
Sting Operations to Expose Celebrity Psychics - flippyhead
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/magazine/psychics-skeptics-facebook.html
======
TaylorGood
While 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
What's frustrating about these boneheads is that they never consider that
'branching out' should involve an actual education. I guess that's too hard.

~~~
setr
Education is a cult in and of itself — most follow its scriptures in just as
similar a fashion as they would a priest. People just don’t think that hard
about things outside of their specialization (and often enough, not even
then), and end up trapped in all sorts of belief systems, including
“education” and “science” (have you ever taken a look at “I fucking love
science” fb pages? Its called science, and its followers believe in science,
but that group has nothing to do with it. Its just a bunch of rituals that
eventualy produce an effect, with any arbitrary reason given)

Its not a fix on its own, just accidentally more (likely to be) correct than
psychics, from the perspective of the believer.

~~~
simonh
Look at it that way and pretty much anything is a cult, at which point I’m not
sure the label means anything anymore.

~~~
setr
All a cult is in this view is an unwavering, unthinking group following over
some belief system; in that sense, any form of education (of which the bible,
and schooling, are just one of) can turn into a cult. Its not surprising that
students are just as susceptible as some midwestern hick. Its also not that
surprising that people take those teachings differently, and some treat that
knowledge in cultish fashion, and others don’t.

And its not that surprising that people don’t realize this occurs, and spreads
the word blindly, with unwavering faith in its problem-solving ability

------
age_bronze
Just 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
The 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.

------
themodelplumber
What 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.

------
TheOtherHobbes
I'm looking forward to a sting operation that exposes celebrity economists.

------
ycombinatorguy3
As 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!

------
jackcosgrove
I'm surprised they didn't see it coming.

------
evolvedcleaning
David 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.

------
on_and_off
It 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.

------
technofiend
This 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.

------
SkepticRob
Read 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.

------
sciurus
This 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
Works 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
[https://9to5google.com/2019/02/15/google-chrome-detect-
incog...](https://9to5google.com/2019/02/15/google-chrome-detect-incognito/)

------
DyslexicAtheist
John 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.

------
jedberg
The 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
Was about to say this. Opened the article to expect some reference to the John
Oliver show, but still haven't found any.

~~~
headcanon
Probably 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
No 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.

------
lostphilosopher
Relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/808/](https://xkcd.com/808/)

------
triplewipeass
Repeat 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
While 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.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
Now.. 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
The 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.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
What part of my logic is in error?

Lack of proof does not mean proof of nonexistence. And if we look at things
like the aether, was made a distinct proof that it didn't exist as conjectured
(although its rearing its head as a quantum Foam).

But I await for proof, be it positive or negative, of emotion and
consciousness. Because all you did was throw insults.

> Show a mechanism or proof of the effect. Otherwise it's nonsense.

One can highlight open questions with no apparent answers. And it absolutely
doesn't make those questions "nonsense". But this view is called Scientism,
and is not science. "Proof or its fake" is absolutely not science.

"Proof or its unproven" is science.

~~~
tombert
> Lack of proof does not mean proof of nonexistence.

It is certainly _evidence_ of nonexistence. Do you believe every single claim
you've ever heard because you can't conclusively disprove it 100% of the time
always? Of course not, you use your reason and assume that more positive
claims are false until proven otherwise.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
Charles H. Duell was the Commissioner of US patent office in 1899. Mr. Deull's
most famous attributed utterance is that "everything that can be invented has
been invented."

We laugh at it today, because some patent commissioner couldn't see past his
own limited view, and made that claim.

Yet, when I postulate questions about things we have very little science with,
I'm dismissed. I ask for science to be used with emotions; yet Im the dumb
one. I want scientific method to determine consciousness; yet I'm the non-
scientific one.

Again, you're the standard fare when it comes to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism)

~~~
RichardCA
The problem with Scientism is that the very utterance of the word sets up a
Straw Man.

But I do get where you're coming from, having followed some of the same
articles you've been referencing in your posts.

I think Deepak Chopra had some useful things to say. He is normally derided as
trafficking in woo, especially in his remarks about James Randi.

But if you read what he has to say, his position makes sense. A lot of
otherwise intelligent people fall into materialism as a sort of intellectual
default and it's not wrong to challenge this.

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/skepticism-
and-...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/skepticism-and-a-
million-_b_5522690.html)

And this in turn goes back to what Alan Watts had to say, the idea that
materialism should be resisted in spite of its surface plausibility.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mryZ7e2TUhs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mryZ7e2TUhs)

(The meat of it is around 10 minutes in)

------
davebryand
(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+viewi...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acia.gov+"remote+viewing")

Learn Remote Viewing:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=learn+remote+viewing](https://www.google.com/search?q=learn+remote+viewing)

~~~
privateSFacct
Every 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.

~~~
davebryand
"someone struggles to figure out how to make a lightbulb work, then woosh,
anyone can test that lightbulbs work."

That's exactly what you can do with remote viewing: test that it works for
yourself.

It seems like you're assuming that it is possible to use such powers for base
and counter-life purposes like amassing wealth or that anyone that has reached
such a subtle level of consciousness would even care about being wealthy.

~~~
jsweojtj
What can you do (remote viewing-wise)?

~~~
davebryand
Me, personally, or as a discipline? As a discipline, remote viewing allows the
practitioner to gather details about a remote subject (anything in the
universe of which you can become aware) which is unavailable to the five
senses due to distance, time, or obfuscation. For example, the CIA would use
it to gather details about remote bases that they observe on satellite images
and such.

Personally, I've been able to identify basic blind targets (from a target pool
such as [https://intuitivespecialists.com/target-
pool/](https://intuitivespecialists.com/target-pool/)) and started training in
earnest, but soon abandoned it as an egoic pursuit in order to focus my
attention on raising my consciousness through traditional spiritual practices
(meditation, psychadelics, self-inquiry, lucid dreaming, etc).

There is a lot of fun that can happen when you've silenced your mind, sit
still, and close your eyes for a few hours. :)

