--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: > > Orson Welles discusses the nature of 'cold reading', a type of analysis used by many phony psychics and fortune tellers to trick their customers into thinking they indeed do have special powers, and how some can become so skilled at it that they actually trick themselves into believing they are truly psychic. > > http://youtu.be/IjPsnfysrp8 http://youtu.be/IjPsnfysrp8 http://youtu.be/IjPsnfysrp8 <http://youtu.be/IjPsnfysrp8 http://youtu.be/IjPsnfysrp8 http://youtu.be/IjPsnfysrp8>
Excellent. His point at the end about becoming a "shut-eye" is exactly the point I was making earlier. If one is born with a talent for the "tricks of the trade" such as cold reading, an eye for facial expression and body language, and an ability to prompt people in a certain direction via verbal and eye-movement cues, in time one can actually start to believe the "I'm psychic" stuff. That's when it gets dangerous. > How do you tell a fake psychic from a real one? Easy. If they're making money from their abilities, they're fake. :-) > ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "TurquoiseB" wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: > > > > > > Re "Derren definitely possesses unusual abilities": > > > > > > Yes, but not *psychic* abilities. He uses NLP trickery > > (eye-movement > > cues); lip-reading expertise; amazing memory recall; covert hypnosis; > > muscle reading; old-fashioned conjuring ; . . . ; but nothing that > > can't > > be understood by a hard-nosed scientist. > > > > > > So do the psychics. > > > > That's his point. Funny how some miss it. > > > For the record, my point is that it strikes me as much more likely that > psychics are using the skills above to do what they do subconsciously > than that they are able to do what they do because some supernatural > entity is helping them to, also subconsciously. > > The "psychics" using these techniques don't have to know that they're > doing it, or have been trained in how to use them. Any competitive poker > player uses all of these techniques in every game, but they aren't > necessarily *aware* that they're using them. >
