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Wednesday, November 10

Psychics



                It amazes me what some people now will consider evidence of PSYCHIC POWERS!!! As far as I am aware, no psychic has ever been able to entirely prove themselves. In fact James Randi, a magician and author, offers $1 million to anyone who can prove themselves to be psychic. Nobody has yet won this money. Not James Van Praagh, not Sylvia Browne, not anyone. Why then do so many of us still throw our money at these people? I can’t rightly answer this question as I don’t have psychic abilities and therefore can’t get into these people’s brains. If I could, I would be a million dollars richer now.  If I had to guess though, I’d say most people enjoy the comfort they get from these people giving vague readings of experiences almost anyone could be going through. Popular things for psychics to say include: “You are going through a difficult time right now”, “Things look bad but will soon get better”, and “The one you think you might love likes you back”. These things are so easy to predict and can apply to anyone.
                One of my favorite examples of “Precognition Evidence” is the classic “I was thinking about my friend/sibling/parent and five minutes later I heard they had died!” This example was laid out by, of all people, my chemistry teacher. Let us break down a year into five minute blocks: 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year equals 8760 hours a year. 8760 hours a year and 60 minutes an hour equals 525,600. 525,600 divided by five is going to give you 105,120 five minute blocks of time a year. Let us say that you only knew or knew of one person that was going to die this year. And let us say you were so self centered you only thought about them one time in this same year. You would still have a 1 in 105,120 chance of thinking about them within five minutes of them dying.  These odds are better than your chance of winning the lottery, and yet people win the lottery. But guess what else? There are nearly 7 billion people in the world (7,000,000,000). That means there are 7,000,000,000 chances of somebody making that 1 in 105,120. And this is still assuming every person in the world only knows one person who will die this year and only thinks about them once. With these odds, theoretically, 66,590 people will think about that one person in a five minute block of time that they died (7,000,000,000/105,120 = 66,950.563). Are these 66,950 people psychic? No. Are they lucky? Not even that. This scenario was being generous in assuming everyone only knew or knew of one person who would die this year, when actually most people know many more. Also, they normally think about them more than once a year. So the odds are that THIS PHENOMENON WILL OCCUR. As a matter of fact, it would only be abnormal if it didn’t occur!
                Of course, there are other things tied in with being "psychic". There are those that can supposedly move things with their mind (telekinesis). If somebody can do that and prove it, then all the power to them and I will personally kiss their toes for proving me wrong, but I have not seen anyone do it yet. I’ve only seen people claim they “entered a state of meditation and told themselves they could move*object* and *object* moved ____ inches”. This just…annoys me. Saying that kind of thing without even trying to prove it makes me unhappy. Giving a report of a sighting is a different story, maybe you didn’t have your camera with you or whatever, but if you can make something move at your command at least TRY to film it. Even if people shoot it down at least you tried and I give you credit for that.
                I still can’t believe how many people believe the woman known as Sylvia Browne predict anything correctly. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKX5yB-H2tI&feature=related). If she was truly psychic shouldn’t she be right more than 50% of the time? In fact, I haven’t even heard of her being right that often. This woman needs to be sued or something. There’s no telling how many lives she’s ruined with her “predictions”.
                Of course, some people do have amazing mind powers. Take for example the “Human Calculator”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUsD2V6ijyQ. But Psychic powers are unproved and never involve anything hard to guess, and when they do they are usually wrong.
                So I think that if anyone were truly psychic then they would have already won a million dollars. If any of you think you are psychic, tell me your story, I’ll listen, unless it sounds like you pulled it out of your foot. But please everybody: stop throwing your money to these people who have yet to even prove they really exist.

***Some Images Were Removed From This Page To Avoid Potential Lawsuits and/or Shutdowns. My apologies***

 
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2 comments:

  1. Psychic readings are meant to help you sort out current situations, give you a deeper understanding of your past and give you possible outcomes in your future.

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  2. That makes sense, as a lot of people go through difficult times and turn to somebody who can understand them and help them to, like you said, "sort out current situations." How do you feel though about people like Sylvia Browne who inaccurately give people predictions on situations then monopolize on their own fame?

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