Mediums

Mediums have several methods they used for "divining," most of which involve trickery such as matching a caller's phone number to a database. That anyone could predict the future is scientifically unfounded; after all, haven't you ever wondered why there aren't any big corporations selling it?
So yeah, it's complete and utter bull poopy. But the engagement thing might be close to accurate. Just because a medium said it its possibility is not precluded.
If, however, you DO get engaged in May 2013, don't attribute it to her. Mediums take advantage of gullible people with money; that's their soul (get it?) purpose in life.

 

Mediums are charlatans, pure and simple. They use cold reading, hot reading, a detailed knowledge of human nature, and a complete lack of compassion to prey upon the emotionally vulnerable. They tell their clients what they think their clients want to hear, and don't care what sort of damage they might cause.

Okay, rant over.

 

I believe in them. I also know there are plenty of people who pretend to be one in order to make a quick penny. then again I'm a heavy believer in the supernatural and paranormal. however i don't believe i would believe in one that works over the phone. aside from the fact that most of the known methods of divination rely on luck or fate whichever you believe more in i guess. i don't think it would be possible for someone to divine your future without making some sort of physical contact/visual contact (at least).

 

Thing is, there will always be those who claim false things but there are also those few handfuls that are actually the real thing.

 

Tabb, I'd be willing to be that most people get a free trial and then get hooked. Sort of like Celebrex. My dad got a free sample but it alleviated his back pain so he now gives them money next time.

Witchcraft, fatalmoon91, and Chip, there are not always "handfuls" that are actually the real thing. I implore you to find a validated assassination in the Salem trials. I doubt that there were "handfuls" of real witches back then, or now. Mediums (media?) operate on faulty scientific assumptions. We can go down to the electronic level, so let's do it. First, you must know that the world is in "pixels." There is a fundamental unit of length called the Planck length, and nothing can be shorter than that. This has been both theoretically and experimentally validated. So there is nothing going on below the planck lengths, nothing secret going on. We are all quantum states. These quantum states manifest themselves as atoms and molecules. These make up cells. Cells make us up. At no point is there something determinable psychologically. And this is why. I have two reasons. First, you may have heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It essentially states that if we know the position of a subatomic particle, we cannot know its momentum, because to measure it we need to measure photons that have been transmitted from its location which will have changed its momentum. Similarly, we cannot know its location if we know its momentum. A medium would have to divine on the level of subatomic particles. There's no other way to do it. Cells cannot be read on a field or anything like that. So by observing the quantum states that make us up and thereby determining our futures by using advanced extrapolation the likes of which it would take today's computers about 10^(10^(70^(15e+42))) years to compute (assuming we are computing 15 seconds into the future: trust me, I did the math), which I doubt that most mediums can do, they would essentially change the future. By measuring the states and determining the future, the photons seen would change the momentums of the particles and change the future observed.
Second, the chaos theory. This acts on the idea of the butterfly effect. Let's give an example. Let's pretend that I inserted the dancing banana emoticon after this sentence. Perhaps the act of seeing it would make someone subconsciously happy and would prevent a suicide. Perhaps seeing it would make them sad because I'm so banal as to use the dancing banana would cause them to commit suicide. My point is, very small actions influence the would-be future. So the act of telling someone's future to them would also cause them to act differently and cause the observed future to end up differently.
So, we have two different paradoxes coming from the existence of mediums. I rest my case.
Just a note, I'm not saying that mediums cannot predict the future to a certain extent. They can. But that is just seeing, "Oh, that guy seems really happy. I'll bet he'll be married in 5 years," and when it happens, the guy is amazed.

 

I don't believe in fortune telling. however, I do believe in precognition.

 

I'm still with chip on this one...I accept science and everything it does but that doesn't also mean that science can explain everything. as for the salem witch trials i wasn' there. I didn't live it.

My thoughts on being able to predict the future as a medium also differ from being able to 100% discern what will happen to someone in the future. mostly because i also believe in the idea of parallel worlds. where each decision you meet comes attached to multiple futures.

