Interesting reading with a Non Believer

Heh, I'll leave the study debates in others' more capable hands. I just figured newcomers might want to listen to the show.

My take on all this is - Gotta go yourself.

I've been looking to arrange my own reading with someone who, from reports I've gotten from a trusted friend, is a reliable medium.

Do your research, make sure it's safe, go with someone during the daytime, all the usual things you do when meeting a stranger. [Plus the extra care you need to do when trying to research something like this.]

It might be awhile for me since I'm out of town, and soon to be out of the country, but if/when I get the chance I'll report back to this board.
 
Heh, I'll leave the study debates in others' more capable hands. I just figured newcomers might want to listen to the show.

My take on all this is - Gotta go yourself.
Absolutely agree. One caveat--not much can be concluded from a single session. Even if the psychic manages to have a stellar performance during your reading and provides information that seems to defy odds, you will always be thinking that it could have been just chance. However, when you witness the same person do this type of thing over and over, that line of thinking soon wears out and you find it impossible to use that as an excuse not to accept that the phenomena you are witnessing is genuine. It took me many repeated experiences with three individuals I've met in my lifetime for me to reach that point. Getting myself into those situations, and meeting those individuals involved what I consider to be synchronicities, so to me it seems as if forces we do not understand are at play, so don't expect any studies to shed light on them in this lifetime. I'm all for scientific study, but just don't expect it to yield all the insight we desire, and don't give up on getting glimpses it of for yourself!

Cheers,
Bill
 
Absolutely agree. One caveat--not much can be concluded from a single session. Even if the psychic manages to have a stellar performance during your reading and provides information that seems to defy odds, you will always be thinking that it could have been just chance. However, when you witness the same person do this type of thing over and over, that line of thinking soon wears out and you find it impossible to use that as an excuse not to accept that the phenomena you are witnessing is genuine. It took me many repeated experiences with three individuals I've met in my lifetime for me to reach that point. Getting myself into those situations, and meeting those individuals involved what I consider to be synchronicities, so to me it seems as if forces we do not understand are at play, so don't expect any studies to shed light on them in this lifetime. I'm all for scientific study, but just don't expect it to yield all the insight we desire, and don't give up on getting glimpses it of for yourself!

Cheers,
Bill

I see what you mean but I think Science already has, and continues to prove that this phenomenon is very real. Whether it can prove all of it or is relevant for all of it is another matter though!
 

Derren Brown is fascinating; I can't work him out, and I have no doubt that that's exactly how he likes it. The problem with using him as disproof of the paranormal is that he never (so far as I've seen) reveals how he performs his "tricks", or at least the most powerful ones like this, leaving open the very real possibility that he is in a sense a "double agent", either knowingly or unconsciously; one who has and uses genuine paranormal ability but denies it for whatever reason he has to do so.

I think that in this case, there is no doubt that his explanation, "I'm just making it up", is either a deliberate lie or a falsehood based on self-delusion. The odds of "just making up" the story, and it coincidentally matching the actual story, are close enough to zero that they might as well be zero. So, if he's lying about that, then what else is he lying about?

How did he perform this "trick"? I can think of a few possibilities:

  1. As Roberta suggested, he uses audience plants.
  2. He somehow collects or researches information about audience members.
  3. He uses telepathy or otherwise reads the minds of audience members.
  4. He accesses some sort of universal database, or otherwise psychically intuits the correct answer.
  5. He genuinely communicates with spirits.

I'm pretty sure that he would deny all of those possibilities, which would either be a lie or mean I've missed one.

Can anybody else come up with any other possibilities, especially non-paranormal ones that Derren might genuinely have used?
 
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