Why is it that psychics dont invest in the stock market or go for world domination instead of litening to people's boring personal problems? Im sure they could make much more money that way. Of course this isn't evidence that psychics are false right?

So you think it´s all about the money?

Actually i care very little about money but i care more about finding things out than listening to people moan about their relationships. (I admit im a bit insensitive) I do believe that money and power are two of the biggest motivating factors for humanity. Ive seen alot of sef-proclaimed psychics and none of them seem to care about money (except that they like to charge by the minuite for their advice) because they dont use the methods i mentioned.

Money and power are the biggest motivators for frightened people, including the pay-by-the minute-psychics.
The pursuit of money and power will not lead to any improvement of humaity though and maybe that´s because many of the real psychics do not want to encourage those areas.

What if psychic people are, for want of a betetr word, more enlightened than the majority of people and simply don't desire money and material power? Money is just bits of paper and plastic. Power might be fun, but then you die.

these psychics need money too. they're using internet, some of them live in a city (where you need money just to park your car)
food costs money. who pays the bills for these psychics? and clothes,
i haven't seen any naked psychics in tv (which pays them to be there, btw). and i think psychics work, too. if not bending spoons, then maybe something little less "earth-shattering".

as for the power, the only power these people need is psychic power.

;)

Oh, back to the money question again? We've had that subject over and over. http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pascal/images/smilies/throwupen_ron.gif It's getting boring. Money is a necessarry evil people need, to stay alive in this society. Not everyone cares for money and power over others.

By the way, is that a dead Tiger in your avatar?http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pascal/images/smilies/angryfire.gif

"Money is a necessarry evil people need, to stay alive in this society. Not everyone cares for money and power over others."

but those who have to pay their bills, care for the money. that includes many psychics. they even charge for their powers, so why don't take the money? bend a spoon, levitate, talk to dead, whatever.

that power thing is necessary evil too... i personally don't care for it. this world is just so evil, isn't it?


ps. yes, it's a dead tiger. it probably died of natural cause, like old age or watching john edwards show.

or maybe the chinese got it. here's their reasons:

Tiger claws: used as a sedative for insomnia
Teeth: used to treat fever
Fat: used to treat leprosy and rheumatism
Nose leather: used to treat superficial wounds such as bites
Tiger bone: used as an anti-inflammatory drug to treat rheumatism and arthritis, general weakness, headaches, stiffness or paralysis in lower back and legs and dysentery
Eyeballs: used to treat epilepsy and malaria
Tail: used to treat skin diseases
Bile: used to treat convulsions in children associated with meningitis
Whiskers: used to treat toothaches
Brain: used to treat laziness and pimples
Penis: used in love potions such as tiger soup, as an aphrodisiac
Dung or feces: used to treat boils, hemorrhoids and cure alcoholism

:mad:







;)

If the psychics are so much more enlightened why do they chare ridiculas per minuite rates to solve people's petty personal problems rather than doing someting useful like:

Helping the fire department locate people in burning buildings.
Warning peopl about earthquakes or terrorist attacks.
Try and prevent wars.
And probally hundreds of other things that i dont know off the top of my head.

If psychics are real they'd either help people, or use their powers for personal gain. They do both too badly to be considered true.

Well, you know....

They could just give the money to ME!

Seriously, they could give the money to charity. It would be most usefull.

So either:

A: They are heartless bastards
B: They are not true psychics

May we have a personal life too?

My theory on by the minute psychics are...
A. They are just fakers trying to get money.
B. Want to get paid, because then the rate of reading questions are dropped severely...

Here is a link to a post on the Psychokinesis thread:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3998&perpage=20&pagenumber=7

About 2/3rd on the page, "Why didn't anyone would predict about the WTC" stuff...

Another reason that pre-cognition a.k.a foresight isn't used to warn is.

1. It isn't always certain to happen.
2. It could be a random event.
3. It possibly could be a day dream or telepathic "scream for help" happening at the exact time.
4. The rate of doing good is still minimal...
5. The scale of dayly accidents...

6 Billion people of what (I think about) 9% are in danger of an accident that can be deadly.
That is 540 MILLION people!!!!!

Calculate the odd's on the EXACT ACCURACY of the foresight.
Calculate the percentage of people who can use Psychic powers on command...
Calculate the odd's on finding the exact location unknown to the psychic...

That's already enough for me to say "THAT'S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!"

And I bet I can think of more scientific odd's calculations for the next few hours...

