Today, against my better judgment, I visited a psychic.
You might ask why I, a proponent of reason and rationality, would sink to such depths. It was for two primary reasons: One, I was not paying for the reading, and two, I quite frankly had nothing better to do.
I went, as is expected, with as open a mind as I could muster. My disbelief was held at bay in part by a secret desire for this reading to be a transcendental experience of some kind, for this woman to really have some remarkable intuition regarding my life. She claimed to have done readings for several billionaires, to have solved crimes for the police, she even had a photograph of herself with the Bush family in the White House. (Photoshop works wonders…)
However, from the moment she started her reading I had lost all confidence. I was careful to not offer her any hidden clues that might corrupt the legitimacy of her reading, and indeed, without these, she seemed quite lost. When, out of sympathy for the woman, I offered up a few nuggets, she seemed unable to accurately tell anything about them. For instance, I used to be a petsitter; she described several dogs that she “saw,” and felt I had some kind of telepathic connection with; yet I had not cared for a single dog that fit the descriptions she offered. She told me about an individual named “Dr. Edwards” who had “been with me from my very first breath, and gave me books to read,” yet even neglecting that I know no one named “Dr. Edwards,” still no one in my life fit that description.
The rest of the reading consisted of an analysis of an astrological chart, based on my date of birth. Here there were a few things which corresponded with things in my past, and many things which didn’t (in particular she seemed to think that I had moved around the country, and persisted in this view despite my objection that I have lived in the same city my whole life). Following that, she attempted to convince me of her own legitimacy by telling of clients who had great successes that she predicted, and gave me very general sorts of advice (“think positively,” “do what you believe is right”).
Indeed, Wikipedia’s article on psychics offers up a study that corroborates my experience:
In 1988 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences gave a report on the subject that concluded there is “no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena.”[8]
In conclusion, psychics are very talented people – talented, that is, in the art of separating fools from their money.
Psychic used Psychic! But it failed….