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Sting Operations to Expose Celebrity Psychics
- jedberg 8y agoThe timing of this article is interesting given that John Oliver just did his show about this topic on Sunday. I wonder if that forced them to publish this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhMGcp9xIhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhMGcp9xIhY
- hereiskkb 8y agoWas about to say this. Opened the article to expect some reference to the John Oliver show, but still haven't found any.
- headcanon 8y agoProbably a coincidence, this article likely wasn't written in a day, and I doubt NYTimes and Last Week Tonight are talking to each other.
- jedberg 8y agoNo I'm sure this article was many months in the making. What I'm wondering is if it was always planned to come out today, or if they had to rush to an early finish because of Oliver "scooping" them.
- SkepticRob 8y agoAs part of the team which does these stings with Gerbic, I can tell you it was a pure coincidence regarding the timing of the Oliver Psychic segment and the NYT article. The Thomas John sting happened in 2017 and it took THAT long for the NYT to get this article out. The pub date kept slipping for all sorts of reasons, and a few weeks ago it got hot, final fact checking happened, final edits were done, and an actual publication date was set. So, it's just a bad month for psychics. But Oliver NEEDS to be given an award this year from some Skeptic organization. BTW, check out the Wiki article for Thomas John... now including all the new stuff, as well as links to articles written by Gerbic with the inside scoop on the sting, as well as the con that is John's "Seatbelt Psychic" show! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_John_Flanagan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_John_Flanagan Also, I write for Skeptical Inquirer, and have interviewed PI Bob Nygaard about his psychic-busting career. Read it here to get an idea of the magnitude of the problem caused by these TV psychics (it's Pt2, but Pt 1 is linked at the top): https://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/introducing_psychic-busting_private_eye_bob_nygaard_part_2 https://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/introducing_psyc... Also, one of our undercover "agents" just published his insider tale of our latest sting operation against Matt Frasier: https://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/undercover_at_a_psychic_group_reading https://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/undercover_at_a_...
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoForced them? Or they decided to ride a wave of interest and publish what they already have ready?
- jedberg 8y agoIn the journalism world, that's kind of the same thing if you've been working on an article for a while and have to publish early. My main question is, was this always the day they planned to release this?
- jayess 8y agoYikes. I've never watched John Oliver before. His presentation is so cringey. It's hard to watch. I miss John Stewart.
- dlivingston 8y agoPerhaps, but he explores subjects with nuance and detail that is unfortunately lacking in the present day Trevor Noah Daily Show.
- triplewipeass 8y agoRepeat after me: there's no such thing as a psychic. All psychics are simple con men, who prey on vulnerable individuals in order to receive easy cash. That is all.
- tombert 8y agoWhile I agree that it's all baloney, I'd argue that many of them aren't "con men", since they honestly believe they have psychic powers. They're just wrong, and are confused by confirmation bias.
- teddyh 8y agoSure, but those people don’t usually become famous.
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoNow.. I have no qualms in calling out fraud where I see it. But care in throwing it all out. We, earlier this week, read about someone who attended a meditation retreat left in handcuffs because meditation did crazy things to the mind. I mean, he was just eating and sitting and sleeping silently. We have holes in understanding of consciousness, and can't even tell if something is sentient or thinking. And then, we have people feeling emotions in areas. These emotions can be shared. many people can feel being stared at. The hole seems to be the intersection of: consciousness, mind, and emotion. Can we point at emotion? Can we throw it against a wall? Can we describe anger without emotions? How do we measure it? Why can some people feel the anger in an area? Same for mind and consciousness - show me an example. Quantify it. What's confusing is that your declaration of "They're just wrong, and are confused by confirmation bias." is that the very statement is confirmation bias of sciencism. Either there is proof (positive or negative), or there is not. Do not confuse lack of proof as proof of lack.
- EpicEng 8y agoThe fact that we can't yet show a mechanism for <whatever> does not make it reasonable to assume some sort of supernatural explanation. Your logic opens the door for believing any wacky idea a person has should be taken seriously. They shouldn't. Show a mechanism or proof of the effect. Otherwise it's nonsense.
