Last year I read a couple of books on the sinking of the Titanic and the Lusitania. Both books mentioned nationally famous psychics who either were on the ships, of through some quirk of fate missed the voyage.

I was thinking that at least there are no "national famous psychics" anymore. That's progress. I thought psychics were definitely passé now, but then I saw this article in the NYTimes Magazine section that will probably be in tomorrow's physical paper.

While psychics are pretty fringy now, there are still tens of thousands of psychic related businesses out there, and they don't lack for adherents. This is a fascinating article about how the psychics operate, and the people whose self-appointed mission in life is debunking the psychics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/magazine/psychics-skeptics-facebook.html

Paywall if you've exceeded your ten freebies a month. Sorry about that. You might find it on facebook of elsewhere as a secondary posting.

It's a long form article, but here is a paragraph to give you a sense of it:

“Tell the Ginnie Wade story,” his wife, Donna, suggested. Ginnie Wade was a 20-year-old woman during the Battle of Gettysburg, and in 1863, she died by a stray bullet, the only civilian casualty during those three bloody days. A man visiting the battlefield had a picture that his daughter took and discovered a ghostly image in a window of a woman in period clothes. Certain that he had captured the ghost of Ginnie Wade, he submitted the picture to Biddle, who wasted no time in returning to Gettysburg, using the same camera and taking the same shot, revealing how “the old wavy glass created an image and made it look like the back of a woman dressed in an old Civil War period dress. And we were able to recreate it and show him.” Donna added, “Kenny just crushed his dream; he was literally in tears.”

The reference to Facebook in the URL refers to a debunking technique of creating false personas on FB, making an appointment to see a psychic, and having the psychic "reveal" items s/he gleaned from the fake FB profile.

I used to love newspaper/magazine articles and TV shows that debunked psychics. I would sometimes be amused, and sometimes feel sorry for those who were duped. And yet, every time I attended Stake or Ward conference, I’d raise my hand to sustain the FP and Q12 as “prophets, seers, and revelators.”

I might as well have been asked to sustain Jeane Dixon as a true psychic.

Wait--

Jeane Dixon isn't a true psychic?

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> Wait--
>
> Jeane Dixon isn't a true psychic?

Yes. She has an effect named for her!

"This led John Allen Paulos, a leading mathematician who works in the field of probability and logic, to introduce the term “the Jeane Dixon effect.” He explains this effect as a tendency of promoting and accepting a few correct assumptions while deliberately ignoring or forgetting a huge number of incorrect ones."
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/01/11/jeane-dixon/

Yeah, the fact that psychics occasionally get things right (and their believers tend to use wide latitude when crediting a prediction) proves nothing.

I, too, like to see the charlatans exposed. I don't appreciate the bad example so often shown that assumes all psychics are charlatans. That attitude isn't any more scientific that assuming all are genuine. There are people who can do things that popular science says isn't possible. The quick and dirty fix for this is to denigrate such people and call them frauds of some sort. This is not scientific, it's not helpful, and it's not honest. I've been doing some of this sort of thing since I was 8, and was lectured up one side and down the other by Mormons telling me it was Satan trying to trap me. I've known other people who can do a lot more than I can. It exists. Just because 'science' can't measure it doesn't change that.

So Jeane Dixon is a true psychic?

Examples of "these sorts of things"?

Precognitive dreams, telecognitive dreams/simultaneous telecognition, precognition.

One of my co-workers has a cousin in California that earns over $100,000 a year as a psychic.

She was tested before she became hired for her position to be sure she was qualified.

She's gifted, according to my colleague.

I believe there are some who are the 'real deal.' :)

Amyjo Wrote:
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> One of my co-workers has a cousin in California that earns over $100,000 a year as a psychic.

I chose the wrong major!

You and me both!!

Based on thousands of years of history, and countless examples, I think it’s a very valid assumption that all psychics and “prophets” are charlatans.

If anyone has any real evidence to the contrary, I will withdraw my statement and apologize.

Real evidence would have to include independent verification, and agreed upon level of specificity. If someone can be shown to consistently do better than random guessing with those parameters, that would be real evidence.

BTW—saying something along the lines of “in 1989 the Miami Police Department caught a murderer with the help of a psychic” proves nothing. Even Joe Smith occasionally got close to an accurate prediction.

