Selectmen Chairman Jason Smith had just one question for Debra Freeman before his board voted to approve her fortune teller's license during the last week of January."So how much snow are we gong to get tomorrow?" he asked.
Freeman indicated she was not a meteorologist.
She gets that a lot.*
"People come in and ask 'Where do I live? What's my name? How old am I?"' she said this past week. "I call it 'Screw with the psychic.'
-- Dan McDonald, on the insane hilarity that ensues when mixing mysticism and politics, at The MetroWest Daily News.
*Anybody else notice she wasn't expecting the question? LOL.
While I've no time for shopfront psychics, this approach seems misguided. I had two doctors misdiagnose and then have the third one tell me what I had the minute I walked in. Yet I'm not prepared to write the others off as quacks because they (hopefully anyway!) got it exactly right with other patients.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble here seems to be ascribing a function of being 'all seeing/all knowing' to psychics whereas some locate missing children, others predict plane crashes or natural disasters, or convey some personal piece of information known only to the client and their departed loved one. Leaving aside the accuracy or honesty of these endeavours for a moment (and if something is predicted and then happens then it is at least a very lucky guess, not outright wrong) what this indicates is that psychics only pick up part of the picture. She's right - they're not meteorologists (though they often have about the same rate of accuracy) and they can't tell you your address or how much you won on the pools last week. There is no reputable book on the subject that would suggest that this is how it works.
Jeane Dixon's strike rate was abysmal. She was wrong about just about everything else. But she was right about the JFK assassination (and of his brother's) and one would be stretching credibility further than any self-proclaimed psychic to suggest that she had some other means of divining this.
If it happens before the fact, and is recorded, and is too specific to be discounted as a guess, then what the hell is it if not a prediction?
"The trouble here seems to be ascribing a function of being 'all seeing/all knowing' to psychics whereas some locate missing children, others predict plane crashes or natural disasters, or convey some personal piece of information known only to the client and their departed loved one."
ReplyDeleteAnd you deny being a NewAger - just stop, Berko. These are lies - all lies. Show me a confirmed case - one - where a psychic nailed it (and not in some vague way). You can't.
It's all bullshit.
Jeane Dixon & the Kennedy Assassination:
ReplyDeleteShe later admitted, “During the 1960 election, I saw Richard Nixon as the winner.”
The Jeane Dixon effect:
John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, coined what he called the "Jeane Dixon effect", in which people loudly tout a few correct predictions and overlook false predictions. Many of Dixon's forecasts proved false, such as her prediction that World War III would begin in 1958 over the offshore Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu, that labor leader Walter Reuther would run for president in 1964 and that the Soviets would land the first man on the moon.
Save yourself Burko, before it's too late.
That hardly changes anything. Imagine a story where there is a werewolf walking around during the day. "What, werewolves only change at night" Yeah, they also don't exist so why do you care?
ReplyDeleteI'm pointing out that you're ascribing the wrong function to a group called 'psychics' and making a judgement on them that is not valid. Yes, a profiler who does not locate missing children is either a fraud or mistaken about their power. A 'prophet' who foresees the end of the world and commands his followers to live in a cave subsisting on moss and bugs only to emerge in the sunlight the day after with no sign that his vision has come to pass, deserves to be ridiculed and run out of town.
But asking someone with professed psychic ability to possess an ability they make no claim to is not valid. It would like criticising a chiropractor for not fixing a hangnail. It's an error in definition.
And the scope of this argument makes me a NewAger as much as it makes you a lycanthropist. Or maybe you don't mind what time of the day fictional characters show up.
It's called lore and the best test is to examine how well or how badly someone meets the criteria. If the Arizona University that tested Alison DuBois for her psychic abilities and the police who have used her in cases have been lying about the extent of those abilities then this requires an expose. Perhaps you could put a fellow skeptic on the case.
That would be more useful than 'screw with a psychic'.
Sorry for being difficult.
Jesus, Berko, you are too gullible for words: Dr. Gary Schwartz, "PhD," the scientist from the University of Arizona who tested Alisson Dubois, has already been busted by James Randi - repeatedly - just as she has. She's "saved" no one and exposed nothing.
ReplyDeletePlease, man - for your own sake - just stop.
Okay, thanks for that information, CMC. It occurs to me that I've helped you with information and you've helped me with information so that's good. Sometimes coming from different angles can be beneficial.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry about me personally though. I'm not giving my money to snake oil salesmen, if that's what the concern is. I keep very detached from all my investigations and that includes everything from a Baptist minister to the Ananda Marga.
Mr Nigro, I've addressed the fact, more than once, that Jeane Dixon has a terrible track record of predictions. The problem for the out-and-out doubters is when she got it correct. Try it, run urgently up to the authorities with specific information about a public figure being in jeapordy. Mention the circumstances, the first initial of the assassin. Hell, Kennedy wasn't even Pres when she forecast his assassination.
What this means is two things:
1. You shouldn't put your trust in the predictions of psychics, even ones with one brilliant string in their bow.
2. What to do about that fucking string in the bow. Inside information? An extremely (off the scales of all probability) lucky guess?
If the possibility of making a lucky guess with specific details for some future event for which the material does not yet exist is there, then how does it differ substantially from a genuine prediction? It doesn't. Only a vague 'a tall dark man will enter your life' 'I see the number five and the colour magenta as significant' does: the normal stock in trade of phone line psychics.
The (apparently) genuine cases are like spikes - huge exceptional events that sometimes stop normal people, with no claim to precognition or woo of any kind, from getting on the plane that crashes killing all on board. What accounts for that 'a feeling that something's wrong' Well, planes fly in and out of airports all day long, every day of the year. What accounts for the feeling?
I ask these questions not because I have easy answers but because I don't. It is a very long step, though, from not being able to explain all things away, to making the assumption that it is therefore acceptable to buy in to the whole magic workshop. For a start, hunches and intuition are, of their nature, not the thing to bank your life savings on and may not even be useful. Dixon didn't stop either Kennedy from being shot, after all.