Debunking Psychics, Mediums, etc...

[driveway]

There is one thing that being 'psychic' can help you with:

There is no better way to pick up a girl than to read her palm. If you can spend fifteen minutes holding a girl's hand, tracing your finger lightly over her palm, talking about her and her future and not get her phone number, there is something profoundly wrong with you.

Works every single time.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by driveway

There is one thing that being 'psychic' can help you with:

There is no better way to pick up a girl than to read her palm. If you can spend fifteen minutes holding a girl's hand, tracing your finger lightly over her palm, talking about her and her future and not get her phone number, there is something profoundly wrong with you.

Works every single time.

Lol... I don't think I'd want to date a girl that believes in palm reading!!

[driveway]

Who dates anymore?

[4X4]

People that aren't married?

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by driveway

There is one thing that being 'psychic' can help you with:

There is no better way to pick up a girl than to read her palm. If you can spend fifteen minutes holding a girl's hand, tracing your finger lightly over her palm, talking about her and her future and not get her phone number, there is something profoundly wrong with you.

Works every single time.

yeah, then you tell her that you see a big house with a pool in her future, and when she asks you where you see that you hawk a loogie into her hand. Works everytime.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by old-fart

Randi just asks you to prove it, with certain controls in place to ensure no cheating. All he asks Sylvia Browne to do is 10 readings for 10 people that actually believe in her. Give him (Randi) the readings, and he'll shuffle them up then give them to the 10 people. His point is that the 10 people should be easily able to pick out which of the 10 readings are for them, but if they are so generic that they could apply to anyone (and they will be), they'll be wrong more than they are right.

I saw a show a few years ago with Randi (I think it was him) debunking these things.

One of the things he did was go into a University class posing as a psychic and provided all of the students with a "personalized" psychic reading.

He gave every student a sealed envelope with their name on it and their reading inside. He asked them all to review their readings, and when they were done, he asked them raise their hand if they felt their reading was accurate. The majority of the class raised their hands.

Then, he asked them all to trade their "personalized" reading with another student in the class and read the other student's reading. It didn't take long for the entire class to be laughing as they realized that he just gave everyone the exact same "personalized" reading.

[photon]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

BTW Photon, your sig is awesome

Thanks! xkcd is the most awesomest webcomic out there.

Though Abtruse Goose has been excellent lately too. Though a webcomic that can involve large primes embedded in the digits of e isn't for everyone.

[photon]

The ones with Randi and the dowsers are the saddest to me, and there's quite a few of them. These guys truly believe what they do, and when they can't do it they are completely confused and come up with all kinds of crazy reasons (sunspots!).

[Thor]

Originally Posted by photon

The ones with Randi and the dowsers are the saddest to me, and there's quite a few of them. These guys truly believe what they do, and when they can't do it they are completely confused and come up with all kinds of crazy reasons (sunspots!).

Yeah Dowsers are a interesting bunch, here's Dawkins testing dowsers in his documentary called Enemies of Reason (btw highly recommend watching it, 2hrs).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VAasVXtCOI 5 mins

The whole series:
Enemies of Reason

Part 1 - Slaves to Superstition (psychic mediums, astrology, spirtualists, vaccine fears) 50 min
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...93233140975017

Part 2 - The Irrational Health Service (homeopathy, alternative medicine, vaccinations, faith healer) 50 min
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...27014381716642

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by photon

The difference is even if you know nothing about chemistry or physics, you can still get results. We had food, medicine of a sort, etc all based on "chemistry".. no one knew what was going on, but trial and error over a long period still led to results. Same with physics, no one knew anything about how it all worked, but we still built wheels and wagons and inclines and machines and stuff to make our lives easier.. through trial and error and serendipity.

And then when we figured out what we were doing and actually intentionally did it (science), things really took off.

Psychics and astrologers and paranormal practitioners have been around for thousands and thousands of years, but they haven't come up with one thing that's improved our lives.

You can point to thousands of things that were discovered by accident or trial and error before science that enabled humanity to evolve, and move from hunter gatherers into a globe dominating society, because those things are real. You can do no such thing for any psychic, astrologer, faith healer, etc etc...

I guess I'm talking about something else than what the topic is really about. I agree that mediums, astrologers, palm readers, terot, and all that jazz are complete and utter garbage.

