Went to a psychic medium and she told me this?

[tresqua]

^ look I get you're skeptical, but I'm the cynical type and I used to think they're all fake. THERE ARE authentic psychics. Just cos you aren't aware doesn't make them some fictional creature. -_-

 

Are you suggesting the OP's that stupid? She works in law for god sakes.

 

I am stating that there has never been one single shred of proof that anyone is able to demonstrate authentic psychic powers under controlled test conditions and that the term "authentic psychics" is an oxymoron. Entire books have been written explaining how even the best so called "psychics" including Uri Geller and John Edwards and Sylvia Browne are nothing more than scammers using cold and warm reading techniques that anyone can learn if they care to put in the time and effort and have no morals and are ok with ripping people off to pay their own bills.

 

 

Smart people believe stupid things, that's just how it goes with human nature being what it is.

[teabee]

Making big life decisions based solely on a psychic’s prediction for the future is, agreed, not bright. Again, not a fan of having the future read, and any psychic (real or not!) who's going to read it should recognize the impact it can have on a client and be very responsible in giving that information. Not sure OP’s psychic gave her the most beneficial information in the most beneficial way. But I don't think I read anywhere that she was going to make any decisions based on that info anyway.

[Sparkly Eyes]

Making big life decisions based solely on a psychic’s prediction for the future is, agreed, not bright. Again, not a fan of having the future read, and any psychic (real or not!) who's going to read it should recognize the impact it can have on a client and be very responsible in giving that information. Not sure OP’s psychic gave her the most beneficial information in the most beneficial way. But I don't think I read anywhere that she was going to make any decisions based on that info anyway.

 

She doesn't need to say it...The fact that in her mind, this woman has a "gift" and is telling the truth with a high probability is enough to affect her future's decisions and that is bad enough.

 

I also like to say that once you get interested in psychics, mediums, ghosts whatever, it's VERY easy to lose your logic and start seeing things as the way you are told is true /or worse, you feel is true. Human brain can be very deceptive and it play some bad games with us... I myself like I stated have been in situations where I would be considered a "medium". Thankfully, I didn't go with the common beliefs and set some experiments...I still have unanswered questions and I can't explain what has actually happened to me. But the few experiments I did helped me disprove what others liked to think was true.

 

Anyways, OP, I know going to psychics is very tempting...who doesn't want to know about their future? It's exciting. But at the end of the day, it probably has more bad consequences than good ones. Live your life as none of the things you heard could be true and decide based on your own current information on your life.

[lalalollipops]

Meh. Some ppl are too closeminded to believe. Doesn't matter anyway, I find them quite handy. And ppl shouldn't bring Silvia Browne into this, she's a fake.

 

But alof out there aren't just cold reading.

[Rangafro]

I want psychics to be real. I'm nothing if not open minded, they are free to subject their psychic powers to scientific validation for them to prove that they are real. Yet they choose not to. What comes off as close minded to me is the OP asked for peoples opinions on where or not to believe this psychic, yet clearly she has already made up her mind without consideration of arguments to the contrary. It does not matter to me though, as long as she takes responsibility for her life which I believe she is.

[Jaydedgirl]

Lol..im not stupid to falll for bull * * * * ..no she didnt fish me about legal procedures and such..she told me what my spirit guide is confirming. She couldve said doctors, veterinarian, sales person but she said lawyers! And she confirmed where about my cousin got injured during his accident and that he was paralyzed from the neck down.

[tresqua]

Lol..im not stupid to falll for bull * * * * ..no she didnt fish me about legal procedures and such..she told me what my spirit guide is confirming. She couldve said doctors, veterinarian, sales person but she said lawyers! And she confirmed where about my cousin got injured during his accident and that he was paralyzed from the neck down.

 

If you had the opportunity to view a video of the session you had with the so called "psychic" you would probably be amazed to see that you fed her the information as a result of careful directed probing and general guesswork on her part.

 

I've seen several of these videos, all done by professional "good guys" who make themselves out to be psychics to show people how the game works. Upon exiting the session, the "clients" were interviewed and they said the same thing you did. Then they were showed exactly what transpired, and it was clear that the "psychic" simply extracted the information through very skilled techniques, and you could see the lightbulbs come on. some of them were really pissed, either at themselves for falling for it or for the "psychics" who took their money.