You know the odd's of getting ripped off?

Paying for 1 thing (an order*for charity)...
And end up paying another...
(a box of the product filled whit pottatoes*your money goes to the government for weapons and warcraft or people just wanna get laid and get drunk)

Ever noticed (like why russia is a poor country) that they are poor, but even if they are, always buy useless material called militairy vehicles/defence?
And you must pay more attention to the background of the news screen people, a big devencive/offencive F-16, or stealth, or whatever...

Trust charity organisations like you do "psychic people"...
Be skeptical about them at least...
I hate to be blinded like that...

Another thing, we have lotery shows, the prize money keeps increasing, and they promise a part of it goes to charity.
Whit all the money they get of it, and give out again, the world would be a happy place again as you'd say it...

If we want a stable society again, we need to go back to (very) basic...
Wanna stop production of warcraft and warfare?
Just bomb ALL the weapon and military factories...

Wanna have a stable economical system?
Melt all the metallic round thingies that is called money, and stop cutting trees down to make the paper form of money.
Trade whit chickens, and wood and stuff like they did before the Romans spread the money fever...

May we have a personal life too?

Dosen't wash. You could easily make a killing on the stock market and donate a hefty share of profits to charity while having a personal life.

Sheesh, one or two lotteries would have you set. Or you could collect the reward money on Usama bin Ladin, and help end the war in Afghanistan as well.

I serioulsy doubt that the pay-per -minute-psychics are anything else but fakes, but that´s just my guess...:)
Anyway, many of the real psychics do help the firedepartements and policedepartements and even warn people about natural disasters and terrorist attacks, but very few chose to listen to them.

Unfortunately very few people in this world can live without money, but how many of the psychics are rich and take all the money for themselves, maybe Uri Geller and a few more...
Most of them have just enough to survive.

Read the last post I posted before this one...
Edited it, accedentaly posted it before it was finished...
And it comments *coincidents?* the last 2 posts..

Cyah!

Lyn Buchannan, a chap who used to work for the USA military and CIA and such on their psychic projects, now runs a company called PSI - Problems, Solutions, Innovations. They regularly help police departments and such. Not that I believe they are psychic. Maybe they are, maybe not. But they do get the jobs.

That's what I forgot to say.

There ARE psychics helping out...
If you all learn psychic abilities, you don't have to rely on someone elses predictions/abilities...

Some police and groups of the government do ask and use the help of persons contolling their psychic powers...
I won't use the word psychics anymore you all do...
Because every one is, like all of the people are lazy sometime in their life... :)

If you'd read the posts on psychokinesis, then you probably understand why some help and some don't...
Sure we can *try to* do things for good, but not everyone, like most skeptics and disbelevers, is willing to get our help...
They would like to do the opposite as they see it...

Help us to get *a healthy mind* as they say, and call the mental institution...
There are docktors and psychologists out there that do belive in the abbilities, but are still cussious to find or discover such an event.

Hope you'll understand someday.:D

Studies have been done concerning psychics helping the police. It turns out they do no better than chance and a little logical thinking does.

I would be interested in reading such studies.

Obviously no such study-material is available for you to read Adam. Or maybe James R is typing them himself right now. :D

Bebelina, ya big meany. :p

I´m sorry, I don´t know what came over me... :o

Just for a start...

From <a href="http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v03/n12/reallity.html" target="_blank">http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v03/n12/reallity.html</a>:

First, some quick background. For over 20 years, the CIA and Pentagon have spent approximately $20 million to study and employ numerous "psychics." They were supposed to help track down terrorists, find hostages, help anti-drug activities, etc. Experiments were conducted on precognition, clairvoyance, and remote viewing.

The CIA asked two reviewers to evaluate the studies. One is Ray Hyman, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, and a well-known skeptic (see Ray Hyman -- 'The Very Model of the Modern Major Skeptic' Vol. 2, Number 2, The REALL News, by Robert McGrath, and Proper Criticism Vol. 1, Number 2, The REALL News written by Professor Hyman). The other is Jessica Utts, a statistics professor at the University of California, Davis, who is a known advocate of parapsychology. Indeed, Nature (the only one of the four) notes that Utts had participated in some of the studies -- which, in my mind, raises the question of why she was selected to review those same studies.

As we would expect, Hyman and Utts disagreed on how the studies rated. While both agreed that the first "era of research was problematic," Utts says there is "a statistically robust effect" while Hyman notes that "there's no evidence these people have done anything helpful for the government."

