Witch turns and raises eyebrow at the Ouija board with the four decks of tarot and a bag of rune stones setting on her book case?
If from where I'm sitting I could not see my partner cooking dinner in the kitchen I would swear he had an account here. You two would get along like two peas in a pod!
Well, if the transmission of information (that is not available by any known means at the time and that is subsequently proved to be true) is the criterion of reality, then we would have to look at particular cases to establish any conclusions.They are in a form that is more subtle....it is a long metaphysic discussion which is hard to have in a few lines here. Our technology and our senses are not "sensitive" enough to perceive them,because they are too subtle. They exist but we can't normally see/feel/touch them because our minds and so our technology is not subtle enough.
You can imagine ghosts of any kind. Many people who pretend to be medium do. But when you get information from these spirits,you had no idea of and you found this information(dates,situations,facts etc) to be true,then it cannot be imagination nor "paranoia" as someone said above.
Obviously,i want to remark the fact that these are EXCEPTIONAL facts. Most people who claim to see ghosts are just out of mind.
You are correct in the following respect: the record of psychics and mediums in solving crimes is as good as the record of supposed experts in "criminal profiling." Where you go wrong is in the fact that the appearance of successful detection by these methods owes to combination of (1) the vagueness and banality of the hypotheses and (2) such cognitive biases as Texas sharpshooter fallacy and confirmation bias in identifying successes. Unless you enjoy being fooled, you might want to look into the matter more skeptically.By the way,you know that FBI uses PHSYCHICS AND MEDIUMS to solve crimes they can't solve for lack of proofs,traces etc? Many crimes and disappearence cases have been solved all over the World with the help of such people....so it means they have something special,that is not obviously paranoia. If paranoia could solve crimes,then we all should be paranoic!
The claims of the efficacy of remote viewing have, so far as I know, always turned out to exhibit the pattern that I described in the case of psychic detection: the remote viewer offers a drawing, or the psychic a description, that is so vague that there is no defined limit to the range of states of affairs that could count as agreeing with it. Once the target is identified concretely (the criminal culprit in the case of detection or the scene or object in the case of remote viewing), it is easy to identify it with the drawing or the description in retrospect. But no criteria of correctness were ever fixed before the match was made. The results show no difference from what mere guesswork would produce: what appearance of a accuracy there is comes from retrospective interpretation of the results to conform to the target. Again, I refer to the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.There was book published years ago by someone {actually 2 authors if i remember} either working at stanford or SRI. {stanford research } I still have it around somewhere. It got a lot of press when it was released and i remember seeing the author interviewed on the pbs news show.
The author claimed that experiments at SRI had proved the existence of remote viewing among other things. They had someone in a room describe the location of various subjects some close by, some further away. There also published the results of the profits they made in either the stock market or the silver market using some other abilities. The problem is that we now know some of these studies or results were used to have the russians or chinese waste their time and money. I don't know if this fits in that category. The chinese claim they have subjects who can transport solid objects through walls. The department of defense is skeptical but they have to follow through. There is too much at stake if any of this is real.
The claims of the efficacy of remote viewing have, so far as I know, always turned out to exhibit the pattern that I described in the case of psychic detection: the remote viewer offers a drawing, or the psychic a description, that is so vague that there is no defined limit to the range of states of affairs that could count as agreeing with it. Once the target is identified concretely (the criminal culprit in the case of detection or the scene or object in the case of remote viewing), it is easy to identify it with the drawing or the description in retrospect. But no criteria of correctness were ever fixed before the match was made. The results show no difference from what mere guesswork would produce: what appearance of a accuracy there is comes from retrospective interpretation of the results to conform to the target. Again, I refer to the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
Michael Shermer has a video that shows very clearly, through his participation in a supposed remote-viewing training session, how the illusion is effected: part 1, part 2. The particularly revealing moment is in the second part, when, after the target object has been revealed, the instructor retrospectively selects and interprets the drawings produced by the trainees in a fashion that conforms to it.
Penn and Teller did a pretty good show on ESP (video; go to 7:00 for the topic of remote viewing). One important point that they make is that the use of supposed psychic detectives not only lacks a record of success ("No psychic detective has ever recovered a missing child. You will find no cop in America who will tell you that the case was finally broken by a psychic detective"Mark Klaas, father of murder victim Polly Klass, around 5:30 in the video), but it abuses the trust of the those close to the victims of murder and abduction, produces false leads, and wastes the time and resources of police departments.
