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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think psychics are all fakes?

684 replies

LambinsideaDuckinsideaTrout · 11/12/2013 08:33

I don't like that they take peoples money when they are in a vulnerable place, lost loved ones etc. It's immoral. Just my opinion.

Thoughts? Opinions?

OP posts:
puntasticusername · 12/12/2013 12:58

Hettie oh, that's one of my favourite jokes EVER, and no one appreciates it but me..."once I learned about confirmation bias, I started seeing it EVERYWHERE..." Grin

Yeah, I can't honestly say I'd be any less susceptible than anyone else to a "psychic" if I was suffering extreme grief. Which is what makes some of the fuckers so absolutely reprehensible, of course. Target people when they are as vulnerable as they can possibly be, and the least capable of exercising appropriate scepticism in their thinking, and make money off them. If any of them believe in Hell, don't they realise they're due for a bit of a rough time when they get there?

Yellowcake · 12/12/2013 12:58

Good link, puntastic. You could use it as a handy shorthand diagnostic tool for the believers in the supernatural on this thread and others like it, like the recent Haunted Office hooha.

I call:

Attentional bias
Availability heuristic
Availability cascade
Backfire effect
Belief bias
Clustering illusion (this seems to crop up a lot in people stringing apparently unrelated bangs and breakages and toddlers talking to the air together into a haunting)
Congruence bias
Conservatism (Bayesian) - the tendency to insufficiently revise one's own belief when presented with new evidence
Frequency illusion (seems to govern phenomena such as 'angel feathers' suddenly being noticed after a death, for instance )
Illusory correlation
Observation selection bias

Etc etc. have run out of patience!

curlew · 12/12/2013 13:01

"the point i was making is that we are not aware of everyone we come into contact with their true belief's, what does it always matter we have no idea only what they choose to tell us"

Of course.

However, anyone who believes the world is 5000 years old is so stupid and closed minded they should not be allowed near children.

FreudiansSlipper · 12/12/2013 13:11

ok you think they are stupid

but unless they tell you what their core beliefs are (and that is if they are being honest) what do you know

many areas of work that is put aside, not everyone feels the needs to teach others what they see as the truth, could be to do with money, they are questioning it themselves, they wish to but have to follow an agenda all sorts of reasons

tiktok · 12/12/2013 13:11

Not posting (no time) but lurking, and go, hettie :)

The world and its creation and it variability are wonderful and no less wonderful for not having a 'creator' who oversees it all.

Scientific, rational explanations of psychic phenomena are beautiful enough for me - the explanation of 'visits' or 'signs' from Granny (and the daft angel feathers thing) after she has died is that they are ways we humans have of finding and expressing love for a dead person, and there's nothing wrong with that at all, unless we take them seriously.

HettiePetal · 12/12/2013 13:16

the point i was making is that we are not aware of everyone we come into contact with their true belief's

Someone's true beliefs are only relevant to me if they impact on my life somehow. A creationist living next door - I don't care. A creationist teaching my son biology (or anything, as Curlew says), I do.

And, by the way, "personal beliefs" impact on the lives of other people in horrible ways all the time. The cease to be personal & private when people get hurt by them. That's the point.

HettiePetal · 12/12/2013 13:22

Freudian

Honestly - I don't really see your point.

Clearly, if I don't know that someone is a creationist that's because they haven't said so and nothing in their behaviour has led me to think that.

But that's not a reflection of how things work, is it? People are motivated by their beliefs - and not all beliefs are equal.

If my son is sick, I take him to the GP because I believe that's the best way to make him better. Good belief.

If I believed that homeopathy is the best thing, and took him there instead, that could hurt him. Bad belief.

This personal beliefs crap is all very lovely & sensitive in principle, but people don't tend to keep their personal beliefs very personal, do they? We have to live with the effect of their "personal" beliefs.

BackOnlyBriefly · 12/12/2013 13:22

not everyone feels the needs to teach others what they see as the truth, could be to do with money, they are questioning it themselves, they wish to but have to follow an agenda all sorts of reasons

As I said earlier a creationist teaching evolution is from their pov deliberately deceiving children. So I'd want them kept away from kids not just because they are creationist in that instance, but because they have demonstrated themselves to be dishonest and untrustworthy.

FreudiansSlipper · 12/12/2013 13:25

of course they can if people want them too and other times people are not always aware of how much they are projecting

i have clients tell me often they speak to their dead relative, they see them and feel them near

now i may or may not believe that but what difference does it make to my client i am not letting them know either way and some do try to find out what my feelings/beliefs are (regarding many issues) because they are wanting guidance. that is not my role i can separate that (even if i want to scream he will hit you, rape you again) not always easy but i can and so can many others in their line of work

HettiePetal · 12/12/2013 13:34

I'm really sorry - but I don't think your role as a counsellor is comparable with a biology teacher who thinks evolution is a lie.

Not all beliefs are equal, and neither are all scenarios.

