h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We read about people who can talk with spirits by hearing or seeing picture form many tv shows like colin fry leave people gasping who do they know that i'm the only one who could know . How come they can't know where missing people are people who have went missing for years .

I have an anecdote that is most amusing.

Years ago, our local paper, the NZ Herald, had a front page report of a conference held by the NZ Sceptics society, with a report of a speech by Denis Dutton, a well known sceptic here.
Professor Dutton said exactly what you've said <> - but specifically mentioned involving dreams... To the right of Professor Dutton's speech, was a report that the body of a missing man had been found, after he'd been swept off rocks while fishing from them, a common pasttime here. The body had been found after the missing man's cousin told police that he'd had a dream in which his dead cousin told him where his body was..

Mind you, this was a one-off, the guy wasn't a TV 'psychic'... and I agree with you there, they're a load of pants!

Vicky

Hi vicky i have been to one and he could tell me things only i knew . I have heard people saying it might be that the spirit does not want to be found ok but what if the person was kidnapped now could they not seance where they are etc .

You should look into something called Cold Reading. It´s a very common trick among the "psychics".

A lot of missing person cases as well as murders etc 'have' been solved with the help of psychics and clairvoyants , we just rarely hear about it. There are genuine people with genuine gifts.

Xans right about the cold reading technique though, there are a lot of unscrupulous people out there ready to exploit people at a vulnerable time with such methods.

what Xan said. They're fakes, although they may not realise it themselves, but a lot do know. I've yet to hear a story of a body find by a psychic corroborated by the police (or relevant authority) that stood up to scrutiny. It's either plain not true, or the actual prediction was so wide it could have fit a multitude of answers.

on the other hand if medium did help by saying he or she seen a vision where a person might be just say they were spot on the police could think they were in on it .

<>

I did hear of that happening to someone... It was very awkward to say the least!

They weren't a TV medium, just a neighbour of the deceased....

Vicky

I do think that there are people out there who are able to do this kind of thing... however you get the media whore fakes like Derek Acorah who give the whole thing a bad name.

oldrustbucket< i have been to one and he could tell me things only i knew . I have heard people saying it might be that the spirit does not want to be found ok but what if the person was kidnapped now could they not seance where they are etc .>

It is all cold reading and sometimes a bit of warm reading(prior knowledge).

I suggest you have a quick read of this:

http://www.randi.org/joom/content/view/142/1/#i7

Which is very apt.

and:

http://www.randi.org/joom/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,80/

http://www.randi.org/joom/component/option,com_seyret/Itemid,70/

And of course Sylvia Brown:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sylvia+brown&search=Search

And also Derren Browns 'Trick Of The Mind'

There are no mediums there are no psychics.

And if after reading the links above and doing some more background reading you still believe in it...it's your money...

yes i have read mr randi's views before and i have also been to see mediums in the past to me it is a case of 6 and to 3s or black or white infact i had even my cards read for nothing and the person was correct on what they told me what was going to happen .

At least you didn't waste any money on one occasion.



Um, no, it's lot's of historical evidence about the way in which mediums and spiritualists came about (start off with the Fox Sisters, Davenport Brothers and work your up from there) AND a wealth of literature on the actual techniques used knowingly (or in some cases possibly unknowingly) by these people.

And on the side of the mediums the evidence is...well I point you to the literature above...specifically any literature recording what someone 'sitting' for one of these things remembers happening(i.e. the medium getting everything right) and what actually happened(the medium missing most of the time but hitting after fishing for ages and the siter remembering the hit.)

At this point I am unsubbing. Since you have read 'mr randi's' views before and still believe in this stuff and do not seem to want to investigate what is actually happeneing I will not waste my time any further.

yes but is mr randi 100% sure of course not nothing is' like everything else it just takes one too give the rest a bad name as you get bad plumbers painters why not a bad medium . before man could fly people laughed at anyone that tried to give it a ago dont here people laughing now .

the only thing that gets too people like mr randi is cause they cant prove it.

Yes but if all the people who have been hailed as really good psychics have been shown to be fake, are the any reason to think the ones doing worse at it are any more genuine? People stopped laughing when someone actually flew. I´ll stop laughing when someone starts making proper predictions.

Man can fly

I thought technology was necessary for that kind of thing...

Science and technology also allow humans to make fairly accurate predictions about the natural world.

