.
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I agree, especially ones that are close to you, like friends and family
that give any sort of thought or concern for your health. People do share
a lot of common ailments so a hit and miss game wouldn't be too hard to
achieve in my opinion. Anita to me anyways, seems like she is from vague city though. And maybe with some revisionist stories to boot.
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