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Originally Posted by dhethic  That would be some serious fodder in a reading with a skeptic. I'm pretty sure that practiced, professional, legit psychics have this problem far less frequently, but I also doubt that it goes away completely.
If people didn't polarize so much, and kept what was useful as being useful, and discarded what wasn't, things would be easier. I'm biased, however. My days of being a completely dismissive skeptic are quite over. |
What you say makes perfect sense from a pro-psychic point of view (as you admit yourself). I honestly hope it is this way.
But on the other hand, this is indeed one of the most powerful arguments of skeptics: someone who is very intelligent and good with people can easily tell them vague things and let them make it fit. They can say something like "there is something you are trying to achieve, and it's really important to you", and if they see the person nod, they'll go on "and it's probably related to your academic life", and if the person nods as well, they'll try to narrow it down like "you're probably in college and there's this particular test in the following... month, or is it next week?" etc. They can leave someone utterly astonished this way. It's pretty easy to give someone very specific answers as long as you go about it in this gradual way, allowing them to make it fit into their experience, and watching out for their body language. I agree that this absolutely doesn't mean that psychics cannot be genuine, just because there are mentalists who can pretend to be psychics with mind-blowing accuracy. It's just that, probably, mentalists tell people very specific things, but which do not necessarily come from the spirits, but from their own intuition and from the clues they receive from the sitter, while psychics, being equally accurate in their readings (maybe even less accurate) actually give the sitter something of real value, because the information comes from beyond, from a spirit guide or a deceased relative. But it's almost impossible to tell the difference between the two types of reading if there aren't some precise facts involved that no one could know. If the reading is done over the phone, I guess it's even more trustworthy.