The reason I don't believe in psychics

[Cheapjack]

I tell you one thing:

There was a case of someone predicting baseball scores, to the unit, in the 1950's and winning a mint. I think that's what that idea in Back To the Future came from.

It only occurred to me a few months ago, that the whole thing was just fixed, as can happen!

 

[Nardpuncher]

I am psychic but I can't predict the future. I have always believed that having prior knowledge of an event changes the flow of things enough that the event will most likely never happen. I will see flashes of things coming up presently but it is always something that is about to happen. For example, I know I will run into someone at a restaurant about an hour before I get to the restaurant. And from time to time I will know when the phone is about to ring and who is on the other end. I get other things also but anything above that is beyond anyone's abilities, or at least in my experience it is.

For the most part I can sense other people's thoughts and emotions. I can also detect ghosts and communicate with spirits. You want to talk to your dead granny who might be lingering around in the kitchen... than I am your guy. I can "cleanse" places of those kinds of things. I also know if someone is sick or is lacking things in their diet. I have this weird "Dr. Dolittle" thing with animals too. I don't talk to them but I can "understand" them.

Of course people think I am bat shit crazy when I talk about this. Most don't believe me. Well they don't until I pick up their car keys and start telling them things about themselves that I couldn't possibly know. It completely wigs folks out. I love doing that. I also don't like being referring to as a psychic. I prefer "empathically aware". I am closer to Deanna Troi than gypsy fortune teller.

And one more thing... the famous psychic author Sylvia Browne is a fake. Don't believe a word that woman says about anything. She is about as psychic as my car.

I am certain you're not psychic.

You're probably thinking of about 50 people calling you and then eventually one of them does.

 

[Cheapjack]

What abou those documented cases of dogs being video-ed, knowing when their owner has decided to come home, and getting all excited!

(And, way before the car can be heard in the drive)

 

[F. King Daniel]

The reason I don't believe in psychics is because I have a shread of common sense.

 

[Awesome Possum]

I think part of the problem is our brains. We're way too good at finding patterns, even if there isn't one there. Also memories are so fluid that we may remember events that didn't happen. I find the whole thing amazing though and just a little terrifying at how little we do know about how the brain works.

 

[Cheapjack]

So anyone who has a slight suspicion, hasn't even when there are unexplainable things?

 

[Australis]

I've had premonitions sometimes when people are about to die (Princess Di, Port Arthur shootings), but not a thing about 9/11. That was odd. Mind you, everything about psychic ability, collective unconscious, past lives and so on, are bloody odd. Because quite often it's rubbish, and then one thing slips through which changes your mind.

When I was a kid, there was psychic called Jeane Dixon. She got the first Kennedy assassination right, but failed miserably at everything after that. Example, she said a comet was going to strike the Earth in 1986. Obviously people knew Halley's Comet was due then. Hmm, don't recall it hitting the Earth.

My favourite joke is apparently a true story, from a newspaper classifieds column: "The psychic will not be available due to unforeseen circumstances".

 

[Deranged Nasat]

My favourite joke is apparently a true story, from a newspaper classifieds column: "The psychic will not be available due to unforeseen circumstances".

To clarify my earlier comments, I don't believe these things are ever predictable or consistant, so I don't trust any self-proclaimed "psychics" who "make predictions". It's just something that occasionally happens. Sadly, when it randomly happens a few times to some people, they think that means they are a psychic, and can do it as a matter of course. They can't, as far as I can tell. Maybe some people have it happen more often than others, or with better detail, but I think these things are, by definition, largely randomized and outside the scope of predictability. So I believe in psychic phenomena, and I believe in people who are more sensitive than others or "more psychic", but I don't believe in "psychics".

Random future knowledge, or premonitions, or details of events before they happen- sometimes important ones, sometimes trivial- is something I very much believe in. It's happened to me on occasion. And you can tell the difference between "lucky guess", "co-incidence" and "knowledge of something that's about to happen". To anyone who's experienced these things now and then, there isn't any confusion. But don't go around believing that because it happened once or twice that makes you "a psychic"

 

[Haggis and tatties]

^^^This.

Although i will say if some people get some type of comfort from them then who am i to rock that boat.

Comfort? I don't quite understand you. "Them"? What's "them?" Snippets of future information are "them"? And what's comfort got to do with anything?

In contact with the dead and all that, people looking to contact their dead loved ones actually get some comfort from psychic/mediums at times with this, so in that sense i suppose its does actually do something positive if its gives somebody the ability to deal with loss and get on with their own life and happiness, regardless of my personal belief that its all just a bunch of hokum which i firmly put up there in the same category and Magic, ghosts, telekinesis, telepathy and the loch ness monster .

 

[Deranged Nasat]

^^^This.

Although i will say if some people get some type of comfort from them then who am i to rock that boat.

Comfort? I don't quite understand you. "Them"? What's "them?" Snippets of future information are "them"? And what's comfort got to do with anything?

In contact with the dead and all that, people looking to contact their dead loved ones actually get some comfort from psychic/mediums at times with this, so in that sense i suppose its does actually do something positive if its gives somebody the ability to deal with loss and get on with their own life and happiness .