I'm talking about "psychic" ability, like when people sense danger yet there is no obvious or apparent reason for it, or like how 2 people who are related, will often think about the same things at the same time. I have a very personal experience when it comes to this. About a week before my mother passed away suddenly, both my sister and I had dreams about trying to save her from danger. We were both really anxious all week, but couldn't really figure out why. It was a feeling like knowing something was wrong, but not being able to put your finger on it. It turns out that our mother had an undetected heart defect, and in reality, there were probably some subtle changes in her behaviour or expression that subconsciously told us that there was a danger even though we couldn't figure out what it was. It's not "psychic" ability in the paranormal sense, but I think it is something that is real and often makes people think they are psychics.

I believe that things like that do happen, but they're not "paranormal". It's a natural ability that just isn't understood.

[troutman]

Y'all might enjoy this weekly podcact, The Skeptic's Guide To The Universe:

http://www.theskepticsguide.org/

[Thor]

Originally Posted by troutman

Y'all might enjoy this weekly podcact, The Skeptic's Guide To The Universe:

http://www.theskepticsguide.org/

lol this is priceless:

[troutman]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I guess I'm talking about something else than what the topic is really about. I agree that mediums, astrologers, palm readers, terot, and all that jazz are complete and utter garbage.

I'm talking about "psychic" ability, like when people sense danger yet there is no obvious or apparent reason for it, or like how 2 people who are related, will often think about the same things at the same time. I have a very personal experience when it comes to this. About a week before my mother passed away suddenly, both my sister and I had dreams about trying to save her from danger. We were both really anxious all week, but couldn't really figure out why. It was a feeling like knowing something was wrong, but not being able to put your finger on it. It turns out that our mother had an undetected heart defect, and in reality, there were probably some subtle changes in her behaviour or expression that subconsciously told us that there was a danger even though we couldn't figure out what it was. It's not "psychic" ability in the paranormal sense, but I think it is something that is real and often makes people think they are psychics.

I believe that things like that do happen, but they're not "paranormal". It's a natural ability that just isn't understood.

I think you are talking about a kind of "sixth sense", and as far as I know there is zero evidence for it.

We forget about the stange feelings we have all the time that don't cooincide with actual events. A stopped clock is right twice a day.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by troutman

I think you are talking about a kind of "sixth sense", and as far as I know there is zero evidence for it.

We forget about the stange feelings we have all the time that don't cooincide with actual events. A stopped clock is right twice a day.

Yes, a sixth sense. Isn't that the same thing as what some people mistake for being psychic?

Anyway, it's not totally outside the realm of science:

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/7036

http://http://www.hno.harvard.edu/ga...xth.sense.html

[troutman]

http://www.livescience.com/animals/0...ami_myths.html

Shortly after the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami tragedy, stories and news reports appeared making claims that animals and aboriginal tribes had escaped the danger because they possessed a mysterious "sixth sense" that somehow warned them in time. For example: "no dead animals have been found as a result of the tsunami, confiming animals' sixth sense" and "no one has found dead animals in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami" (Note 1).

These reports are simply incorrect.

http://www.livescience.com/strangene...ee-future.html

Such ability in humans has never been shown scientifically to actually occur with any statistical significance. Of course, people sometimes do predict the future — as one can predict heads or tails on a tossed coin and be right, oh, say, half the time. And yes, there is much about the mind we don't understand. But the claims of psychics (as just one group example of people who think they can see the future) are routinely debunked when held up to the facts.

[photon]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I'm talking about "psychic" ability, like when people sense danger yet there is no obvious or apparent reason for it, or like how 2 people who are related, will often think about the same things at the same time.

There's no indication though that these things happen any more than they should due to random chance.

It's easy to get caught by confirmation bias and think that an instance of this happening is evidence of something going on, but if you take into account the huge # of people and the pure amount of time and events in a day, of course randomly some people are going to "sense" danger before it happens (they of course forget all the other times they sensed danger and nothing came of it), or randomly think about the same things at the same time, or call each other at the same moment, or whatever.

I do agree with you that our subconscious can pick up on things and influence our conscious mind's thoughts (though I don't think the difference is nearly as wide as we'd like to think, I don't think we're as nearly in control of our own thoughts and decisions as we'd like to think we are).