 

Try this my friend. Go back to your psychic but have a more neutral or at leat unbiased approach, and be VERY careful not to give him or her ANY information at all, and see what specific information they come up during your next session, which is not available through any sort of background research (which is known as "hot reading"). For example, the psychic may say "you had an older male relative that had a bad accident" and you might answer "yes my cousin, they hurt their back!" and they will nod and you will walk out of there thinking "they knew my cousin was in a bad accident and had a back injury!" Nothing whatsoever to do with how smart you are and everything to do with techniques that have been around since the turn of the century.

[MyNinja]

An astrologist (I believed that what she claimed to be) took my reading for free because she was a normal customer who came into a grocery store I used to work for. It would've otherwise cost me $100 for a reading. She took down my birthdate, place of birth and age. She came back to me the next day with the "results" She said I was a double capricorn, highly intelligent (almost that of a genius), I have a strong business sense, etc. She even said that I would live long and my only health concern would be that I would need to take calcium supplements. She said a bunch of stuff I already knew about myself such as my personality and disposition. She just sort of elaborated on it.

 

Most of the things she said were generalizations and likely outcomes (many women need more calcium as they get older, lol, that's a given). It seems like it was fixed and most of the stuff she said wasn't a surpised to me. Good thing it she gave it to me for free. That was nice of her nontheless

[tresqua]

It seems like it was fixed and most of the stuff she said wasn't a surpised to me. Good thing it she gave it to me for free. That was nice of her nontheless

 

Everything she said to you was complimentary "feel good" stuff, and could apply to anyone and/or it had to do with some future occurrence (long healthy life) and if she was wrong.. well you'd be dead (lol).

 

She did it for free because she hoped you would be enticed to come back for more.

[teabee]

LOL, if you ask me, this takes sooo much more effort than actually developing one's psychic skills. The problem with thinking you know everything, is that you automatically discredit any information contrary to what you "know." Science is so behind on how incredible this world is and how much there is to it, because the science club has already determined what can or can' exist. And when you've already determined what you're going to find, that's what you find. This society is ridiculous sometimes, the way we over-rely on and romanticize logic and what we can discover through THINKING alone. "To hell with ancient wisdom, personal experience, and report after report after report of mysticism," we say. "Let's rely on only that which we can SEE, LABEL, and SQUEEZE into experiments designed by us, and shun everything else. Then we will know everything."

 

Yeah. Right.

[Rangafro]

LOL, if you ask me, this takes sooo much more effort than actually developing one's psychic skills. The problem with thinking you know everything, is that you automatically discredit any information contrary to what you "know." Science is so behind on how incredible this world is and how much there is to it, because the science club has already determined what can or can' exist. And when you've already determined what you're going to find, that's what you find. This society is ridiculous sometimes, the way we over-rely on and romanticize logic and what we can discover through THINKING alone. "To hell with ancient wisdom, personal experience, and report after report after report of mysticism," we say. "Let's rely on only that which we can SEE, LABEL, and SQUEEZE into experiments designed by us, and shun everything else. Then we will know everything."

 

Yeah. Right.

 

Not if psychic skills don't exist. =/

 

It's not about knowing everything. It's about knowing nothing. Before you can know something, it must be proven to be true. None of the proof provided for psychic phenomena stands up to repeated testing, and none of the theories stand up to deductive reasoning. Because a psychic reader knows information about you doesn't mean they got this information with psychic powers, much less tell the future. Science isn't some conspiracy cult that discredits information it feels like. I'm not sure you even know what science is. "Ancient wisdom" is nothing more than dogma. "Personal experience" is not objective and measurable. "Mystcism" and supernatural phenomena are not falsifiable. Science encourages free expression of ideas and information. Anybody anywhere with whatever education can say anything they like, but it doesn't mean anything if they don't prove it.

[lalalollipops]

Lol I can link you guys to several psychics on Ebay that aren't fakes. But then you still wouldn't believe aye? Even if they have 1000+ positive feedback with ppl stating accuracy and even following up months later stating whatever happened did happen.

