What do you think about people who claim to be psychic mediums?

If you do and can prove it you can win a million dollars

And even without watching the video I can say wirh 100 percent certainty that he is a fraud.

Frauds, charlatans, hucksters. Every one of them.

Tbh they fascinate me, even if I truly believe they are charlatans. I may have seen my gpa’s ghost once & I got a very strong premonition at least once that was fatal to a friend. (me being too late believing in myself to stop it.) Twice in 44 years isnt great odds.

Totally bogus.

@Rarebear – I don’t that’s why I’m asking:)

It’s called fraud. That is what I think.

They are either Frauds, or mentally ill.

I don’t know but he seems to have appeared on show called “Better Connecticut” lot many times!

I watched the video. Why was the guy from the audience wearing headphones? Didn’t that strike you as being a bit odd?

He’s not from audience but TV crew member. That’s why he’s wearing those.

Don’t you think that they could have gotten information about the crew member before the show?

Oh Jesus Fucking Christ…

I just watched that clip. Same generic, cold-reading bullshit these frauds have been doing since the first “psychic” met the first sucker. My dad’s dipshit dog wouldn’t fall for this bullshit, how is it that humans are still this gullible?

Psychic mediums are usually about 99.9999999% bogus but i think this guy is the full 100%

@Darth_Algar is correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

If they help people without making a profit then I am ok with them. Some people can’t handle death and loss and life in general. They need the lie to live a normal life. I wouldn’t take away the chance for comfort as long as they aren’t being taken advantage of.

@RedDeerGuy1 First of all, they make a profit. Second of all, they’re liars. Why is it giving comfort when you’re making shit up about dead people? It’s just cruel.

@RedDeerGuy1 , These people make a living off of this. Of course they are taking advantage of people.

@LostInParadise like a priest you can make a little to survive on. Healing should be free to avoid being seen to take advantage of week people. Doctors make a killing because they can

@Rarebear Priests lie too to comfort. Also I don’t call myself a medium I am an extra large. : ) sorry For standing up for charlatans, I have some wierd beliefs and I am open to the possibility that one or two mighy be legit.

@RedDeerGuy1 Funny.
And yes, priests lie too. I’m not a fan of them either.

@Rarebear Ok I agree with you. Healing should be free when the medium is in doubt. Mediums need to eat too. Not everyone can be a doctor of medicine. My guess it that most of psychiatry and psychology will be debunked in the next 20 years and be replaced with something new. Like diet and exercise. Most of the time only the disability checks are the only source of assistance that I received that worked. Some emergency PRN’ s of anti-psychotics helps with anxiety attacks. The rest are unproven to work with me.

@Rarebear The amazing Randi’s million dollar prize has been discontinued for some time.

We have more than five senses. That has been proven. For a very long time people believed otherwise.
Down through time, many people who believed themselves highly intelligent spouted off against various scientific phenomenon.
There is a great deal which seems mystical now which may in the future be common knowledge taught in primary schools.
Virgins have been tossed into volcanos to appease gods. Eclipses were mystical and frightening. Lightning was god’s own hand.
Those who are too quick to debunk are often later shown to be fools.
I believe most claimers are frauds.
I think some of the claimers believe themselves to be gifted.
I believe there is the possibility that a few really have something going on.
Maybe they can connect somehow with something.
Who knows, maybe when we die a few of our thoughts and feelings float around like radio waves. If some people could pick up on that, they may believe they are conversing with the deceased.
If it brings someone comfort, good.
If nothing else, it is sometimes a fun parlor trick.

@RedDeerGuy1

No, it’s still being offered, they’re just no longer accepting open applications for it.

@Patty_Melt

Parlor tricks are fine as long as you’re honest that it’s just a trick and just for fun.

@Darth_Algar Thanks for the heads up.

As a sort of aside, there’s a really great documentary about James Randi titled An Honest Liar. I highly recommend it.

I quit working in a magic show because I hated tricking people. Psychic Mediums are billed “for entertainment purposes only”. I don’t consider it entertainment.

I consider them in the ranks of evangelical pastors, or reverends. Scum of the Earth…

Why do they lie? Because they know there will be people who take them seriously.

And unfortunately there are still too many of them.

If no one gives a shit about them they will have to give up.

^I don’t think that will ever happen because of curiosity of people to know if there’s anything after death / if so will they be able to connect with their loved ones / to know about some unsolved mysteries regarding death of dear ones etc.

I don’t think it’s curiosity. In most cases, it’s desperation.

@imrainmaker I really wish that was curiosity. Curious people can at least learn. Some people just relate more to the supernatural world than logic.

All the people who think all mediums are frauds are wrong.

I have met many people who do mediumship of one sort or another, and I’ve done some training and practice myself. The people I know who do mediumship and related things are serious about it, and are not out to defraud people.

It’s an intuitive spiritual practice. If you’re capable of taking it seriously and being open to trying it, then it’s a capacity most people have. If your material rationalist programming won’t let you, then you’ll feel the need to shout “bogus”, a bit like Christians since medieval times felt the need to shout “witch”.

I have been able to let my voice be used by things that are not me. My conscious mind had no part in what was said (except hearing it and getting some impressions).