FreudiansSlipper · 12/12/2013 13:42

it was an example of how it can be separated

would someone with such strong beliefs what to teach something that goes against what they believe i doubt it but i am sure it happens and we are none the wiser but as i keep saying we are not always aware and people keep their professional life and views separate it does have to be monitored as it does cross over as at times

Frizzbonce · 12/12/2013 13:52

One of my friends is a copper and he says they call psychics, the second wave of predators. Also this myth about 'the police use psychics' - it just means that if a psychic rings up to grab some free publicity to help frantic parents with specific evidence, for example if Doris Bonkers were to say: 'I know that X is being held in a house in Brighton close to the post office' they would have to investigate. But most psychics come out with really vague rubbish about 'X is somewhere near water'.

So some psychics have take the fact that the police have a legal obligation to investigate specific reports, as them 'helping the police.'

When Genette Tate went missing in 1978, her family were plagued by psychics and her father John said: "We discovered that the work of the psychics was not just ludicrous and laughable. it was sinister and evil....None of it ever led anywhere except to despair and disappointment, misery and confusion."

The Second Wave of Predators is right. I have nothing but contempt for these people. A group of people who actually see 'opportunity' in parents misery and grief?

Binkybix · 12/12/2013 14:08

Have read and enjoyed the thread. I find confirmation bias, and the way we lie to ourselves constantly fascinating. This sort of knowledge makes the scientific method and logic even more important surely?

I think psychics are charlatans, but some do believe in it themselves.

Finally, baldricks comment (below) really stood out for me. I remember having a similar argument with my dad when I was about 10 about possible existence of ghosts where I was making the point that 'anything is possible' as a rationale for why they could exist. I didn't understand why he was getting so frustrated with it at the time, but as an adult I do.

It's true that anything could be possible, but this isn't an argument for it existing in the absence of any other evidence for it. It's infuriating and so unlikely as to be completely irrelevant to the discussion.

But it IS a valid point! It's the point I am making. There has been total dismissing of others points of view on this thread and the dismissal has been absolute. My argument has been that you cannot dismiss anything absolutely and to do so is ridiculous. I have made my point, you have accepted it. I haven't got anything else to say to you

Binkybix · 12/12/2013 14:09

Ps I like Phoebe (Friends) explanation of gravity: 'I feel less like I'm being pushed down, more like I'm being pushed up from the earth'

tiktok · 12/12/2013 14:18

I don't think anyone is dismissing anything absolutely - to say 'there is no rational evidence for what you believe' is a valid response to anything woo or religious, surely?

The rational person/science says 'I will be delighted to revise my understanding when there is more evidence to assess'.

The woo believer says 'I will never revise my understanding 'cos I feel I am right.'

Who is the most 'open minded'?? :)

curlew · 12/12/2013 14:19

I have always been amused when I am told I need to be more open minded by someone who is clinging to their beliefs in the face of a tidal wave of evidence.....

Original poster
LambinsideaDuckinsideaTrout · 12/12/2013 14:20

Phoebe didn't say that, she said this - I don't know, lately I get the feeling that I'm not so much being pulled down as I am being pushed.

OP posts:
Binkybix · 12/12/2013 14:25

Yes, yes I was just trying to communicate the sense of what she said. I shouldn't have used the quotes. You've got me bang to rights, you picky lamb.

HettiePetal · 12/12/2013 14:27

Part of wonderful conversation.

Got to feel for Ross here Grin

Binkybix · 12/12/2013 14:28

I used to be a friends geek. I need to polish up in case my friends and I have a game about Friends trivia! (We did used to do this).

HettiePetal · 12/12/2013 14:37

Actually, watching that friends clip - at the end Phoebe sort of sums up the "possibility" issue....which was at the heart of Baldrick's "argument" yesterday - and is very common.

Yes, there's a possibility that evolution isn't true.
Yes, there's a possibility that ghosts exist.....etc

They clutch at the word "possibility" and say "aha - see?", without once trying to understand just how phenomenally small the "possibility" actually is. I think they assume it's 50/50 or something.

Something that has a 1 in a billion chance of being true is, in all practical ways, pretty much the same as "not true". Not literally, of course, but practically.

ZingChoirsOfAngels · 12/12/2013 14:43

so by your own logic it's not true that the Universe and everything just became by chance.

because the possibility of it is so small it's ridiculous and negligible.

HettiePetal · 12/12/2013 14:49

What does "just by chance" mean?

BackOnlyBriefly · 12/12/2013 14:49

Zing, I think that's like the golf ball thing.

You hit a golf ball hard and when it lands on a tuft of grass you say "wow! that's amazing to hit one tuft of grass".

But it had to land somewhere. It would only be amazing if you predicted it would land there.

So if I'd said in advance this universe would exist and contain a forum called mumsnet that would be extremely unlikely, but the universe is just what it is.

Believing or predicting things that are extremely unlikely is still not reasonable.

Binkybix · 12/12/2013 14:52

Do you mean that it's proof of a creator?