Ah, right. Sorry, I was still thinking about the basic phenomena, you were talking about the actual subject of "psychics", the people. Never mind me.

 

[Marie1]

I don't believe in it either. Someone tried to convince me I'll have several kids... clearly insane...

 

[Miss Chicken]

I don't believe in it either. Someone tried to convince me I'll have several kids... clearly insane...

Would you have one, or perhaps two?

 

[Mistral]

I don't believe in it either. Someone tried to convince me I'll have several kids... clearly insane...

Would you have one, or perhaps two?

I would not have them in a box,
I would not have them with a fox(ok, wait, maybe!)
Sorry, couldn't resist...

To expand a little further on Deranged Nasat's take on it-I think the brain(a bio-computer), when operating at above baseline capacity can process information we are only peripherally aware of, collating that information for some people into a 'simulation model' that seems to be predicting the future. What its actually doing is assembling a "likliest outcome" based on what it has collected. Any "positive hits" by a so-called psychic are merely that, no more mysterious than the computer programs used to measure and monitor wind tunnel effects. They just aren't under as much conscious control as said wind tunnel.

As for the professional psychics out there-I can't believe in any of them. Here's why- I want to talk to a real psychic, and yet none have ever called me. If they were real they'd know I'm expecting that call...

 

[The Badger]

...When I was a kid, there was psychic called Jeane Dixon. She got the first Kennedy assassination right...

It's debatable whether she even got that right. In a 1956 issue of Parade magazine she predicted that the 1960 election would be 'dominated by labor and won by a Democrat', adding '...he will be assassinated or die in office, though not necessarily in his first term'.

Sounds convincing, right? Providing you ignore that 'dominated by labor' business. Or the fact that in 1960 she stated quite clearly that Kennedy would lose his bid to become President, and that Nixon, who would win, would serve his country well. In fact, this has become known as the Jeane Dixon Effect. A psychic throws out a multitude of predictions, at different times, in different media, often self contradictory.

By sheer chance some of these stand a good chance of being correct, or at least close enough that the psychic can convince people they got it right. Those 'predictions' are then repeated and hyped. The less successful majority are quietly ignored.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I must admit Nostradamus came up with some pretty interesting stuff. The key was that he was so utterly vague that his stuff could be made to fit anything (i.e. "crooked cross" = swastika)- an old book I had claimed Nostradamus saw a nuclear attack on New York at some time in the near future. Guess what? That same passage was on the news a few weeks after 9/11...

I got the book to see if I got a mention.

Alas, no

 

[Yeoman Randi]

^My co-worker's granddaughter consistently tells them what family members are doing at a given time. When contacted by phone they almost always corroborate what the little girl (she's seven years old) has said. It's a little odd but her parents are getting used to it.

I do believe precognition does exist but I suspect you could confirm it doesn't work anything like tv says it does . . .

WHOA!

 

[Marie1]

I don't believe in it either. Someone tried to convince me I'll have several kids... clearly insane...

Would you have one, or perhaps two?

After Armageddon, when the world is a paradise and there is no sickness or war, and I have a husband that is a perfect (free from Adamic sin) man, I'll consider it... maybe.

I don't believe in it either. Someone tried to convince me I'll have several kids... clearly insane...

Would you have one, or perhaps two?

I would not have them in a box,
I would not have them with a fox(ok, wait, maybe!)
Sorry, couldn't resist...

You're nuts!

I believe supernatural things happen, but I don't think that it's to do with humans exclusively...

 

[Spot's Meow]

I was just reading about this show on TV the other day called America's Psychic Challenge. Here is the description:

Lifetime's reality competition features 16 unique individuals from across the country who claim to have the gift of clairvoyance. They're going to battle it out for the coveted title of America's #1 Psychic. In each episode, contestants must prove their abilities by participating in carefully designed tests like searching for a man hidden in a hospital, doing a reading for someone without knowing their identity, precisely identifying specific details of an investigation at a murder scene and much more. The competitors are awarded points based on the number of successful predictions they make. At the conclusion of each episode, the two psychics with the fewest points are eliminated and the two with the most points will advance to the next round — all leading to the exciting season finale, where one winner will be declared!

I think it originally aired sometime last year. I never saw the show but it sounds like some people in this thread might find it mildly entertaining.

 

[Mistral]

I was just reading about this show on TV the other day called America's Psychic Challenge. Here is the description:

Lifetime's reality competition features 16 unique individuals from across the country who claim to have the gift of clairvoyance. They're going to battle it out for the coveted title of America's #1 Psychic. In each episode, contestants must prove their abilities by participating in carefully designed tests like searching for a man hidden in a hospital, doing a reading for someone without knowing their identity, precisely identifying specific details of an investigation at a murder scene and much more. The competitors are awarded points based on the number of successful predictions they make. At the conclusion of each episode, the two psychics with the fewest points are eliminated and the two with the most points will advance to the next round — all leading to the exciting season finale, where one winner will be declared!

I think it originally aired sometime last year. I never saw the show but it sounds like some people in this thread might find it mildly entertaining.

Particularly after a six pack and a joint.

 

[Davros]

I don't believe in psychics because of the Amazing Randi