They did a very nice dissection of cold reading, though I think the psychic was a lot more competent at it than most are. I’ve seen lots of descriptions and accounts of cold reading over the years, but they were almost always just a few small examples from a large set (e.g. John Edward working an audience for several hours.) “Leverage” did a complete step by step breakdown of the psychic starting from some vague generalities and guessing with the odds, correcting his many mistakes based on feedback, and finally coming out with seemingly impossible knowledge of one of the character’s childhoods. First they showed it in real-time, and then went back over it step by step showing exactly how he had ferreted out the information. Well worth watching. (And Gina Bellman was in Steven Moffat’s “Coupling”, so we get our mandatory Dr. Who connection.)

How’d they know?!?

Walletectomy! Hah! THAT should be over the door of every psychic. We lighten your wallet,,,so you don’t have to. See! Psychics are just helping us to carry the load. Snark!

I just had a “psychic flash”.

There will be a psychic “advisor” posting here soon,,,and they STILL won’t make any sense.

The average IQ of medical doctors is 120. When I go to the doctor, I try very hard to find ones who are above that average.

GAry 7

(On why psychics don’t win the lottery)
“What people don’t understand about psychic powers is that there is rarely a solid, 100% answer to any question. You get impressions, you feel certain about some things, but you can never be 100% certain about something until it happens.”

So they’re just guessing?

“Sadly, this had nothing to do with claims that he was psychic. He misrepresented his track record and misappropriated the money.”

Perhaps, but if I were a real psychic, I wouldn’t even have to take it that far.

Predicting winning lottery numbers, the stock market and all that, you know…

Dale

In Whitby, a seaside town in England, there’s an old shack, which has been derelict for years; a sign is still attached, showing that it used to belong to “Madame” somebody-or-other, a so-called “gypsy clairvoyant”. Below the sign, someone attached another saying, “Closed due to unforeseen circumstances”. It has remained there for years.
An ancient joke, but very funny that someone did it for real.

For a large enough population, IQ follows a normal distribution. For for such a distribution, the mean, median, and mode are all the same.

Be afraid . . . be very afraid . . .

And she seemed more interested in getting me to have her become a psychic advisor.

I wasn’t THAT silly.

It was an experience. And glad I did it. Of course, now I know more about cold reading (and she was crap at that), and other mentalism effects. Come see me break a spoon some time.

PfA.

PS – said psychic was in San Francisco. Still a wonderfully pretty city.

Because they’re not!

By the way, I’m surprised by Phillip Helbig’s comment about President Eisenhower being “shocked when an aide mentioned that 50% of the U.S. population was below average in intelligence,” since after all Ike did spend most of his life among military officers. But then again, I’m the son of a career NCO, and so have been indoctrinated since birth never to trust brass of any kind no matter how bright be their meddle.

(Old joke. Sorry)

why don’t you see headlines in papers saying “Physic Wins Lottery…AGAIN”

“How much are articles like these about airing a scientific opinion, and how much are they about stroking your own ego?”

It’s human nature to share a laugh about other peoples’ foibles with like-minded people. This is normal regardless of how smart or right or weird one’s own worldview may be. It’s not productive, but neither is it that harmful. And it’s enjoyable. This so-called psychic dufus had it coming, as did his foolish clientele.

Here’s a URL for a jpeg of my screen shot: http://lh4.ggpht.com/_WtnYwFZtgHI/S5gruwUM19I/AAAAAAAAAjc/tq_hcHDypZU/s400/Psychics.JPG

Eisenhower was shocked when an aide mentioned that 50% of the U.S. population was below average in intelligence.