Comments on: Cold guessing

By: Psychics leave me in shambles | Bad Astronomy | JoeShop

Psychics leave me in shambles | Bad Astronomy | JoeShop — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 02:10:48 +0000

[...] talk to the dead, when it is far, far more likely they are simply using psychological tricks (like cold reading) and random guesses, making it seem like they have some supernatural [...]

By: Walabio

Walabio — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:06:30 +0000

Kent Hovind was never a real teacher. Mister Hovind is not a doctor. He bought a degree by mail. He was always a fraud and always will be.

By: Anne V

Anne V — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:51:14 +0000

I love the idea of a counter running at the bottom of the screen! If I have time, I might try annotating the YouTube…

By: Zar

Zar — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:30:38 +0000

@52:

Actually, Sylvia Browne did once tell someone that their mother was trying to explain, on her deathbed, that “Your father is not your father.” Sylvia went on to reassure the horrified woman, saying in her cigarette hag rasp, “But who cares? Ya love who ya love.”

The Soup had a clip of it.

By: Grumpy

Grumpy — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:55:35 +0000

That video needs a voice-over of what the spirits were saying to Van Praagh. “No, not ‘Rob,’ Ron! Tell her Ron is with her! Ron! Tell her about the jewelry, the jewelry I gave her on special occasions. Does she remember the jewelry? Because… just checking.”

By: emk

emk — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:11:37 +0000

Holy mackerel. I just made a deal with my husband that if he dies before me, he will NOT talk to me about the (lovely and greatly appreciated) jewELry he’s given me over the years. (I just quizzed him about the photos, and he’s completely unaware of the pictures I have on my nightstand – but he knows how I feel about having pictures on my nightstand, so that one’s a non-starter.)

Instead, he will mention at least one of our favorite mutual activities (no winking or nudging, please) and describe, in detail, the place I recently proposed to him as my preferred final resting place.

Alas, the million dollar prize won’t be around by then (I hope), but I’ll be able to make my millions telling the tale, you betcha.

By: Jo

Jo — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:32:45 +0000

#24 and #27 — Bad Astronomy (the website) was focused on debunking the moon hoax (amongst other things). It was a skeptical site. Bad Astronomy (the blog) was spun off of the original website. Phil IS being on topic.

And quit whining. No one forces you to read anything here. And no one will miss you when you’re gone. I hear Carl Zimmer has a blog called The Loom, and it has NOTHING to do with textiles! You should go leave a comment there, too.

By: Brigid

Brigid — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:29:38 +0000

Hmm, I’ll reserve judgment about calling all psychics ghouls–but the cold reading thing DOES happen more often that not. The funniest story I heard about it was from a woman I knew who was staying at a hotel that had a psychic fair. One of the psychics approached her and said she’d read her palm for 5 dollars. She decided to play along. The thing was–this woman had been a professional actor, and knew how to make and keep a completely expressionless poker face. She did that through the whole reading. Frustrated, the “psychic” told her “there’s something negative over you, I can’t read you!” More like, something negative looking at your hand…

By: Charles J. Slavis,Jr.

Charles J. Slavis,Jr. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:07:40 +0000

And for those skeptics, I will now future project for you. I am visualizing myself going to the store. Do you notice that my writing is beginning to fade out? Look closely! Before you know it, I will be gone. And, you will think, “Damn! He really did it!” Look closely! If you try too hard to future project you will push yourself right back to square one. That usually happens when you are standing at a time clock waiting to punch out. Before you know it you are back punching in again. I am almost gone. Look closely!

By: Charles J. Slavis,Jr.

Charles J. Slavis,Jr. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:52:49 +0000

The multi-verse just might be.

By: Charles J. Slavis,Jr.

Charles J. Slavis,Jr. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:50:06 +0000

What do you expect? I’m also one of those who actually thought we landed on the moon.

By: Charles J. Slavis,Jr.

Charles J. Slavis,Jr. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:14:21 +0000

I am not claiming any power. I just said in 62 years I only had one unexplainable happening. Five year old children in the 50′s didn’t often dream that a grand parent lies down next to them and dies. At 5 you are thinking of games and toys. We didn’t even have a tv till later. After my grandfather died, I recalled asking my father about the dream, and realized that it was accurate. Seeing my mother can easily be a fabrication of my own mind. Watching my grandfather die 10 years before it happened, and being told that he went up to bed tired and never got up was exactly what I saw. I had another grand father drop dead at the top of a stair case and fall to the bottom. I didn’t dream about that happening. But I wasn’t sleeping in his bed either.