Well, if the transmission of information (that is not available by any known means at the time and that is subsequently proved to be true) is the criterion of reality, then we would have to look at particular cases to establish any conclusions.
You are correct in the following respect: the record of psychics and mediums in solving crimes is as good as the record of supposed experts in "criminal profiling." Where you go wrong is in the fact that the appearance of successful detection by these methods owes to combination of (1) the vagueness and banality of the hypotheses and (2) such cognitive biases as Texas sharpshooter fallacy and confirmation bias in identifying successes. Unless you enjoy being fooled, you might want to look into the matter more skeptically.
If they're too subtle for us OR our technology to sense them, how do we have any reason to believe they exist in the first place? And i'm sure if you were to retrace your steps if you knew any information you think is impossible to know about, you'd find that you had in fact learned it beforehand but simply paid no attention to it until something triggered a response.
And the FBI employs many private parties for various tasks, but it's all a waste of money; those "psychics" and criminal profilers and the like have no higher success rates than regular cops using old-fashioned police work. You're talking about cases solved by hard-working police detectives and giving credit for their years of investigations to con artists. If psychic detectives had any way of finding criminals and/or missing people without forensics or detective work, something like this wouldn't still be a mystery: 6 People Who Just Fucking Disappeared | Cracked.com
Any "psychic" detective you find is guaranteed to solve crimes (if they do so at all) in a somewhat less boring--though probably just as entertaining--fashion as Shawn Spencer in Psych.
And the CIA also used to experiment with psychics (when they found out the Russians were, and didn't want to risk falling behind if it were credible). They eventually stopped. During the Cold War. Because they had seen run enough basic experiments (like having a bunch of psychics say which box in a vault had a photo in it) to realize that they were just guessing or using (not so) clever vague descriptions with ambiguous meanings.
Well, it is curious that none of the ones who have been subjected to tests with scientific controls have been real ones. Perhaps you are not aware that the James Randi Educational Foundation offers a prize of $1 million to anyone who can prove paranormal abilities? From the Web site (bold type mine):Real mediums and phsychic can give you PRECISE descriptions and information. You can't even imagine. Most people,instead,pretend to be mediums but they aren't,so they just give vague descriptions,as you said.
You would think that the genuine psychics and mediums would be moved to get that prize; but apparently the offer only attracts the false ones.At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. The JREF does not involve itself in the testing procedure, other than helping to design the protocol and approving the conditions under which a test will take place. All tests are designed with the participation and approval of the applicant. In most cases, the applicant will be asked to perform a relatively simple preliminary test of the claim, which if successful, will be followed by the formal test. Preliminary tests are usually conducted by associates of the JREF at the site where the applicant lives. Upon success in the preliminary testing process, the "applicant" becomes a "claimant."
To date, no one has passed the preliminary tests.
It's funny how you reach that conclusion on the basis of so little information. You are right to this extent: if I had one experience of, say, someone with no apparent access to certain facts stating them on the basis of supposed psychic abilities, I would not be convinced that he or she had such abilities, and would want to know more about what happened. That is far from being "blind": that is proportioning the strength of one's belief to the evidence. To credit the person with psychic abilities is not insightful; it is simply credulity, which is every bit as serious a deficiency of cognitive functioning as is dogmatic rigidity.But you know,there's no worse blind than the one who doesn't want to see. Even if you lived a paranormal experience of the strongest kind,you'd never believe it...so there's no discussion,actually...
You are way, way off the mark there. Your reasoning exhibits the fallacy of "where there's smoke, there's fire": if a lot of people believe something, there must be some truth to it. If a lot of people believe in spirits and ghosts and fairies, there must be invisible creatures of some kind that cause them to have those beliefs. Not so. The ways in which human beings reify their fantasies and draw unwarranted conclusions from their experiences are very well attested. Have a look at this list of cognitive biases for a start.If it were totally invisible and non-existant,no man would have ever experienced that and not even the idea of these phenomenon would exist on Earth....
I read a lot of skeptical stuff, on the Web and in print, but for some reason I don't like listening to podcasts. Thanks anyway.Calboner, thank you very much for typing out all this. I wanted to do it myself, but I lack the time and writing skills to put my words down in a way that is clear and concise.
If you don't already know about it there is a fantastic podcast called the The Skeptic's Guide to The Universe that talks a lot about skepticism, the latest science news and other interesting subjects. It's very funny and enlightening.