I place belief in the power of psychics in the same class as the belief in UFOs. I think that a lot of people believe psychics because they *want to believe in Psychics, but there is no evidence whatsoever that the chances of a psychic's predictions coming true is any greater than if no psychics were seen at all.

In addition, a few years back, I read a short news story about how a group in California had fired one of its psychics. According to the article, she wasn't giving enough positive predictions for the people who called her.

Now, I should point out that I do believe in the work of futurists (think Alvin Toflin here) who use statistics and other economic and demographic information to predict what will happen to humans as a group; that kind of work is well-grounded, and predictions made are well-based in fact. But while we can predict group behavior with some degree of accuracy above pure chance, there is absolutely no way without personal intervention by the psychic (or prophet) to predict with any degree of accuracy the behavior of individual human beings in the future.

There were psychics working for the Pentagon during the height of the Cold War on assignment.

I watched a program last night where a couple of them were interviewed. One foresaw the bombing of a naval ship two days before it happened by Iraqi forces. He was ignored and not taken seriously because he was a psychic. Although that was what the Pentagon was paying him to do.

Crazy huh?

The men being interviewed had genuine psychic powers.

They were given many assignments during their time with the Pentagon. It was part of the intelligence gathering operations.

"There were psychics working for the Pentagon during the height of the Cold War on assignment."

Correction: there were people who claimed to be psychics, working for the Pentagon.


"One foresaw the bombing of a naval ship two days before it happened by Iraqi forces. "

Hey, JS foresaw that there would be a US civil war that would start in South Carolina, and he predicted it a couple dozen years in advance. Of course, so did lots of other people. It's not like it wasn't obvious trouble was brewing. Ditto in Iraq. How many things did this particular psychic foresee that didn't happen? That would be a useful bit of information in judging his psychic abilities.

"The men being interviewed had genuine psychic powers."
And we know this how, because the History Channel, always desperate for material to sensationalize, said so?

https://www.livescience.com/5103-fringe-science-secretive-project-stargate.html

"From the 1970s through the mid-1990s, there was indeed a fringe science government project designed to explore the possibility of psychic powers."

"Finally the CIA took over the program and asked scientists to review the results. They concluded that the psychics did no better than chance, and that the data indicated that psychic information was neither validated nor useful. Project Stargate was soon shut down."

Officially shut down.

Right. Now they unofficially kill goats by staring at them. :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2019 08:54AM by mikemitchell.

My ex had a vivid dream of a flight she was supposed to be on disintegrating in the sky and everyone screaming in terror. She didn’t get on that plane. She tried to phone in a warning but they treated her like a terrorist or something so she hung up. The plane did in fact crash, and all those people died just like in the dream. That was the DC10 where the engine fell off.

She was actually psychic. I couldn’t get away with anything.

interesting. I was driving home one night with my dad and my father saw a man on a bike cross right in front of me and told me to slow down. I didn't see anything. Then moments later a man on a bike appeared and crossed right in front of me.

It was quite strange. Just for a moment a glimpse into the future.

OMG, guess it wasn't her time then.

It's things like that happening in everyday lives that make believers out of people like me.

There is definitely something there call it intuition, psychic awareness, angelic intervention. But it can and does happen.

I haven't seen or heard of any convincing evidence.

The stories and anecdotes are always interesting. But they're always impossible to verify.

For example in the "psychic at the Pentagon" story, I would need to see a very detailed account before I could even begin to form a judgment as to how reliable it was.

Questions such as the following would have to be asked:

Who did the Psychic make the warning to?

Is there a paper record of the warning being filed prior to the predicted incident?

Were the location and subject matter of the predicted incident precisely described and defined or was the prediction vague and general and only linked to the incident with hindsight after the fact?

Would the person(s) or organization(s) involved in making the story public have any motivation for putting out a false story about "psychic abilities" being harnessed by the pentagon (e.g. as disinformation to demoralize foes prone to superstition, to promote future career for "former pentagon psychic" for personal gain or to promote credulousness among a target group in advance of a disinformation project, etc., etc.)?

Was the possibility of the incident occurring already a matter of analysis and reporting being conducted by non-psychic analysts and reporters? Was the psychic in question aware of such speculative analysis? Was relevant sigint or humint circulating at the time?

