DP believes some psychics are real, I think he's lost it

[Dpi8]

A discussion about a documentary I watched last night descended into an argument today when chatting over dinner. It was about Derren Brown and how he tests so called psychic mediums in an attempt to prove that it's a load of old rubbish - which I agree with him on.

He got majorly arsey with me when I told him about cold reading and the other techniques they use, such as using vague statements that could apply to most people in the sitters demographic. IE, telling an elderly lady that they have a parent in the spirit world who had a dodgy knee.

I asked him for some examples from which he reached his conclusion that some are genuine but he wasn't forthcoming with anything of any substance, simply mentioning some bloke from the Ghost Adventures series who wanders around buildings 'debunking' certain things for plausible deniabily then making up shite of his own to 'prove' the contact.

This is a hill I'm prepared to die on as I will not accept that such tosh is in any way genuine.

AIBU to say that absolutely all psychics are full of shit?

@NonPlayerCharacter No, she really didn't go because her child was ill. The problem here is that in doubting any possibility of this being true you are so determined to debunk it that you are bending the truth.
I don't need to explain all this again but I will just for clarity and to save you making any more assumptions. This was in the days pre-social media and before the internet was widely used. Friend had lost her father some months earlier and wanted to see a psychic so I arranged this as her birthday present. Saw a leaflet in a nearby new age shop for this psychic who lived in the next town, never heard of her before, no mutual friends, etc. I rang and booked so I know I gave no information other than our, very common first names and a contact phone number. Appointment was booked some weeks ahead to tie in with birthday and allow planning babysitters, etc. Child became ill after this was booked but we all thought just a nasty virus and it was in the weeks after this when child did not recover that they went back to the GP and the diagnosis was made. Also friend and I are both a bit cynical so gave as little feedback and reaction as possible. I am not claiming this as proof that psychics are genuine, just saying that this was one incident in my 60+ cynical years that gave me pause for thought.

Between diabeties, asthma, hell even hayfever quite a large % of kids have some sort of long term illness.

Psychic just needs to say it to enough people and they'll eventually get a hit, who then goes off and tells their friends/ people on the internet how this person couldn't possibly have known. The majority of times the fraudster psychic gets it wrong just get forgotten about.

It's as simple and completely fucking immoral as that.

I knew you were going to come back with something along the lines of "the psychic couldn't possibly know this, everything she said was accurate and so specific it couldn't be coincidence or cold reading etc etc". Everyone always does. I'm reminded again of the time slip poster who denied she had changed her story on the second telling even though the two posts were right there.

Without a transcript or video of the session, I cannot say exactly what happened. I can only say that "unspecified long term non-viral condition that can be managed" applies to me, both my siblings and a great many children, that happy people with no problems rarely visit psychics and that if this person really did know things that were impossibly specific, accurate etc etc, then she's the only one ever who has and I don't know why she never claimed the prize from the Randi Foundation. If she's still alive, she could still stun the scientific community and greatly advance human knowledge by demonstrating her powers under test conditions. If I had powers and wanted to use them for good, that's what I'd do.

I don't mean this nastily, but I think a lot of people truly don't realise how universal their experiences are and how many hit points we all share.

Think of all the posters on here who think they'll be totally outed if they admit they have a dog, two children and their DH likes cycling...

@NonPlayerCharacter I know where you are coming from on most of that and didn't see the time slip post but I would be happy to admit if there was any obvious explanation which is why this one experience stands out to me. The T1DM diagnosis was a shock to us all and very unexpected as no history in family.
I've just tried Googling the psychic but can't find anything after 2015 so I guess the million remains safe even if my experience was exactly as I remember it!

This made me laugh

But you said they just said a long term but managable illness, which could be anything.

I agree.
And if there is ever scientific evidence that people can communicate with the dead I will 100% accept it.

The presence of a mark with a child with an unspecified but manageable health condition will not have shocked the psychic in the slightest. It's so vague it applies to me, both my siblings (all as children), both my parents, several of my closest friends and their kids, several of my cousins and their kids... You could even read it to include mental health conditions or neurodiversity.

YANBU

They are full of shit. Sharlatons

I'm not going to argue any more on this. I am confident in my recollections but am not arguing this is any kind of proof, just that it seemed unusually accurate to me at the time. I'm sorry to hear of others with ongoing health issues but that is genuinely not the case in mine or friends family.

I did have an amusing experience some years later when a different friend invited me to a lunch where a psychic would give readings. She began mine with "You know somebody who has a large bottle of Gaviscon at home". I knew a few as I worked in a pharmacy!

The obvious explaination is that psychics make "predictions" based on something that is statistically likely to be true of a lot of people, like having a kid with a long-term illness in your example.

Other easy targets are things like lots of people aged around 20-30 are going to get married or have kids in the next few years.

That's an easy "prediction" to make as well.

We know absolutely how these fraudsters work. There is nothing magical or fantastical about any of them.

It may not be common in your family but it's very very common among the public at large, and that's the group the psychic is targeting statistically. It isn't "unusually" accurate at all - it applies to zillions of people. And in fact it wasn't even very accurate because she was so vague about it.

Why don't they ever predict the lottery numbers?

😂

Years ago my husband was in a pub and a psychic was doing a gig upstairs. She came down and they got talking, she was obviously looking for another customer.

My husband asked her how many pints he was going to have and she stormed off.

I said she should have known he was going to take the piss. 🤷

They can never answer the important questions...😂

Only talk about the elderly aunt who died, grandmother loved you, you're had a tough time and it will get better... all vague bollocks

Apparently there's going to be a psychic on the new series of The Traitors. They had one on the Australian one last year. I remember she got two out of three right and then dramatically walked out without waiting for confirmation.

Well, you’d expect someone with cold-reading skills to be good at noticing ‘tells’, wouldn’t you?

Just like the fact that the woman who won the series Squid Game: the Challenge managed it because, after surviving the big culls earlier on, she was very good at the final two games, one of which was a trust game that involved guessing which other player had tried to get you out by giving you a ‘present’. She worked as an assessor for US immigration, her job involved assessing whether people were bona fide, so she had a lot of experience in assessing ‘guilty’ or evasive body language.

Oh yes, I don't think she was actually psychic but I can believe she was good at reading body language...pretty vital for the part. She still didn't get them all. I think a key part of the performance is being very definite and dramatic in style. At the start of every series, you always get people who are reading well and guessing right, but they tend to be unsure and tentative. She throws it out there as definite fact after making a big meal of how flickering lights are actually spirit messages, flounces out for no reason and you'll remember she got a couple right and forget she fucked up the third.

It's the power of showmanship.