By: Chayanov

Chayanov — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:00:25 +0000

M… I’m seeing an M… somebody you know with an M. Now I’m seeing winter… You used to do something with M during the winter… I see M giving you something in the winter… a gift of some kind…

By: doofus

doofus — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:52:11 +0000

The dead seem a rather boring bunch.

They never seem to come back and say, “oh, and by the way, Aunt Betty and I carried on a three-way affair for years with the crazy cat lady across the street”.

By: Azam

Azam — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:36:18 +0000

Something I would like to point out. I do not mean to a racist here but something I have always noticed in these videos is that these “psychics” always cold read someone of their own race. Hence, it is ALWAYS easy to throw out random names that you KNOW they will have encountered at some point or another. I am of a middel eastern decent. Put me in a room with this guy and see if I know anyone named “joe, joey, john, jack, jill, james”. Even better I dare him to say does the name “Akkkhhmed” ring a bell? That is probably the ONLY name he knows. These “psychics” get away a lot using these techniques. Fooling people in to believing they are real by getting a lucky guess name like “john” and cold reading people of the same race/culture as them. It would be awesome to test them using cross cultural cold readings and expose them for the frauds they are.

By: John Paradox

John Paradox — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:35:23 +0000

19. DLC Says:

Then there was the “Televangelist” whom Randi caught using his wife to radio information to him while he was onstage. Don’t remember who that was now. but I thought them rather evil.

Peter Popoff, who, in the 1970′s-80′s pushed to ‘send Bibles to the Soviets/Russians’. I remember him well from my years working in ‘Religious Broadcasting’.

J/P=?

By: Clarke E W

Clarke E W — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:34:18 +0000

I would thoroughly enjoy secretly recording an elaborate sting employing even a “really good psychic” with a person who is trained to give absolutely no positive feedback whatsoever and yet the person begs in tears for information. Should we feel bad for pranking the psychic? Not at all, my friends; not at all. For not only does he not feel bad about it, but he gets paid to do it.

What hurts me personally is that my own wife believes in all this bunk. And out of respect to her, I will never correct her directly. Our love is more important than her knowing the truth about these things.

By: rob

rob — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:42:16 +0000

Rob Lee (44), didn’t you know that the Dominican Republic has been renamed “Denmark”.

By: Ripley's "Have You Heard?"

Ripley's "Have You Heard?" — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:11:28 +0000

Cold Reading

A lot of people claim to speak with the dead and they tend to have very similar methods. Once you’re familiar with cold reading techniques, it’s almost funny to watch these peole work. Cold reading is a pretty simple technique that just …

By: Mark Hansen

Mark Hansen — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:08:40 +0000

Rob (39), my daughter tried a variation of that one on me. You use the last letter instead of the second. I did pick Denmark but then selected Kaka (a bird from N.Z.) as the animal and thereby threw the rest of the joke. The best part was that I wasn’t consciously trying to spoil it.

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:03:50 +0000

Ghouls. I like that, Phil. I think that’s how I’ll start referencing psychics.

Once you’ve seen cold reading exposed for what it is, it’s amazing how many folks get taken in by it. There are a few practitioners of it that are pretty skilled, but most of them go by the term “magician”.

When I was in Gatlinburg a couple of weeks ago, I was amused at how many psychics, palm readers, and astrologers have set up shop in the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area. They tend to have storefronts near the “romantic toy and novelty” shops…

By: Rob Lee

Rob Lee — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:01:52 +0000

for you smarty pants, how many jaguars are there in djibouti?

There are also plenty of orangutans, ocelots, and oxen in the Dominican Republic

By: TheBlackCat

TheBlackCat — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:58:56 +0000

for you smarty pants, how many jaguars are there in djibouti?

No clue, but I’m sure there are plenty of jerboas

By: neil hopkins

neil hopkins — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:45:50 +0000

It was vile the way he mimed having trouble breathing to grieving relatives, knowing that the vast majority of dead people will have had some sort of breathing problem before they died.

By: Rob Lee

Rob Lee — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:02:07 +0000

@Jeeves — “I was expecting a couple of counters on the screen, one tallying the hits, the other the misses. And at the end an analysis of how many hits you would expect to get purely by guessing.”

That would be great! My only reservation is that for a skilled cold reader, this number would be much higher than straight guessing as cold reading really is a highly developed skill, but this clown seems like he is probably scoring less than chance somehow.