 

 

But then you guys would still say they're all gullible fools? Pish I do think it's time to open your minds. I used to be disbelieving as well, but when I got a reading done and they knew things they couldn't have known, I started to believe. With one psychics I was adamant to tell them they were wrong about my ex, and guess what? Half a year after I dumped him I went back to that reading and boy was it accurate.

 

Sure some things can't be explained, but that doesn't make them not real.

[lalalollipops]

LOL, if you ask me, this takes sooo much more effort than actually developing one's psychic skills. The problem with thinking you know everything, is that you automatically discredit any information contrary to what you "know." Science is so behind on how incredible this world is and how much there is to it, because the science club has already determined what can or can' exist. And when you've already determined what you're going to find, that's what you find. This society is ridiculous sometimes, the way we over-rely on and romanticize logic and what we can discover through THINKING alone. "To hell with ancient wisdom, personal experience, and report after report after report of mysticism," we say. "Let's rely on only that which we can SEE, LABEL, and SQUEEZE into experiments designed by us, and shun everything else. Then we will know everything."

 

Yeah. Right.

 

It's quite funny how much more spiritual I've become. I used to not believe in anything, but now I do realise that there are angels and spirit guides and higher powers watching over everyone. But I guess it takes something traumatising to realise some things. I started getting into it after the break up with my ex from last year.

[Sparkly Eyes]

Not if psychic skills don't exist. =/

 

It's not about knowing everything. It's about knowing nothing. Before you can know something, it must be proven to be true. None of the proof provided for psychic phenomena stands up to repeated testing, and none of the theories stand up to deductive reasoning. Because a psychic reader knows information about you doesn't mean they got this information with psychic powers, much less tell the future. Science isn't some conspiracy cult that discredits information it feels like. I'm not sure you even know what science is. "Ancient wisdom" is nothing more than dogma. "Personal experience" is not objective and measurable. "Mystcism" and supernatural phenomena are not falsifiable. Science encourages free expression of ideas and information. Anybody anywhere with whatever education can say anything they like, but it doesn't mean anything if they don't prove it.

 

Excellent post, LOVE it. Personal experience is called personal for a reason, it's subjective to the person and different people have many different and often contradictory experiences. If we wanted to rely on personal experiences and ancient wisdom, we'd probably still believe sun moves around the earth.

 

All that being said, I wish people who were into supernatural were also more into science (and vice versa). There are lots of supernatural phenomena imo that are worth looking into/being researched. Perhaps we can find a scientific explanation for them or better, realize our science needs to be expanded. However, due to the nature of a lot of people who are interested in these phenomena, the explanations given for them are sometimes so ridiculous that no one even takes their experiences seriously in the first place, which is sad in a way, because they might have a point. Even scientists are always doubting the old theories that work/have been proven repeatedly. How someone can claim they know something for sure about a supernatural phenomenon is beyond me.

[teabee]

It's quite funny how much more spiritual I've become. I used to not believe in anything, but now I do realise that there are angels and spirit guides and higher powers watching over everyone. But I guess it takes something traumatising to realise some things. I started getting into it after the break up with my ex from last year.

 

That's interesting. It's been similar for me. I had to hit the bottom and start reevaluating. It's been very cool having my world open up

[teabee]

Not if psychic skills don't exist. =/

 

It's not about knowing everything. It's about knowing nothing. Before you can know something, it must be proven to be true. None of the proof provided for psychic phenomena stands up to repeated testing, and none of the theories stand up to deductive reasoning. Because a psychic reader knows information about you doesn't mean they got this information with psychic powers, much less tell the future. Science isn't some conspiracy cult that discredits information it feels like. I'm not sure you even know what science is. "Ancient wisdom" is nothing more than dogma. "Personal experience" is not objective and measurable. "Mystcism" and supernatural phenomena are not falsifiable. Science encourages free expression of ideas and information. Anybody anywhere with whatever education can say anything they like, but it doesn't mean anything if they don't prove it.

 

First off, I do know what science is, thanks. Did 3 years in sciences in uni before switching to arts psych so I could go into counselling.

