| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Modeling Psychic Phenomenon |
| Posted by: | Dimitry |
| Date/Time: | 06/11/2002 17:34:33 |
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John Edward claims to talk to the dead. As do most of the prominent psychics (e.g., Sylvia Brown). If you can receive minimal sensory signals from thousands of miles away, that's not what they claim to do. Learning to read people's subvocalizations is great, and something modelable from people who claim to be psychics. Cold reading is something that therapists also use. But Edward is not very good at reading subvocalizations, he usually only gets the starting or salient sound in the name. His "communications from the dead" often are so vague, with so many possible meanings that he keeps telling the person, "no, that's not it" to the interpretations they readily offer -- until he sees a bigger emotional reaction from them. Then he knows that he's hit on something important. And so he pretends that THAT was really the event or thing he was talking about. But any thinking person should be able to see that those cues have too many possible meanings to lend any validity to his "powers." He's just fishing. If you want to model how to get a television show with almost no "psychic" talent, then he's your guy. People who call themselves psychics claim that they have a connection to the "spirit" world where the dead tell them things. That is not a useful thing to model when you realize that they are using tricks to make people believe in these "communications". |