Talking with Psychics

[Eilonnwy]

I learned yesterday that my older sister believes she is a psychic and practices card reading with some gypsy cards. This is out of my league. I've only recently abandoned those kinds of beliefs. Seriously. I've been an atheist since 16 and I've been studying all the information behind the religious skepticism but I'm not well versed in skepticism about psychics and spirituality. I've held these foolish beliefs up until last summer. I'm out of my league and it showed when I got into a fight with resulted in me apologizing because I know I presented my arguments in a completely wrong and insulting fashion, mostly because I was thrown off balance by finding out my sister is so into this stuff.

Does anyone have any experience in talking with psychics, know the best way to confront them? Have any recommended reading? Any advice could really help. It's not like I have any plan to intervene and deconvert. But I want to be able to properly show why I'm a skeptic about this stuff and present the proper evidence.

[leo-rcc]

Easy, let them make predictions and then test them. Set a prefixed set of parameters where to start of with and verify the test results. I would suggest going to http://www.randi.org which is the website of James Randi and the JREF. There you can learn a lot about debunking woo.

[Eilonnwy]

I'll check out the website, I forgot about good old James Randi.

I know that she doesn't make specific predictions per se. The way she describes is that it's like a guide that can give you a little bit of insight to what's going on and help you make decisions based on that insight. She uses these gypsy cards that I found on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Gypsy-Fort...568&sr=8-2

I at least understand that what she is doing is giving general predictions that are very easy to confirm because of probabilities and confirmation bias.

[leo-rcc]

Well if she can't go into specifics what use are her predictions?

"You will meet a mysterious woman in your life"

Well I can claim that without cards, and eventually I will be proven right.

It's pretty simple. Random guessing will give you an average of hits and misses. Let her make several predictions and if she scores significantly higher than what a average of guesswork would bring she might have something. The larger the data pool the better.

[fr0d0]

The perfect mystic perfectly deceives, and can't be tied down. You more you try to trick them the more perfect there act will become.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

@Eilonnwy

Keep a voice recording any sessions,during which you have asked for specifics, especially dates. I've never come across an astrologer or other kind of fortune teller who will make precise predictions. Their trick is to appear to do so. (which is what psychics do when giving cold readings)



I was an amateur astrologer for about 5 years and did dozens of charts. I was not a charlatan, I'd merely managed not to engage my cerebral cortex on that topic.

Is your sister in her teens or early 20's and not intellectually impaired? If so,she'll probably grow out of it if you leave her alone. If not,there's not really a lot you can do about her beliefs nor do you have any right to try to change what she believes.You do have the right to decline to discuss the matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

[Edwardo Piet]

The tricks that a psychic (or a good magician) appear to pull off, - at least to some people, - are so highly improbable and out-of-this world - ...they're miracles that don't appear to happen outside of these psychics and magicians tricks -....that it is always HUGELY more likely that its just a trick...and you need some MASSIVELY strong evidence for it to not be.....basically nothing will do. I mean its basically always best to assume such things are a trick...

These miracles need massive amounts of extremely strong scientific evidence to be backed-up as not a trick....the default position should be total scepticism and disbelief.....its always SO much more probable that its a trick....

Its always satisfying when you know how the trick works...or have cold-reading is done....but it should be assumed to be nothing miraculous anyway - right from the off-set....because such 'miracles' or 'psychic abilities' or whatever....are so extremely improbable and you need some real proper evidence of them.....and none has ever been known...its always just tricks or luck or cold-reading or whatever.

Nothing has ever pointed to it being a miracle...only that it 'seems' a miracle or that it is not known how its done....the default position should be total disbelief whether you know how the trick or so-called 'psychic ability' or whatever is done - or not.

EvF

[leo-rcc]

The perfect mystic perfectly deceives, and can't be tied down. You more you try to trick them the more perfect there act will become.

Hey, if they are that good there is still a million dollars waiting over at JREF.

[fr0d0]

The perfect mystic perfectly deceives, and can't be tied down. You more you try to trick them the more perfect there act will become.

Hey, if they are that good there is still a million dollars waiting over at JREF.

LOL the perfect deception can't have proof

[leo-rcc]

It doesn't need to be true, if he can fake it so convincingly, he can still win.