- on_and_off 8y agoIt is sad that such an operation is needed to debunk these leeches. Good on these people to have the time to debunk common myths and frauds. This might help prevent some from succumbing to their scams.
- themodelplumber 8y agoWhat a funny article. I didn't expect the technique of leaving those name cards behind. I would guess most people would throw away a name card before they'd research the printed name, so maybe a little researcher bias showing through in this method? I've been studying various models of charismatic behavior recently and I've come to wonder whether, given _any_ particular dominant interaction or communication style, if played up it will activate the "investigator/auditor" reflex/role of another style. As an example, growing up around charismatic people, they are very much capable of doing something like this NYT article in reverse, for example getting the quiet, researcher-bean-counter-style approach of some government office critiqued on the evening news, organizing "irrational but passionate" protests, etc.
- jackcosgrove 8y agoI'm surprised they didn't see it coming.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y agoJohn Oliver had a section on it in Sundays "Last Week Tonight". Had me triggered because I have a case in my own family who is drawn into the Astrology/Psychics bullshit. It went so far that she lost a lot of money at a time she was most vulnerable and she would meddle in other peoples lives by predicting horrible stuff (which sometimes happened because of projection) ... So I did an Ask HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19254698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19254698 -> I don't want to hi-jack this thread but did want to point out the John Oliver story and my general bewilderment wit YT not demonetizing these channels - no need to block or censor but just give them no money for their traffic.
- TaylorGood 8y agoWhile not a celebrity, I recently met a woman whom spent $XX,000 on psychics to try and understand where life comes from. She was raised Christian, started "branching out" to find the answer and spent over a year of time in doing so. I asked if she ever found the answer.. her response was "no" and that she returned to Christianity. I was flabbergasted with how casual she was about explaining psychics as her choice to better understand the Universe.
- burtonator 8y agoWhat's frustrating about these boneheads is that they never consider that 'branching out' should involve an actual education. I guess that's too hard.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoPeople want easy. They want to take a pill and look like a bikini model. They want to write an app and make $1B. People want easy.
- chasing 8y agoIt's hard. And science gives really unsatisfying answers to many big questions. What happens after we die? What does it all mean? Does my pain have meaning? Am I special? What is consciousness? Will I ever be able to talk to my dead grandmother again? That's why there have always been predators around willing to take your money in exchange for easy answers to these (and other) questions...
- duozerk 8y agoScience does not give any answer, satisfying or not, to those questions (and one could argue it probably can't).
- acqq 8y ago> Science does not give any answer, satisfying or not, to those questions Of course it does, as its very basis is that there are no supernatural forces influencing anything that the science observes. Or to formulate even simpler: there are no "miracles": if something happened, it was possible to happen. You can't postulate "and then the deity came and intervened" if you are doing scientific inquiry about some event. If you could everything could be simply explained by deities playing around. Therefore, the scientific approach to human history is also very simple: it's the people who invented the gods, and not vice versa. So you can personally believe in deities somehow, but if you try to explain your scientific work with their involvement, your work would immediately not be scientific anymore. To give again a simple example, Newton didn't try to explain the movement of the planets with angels pushing them around, but with the plain physical laws. And it worked. Newton believed in god(s) somehow, but he hasn't let that interfere with the laws. Then he did some other works which involved gods, but these aren't science. It's that simple.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoI'm looking forward to a sting operation that exposes celebrity economists.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sciurus 8y agoThis is the first time I've seen the NY Times hiding articles if you're browsing in private/incognito mode. https://imgur.com/a/Tlv6Kn3 https://imgur.com/a/Tlv6Kn3
- Sebb767 8y agoWorks for me (Chrome on Linux). Either they do A/B testing or they can only detect it on some browsers. Concerning nonetheless, t.b.h..
- wrayjustin 8y agohttps://9to5google.com/2019/02/15/google-chrome-detect-incognito/ https://9to5google.com/2019/02/15/google-chrome-detect-incog...
- zknz 8y agoThink it might be A/B testing. I have got it sometimes, not others.