 

I am not using the word conspiracy at all. Just wondering why everyone believes science is safe from any of the regular narrow-mindedness and biases present in everything humans create? For example, science journals select what to publish. If someone completes an interesting study that supports the idea that prayer can influence recovery rate during illness, for example, they could very well get a reply from a journal saying, "Interesting, but doesn't fit our journal." And then The Great Science goes on telling us what to believe while leaving out bits and pieces. There IS a science club, and it's just as susceptible to bias as anything else created by humans. Also, science is always behind. It can never be on the leading edge because it needs to wait for tons of studies, support, and consensus. It's a very good system, but it will always be behind. Years down the road they'll be announcing phenomenon x, y, and z are true, and there will already be a lot of people who already knew it was true and didn't need to wait for someone to find out how to measure it and support it scientifically.

 

Because a psychic reader knows information about you doesn't mean they got this information with psychic powers, much less tell the future

I guess it depends on your definition of "psychic powers" doesn't it?

 

Ancient wisdom" is nothing more than dogma. "Personal experience" is not objective and measurable. "Mystcism" and supernatural phenomena are not falsifiable.

That's exactly what I mean when I say this society is obsessed and overly in-love with logic and science. I know people that have had death-experiences. I don't think they care if it's objective, measurable, or falsifiable. People I know, including myself, have had out of body experiences. I don't care whether science supports it or not. I also did a year in an intuition course and came up with specific, detailed, accurate information that I could not have known about people I'd never met. I really couldn't care less if scientific studies would deny it's possible. Because it happened.

 

Also, there's a reason ancient wisdom is making a comeback. There is more to life then logic and science, and the world is starting to catch on.

[teabee]

Also, what you believe depends on what studies you're reading. There are things that are commonly accepted or disregarded by the mainstream "science club," as I've been calling it, but there's also lots of alternative research going on, so in some cases you can't even say, "Scientific studies show that doesn't exist," because you'd have to really know about all the studies that are out there, not just the ones the mainstream perpetuates.

 

I stumbled upon this journal a few months ago: link removed

Tons of interesting studies. (I have free access through my university, not sure if all the studies can be accessed otherwise)

 

And this article is interesting: link removed

 

Just one quote from the article to get an idea of how people can decide what's true and what's not true, and stubbornly disregard any new evidence that conflicts with that:

Philosopher Anthony Gottlieb, a visiting scholar at N.Y.U.'s philosophy department, amazingly suggested that Bem's evidence simply does not matter, no matter how solid it might be: “But even if Daryl Bem's study … turns out to be gold-standard science and breaks none of the standard procedural rules, one can still be confident that its findings are incorrect.”

Really? REALLY?

 

I have so much to say about all this, trying to stop and go to bed

[bulletproof]

Where did this bf of three years come from? Didn't you post in March about a guy at your gym that you were interested in, then subsequently devastated when he wasn't interested in you:

 

 

 

Lots of your threads contradict each other, which makes me wonder about your judgment in general. I'm glad you came to the conclusion that you will not be basing life decisions on a phone psychic reading, but I question whether these good people offering you life advice are wasting their breath since we don't really know what's accurate about your life.

[tresqua]

Where did this bf of three years come from? Didn't you post in March about a guy at your gym that you were interested in, then subsequently devastated when he wasn't interested in you

 

Wow great detective work right there. Looks like this thread is nothing more than "creative imagination". Why do people feel the need to fabricate stories and waste the valuable time of well meaning posters?

 

"I've got a boy friend of 3 years and yet I'm posting about some guy in a gym that has a crush on me and how do I go about meeting him..." Nice..

[Rangafro]

I want psychic powers to be real. If it can be harnessed it holds massive potential for humanity far beyond things like knowing who your future husband will be. Why would I or anyone else want to actually hold back that discovery? I don't understand then why all the psychics of the world are just sitting on their hands withholding this power from us if they are anything but genuine. If psychics can be proven scientifically we can have schools established to teach everyone how to harness that power. I don't want to bury or ignore evidence to the contrary, I just find the evidence thus far to be highly insufficient not in quantity but quality. 1 million Ebay testimonies are still only testimonies, even if they are from actual scientists! Of course psychic testimonies are going to be positive; most people who go see psychics already believe psychics are real, otherwise why would they see them? What I need is the actual data on the experiments. If psychic powers are a real natural phenomena then it is not outside the realm of science. If it is true, then it can be proven to be true and the science will support you.

