Sylvia Browne and psychics

[boonw]

Seriously, these frauds make me sick. They are like Peter popoff, preying on the naive and grieving. I live in a house where only my brother is sane enough to realize that they are full of shit. My mother on sunday closed the deal that they were stupid and unconcerned of the truth by saying "Spencer, you are being too scientific and therefore naive and closed minded." Seriously, asking for a confirmed example is being naive? And seriously, accepting something with no evidence isnt being closed minded, its called being gullible.

Why dont psychics win the lottery? Why havent they accepted James Randis challenge where they can earn a cool 1 mil for showing one supernatural ability. My mother says "they arent here to make money or abuse their gifts." They arent here to make money or abuse gifts.... well then why do they charge 30 bucks an hour to "talk" to your pets or departed loved ones? Sylvia Browne for example makes MILLIONS selling books, and charges 700 dollars for a 20 minute phone session. Besides, I can think of a few charities that can use the 1 million dollars from Randi, or the 30 mil some jackpots reach. Hell, if they dont want it, they can just tell the parties they can keep it. A lottery would love that "I dont want this 30 million dollars, I want you to put it into next weeks jackpot". Or if someone else got the winning numbers, they can give that half to the person(s) who also won.

Seriously, these people make me sick. Things that I often get told

Psychics help the police: Myth
Psychics help the FBI: Myth
Psychics predict phenomena: Myth, all cases are either very vague or predict events that happen all the time.
The Soviet Union used psychics to fight the capitalist swine: Let me ask you something..... who won?
Psychics make non fiction books: The books they write are fiction with a non fiction label thrown on it... and gullible audiences world wide will drop 30 bucks for a copy.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRc4LkBRjIc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jF-d2pE9Ls&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWcfuFDZzDE

 

[Daealis]

Well there's a pathetic character. She need to be told all the details before she can reach. What a psychic. Right.

If psychics could read the dead, couldn't they just ask the deceaded spirits where to call? Now that would be a show:
-A psychic just sitting with a phone, picking it up and calling a number she/he has no knowledge about and then talking to the guys on the other side with personal details only their family member had.

-If there has been a notice in the papers, it wouldn't count, because after that one can get quite a bit of information out of a person.

Or the lottery thing, that is the other way. You can tell the future to warn me of an impending doom but you couldn't prevent the certain death of millions of starving people by seeing the lottery numbers for yourself in a live show? Oh you don't want to benefit? How about a psychic like this Browne tell us the numbers in a live show. If the next lottery jackpot is divided amongst a million people, they won't benefit much more than they would by collecting some bottles or such. So there would be next to no benefit to anyone, except the psychic gets proven right.

And the whole world would go bonkers in a week. Fraudsters would have a glorious life, since how can you tell the difference between the genuine ones and those who can't do jack?

 

[Desertphile]

Hell, I wish I had a dollar for every time Ms. Brown made a wrong guess.

 

[Mapp]

There needs to be more people like James Randi to take these frauds to task on national television. I think the great thing about Randi is that his Institute actually teaches people to spot and expose these frauds so that his work can continue after he's gone.

 

[Artsysiridean]

It seems like people need to learn less about psychics and other whimsical things to believe in and more about con artists. How much time do you think we'd save with that?

 

[Unidentified]

I'm a 'psychic'. People believe me, too. It's bullshit, but they believe me.

I'll 'read' someone, with at least 80% accuracy, leave it a while and then tell them that it's bullshit, and they won't believe that it's bullshit. They refuse to believe that I'm not a psychic and that's what all psychics do. I explain every technique, even the elusive ones, do other psychological 'tricks', trying to prove to them what's possible, but they still won't believe it. It got to the point where I contacted Tupac from 'the other side' and used him as my spirit guide and read someone, trying to show them, and still nothing. Still couldn't believe it was just a bunch of bullshit.

 

[Daphne1D]

She's an appalling woman. She came to my city a few years ago, and one of my co-workers, who worshipped her, went to see her (she was a dimwit who bragged to me the first day that I met her that she "doesn't read books").

The next day I asked her about the show, and she did a total 180 on Sylvia Browne.

She said at one point during the show a young man stood up and asked who killed his dad, and Sylvia Browne gave some initials and the young man exclaimed "RON!" and ran out of the theatre (presumably to beat up 'Ron').

It's amazing what TV editing can do to make a person seem legitimate.

 

[Ozymandyus]

Yeah, I love Derren Brown and James Randi and others who do the same shit, often better, and show you how it's done. I enjoy a good show, but I always go in looking for the wires or knowing that people are very suggestible and follow very simple lines of thinking.

I wonder if people's certainty of the independence of their own thought, their certainty in the power of their free will, that lets them be so easily conned. I believe that there is something called free will, but it is clearly an incredibly fragile and easily controlled thing, if it exists at all.

 

[Artsysiridean]

I wonder if people's certainty of the independence of their own thought, their certainty in the power of their free will, that lets them be so easily conned. I believe that there is something called free will, but it is clearly an incredibly fragile and easily controlled thing, if it exists at all.

That's a bit critical of the human mind.

Everyone's got a view in this that is potentially right if they've ever stopped believing in something that isn't true. People believe what they want to believe because they're being true to themselves and what they feel is right. Sometimes this leads to filtering in what they want to know instead of taking in what they could know, and a bias is born.

Free will is rather fragile, but can be sturdy in the same paradox. You could compare it to bridge building or something.

Edit: Contributing to the thread.

She also wrote a book on Jesus. I wonder if that upsets any christians as it does dot dot dot. The rest of us..

Edit 2:
WAAAAAAARG

 

[JRChadwick]

That was painful. I cringed! What a fool.

 

[Coma White]

I think the people who claim they are psychic are, in fact, not psychic.

If there are people who actually do have psychic potential of some sort, they don't know it.

CW