By definition this has nothing whatsoever to do with belief in supernatural

<>

IMO, the last thing a genuine psychic would want to do, would be to be a 'professional' or TV medium. (Or psychic medium' as they redundantly say. Everyone has the odd flash of prediction, or the odd forecasting dream. I remember back in the 1990s, having the kind of surreal dream which I usually have, about being in a big glass-walled room, that had a lawn in it, with my brother, and watching as two planes flew over too low, and crashed behind the building. We took space blankets and first aid kits to the site of the crash, which was a gully about a kilometre away.

Months later, we went with my brother to see the flat he'd just shifted into. Behold, the 'glass walled room with a lawn in it', a "conservatory", the landlords called it, with Astroturf instead of carpet. The gully existed too, as did the fantastic view from the glass walls - almost a 360 degree panorama.

The plane crash however, didn't happen while Garth lived there, in fact never happened while he was alive.

It may still happen, but will have absolutely no effect on us, as his place was miles away from here..

There are others I've had, equal mixtures of fact (the room, which I thought was surreal but thanks to weird landlords was completely genuine) and pure fancy, which could have happened (the flat where he lived was on a flight path to the local airport) but didn't occur at all.

Vicky

If anyone has a gift and gets on in life you will always find some people digging out there dirty washing becouse they have not got on and have the green eyed monster for those who have .

Birds fly, well most of them do, you can see it any old time.

We see, we most of us can, it happens pretty much all the time.

Sight beyond sight is one of those things like, or other tings we never see that some people still like to think are as real as birds flying or sight in humans.

Tarot, Seeing the future.
Of ourse we *all* have several dreams per full nights sleep, that's about four or five dreams every night and if none of those dreams matched up with a future reality it would be very very odd. Each dream contains various scenes and scnarios and even if you cant conciously access the images and information they all reamin inside your memory.

When you can recall them on your own will then see something later you think its a "prediction" which is a stupid as saying that you *made* it happen by dreamimng it that way. Well if your dreams are predictions why hasnt the body found a way of focusing and using this ability effectively? You can focus on near and far objects with your eyes why would this alleged boon to humanity remain such an imprecise tool?

I say imprecise tool because you get to remeber even dreams that you cant recall on your own volition. I have never seen anything like the dream where Im flying over the Safari park being carried aloft by a stiff breeze catching in the Tesco carrie bag Im holding, looking down onto the hippos. Im unlikely to ever see anything like that. What is relevant is the things I can and have seen I have seen.

I have seen lots of Tesco carrier bags in my time I have looked down onto the Elephant enclosure from the viaduct that passes the local safari park.

Nnow that dream or even bits of it are ripe for *de ja vu*. Most dreams you cant remeber but if something closely enough matches a dream you dont recall you stand for a moment womdering why you've seen the scene before. Its a simple as that. Once again if in real life there were bits of the *majority of dreams you can recall that never near enough came true in real life then that would be very, very weird indeed.

Evolution would have let the people who couldnt use these perish from falling off cliffs or being eaten by lions. Those who could psychicly predict the right place to find water or the path to take that would mean not getting bitten by a poisonous snake would have passed on their psychic genes better. This hasnt happened though has it.


If there werent so much human misery involved with it Id be inclined to laugh but if Tarot realy worked Id still be with Liz, happily married and we'd be expecting our second daughter. If it really worked Tarot would be used by everyone to decide *everything* if it really made for a better life with better decisions then we would use it for everything business plans, flood defence placement and when to schedule Wimbledon so that rain didnt delay play so much. That we dont that the divocre rate is so hig etc..etc... is testament to the our crappy powers of prediction by supernatural detection.



Mind readers, Mediums.
You can understand and influence people with body language just as much as and sometimes more effectively than you can with verbal language. Those who are stupid enough to believe inthings they cant understand ni the slightest and have never been offered anyting but anecdotal evidence for its existence are unfortunately gullible prey for every kind of snake oil salesman going.

We should protect these feeble minded people but I like Alfster sometimes think that go to all that effort for small gains in their undrstaning when they seem so vehemently happy with their ignorance like some kind of pig in in shit.

one love

Are those the same people that put on the lotto, footy coupons, bet on horses etc etc those things are opps dare i say tampered with and everyone who plays gambles also falls for the prey LAYMAN terms all of the above is a fix anything where money is used you will find somebody playing the cat and the fiddle the jimmy riddle . But someone telling a stranger things he or she only knows by not having anything too go on noo cards up the sleve noo wand or fairy dust noo ear piece etc well that has everyone stumped .