 

You keeping talking about a science "club." Science is not a unified body. There is no one journal to rule them all. This Gottlieb would be ridiculed by most scientists, and that's probably why he is only a philosopher and not a scientist. At any time a paradigm shift in thinking can happen, and has happened on several occasions because someone somewhere had the evidence to back it up. You're absolutely right that people do suffer from biases and errors in logic, this is exactly why we need concrete objective evidence in the first place and why things like personal anecdotes on Ebay and ancient traditions are not substantial. Scientists are "in love" with this kind of evidence for a reason; because it does not lie, it is not ambiguous and is not subject to fuzzy logic and magical thinking like people are.

[teabee]

Ok, here’s more quotes, from scientists this time, exhibiting blatant bias since you think the philosopher would be ridiculed (they'd all be part of the "club" I'm talking about that refuses to see beyond what's accepted in the mainstream). The research they’re up in arms about is research by a Daryl Bem showing statistically significant results (demonstrated in 8 out of 9 studies) that support the existence of precognition.

 

Read the last paragraph I’ve quoted, if nothing else.

 

“Bem's study prompted a hissy fit among scientists 8221;

 

Cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University predicted disaster, wailing, “If any of [bem's] claims were true, then all of the bases underlying contemporary science would be toppled, and we would have to rethink everything about the nature of the universe … There has to be a common sense [sic] cutoff for craziness … Otherwise, the floodgates will be open to crackpots of all stripes—and opening the floodgates to the frequent publication of crackpot ideas in top-notch journals would … spell the end of science as we know it.”

 

Columbia University astronomer David Helfand thundered that Bem's findings were “an assault on science and rationality.” Breezily ignoring more than a century of experimental investigation, Helfand questioned “whether ESP is even amenable to scientific inquiry.” He compared Bem's study to “the memos describing the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the rantings of Senator Jim Inhofe on climate change, and the triple-A ratings of collateralized debt obligations.” He charged that Bem's paper, like these examples, had not been “subjected to rigorous and impartial peer review,” and would therefore cause similar mischief—an accusation that is vigorously disputed by psychologist Charles Judd of the University of Colorado, the editor of the journal that accepted Bem's paper. Helfand cheekily suggested that psi may deserve “the same exalted status as belief in the Pastafarian Flying Spaghetti Monster.”

 

Physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, of Arizona State University, excoriated Bem's paper as an example of “bad research [which] gets happily buried in the dustbin of history, which is what I expect will happen in this case,”9 although he gave no specific reasons why Bem's research was “bad.”

 

Ray Hyman, a retired psychologist at the University of Oregon, who for decades has been a voluble, dedicated foe of such findings, screeched that Bem's work and its imminent publication are “craziness, pure craziness. I can't believe a major journal is allowing this work in. I think it's just an embarrassment to the entire field.”

 

Hyman had said in 1985, as if unconsciously describing himself, “The level of the debate [about these kinds of findings] during the past 130 years has been an embarrassment for anyone who would like to believe that scholars and scientists adhere to standards of rationality and fair play.” Hyman's comment still seems true, because in all the statements of the “experts” whom the Times recruited to comment on Bem's paper, not a single one appeared even minimally knowledgeable of the field they so enthusiastically disparaged.

 

Gottlieb stated, “It's very suspicious that hard evidence of paranormal powers only ever seems to show up in laboratories. If people really can predict the future in extrasensory (and extrarational) ways, how come they only seem to manage it when ESP researchers ask them to do something trivial, like guess a playing card or a picture?” Gottlieb seems blissfully unaware that precognition, or future knowing, usually takes place not in labs but in free-range humans in the wild. He displays not a glimmer of awareness of the hundreds of experiments in remote viewing at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab and elsewhere, which also take place outside the lab in the real world, and that most of these results are precognitive in nature. He has apparently never heard of entire books devoted to locating sunken ships and buried or inundated archaeological sites by extrasensory means. Or that psychics in several real-world experiments have made considerable sums of money predicting the silver futures market, one study of which was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Or that a 10-year study of 385 chief executive officers of US corporations found that 80% of executives whose companies' profits had more than doubled in the past five years had above-average precognitive powers on ESP tests; and that the correlations were so definitive that the researchers were able to examine financial reports and predict in advance how a given CEO would do in ESP experiments.

