52. Skeptic Lynne Kelly on Cold Reading Techniques (Podcast)

[Open Mind]

Lynne kept mentioning 'astrology', 'tarot', 'system' ...and how she developed her own 'system.'

Personally, I do not consider 'systems' to have anything to do with psi or mediumship. Although psychics/mediums often claim these tools help them, I cannot see how they can lead to anything other than self-deception..

If astrology or tarot works, the person doesn't need to be 'psychic' at all. In fact could be a computer could generating readings. Therefore if machines can generated accurate readings, life must be very deterministic. Which mean no free will, which means no need for consciousness, which means any information provided must be some plan or akashic like record which cannot provide information beyond physical death unless we have no free will after death! How can that help a medium?

Of course some pseudo-mediums will say astrology/tarot is only an influence, these do not remove our free will. But the problem still emerges, a system cannot ever prove survival of consciousness because the only way to prove these is to show something outside the system. A classical computer (or 'system') can never be telepathic, it can never beat chance expectation, the medium or psychic has to beat chance.

If we assume astrology, tarot systems do not work at all and Lynne has created her own system to try and match and out perform such pseudo-psychics, pseudo-mediums following systems ... .I do not see how Lynne can fail to match or probably beat the performance of pseudo-psychic-mediums. Is this pseudo-research into mediumship? But I have to say she sounds a sincere person, I've not read her book.

It is possibly unfair of me to imply any psychic or medium who uses a system are self deluding themselves but I cannot see how a system can be more than crutch if psi exists or a deceased person is trying to prove life after death exists.

How can a system ever hope to generate a surname from a deceased loved one? How can a system ever hope to provide detailed information? It leads to vague, vague and more vague information and probably, if anything, develops budding psychics into becoming unconscious cold readers.

There is another way to create pseudo-medium, put non-psychic persons on public demonstrations before they have developed any genuine talent. In front of an audience of believers any vague information is likely to fit or be fitted by keen believer ... any detailed information is likely to be punished by the embarrassment of being wrong. So the pseudo-medium learns to say vague things that fit.

So even if one avoids tarot type of psychics, the absence of these 'system' tools does not indicate good mediums. Fortunately the psychic/medium does not need to be that impressive to succeed in a semsitively designed trial like Beischel's but the better the mediums, the better the odds of succeeding with the increased pressure of having to succeed in front of skeptics.

What I have written above could be wrong, maybe there is something in astrology or other systems perhaps I am biased against systems?

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by alextsakiris

- I sent her a link to the paper more than a week before the interview.

- We exchanged several emails in which I specifically said we'd be digging into the details of the protocol.

- This work should be well known to anyone who claims expertise in the field.




- medium is only given the name of the deceased



- no, the questions are exactly the same for the control reading the and target

As the Screwtype e-mails said, it is OK to say you haven't had time to read the papers, but it is essential that you DO read them carefully!

I guess she didn't read them

It will be interesting to see if she is stung by her blundering performance and goes and reads the details!

BTW Alex, How do your podcasts work - could she have just asked for a break and a re-start while she got the basic facts cleared up?

David

[scomsjw]

Good interview.

She suggested that she would like to see detailed transcripts. Are these available anywhere? Or a commentary by the researchers? It would be interesting to get an idea of what specific questions were asked and what reasons were given for judging something a hit or a miss.

I wonder what her next paper will be about. She said the skeptics might not like it. Sounds interesting. Any ideas what she has been up to lately?

[Open Mind]

Further to my ramblings above ..

I think it would cool if believers, open minded skeptics and disbelievers could agree to try test the differences between fortune tellers, psychics and mediums. Perhaps some agreed definition could be

(1) Psychics who claim they have personal control over psi to perform remote viewing, precognition, telepathy, etc. this really has been tested already in parapsychology

(2) Mediums who claim no personal ability to remote view, claim no ability to predict future ...most claim some sort of telepathic mind blending with a discarnate mind, not a telepathic link with the living as assumed in parapsychology, the discarnate entity is putting information in thier mind, with the mediums willingness.

(3) Fortune Tellers who use tools such as astrology, tarot, palmistry, etc. who might be psychic but it is not required to give a reading

Sadly these terms have blurred, it seems to me even most fortune tellers, psychics and mediums today don't have a clue what they are supposed to be doing!

Th founders of parapsychology like Charles Richet and J B Rhine shared one thing in common, they did not favour the 'mediumship' hypothesis above, their favour was the psychic/psi/ESP hypothesis. Many had come to view any evidence of survival as merely telepathy, remote viewing or precognition, ESP of the living. The dead were dead, consciousness to them most plausibly only a brain function.

What if they are 180 degrees wrong and ESP doesn't exist but mediumship does exist? What if all psychic functioning involves discarnate minds? How could a discarnate entity attempt to prove survival to any lab without parapsychologists jumping the gun to 'we have found ESP!' What could they do? Play along to keep them interested but ultimately produce erratic, unstatisfactory results, until they start testing the right hypothesis?

I don't think I quite believe the above 'mediumship only exists' hypothesis is correct, people probably do have a degree of borderline personal ESP in my opinion but it might turn out that in all cases of stronger psi, some discarnate entity is trying to prove survival, perhaps with the loss of the physical brains language capacity and it just looks rather like ESP to us ... egotistical as we humans like to be, we keep thinking 'I did that'....... 'I must be psychic'

In this interview Lynne says the past 40 years has shown psychic mediumship (or does she mean ESP?) does not exist ... from what I can tell parapsychology has largely ignored mediumship claims while looking for psi in the general public... Schwartz and others have rekindled interest..