That would just be the start.

So far, I haven't found any anecdotal account that could withstand significant questioning.

Jeane Dixon's prophecies for my life came true over and beyond my patriarchal blessing.

She is my guru. She carried me from adolescence to adulthood on eagles wings.

Thank you, Jeane Dixon. May she R.I.P.

Amyjo Wrote:
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> Jeane Dixon's prophecies for my life came true
> over and beyond my patriarchal blessing.

"Dixon suffered a cardiac arrest and died at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., on January 25, 1997, just after uttering the words “I knew this would happen.”"

Apparently they came true for herself!
https://verybizarrestories.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/jeane-dixon-predicts/

Her words provided me inspiration and hope during a chapter in my life when the only direction I had to go was up.

She never knew me, but yet in her own way she touched my life for good that still inspires me to this day.

I said the same thing about Joseph Smith earlier in my life.

I never did.

Jeane Dixon touched my life personally and directly in a positive way. That's constructive influence.

Amyjo Wrote:
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> Her words provided me inspiration and hope during
> a chapter in my life when the only direction I had
> to go was up.
>

If you only had one direction in which to move, just talking to yourself would have worked just fine.

Actually it was talking to God that did it for me.

I was agnostic as a young adult. So I said a little prayer asking if he was real or not. Well my faith was no bigger than the size of a mustard seed spoken of in scripture. That's how small it felt inside of me.

But the big guy upstairs heard my prayer and answered it, and I've never questioned since whether God exists. I know someone watches over us and loves us.

Jeane Dixon's words were just prophetic for my life. In a good way. It was a blessing to receive them when I did because they've stayed with me all my life.

You could be a flat earther and debunk physics.

The earth isn't flat?

I'm with you LW. My part of it certainly seems pretty flat.

Once again we see "scientists" and "smart people" telling us to ignore what we see right in front of our faces.

LOL

The ice wall rim circumference is like 2 million miles. Once you hop over the rim, there's just an endless expanse in all directions, but you may run into an invisible dome. The sun never really goes behind the horizon, it just gets really small in the distance until everything goes dark, even though it looks the same size, if not bigger, when the illusion of dipping down below the horizon occurs. And don't ask why on a flat earth things are not always illuminated everywhere by the sun. Even though the bright sky on one side of the disc should be easily seen by the other side of the disc there are complex shading mechanisms at work. Too complex to talk about here.

Or something like that.

I was fascinated that people were reviving the flat-earth theory and wanted to see if there was something to it. But the more I looked into it the more I felt like I was at a Mormon Apologists Anonymous meeting. "Well, you see, the papyrus served as a catalyst for Joseph Smith to tap into the actual text written by Abraham, which existed in the ether and that's why it's all true, even though Joseph Smith mistakenly identified the ordinary funerary texts and illustrations as the Book of Abraham. Yeah...that's the ticket. It was a catalyst. "

Nostradumus is one of the best examples of a gifted psychic i can think of. His impressions have been around for centuries, and are still being observed and discussed.

Is a 'gifted' psychic better than just a regular psychic?

My psychic has been making a map to the Lost Dutchman Mine in the Superstition Mtns. Just one more payment and the map will be ready.

OMG. I thought spiritist was the only RFMer who bought into this stuff, but there are others.

Where's Hie when we need him!


"Yeah, most religions/gods/prophets are phony, but mine is the real deal"

"Yeah, most psychics are fakes, but mine is the real deal"

Notice the similarity of the two arguments.

Just because you brought my screen name up, I will make a comment but will not argue.

Most psychics are not that good. Even the best are not 100% the maybe some of the best hit 80+% but many 'remote viewers' get around 70% accuracy on 'descriptors of the target'. If the target is selecting from two or X number of very 'different' pics the 'accuracy' of selecting the target is higher (near 90+%) ---- especially if we have a group of viewers doing the same project then compare what the majority got.

I not only 'bought into this stuff' I am a remote viewer (took free online courses and have studied a book or two) for my personal use, and practice a few days each week. A couple of us get together on a site and predict games, elections, etc. etc.. I wish we had a track record but too many 'just wannabes' so only a few of us get accurate information right now ----- maybe the others will up their game or more 'trained' viewers will start doing the targets.

