Been to a psychic?

[context]

[ QUOTE ]
I can ask him in more detail how it went down but I think it was something like:

"Do you have a family member named XXXX?"
"Yes, I do."
"Is he having prostrate problems?"
"Yes?!?" (this was just discovered recently and he is one of only two people who know)
"He needs to do something about that right now while it's still treatable" (In reality, XXX isn't doing anything despite his bad test results)

Like I said, my dad was skeptical going in. I think he wanted her to be full of it.

Another, less clear example:
"Is there a Sarah in your family?"
"Yes" (rwanger's ex-girlfriend)
"She's moved on."

Now while I realize Sarah is a pretty common name, and "She's moved on" can be interpreted in a lot of ways, this conversation with the psychic happened less than a day after I talked to Sarah FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE JANUARY?!? and summed up the conversation pretty well.

I'm sure someone has to have had a similar experience?

FWIW - he wasn't paying this psychic.

[/ QUOTE ]

You just summed it up pretty well.

You r dad goes to a fraud, your dad is an older guy, he will know lots of other older guys. Prostate problems are common in older guys. Apparently he needs to do something about it - you think!

Fraud picks a common name as you said and, as you again pointed out, picked out a very general phrase to use.

It's all baloney. I've seen and read enough to be sure that these people are frauds. If you know anything about "cold reading" and using probabilites (old guy knows guy with prostate probs). Good old basic psychology and positive reinforcement helps too. Seriously, if you were psychic, why the hell would you need to make money telly aunt Betty that her mother who passed away forgives her for the times they argued? Me and my psychic powers would be down Vegas hitting up the biggest game I could find...

There's a guy over here (UK) who's famous for his mind/psychology/parlour game act - called Derren Brown. It's kind of like a magic act except he makes it clear that it's all about mind tricks, clever twists and general slight of hand etc. The guys a genius at many things and he's often shown how he can pretend to be a psychic. He makes it very clear that he uses cold reading and other tricks. He's open about it (thought obviously doesnt reveal it to the people before he does it).

[thirddan]

[ QUOTE ]
If their name starts with an L, that'd be cool. But there's probably a pretty high chance of this if you marry someone with a middle name.

Did she know you were going to be on a boat on your trip? (that would be the last mode of transportation I would assume...)

Edit: unless maybe you were at a boat show to begin with.

[/ QUOTE ]

the L this is meh, but the boat thing was pretty impressive, i didn't tell her what kind of trip we were taking and it wasn't a boat show...pretty weird...

[tpir]

this is a very sad thread.

[tolbiny]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah. My dad also said that she said there was going to be a baby in the family soon. Which would mean me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why would that mean you? No cousins, nephews, in laws, friends that are trreated like family? Its like going up to a person in their 20s and saying "someone close to you will be married soon". Odds are someone they know is already engaged, or in a serious relationship which will end up in an engagement soon, or will be drunk in vegas and have a funny ass story. The great thing about predicting babies and marriges is that
1. Most people have at least one of each
2. They happen within a certain age range
3. there is a big window for you to already know someone who is pregnant or engaged to give them instant credibility.

[SixT4]

My sister went to one recently. I think they're full of [censored], but the psychic said that she had a brother and that he'd do well, so she's kinda right [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[phydaux]

[ QUOTE ]
One of their techniques is asking leading questions. At least you're not guilty of this...

[/ QUOTE ]

I just had to chime in here.

Something not a lot of people know about me is...

I was once, briefly, one of Ms. Cleo's Psychic Friends!

It was shortly after the dot.com bust, and I was an unemployed IT worker. The Unemployment had run out, contract work had dried up to nothing and nobody was hiring.

I was an ad in the newspaper for "telephone customer service, all shifts." I figured it couldn't be much worse than the telephone troubleshooting I had been doing in an IT call center ("Hang up and reboot") so I chased down the web address in the ad. Turns out it was Ms. Cleo's web site, and they were looking for people to take calls in their own home, re-routed from the master call center.

Now when I was a kid I used to do that "Harry Blackstone, make the little ball disappear" magic that you could get in toy stores, 101 magic tricks for $25.95. Well, one year for Christmas I look in my stocking, and I see a deck of Tarot cards.