There are different types of practice and different frameworks of ideas for what it’s about and different people who teach and practice various types of mediumship and other spiritual practices.

Some of them are frauds out to get people’s money, and some of them aren’t.

Okay then. Mediums are either frauds or self delusional.

If someone really has psychic powers then it should be simple for them to prove it under controlled tests. So prove it folks.

Has anyone ever proved legit powers in a controlled environment?

@KNOWITALL Nope.

A billion Christians think that Jesus and his disciples performed miracles. They can be considered psychic powers.

Jesus and his disciples did not charge money.

^There are plenty who would claim to be his disciples, who make untold amounts of tax free money.

Uri Geller was a very well known psychic. He was invited to perform his magic on the Tonight Show. One twist though. He was not allowed to use his own props. He had to use replicas provided by the show. What happened? Surprise, surprise, his powers were not working. Link

Here is another trick performed on the Tonight Show, by the Amazing Kreskin. Go to about the nine minute mark. Check really carefully where the identities of all the cards are supposedly revealed. Can you tell what they are? I sure can’t. This is such an obvious fake that I am surprised he was not laughed off the show.

Physical effects and reading or communicating accurate data details are not really what the actual mediumship I have seen and experienced by non-showmen is about. It’s about tuning in to your intuitive and/or spiritual and/or subconscious/liminal/hypnogogic/dream experiences, and gaining insights, connection, harmony, wisdom, self-awareness, well-being, clarity, distance from ego-attachments, etc.

I’ve experienced both the phenomena of these and (much more importantly) the effects of them on myself. It’s given me clarity and insights into what’s going on with me and wisdom to choose what to do and how to do it (covering many frequent Fluther topics), gotten me rapidly out of funks, broken relationship hell, and I’ve seen it transform other people’s lives in remarkable ways, get people clear about major life choices, on and on and on.

Alternatively, it may be more comfortable to decide such must all be nonsense, but it seems like a wasteful shame, to me.

@Zaku

Basically you just described meditation. Nothing at all supernatural about that.

I think some people do have that gift . It is difficult though to tell who is genuine or not nowadays because there are so many frauds

@Darth_Algar Did I ever say “supernatural”? No. Did the question? No.

What is “psychic” ability if not supernatural? The word “supernatural” means something that is beyond rational/scientific understanding. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot criticise others for approaching the topic rationally then take offense when someone uses a word that means beyond rational.

@Darth_Algar “Psychic” ability may seem supernatural from the limited perspective of a pseudo-scientific materialist skeptical mindset.

It is telling that such a perspective is written into a modern dictionary, though mine (Oxford English Dictionary) writes something slightly different if you pay close attention to the words:

psychic [adjective]
1 relating to or denoting faculties of phenomena that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, especially involving telepathy or clairvoyance.
>(of a person) appearing or considered to be telepathic or clairvoyant.
2 of or relating to the soul or mind.
3 Bridge [...]
psychic [noun]
1 a person considered or claiming to have psychic powers; a medium.
2 (psychics) [treated as sing. or pl.] the study of psychic phenomena

Of which I notice that:
A) You wrote “something that is beyond rational/scientific understanding” and “a word that means beyond rational”, which looks like an attempt to bend definitions to mean irrational by definition, whereas the definition I read above is “apparently inexplicable by natural laws”, which is a very different thing.
B) I also think that the first definition includes the bias of unproven pseudo-scientific bias and prejudice. The second definition seems to me much more to the point, especially because it is what the root of the word means. That is, “of or relating to the soul or mind”, since “psyche” is of course from the ancient Greek word for soul, life, or breath, and the English word “psyche” means “human soul, mind, or spirit” (which also shows a bit of the popular (but I would say, cruelly wrong-minded) modern bias towards dissociating non-humans from having souls, minds, or spirits, and which also shows the modern orientation to and identification with thought by inserting “mind”.

So actually, yes I can do use the word psychic without invoking “beyond rational”. I also know several very rational people with scientific degrees, doctorates, and so on, who base their ideas on personal experiences and on evidence and rational logic, and who write about souls, past-life regression, seemingly psychic abilities of humans and animals, mediumship, communication with ancestors and spirits and so on.

@Zaku

If you’re going to haggle over definitions at least be honest enough in your argument to haggle over the same word. I used “beyond rational/scientific understanding” to define “supernatural”, not “psychic”.

I am with Darth on this. “not explicable by natural laws” means that the explanation must go beyond natural laws, which would be super natural. There can’t be supernatural laws, because for anything to be lawful, it must be testable and hence scientific.

Agreed.

@Darth_Algar Oh that wasn’t dishonesty, but a mistake reading what you wrote.

However, the message I was responding to was still you being the one trying to use the definition of a word you yourself introduced (supernatural) and apply it to what I and the OP were talking about, to try to say that it is by definition irrational.

Which is the opposite of my experience. I was raised rational materialist skeptical too. I and the other rational people I was referring too also retain our rationality after have experienced things.

It seem to me that what is not rational is to not have had an experience, yet claim that the experiences of others are delusional, based on conventional pseudo-scientific materialist thinking and labeling the claim supernatural yourself and then using the dictionary definition saying that’s not rational to try to say I’ve said something irrational.