 

You can refer to the article for the citations of the actual studies.

[teabee]

Intuition/precognition/psychic powers exist. And so do schools that teach them, for that matter, since every human is intuitive and can be trained to develop the muscle. I'm wondering how carefully you've been reading my posts because I've mentioned intuition courses several time.

[superfox]

Where did this bf of three years come from? Didn't you post in March about a guy at your gym that you were interested in, then subsequently devastated when he wasn't interested in you:

 

 

 

Lots of your threads contradict each other, which makes me wonder about your judgment in general. I'm glad you came to the conclusion that you will not be basing life decisions on a phone psychic reading, but I question whether these good people offering you life advice are wasting their breath since we don't really know what's accurate about your life.

This got me wondering too.

Despite being infracted for answering on a previous thread of hers I would possibly suggest that the op seeks counselling, despite my beliefs in the paranormal or not.

[Rangafro]

I'm well aware there are niche courses run privately. I am referring to psychic education that becomes approved as part of the national curriculum in countries accross the world along side maths, english or physical education. This is what scientific validation can bring.

 

Good evidence speaks for itself regardless of people's biases because at the end of the day scientists are human too. Here Prof. Bem is likened to a modern day Galileo. We know about Galileo's detractors yet history looks favourably upon him because of his cogent evidence for his theories. So what's is Prof. Bem's evidence? It is an interesting study and there are in fact many like it, but it does not begin to go far enough. It has established a correlation, if only a weak one, but any mathematician will tell you correlation does not imply causation. But it is a start. How do the students know which curtain has the picture? Yes we can fill in the gaps by saying psychic powers, but how do they actually work and what is the mechanism behind it? How does the brain receive these signals, and why aren't the students consciously aware of it? What medium do these signals travel through, and how can they be intercepted or measured? Why is the correlation so weak? What was different about the test that showed no significant results? Why aren't these apparently psychic-gifted students out playing roulette instead!? These questions are not yet answered. It is somewhat outside the scope of psychology to understand the actual nature of consciousness, but this is where studies need to be going. However, to say it is outside the scope of science entirely is simply not good enough. How are we able to receive these signals if it is impossible to show they exist?

 

In the same article it notes that already three attempts have been made to replicate Prof. Bem's results in similar experiments, and have turned up showing no pattern at all. Prof. Bem asserts that these other tests are inconclusive because we can't know that the students participating in the study paid enough attention to the task, but his study doesn't even explore attention as being a determining variable in the results. There are more to come however. I don't doubt people like Prof Bem have their heart in the right place, and there are a lot of scientists willing to explore this kind of phenomena however dubious their experiments may be. Indeed even Einstein famously derided the initial findings of the fathers of Quantum Mechanics in saying "He (God) does not play dice", but they built up a body of empirical evidence that could not be ignored. All the scientific journals in the world opposed does not stop people like Prof. Bem doing the same.

[teabee]

I don't know if it's entirely outside the scope of science / impossible to show certain things exist. But if so... maybe that's just the way it is. I'm assuming there's lots of things happening in this universe that elude the means we have of measuring them (for now at least). Personally, I think it's funny that we believe we can know and dissect and label and write laws for everything. Letters to Vanessa by Jeremy Hayward is an excellent book written by a physicist if you have any interest in all this. It really challenged the way I thought about the world and science. We really are conditioned to think a certain way, and that's why you get educated people saying things like findings from a study are "bad research" for no reason, and can't be taken seriously, for no reason. Luckily, on a long enough timeline, people who say "it's not possible" tend to be proven wrong Even Einstein, looks like.

 

There are issues with replication in general, not just with experiments like these.

link removed

 

Short reply... but it's bedtime!