Today, I did 8 practice sessions of approximately 5 minutes each on an ESP site that gives you 4 different pics ----- one the actual target. I got 6 of the 8, whereas odds guessing are getting 2. I normally get above the odds by around double today it was better. As mentioned above we would all be lotto millionaires if remote viewing worked with 'financial projections' ---- some have had some success but not close to the success of other 'targets'. That doesn't mean it can't be used for investments or numbers as I have had some success (coincidence --- I think not but more 'situational' and I have won valuable prizes) but it is not that 'reliable' in predicting numbers on a routine basis. Like I inferred it depends on the 'specific situation' and if it is just 'get rich quick' RV doesn't seem real reliable. However, I just signed up with a group to do 'stock market' forecasts but I haven't seen their results. I was tasked today, so maybe after I complete my 'tasking' I can get an idea of how well they do. Some 'groups' have 'claimed' around 80% but I am not sure how many test runs were accomplished.

I normally do better when the target pics are 'totally different' (I use a personal listing of around 50 different sets) which is not the case on the ESP site where they are 'totally random' and not normally that different. For example, it is easier to identify a 'mountain scene versus a desert one' or identify a scene with 'water' versus one that is 'dry'.

As far as the Government's use of RVers. There is at least one RV person that 'refers to himself as a psychic spy' because he 'claims' his RV firm was a 'contractor' for the government in the 2000's for a number of years. This is, of course, 'after' the Government 'claims' it got out of the 'psychic spy' business (1995?) but it is too late and a 'so what' to do the work to look a reference up. However, few 'military now retired' believe the US Government gave up on 'psychic spies' after over 20 years of using them. Based on my RV work the Government still does use RVers as 'consultants' doing RV work ---- but who really cares. Uncle would never lie to Americans!

Howdy Spiritist! Glad to see you're still around.

:D

Hey, spiritist, thanks for popping in. I'm still highly skeptical, but I always impressed by your absolutely unshakable confidence in your claims. I'd really like you to drop by once in a while to add a touch of spice to the stew.

I'd love to see a video of an RV test that even had a 50% success rate, as long as it was conducted with the same rigor as the the one done by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Rosa , the nine year old who did the double blind experiment on therapeutic touch.

In that case, she was working with people who worked as therapeutic touch practitioners and presumably considered themselves effective, as opposed to considering themselves frauds, but hey, it was a good gig.

Her results were that the practitioners were less than 50% correct in identifying whether there was an aura/hand under a sheet, so not only were they totally ineffective at identifying the presence or absence of an aura (a yes/no question so they should have been right 50% of the time based on pure chance, assuming they knew in advance that there was a 50/50 chance that a hand would be under the sheet), but with success below 50%, they were totally ineffective, and had a bit of bad luck to boot.

RVing of course is not a 50/50 type of experiment, so a 50% success rate would be quite impressive. Even on the more sensationalistic cable channels, I have never heard of such an experiment being rigorously presented. Or even unrigorously, come to think of it. Just a few police procedurals.

If you or anyone knows of one, I'd love to hear about it.

I pop in periodically ----- I do get 'value' from reading some posts. Keep up the good work! I haven't left!!!

It's ok to be skeptical! Most 'psychics' are full of BS unless you can use intuitive or RV techniques to identify 'truth from BS'. I am somewhat (based on my time) interested in finding out what utube 'psychics and remote viewers' are coming up with and some is definitely BS.

There are numerous 'rv demonstrations' on utube, however, I am not sure any are 'proof' although all claim to be done 'blindly'. The US Government's use of RV, for over 20 years and counting, is proof. Viewers were 'evaluated' on every project by the 'agencies involved' but the content was classified normally. I don't expect the Government will release these stats.

In the meantime, I am doing my 'intuitive and RV work' and life is going good. I am always finding new and interesting ways to test/use whatever 'abilities' I have.

If psychics were so effective why would they need to work a salary job?

Everyone's entitled to earn a living.

There are psychics who make their living by being psychics.

There are psychics who don't. Some are naturals who didn't elect it to be a calling or a vocation, but they are anyway.

Lilydale, NY is a town that the town is made up of spiritualists, psychics and mediums. In order to live there, one has to be. Whether or not they make their living at it, if they want to buy a house there.