 

I've never been to see a medium, but I definately believe that their are some people out there that are psychic. As for those psychics on tv I think those ones are fake just trying to get money from you. As for whether or not your getting married in 2013, who knows? =) She could be the real deal, or she could just be a scam artist.

 

I do not believe in the supernatural in general, and fortune tellers in particular. Goes against the principles of self-determination I hold dear. "Always in motion is the future." I find those who believe in fortune-telling- and ghosts, etc etc- is for the hope they offer, that the uncontrollable can be controlled through prediction, or- in the case of hauntings and ghosts- that there is something waiting for us after death.

 

I gotta correct this and say current science cannot explain everything. Obviously there is some explanation behind everything, it doesn't just happen by magic. So if there are people with clairvoyant skills of some sort, of course there is some explanation behind it - we just don't have any as of yet that is supported by evidence.

As far as I've ever seen or heard myself, no one has any psychic abilities that aren't explainable by fraud, social engineering, or just coincidence. So I'm hesitant to believe that there are cases that don't fall under one of those.

 

I believe in mediums, now I course you will have the fakes that say they. An predict the future. I believe though that a real medium will help you to help you, not ask for payment or fees. These mediums that want you to pay for predictions are usually fakes. Now I am not saying that the real ones should not be paid, but I believe it weeds them out from the rest.

Now I have studied up on the Salem witch trials and really that has nothing to do with this disscusion. Some believe that witchcraft is involved in predicting the future, but I hav to disagree. They have a gift that allows them to see things that we cannot, that does not mean they use spells or gods and goddesses to predict the future.

Now you want proof, well you can have proof, but you will not believe it if we gave it to you. A disbeliever usually stands by his judgment and dosen't believe anything that overrules that judgement. So we could give you all the proof in the world, but it wouldnt matter.

Now we all have are opinions and beliefs, so we will think different, but don't disprove someone if you yourself do not have facts. It is just like religion and science, so just open your mind a little bit to the thought that there are things in this world that are out of our control and try to believe that some people have certain gifts that are supernatural.

I do not intend to offend you or to those that agree with you, but I just don't like it when someone disproves someone else's beliefs when they do not know themselves. Like I said that's almost like religion or even us and whether we are born this way or if it's a choice.

 

What proof would that be exactly?

 

Beware the self-fulfilling prophecy. I think that's another tool of their trade. They tell someone, "You're getting engaged in May" so people keep their eyes open, and when they find someone they are interested in a few months before hand they say "Oh my god, this is the one they were talking about!" Then come May, the prediction comes true because their stating it caused it.

 

My point was we could give you proof of mediums existing, but you wouldn't believe them anyways. If you want to see, you can google it, there have been several scientific studies and not all scientists believe it is not real.

Now of course there are some sites that aren't really real per say, you just have to judge for yourself. There are supernatural things that are beyond our control and sometimes we get a gift, so what if you or anyone else believes, it is what it is.

 

Don't speak for me please. I would believe anything if there was definitive proof of it. There simply isn't definitive proof for things like mediums, astrology, etc... Most "proof" is circumstantial evidence at best.

 

When someone is making a positive claim (e.g. there are people with the ability to talk to the dead) the burden of proof is on the person making that claim. Just saying "go Google it" is an attempt to shirk that burden. I could Google "scientific proof of psychics" and the signal to noise ratio would be so low as to be ridiculous. You, on the other hand, claim to have knowledge of valid studies done. It should be trivially easy for you to find and cite these studies.

I have no knowledge of any scientific tests performed on mediums, and so I cannot claim with absolute certainty that there are no valid mediums. However, it is in the nature of negative claims that they are almost impossible to prove. It is very easy to falsify my claim that there are no valid mediums, all you have to do is produce one valid medium, but in order for me to prove definitively that there are none I would have to prove either the impossibility of mediums existing*, or would have to test each and every person that has ever or will ever live.

*This would require a very rigorous definition of the term, and include a hypothesis about the methods by which mediums communicate with the dead, as without a very concrete definition, proof of impossibility is not possible.