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Lynne kept mentioning 'astrology', 'tarot', 'system' ...and how she developed her own 'system.'

Personally, I do not consider 'systems' to have anything to do with psi or mediumship. Although psychics/mediums often claim these tools help them, I cannot see how they can lead to anything other than self-deception..

If astrology or tarot works, the person doesn't need to be 'psychic' at all. In fact could be a computer could generating readings. Therefore if machines can generated accurate readings, life must be very deterministic. Which mean no free will, which means no need for consciousness, which means any information provided must be some plan or akashic like record which cannot provide information beyond physical death unless we have no free will after death! How can that help a medium?

Of course some pseudo-mediums will say astrology/tarot is only an influence, these do not remove our free will. But the problem still emerges, a system cannot ever prove survival of consciousness because the only way to prove these is to show something outside the system. A classical computer (or 'system') can never be telepathic, it can never beat chance expectation, the medium or psychic has to beat chance.

If we assume astrology, tarot systems do not work at all and Lynne has created her own system to try and match and out perform such pseudo-psychics, pseudo-mediums following systems ... .I do not see how Lynne can fail to match or probably beat the performance of pseudo-psychic-mediums. Is this pseudo-research into mediumship? But I have to say she sounds a sincere person, I've not read her book.

It is possibly unfair of me to imply any psychic or medium who uses a system are self deluding themselves but I cannot see how a system can be more than crutch if psi exists or a deceased person is trying to prove life after death exists.

How can a system ever hope to generate a surname from a deceased loved one? How can a system ever hope to provide detailed information? It leads to vague, vague and more vague information and probably, if anything, develops budding psychics into becoming unconscious cold readers.

There is another way to create pseudo-medium, put non-psychic persons on public demonstrations before they have developed any genuine talent. In front of an audience of believers any vague information is likely to fit or be fitted by keen believer ... any detailed information is likely to be punished by the embarrassment of being wrong. So the pseudo-medium learns to say vague things that fit.

So even if one avoids tarot type of psychics, the absence of these 'system' tools does not indicate good mediums. Fortunately the psychic/medium does not need to be that impressive to succeed in a semsitively designed trial like Beischel's but the better the mediums, the better the odds of succeeding with the increased pressure of having to succeed in front of skeptics.

What I have written above could be wrong, maybe there is something in astrology or other systems perhaps I am biased against systems?

I used to think the same about astrology... but then consider this: YouTube - Vedic Astrology: Michael Shermer vs Jeffrey Armstrong

Just another reminder of how little we know about the limits/nature of consciousness... and how much RESEARCH IS NEEDED

[Larry Boy]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

What if they are 180 degrees wrong and ESP doesn't exist but mediumship does exist? What if all psychic functioning involves discarnate minds?

The definition of ESP doesn't distinguish between the survival hypothesis and the brain functioning hypothesis. So ESP will still "exist" even if it turns out that all communcation is mediated by discarnate minds. And even if it is, the information will still need to be non-locally transferred between minds, and have all the other properties we associate with psi, so it would still make sense to call it extra-sensory perception in my opinion.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Lynne kept mentioning 'astrology', 'tarot', 'system' ...and how she developed her own 'system.'

I thought Lynne started well - her 'system' is explicitly meant to be a scam to fool people - because that is what she is testing. Fair enough - but she didn't seem to have any idea about the experiments that Alex was talking about - despite having been sent details in advance.

David

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

I thought Lynne started well - her 'system' is explicitly meant to be a scam to fool people - because that is what she is testing. Fair enough - but she didn't seem to have any idea about the experiments that Alex was talking about - despite having been sent details in advance.

David

... yea, but she was pretty quick to point out that only 8 pairs of subjects were used... a kinda selective memory thing

[Mizzark]

Ya know, this question comes up every now and then about how we can distinguish telepathy among humans from mediumship. Has anyone ever thought of bringing an audio recording device along and seeing if you can get voices at the same time that the medium is supposedly communicating with spirits? If the voices match up with what the medium is saying then it should be pretty good evidence that the medium is probably communicating with a ghost.

[hoggworks]

Lynne Kelly seemed to mop the floor up with Alex, in that one.

It seems surprising that Alex wasn't able to grasp the difference between scaling something subjectively (such as on a scale of 1 to 10, where a judgment would depend entirely on how similar a person feels it is [for example, take "old." If I'm 50, I might think the person dying isn't old if they died at 55, because old is a relatively consideration for many people]), and scaling something objectively (such as a binary scale).

There is a huge difference between me saying "your loved one was 54" and "your loved one was old." The former only encompasses one year, while the second could potentially encompass several decades.


Also, why does anybody think that giving the psychic the name of a person is sufficient information to get a read on them? Who says that information is available to real psychics (if they exist)? Even if it is, how do they know they're talking to the correct one?

Aside from that being a gaping hole in the test, it seems a handy way for those involved, if the replication fails, to explain it away -- well, maybe they got the detail on some other Bob Jones who died recently, just not ours?

Alex, you also seemed to miss what Lynne was saying when she agreed with you that if this was real and actually as concrete as you suggest, then it definitely would be front-page material. She didn't seem to be taking the stance that you do, that there's some large-form conspiracy out there to silence science out there; she seemed to be taking the stance that a lack of attention was because it didn't deserve enough attention.

And as far as the ability of scientists to silence theories they don't like, don't forget about the fact that the practitioners of woo are by and large BETTER at getting media attention, and even if the scientists didn't like it, the media, and the world at large, the majority of whom already believe in paranormal happenings, would eat it up. Don't you think that the 2+ billion christians out there would love to take such concrete evidence of an afterlife and rub it in the 1.2 billion godless faces in the world?