- technofiend 8y agoThis being hacker news I was trying to envision how celebrities have different physics than regular people. I mean are they talking about Hollywood special effects or something? :facepalm: James Randi spent his life debunking these charlatans. See Youtube for many examples if you really want to go down the rabbit hole.
- lostphilosopher 8y agoRelevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/808/ https://xkcd.com/808/
- davebryand 8y ago(EDIT: When I was going through YC and my startup phase I would have automatically down-voted this post, too. Love you all.) Skeptics: Of course there are many charlatans out there, but I'd love to understand how you justify dismissal of all non-local consciousness phenomena given that the CIA has been using Remote Viewing for decades and that anyone can learn to do it. Go prove it to yourself that it works and you'll taste the potential of consciousness and non-duality. CIA's FOIA docs on Remote Viewing: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acia.gov+"remote+viewing" https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acia.gov+"remote+viewi... Learn Remote Viewing: https://www.google.com/search?q=learn+remote+viewing https://www.google.com/search?q=learn+remote+viewing
- trainingaccount 8y agoDoing it != success
- davebryand 8y agoSo if every person were able to successfully do this but science can't explain it, what do you call that?
- jschwartzi 8y agoA frontier of science.
- davebryand 8y agoExactly! The fact there is a boundary between what is reliably and repeatedly observed in reality, and what science can explain means we need more people doing experiments on themselves to give scientists more data. If everyone tried enough Remote Viewing to have success (not that much work) the materialist paradigm would crumble.
- privateSFacct 8y agoEvery other advancement in understanding relatively quickly becomes highly reproducible - someone struggles to figure out how to make a lightbulb work, then woosh, anyone can test that lightbulbs work. A lot of the psychic stuff - telportation, telekensis, remote viewing etc doesn't follow this. Even worse, in many cases it violates well understood laws of physics etc. Even worse, in contract to someone like bill gates who did some cool software stuff, we don't have example of even one psychic using their powers to fortell the future flaunting and demonstrating their powers and become rich and wealthy. Out of 5 billion people - not one.
- age_bronze 8y agoJust like beginner developers who never sanitize their input, there are also people who never validate their inputs. Just like exploitation of programs, there are people who exploit the behavior of other people, giving them input when what they really want to do is to run their code (buy the product / believe in the psychic). Just like educating beginning developers in the important of security, we should educate children to sanitize their inputs, validate things they are told, think critically, and realize the code that others are trying to run on them.
- copperx 8y agoThe problem is that people only "sanitize their input" about things of which they care to keep a consistent model in their heads. Things that are not relevant to the task at hand (for many, the news) are accepted without critical thought. That's why advertising is so successful.
- ycombinatorguy3 8y agoAs far as I’m concerned, the much larger and more reprehensible scams are perpetrated by religious/spiritual leaders. The only people this might come as a surprise to are the flock. The most flagrant frauds are committed by evangelical preachers, especially the “prosperity gospel” charlatans. The efforts to expose these crooks on a large scale have been weak and ineffective. The fact that these fat cats actually preach morality (their version, anyway) to their credulous throngs with one bible clutching hand held triumphaly toward heaven, while the other is pickpocketing them, is, of course, morally repugnant. These people need to be taken down. I could go on for hours with credible arguments for why this is justifiable, but I just desperately want to move this ball farther downfield where we can finally score one for the good side. Yes, I’m exercised!
- SkepticRob 8y agoRead the Wikipedia article on Bob Nygaard. It is a great collection of this detective's most notable psychic-fraud cases (including one where a client lost over $700,000). It will give you an idea of the scope of harm that belief in paranormal has on society.
- evolvedcleaning 8y agoDavid Chase provided us evidence through the Sopranos character Paulie Walnuts: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PqgoXVB20W4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PqgoXVB20W4 It’s not entirely unlikely that this scene was based on real mob stories. In the fictional depiction, the psychic would have had to have been in cahoots with Christopher Moltisanti for this to have been a deception, since it’s unlikely a psychic would have otherwise guessed about the poison ivy that Paulie got when whacking Mikey Palmice with Christopher.