I saw a study where they created a game that looked simple but the rules were very complex. They got a bunch of people to play the game without knowing anything about it. At first everyone did poorly because they didn't understand the rules. After a bunch of turns (50 say) people finally started to understand the rules of the game and did well.

The interesting thing was before this conscious understanding came about (say turn 30), people started to do better, even though they didn't notice it and didn't understand why. Part of them understood the rules enough to influence their conscious decisions, but not enough to actually grasp it in their minds.

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I have a very personal experience when it comes to this. About a week before my mother passed away suddenly, both my sister and I had dreams about trying to save her from danger. We were both really anxious all week, but couldn't really figure out why. It was a feeling like knowing something was wrong, but not being able to put your finger on it. It turns out that our mother had an undetected heart defect, and in reality, there were probably some subtle changes in her behaviour or expression that subconsciously told us that there was a danger even though we couldn't figure out what it was. It's not "psychic" ability in the paranormal sense, but I think it is something that is real and often makes people think they are psychics.

I believe that things like that do happen, but they're not "paranormal". It's a natural ability that just isn't understood.

Sorry to hear about that.

In your example though I can agree that subconscious observations may have given rise to the anxiety. Or it's also possible it was just a random occurrence that you both had a similar dream at the same time and it randomly happened close to a terrible thing. It seems unlikely, but given 6 billion people, 365 opportunities to dream, and tons of significant events occurring all the time, it's going to happen a lot.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by troutman

http://www.livescience.com/strangene...ee-future.html

Such ability in humans has never been shown scientifically to actually occur with any statistical significance. Of course, people sometimes do predict the future — as one can predict heads or tails on a tossed coin and be right, oh, say, half the time. And yes, there is much about the mind we don't understand. But the claims of psychics (as just one group example of people who think they can see the future) are routinely debunked when held up to the facts.

That's the thing... Having a sixth sense =/= being able to predict the future. It's not the same thing. If that is what scientists are looking for, then I think they're barking up the wrong tree.

People who claim to have a sixth sense or heightened intuition don't know when when or where situations for their sixth sense will be triggered, or even if they can figure out at the time what it means when it is triggered. Humans are instinctual like many animals. We react to senses all the time without having the luxury to think about it or apply statistics to it. Somethings just can't be done in controlled circumstances because mearly controlling the circumstances changes the nature of the circumstances.

Obviously scientific methods are not perfect, especially about vague phenomena that are poorly understood.

[troutman]

I read today that we all have more than the standard five senses; ie balance, pressure.

[photon]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

That's the thing... Having a sixth sense =/= being able to predict the future.

I think the term sixth sense itself is misleading.. it implies something supernatural or beyond our normal reality. The links you posted though are very normal things.. pheromones and the observation of things by our subconscious are both normal things based in reality, nothing supernatural.

[driveway]

The sixth sense is generally regarded to be proprioception - the ability to sense where the parts of your body are in space. It makes things like walking possible.

Interestingly enough, there is evidence that octopuses cannot proprioceptate:

However, the octopus has a very poor proprioceptive sense. The tension receptors are not sufficient for the octopus brain to determine the position of the octopus' body or arms. ... As a result, the octopus does not possess stereognosis; that is, it does not form a mental image of the overall shape of the object it is handling. It can detect local texture variations, but cannot integrate the information into a larger picture.[16]

One interesting possibility that looks, at first blush, like psychic-ness is 'hundred monkey theory'.

The Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years. In 1952, on the Island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but found the dirt unpleasant. An 18 month old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in the salty ocean water, improving the taste of the potato. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates learned this trick and taught their mothers too. This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by numerous monkeys in the troop and observed by the scientists.
Between 1952 and 1958, all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes and make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this cultural improvement. Other adult monkeys kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes. In autumn of 1958, something startling took place. A certain number of Koshima monkeys were already washing their sweet potatoes, the exact number is not known. The hypothetical number given was 99. Then it happened. The hundredth monkey learned to wash the sweet potatoes. The added energy of that hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough. Almost everyone in the tribe was washing their potatoes before eating them, but a surprising occurrence was observed by these scientists. The habit of washing the sweet potato had jumped overseas. Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop at Takaskiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.

Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of individuals knows a 'new way', it remains the conscious property of those individuals. However, when one more individual manifests this new awareness, the field is strengthened, a critical mass is reached, and the awareness becomes the conscious property of all. This new awareness is communicated mind to mind.