So where does this leave us? Let's look more closely at the studies. Utts said the "psychics" were accurate about 15% of the time when they were helping the CIA. 15%? Is this supposed to convince us to pay them to help the United States government? Well, Utts says she thinks "they would be effective if used in conjunction with other intelligence." Well, my intelligence tells me that a 15% accuracy rating isn't much help no matter what it's used in conjunction with. Indeed, a former CIA technical director who monitored these programs said on Nightline that he wasn't aware of any significant results from the "psychics."

In one particular study on remote viewing, the "psychics" scored above the result expected from chance by getting the right answer approximately 33% of the time when there were four choices, which Science News characterizes as "a moderate increase over chance." But the judgment of success was determined by the project's director, who rated the similarity of each response to the target display and to other randomly chosen pictures (he did not know which videos or photos were used in specific trials). Hyman argues that these studies don't offer any insight as to why they might be scoring above chance -- it is just assumed that it must be psychic ability. He also notes that the accuracy ratings should have been done by independent judges -- not the project director -- and that none of these studies have yet undergone peer review.

An interesting note in this regard is that "psychics" interviewed by CIA evaluators said the program worked well as long as it was run by those "who accepted the phenomenon." Sorry, guys, but objective scientific results shouldn't depend on who's running a study!

Both the State Journal-Register and Newsweek reported anecdotal stories that have been used in support of this program (it is interesting to note that neither scientific publication did -- only the ones from the popular press). One of these stories is that a "psychic" predicted that an American official would be kidnapped on a certain day in 1981, and Gen. James Dozier was taken that night. As Hyman notes, though, "these are nice tall stories that can't be evaluated." As with all "psychic" reports of this type, there is too much missing information. What, specifically, was the prediction? When was it made? When was it recorded? Had this psychic made other such predictions that did not come to pass? There are simply too many unanswered questions. The stories told in the State Journal-Register mostly came from one of the "psychic spies" himself, but I would never suggest that a "psychic" would tell tall tales in order to promote himself...

Newsweek also reported that, as if the early years of the program weren't bad enough, it became even worse in the mid-1980's. A senior general would call subordinates together for spoon-bending sessions. One "psychic" wrote a long paper predicting a huge air attack on Washington during a Reagan State of the Union speech. The program offered several suggestions about capturing Saddam Hussein during Desert Storm, and all of them proved utterly useless. And one of the "remote viewers" left the army because he was convinced there was a Martian colony beneath the New Mexico desert.

The Newsweek article, in addition to relating these anecdotes, went on to compare "psychic spies" to "psychic detectives," saying, "Advocates point out that flummoxed police sometimes call on psychics to help find missing children or identify serial killers." Apparently, this is from the "two wrongs make a right" school of thought. They did end the article by noting, "Defenders admit that psychics are wrong about 80 percent of the time, but say the other 20 percent can be really helpful." Sorry, but I don't consider a 20% success rate to be all that great. Think about it -- this means that 80% of the time, police (or spies) are wasting their time and resources on incorrect information. We're supposed to be happy with that?

Why does it seem so difficult to have an objective, scientific experiment to look at claims of psychic power? Why do we always hear anecdotal tales about the great successes of "psychics," which, all too often, turn out to be exaggerated, misleading, or even completely untrue? I wish I could answer these questions, but for now we can only address each claim as it comes up, and hope that eventually some good science can triumph over bad stories.

JamesR,

I'm generally a skeptic. If someone says they are psychic, I never really believe it. However, on those tests in which you guess the shape on the backs of cards, I consistently score above 75% accuracy. Even the local police in my original home town, Frankston, use psychics now and then, usually when they are SH%$ out of leads; occasionally (maybe 15%) they pay off.

Adam,

Phone the Australian Skeptics now! If you can do the card thing for them they'll give you $100,000.

Good luck!

JamesR: my friend's father is one of the board members, and yes we have talked about the tests and the money.

So, are you going to do a test or not? If not, why not?

Yes, I am going to do the test. I want to get in some practice first though. I score very well usually, but this could indeed be a mere accident of statistics. If this sort of thing realy exists, then a short time of practice can not harm my chances. If it is merely an accident of statictics, then I lose nothing.

PS: If you're wondering and can find their website, Rolly Seidel is my freind's dad.

And yes, I do accept that the most likely explanation is a simple accident of statistics.