I'm like 12, and I know what Tarot cards are. I just can't for the life of me figure out why my mother would put a set in my Christmas stocking. I ask my mother and she says that, being the loving mother she was and being all involved in my life, she knew I liked to do tricks with "magic cards." So went into a bookstore in the local mall and asked for "magic cards" to give as a Christmas gift. And naturally the brain-dead hippy working in the store between bong hits gave her a set of Tarot cards.

Well, the cards come with a little book telling what each cards "means." It doesn't take long before someone with a decent gift for gab can "interprate" the cards for someone else.

It usually goes like this:

Psycic - "So, certinly you wouldn't inquior of the cards unless you had something on your mind.

Mark - "Well, yes. I do have a few questions on my mind."

P - "The more specific you can make your question, then the more the cards can help you. If you could have the answer to just one question, what would it be?"

M - "Well, my current job kind of sucks. I've been offered a new job, but I don't know if it's right for me. I don't know if I should take this new job, stay at my old job, or keep looking."

P - "I see... As I look at this first card, I see a long journey. Would taking the job offer or looking for a new job involve a long journey?

M - "Oh God! Yes! The new job offer is in Pheonix. That's why I didn't want to take it at first. I wasn't sure if I should move so far away."

P - "That's interesting, but I don't think that's all of the story, is it?"

M - "Oh, this is just too wierd. No, that isn't all of the story. I've also been talking with a friend about moving to Seattle and looking for work there. You are just spooky."

P - "Now in the next card I see a tall man. Is there a tall man involved in this in any way"

M - "My father! My father lives in Tulsa, and that's not that far from Pheonix, is it?"

P - (Thank God this dope doesn't own a globe...) "No, no it isn't. Does him being so close to Pheonix (gulp) play a part with the job offer there?"

M - "Kind of. I mean, I've never really been close to my father. He didn't live with us when I was growing up. But now that he's out of prison I've been thinking of trying to get in touch with him..."

And so it goes, at $4.95 a minuet.

I only had the job for a little over a month. Then I got a real job working in IT again (that didn't last). It was shortly after that that the big law suit forced Ms. Cleo to shut down.

It was fun while it lasted, though.

[tagtastic]

How much of the $4.95/min did you get for your efforts?

[phydaux]

Zero if the call was under 5 min.

Then it was $2.00 for the first five min and .10 a min. after that. If you could bang out five or so 10 minuet calls you make about $10.00 an hour.

But you could also give your "direct line" to your "special clients." Then they could call you direct whenever you were working. For those calls you got $3.00 for the first five minuets and .20 a minuet after that.

These patsys just long for human attention. You almost doesn't even have to talk or ask questions, they just jab your ear off, and you make $15.00 an hour listening to the minuta of their pethetic, dull, drab existance. These calls can go for an hour and a half, two hours.

It's NOT as easy or as cool as it sounds. You seriously consider suicide self in the middle of some of these calls, 'cause you know they're going to go ON and ON...

And they tell you how you're the only person in the whole world they feel a connection with, and how important to them you are, but all the time you HATE them because they're so stupid and weak-willed and so filled with self-inflicted victimhood.

And you start to feel like everyone in the world is stupid and weak and insecure.

It's kind of like being a professional card player, and how after a while you start to belive that it is morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money.

[Morbo]

OP,

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

[kazana]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone else believe in this crap?

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm a bit torn.
While I tend not to believe this stuff, I've heard some stories from people I trust that are spooky indeed.

Example: My mother and her sister went to one of these fun fare palm readers' tents, they thought it'd be a blast to see what the old woman will "read".
The old woman told my mother she knew that she had 2 boys, and that 2 other men will be putting her into a spot where she'll have a tough decision. She will have 6 kids, 3 girls and boys each and one failed pregnancy.
To her sister she said that she sees 2 daughters, and a future husband, but things won't work out.

They laughed it off, even though they found it spooky that she guessed both their children's numbers and sexes right. Especially since my mother never wanted to have more than the 2 kids she had.
Turned out, everything the women foretold was correct. May have been her lucky day, though. I'm not convinced, but neither am I prepared to call it all crap. There just may be something to it.