What I meant was if they were psychic they could predict lotto numbers and live off their jackpot winnings.

I'm not sure how you could choose the winning lotto numbers, but you could probably clean up at the race track

Even psychics aren't that lucky. :D

But yeah it would be nice wouldn't it?!

I got tired of playing lotto so I took a timeout. Even though I know my odds are as lousy as everyone else's. :P

There was some woman in New Jersey who won the lotto twice - each was worth app 3m. Not the power ball but still nothing to sneeze at. What are the odds of winning it once, let alone twice? I wondered if she had some sixth sense that helped her pick out her numbers lol.

But she couldn't manage her money. She blew through both jackpots in no time and ended up living in a mobile home after she went broke. I don't get it but from what I've heard of lottery winners it isn't hard to do.

http://skepdic.com/lawofnumbers.html

"For example, you might be in awe of the person who won the lottery twice, thinking that the odds of anyone winning twice are astronomical. The New York Times ran a story about a woman who won the New Jersey lottery twice, calling her chances "1 in 17 trillion." However, statisticians Stephen Samuels and George McCabe of Purdue University calculated the odds of someone winning the lottery twice to be something like1 in 30 for a four month period and better than even odds over a seven year period. Why? Because players don't buy one ticket for each of two lotteries, they buy multiple tickets every week (Diaconis and Mosteller)."

Once again we see "scientists" and "smart people" telling us to ignore what we see right in front of our faces.

Of course. Why BKP even warned us about "so-called intellectuals"

You got me!

I remembered it wrong. But the sentiment remains every bit as compelling even when quoted correctly!

I was visiting some friends once and they were going to teach me how to play bridge. OK, fine. The very first 13 card hand dealt to me had 10 clubs in it. They were beyond gob-smacked.

The odds against such a hand are astronomical in a single deal. But over the billions upon billions of hands that have been dealt, it happens now and then, pretty much in line with the odds.

If you check Powerball results, the states winning the lesser grand prizes are almost always the middle to large population states (Missouri, NY), as opposed to places like Montana. Exactly what you would expect from pure chance. The grand prize is won so infrequently that even a single win in a state like Montana would skew the statistical distribution for "expected wins in Montana" for years.

BTW, I won that bridge hand.

I don't see a lot of them taking home their winnings from betting on horse races.

That's just God's doing. If every psychic were rich, there would be no need to exercise faith.

generalities that can be reinterpreted depending on how things actually turn out.

"I predict that Lusty Licorice will win by a nose in the fifth." That would be too specific and only a psychic hellbent on career suicide would go that route. It only takes one or two irrefutably failed predictions to destroy the reputation.

"I predict you'll win big at the horse races." That's more like it. If no money is won, the "win" can be reinterpreted as experience gained or lessons learned. Or thrown forward as in: "Well, your going to the track today set certain things in motion that will pay off big in the future. You can't see them now, but when the time comes, all will be made clear. I never said that you would win a particular bet today. Big picture. Big picture."

If psychic powers were real and controllable (rather than random intuition or lucky guesses or old-fashioned fraud), then a psychic could spend an afternoon each month focusing on one or two publicly listed companies and sensing whether the companies in question were going to come out with some good news or bad news, then shorting or investing in the relevant stock as appropriate. A real psychic would do just as well, if not better, than an inside trader.

But of course they'll tell you that they're not in it for the money, so the fees paid by clients are enough for them.

Or they'll scold you like a Mormon prophet telling you that it's wicked to seek after signs (i.e. "evidence").

Ooooh yes Wally, I was told that in SS in response to just about any question I had:

>"You can't see them now, but when the time comes, all will be made clear. I never said that you would win a particular bet today. Big picture. Big picture."

I always wondered if what would be revealed to me 'later' would be something way different, for instance, that it was all BS.

If the earth were flat my cat would have pushed everything off the edge of it already. If I adopted the flat earth view I would be laughed out of my profession and lose my job to boot.
I have had what I would call spiritual experiences;for lack of a better word.
Not very many experiences, but definitely profound.
I can't explain them and will probably be trying to figure them out the rest of my life.So,if someone says they had a spiritual or psychic experience who am I to discredit them?

But do these special moments happen as part of a special plan, just for you, or do they just 'happen'?