How do clairvoyants know things??

[Homer2]

I have never believed in this, I saw one once just for fun at my aunties house and she wasn’t great. She did say a few things that were accurate, but I put this down to being guesses or general vague things that would be relevant to the majority of people.

However, recently my friend went to one. She recently lost her dad and her partner. Without telling the clairvoyant anything, she knew how her partner died and what his name was. She mentioned my friends dad blowing kisses in a weird way, with the palm of his hand instead of his fingers, which is something he did used to do. How would she know these things??? I don’t honestly believe in it, but can’t understand how she’d know such specific things

Oops, I didn’t intend to be rude, but my previous, non-rude explanation on the basics of how memory works was met by that poster with an angry denial that it applied to her!
A special case, obviously.

Deniers of science, I must confess, leave me somewhat frustrated.

What I don’t quite understand about the spirits who come through to mediums on stage is why they’re so coy about giving hard information.

If I was dead and wanted to speak to a loved one in the audience via the medium, I’d give them my full name and the name of the person I wanted to speak to, bare minimum. I wouldn’t give them my initial, some random fact about myself, or give them a feeling in the area of my body that relates to how I “passed”. I’d just give up hard verifiable information.

Yes, that's what I don't get. I was trying to make a similar point about the flooded kitchen (qv).
Why not just be clear and direct?

Why are you still talking to me? Just want to be awkward and goady? You don’t have to believe or understand where I’m coming from, and you also don’t need to challenge me either.

“Some people can tune in to your thoughts and subconscious knowledge, like tuning into a radio station. Similar to Morphic Resonance”

And some people can post total bollocks on the internet. It is a skill.

Surely we have all experienced anticipating what our friends are going to say/are really thinking?

Maybe thousands of client readings later, these medium people have just honed whatever that ‘anticipating’ ability is?

My 'party trick' (prior to the introduction of randomly generated strong passwords) used to be guessing a password in three attempts. I would say I had a hit rate of about 8 out of 10.

I am (of course) not psychic. However, I have worked in IT for a long time and have a fairly good understanding of human behaviour, which is essentially all it takes.

Oh, and yes, it's always some derivation of children's / spouses' birthdays / pet names / street addresses etc. Humans are nothing if not predictable.

Psychics/clairvoyants/whatever are either charlatans or mentally ill.

It's a discussion forum. We're discussing "How clairvoyants know things."

It's interesting to me that you ask me to open my mind like I'm being stubborn, but you're not even prepared to open your mind to consider a rational explanation of your experience. Why is that?

Discuss all you like .. just not with me thanks.

I absolutely do not deny science , i work with science but i know how my own mind works and i know what my experience was , i could say so much more about it but choose not too.
I find it quite bizarre how some people are so closed off and refuse to believe that there may be more beyond what we know and even you can't deny how much we do not know.
As i said i believe that the vast majority of people who call themselves mediums are absolutely not and many are totally fraudulent , but there are some people who have 'something' i don't know what,why or how but they do.
Maybe sometime in your life someone like the person i experienced will cross your path and you may change your mind.
If it's me you were referring to i wasn't angry.

You know you can just stop responding if you can't bear to consider a different worldview to your own?

And you do know you can stop goading don’t you?

I'm mostly a sceptic. But my mind is not so closed that I would deny all the PPs experiences. Science does not have all the answers - where does the universe end, what's beyond it, how did it start, how on earth did our bodies get put together in such a miraculous way that it all works in the way that it does?
Even the bits that Science has seemingly explained, like sound waves and evolution seem quite extraordinary.
So I'm quite prepared to believe that there's plenty that we still don't know and what happens to us in death and being able to see into the future could well be things we just don't understand yet.

That's something you could do too?

I don't think anyone is doubting your experience, but may be questioning whether your explanation of your experience is plausible or rational.

If you truly "know your own mind" you will know that your mind is prone to hallucinations, heuristics and misinterpretations. Everyone's mind is. It's how our brains work.

I genuinely think people who leap to supernatural explanations of things are far more closed-minded than people who are willing to understand what we know about neuroscience. It is far, far more likely that what you experienced is explained by everything we know about psychology and neuroscience rather than some unexplainable mystery from a world inhabited by charlatans and con artists. Open your mind to the possibility of rationalism. Read about brain science.

Yes, but I am the one interested in continuing the discussion, so why would I do that?

How is this post not you goading me?

It’s called being a polite, thoughtful, mindful adult. Basic manners really.

Every single person claiming to be psychic who has come under ANY sort of proper scrutiny has been shown to be full of shit.

If there was a single one who was genuine, they would happily and confidently prove that they were, and they would make a fucking fortune out of it.

I honestly find it unbelievable that people happily believe in it but accept that it's impossible to saw a woman in half. It's basically the same thing - just a trick.

Science hasn't "seemingly" explained sound waves and evolution. It has clearly, demonstrably explained them through repeated confirmatory theories, experiments and proofs

(And what's so hard to grasp about sound waves? Sound waves!)

I'd agree that 95% of these people are charlatans. Darren Brown's techniques are mind-blowing. Not sure many have his abilities, but for those that don't, they'll certainly be checking social media etc.

But I have had an experience myself where I dropped in uninvited to a spiritualist church, mainly so that they had no prior knowledge of me (gave a different name, too). I was actually amazed at the info they gave me. Not stuff I knew, but things I didn't know (and then followed up with family later).

Was it enough to convince a scientist like me? Perhaps it highlighted there are scientific explanations for something we don't understand, but the cynic in me constantly battles with this!

I have been unfailingly polite.

It's extraordinary to me that you claim you don't want to continue our discussion but you can't bear not to have the last word.

Always a huge sceptic here but I went to see a psychic at a large event. Before we went in, I just had a funny feeling I was going to get a reading and mentally thought that unless they mentioned something VERY specific it wasn't true. I did get a reading which was spookily accurate, every bit of it, then at the end he said ",why is she asking me to mention XYZ?" - the very thing I had thought of!

I personally believe telepathy is real if unpredictable. Aside from that a lot of it is intuition and thread pulling as I call it. I'm not psychic but I have been accused of it. Its just a ways of taking a few facts or even intuitions about a person and situation and mentally pulling on different narrative threads until one takes you somewhere and "feels real" and its surprising how often it turns out to be true!

I think its possible to intuit a persons life and past from them but I'm not convinced anyone can read your future and I don't believe there are spirits hanging about telling psychics where your grandmother left the gold sovereigns!

I hate this kind of thing. They know the people going are vulnerable, as I've never known someone happy or content pay to see one, unless a group event type thing, and I think everyone in the room resonates with things like "I'm getting the letter S" and will make their own mind up and tell the story themselves in a way.

I don't know if I'm just a terrible bereaved person, but I don't want to have messages, or have someone "speak" to my loved ones from a fifty quid appointment.

It doesn't give comfort to me, but I know it does others, I've had family go and come home and try and tell me what our relatives have said, and what this means or that means, I honestly can't listen to it though.