The reasons people choose 37 or 35 when asked to pick an odd 2-digit number seems pretty clear to me: most people when put on the spot to make up a 2-digit number go UP in value from the first digit to the 2nd digit. So once you choose a 3, the next number is logically 5 or 7 since the number has to be odd.
Why choose a 3 for the first digit? Because when we’re put on the spot to pick “odd” numbers quickly, we tend to choose a number where both digits are odd. We have to choose a first digit and we’re thinking “gotta be odd” so we rule out 2,4,6,and 8. We don’t choose 1 since that’s the first possiblity and seems like a cop out or too simple. 3 is the first viable candidate and the simplest that will form a standard 2-digit number that follows the usual pattern of 2-digit numbers (12 is very different in sound than 22, 32, 42)
I’ve seen this trick before where the number has to be above 50 and even, and there, 68 is pretty much the only possible choice given the rules and our bias that the number be VERY even, with ascending digits.
Then how do you explain all the historical accounts of psychic predictions? Like that time the oracle told Croesus that if he attacked Persia, he would destroy a great nation, and he did?
Wait, wait… is boing boing telling us now that there are “FAKE” psychics?
Where are all the feel good stories concerning “REAL” psychics?
Oh wait, there ARE NO real ones. I get it now. But for some reason the editors want us to “THINK” there are “real” ones about by calling only these ones “fake” when all of these buffoons are fake.
OR… is BB trying to court the “believers in real” crowd, by not calling out the “its all fake” reality.
“I don’t see the future, I communicate with spirits. I can only relay what they tell me. Right now I’m getting a…letter ‘A’…who here in the audience knows someone associated with the letter A?”
I mean…if I could tell the future, why wouldn’t I just go clean out Las Vegas, Atlantic City, the stock markets, and anything else I could take advantage of? So much less work involved than being some sort of flashy spiritual leader.
For being portrayed as a buffoon, Biff Tannen was on the right track by stealing the sports almanac.
And many people have had good experience with iridology, a nonsense practice of diagnosing a person’s health by looking at the stripes in their iris. In spite of those people’s positive experiences, it’s counterfactual nonsense that should be condemned as such and shouldn’t be allowed to be sold as health care. But you could apply your exact same post to it, claiming that focusing on the fact that it is nonsense is focusing only on the “negative examples.”
Fleecing suckers is traditional. PT Barnum said IIRC, “We cannot overestimate the stupidity of the American people.” HL Mencken was more succinct: “There’s one born every minute.” And credulity seems contagious, a meme plague. Yikes.
A fantasy voice told Snappy Sammy Smoot (comix character) to murder people. He was caught, tried, convicted. Strapped in the electric chair, the moral of the story emerged: “If you can’t deal with reality, reality will deal with YOU.” Fantasy is fun but reality bites. Yikes. But tell that to patrons of psychics and astrologers.
I was thinking the same thing- unless there’s ever any evidence that psychic powers are anything beyond wishful thinking, “fake psychic” is redundant.
Maybe by “fake psychic” they mean the ones who claim to be real, while a “real psychic” would be the kind who admits they’re “for entertainment purposes only” (i.e. admits they’re fake), but that seems unnecessarily confusing.
Personally, I think that there are a lot of phenomena that are very real, but that we can’t yet measure with our current set of scientific tools. Things some people consider “psychic” or “paranormal” among them.
But be very clear, that’s not what this article is talking about. This is about people who purposely prey on others with promises of healing, closure, or enlightenment. They’re garbage people. It has nothing to do with “not being able to get my mind around” what they’re doing.
If you watch the video it goes beyond whether the psychics are “eyes open” or “eyes closed” (whether they know they are making stuff up or not). Super Eyepatch Wolf says this towards the end of the video:
I don’t care if you believe your psychic. I don’t care if you believe you’re doing good. I care that you are promoting an industry that has destroyed lives and manipulated millions and you and every other psychic who profits off their supposed abilities without proving it under any kind of legitimate scientific testing should be so deeply ashamed.
Their pat answer is that psychics are — all of them — so rigorously ethical that not one of them would ever exploit their powers for mercenary/criminal purposes. (Never mind that the record is replete with “psychics” who drain their marks out of six- and seven-figure bank accounts.) You say “Ha! Those criminals would certainly have exploited their powers to win the lottery.” But the reply is: “Not at all… because those people are criminals, they could not have been actual psychics.”
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