SYLVIA, Sylvia, sylvia

[kuroyume0161]

What is it about her that bothers me? You?

She is to appear on LKL tonight on CNN and again, I am certain, she will wiggle her way out of her "agreement" (two times already, at least) to apply for the JREF Million Dollar Challenge. She has obsfuscated, reneged, ignored, lied, backpeddled, and avoided, among other forms of evasion and deception. And she believes in a personal god and that her powers were given by this deity? What a joke!

Ms. Sylvia Browne is a sad impression of a human being. She bubbles her enigmatic spew, rakes in both the gullible and cash, yet she disallows criticism, ignores calls to verify her positive claims (to fame), and appears to me have an air of petulent snobbishness (sorry for the ad hominem). ;0)

What is to be done with her?

Kuroyume

[Denise]

I deleted the four identical copies of this thread. Must have been some kind of glitch?

[kuroyume0161]

Thanks, Denise! :)

Didn't know that four copies got posted. Hmmm.

Well, I recorded and watched that sorry spectacle on LKL. It was hilarious!! ;) Four "experts" on angels all trying to agree on what they are, look like, their purpose, and so on. How hypothetical can you get?

Thanks for clearing up the rapid fire. Hopefully this won't do the same.

Kuroyume

[Eos of the Eons]

sylivia was on Montel every wed. I emailed the show and told them how dissapointed I was that they would have her on the show at all, let alone every week.

Do you all want the address so you can write in too?

Ask them about this challenge or comment on how she is avoiding it. :cool:

[kuroyume0161]

Montel who? ;0)

Although I have TiVo and DirectTV satellite, my viewing is very particular (usually factual shows, news, and some scifi). Montel Williams is much worse than Larry King in pandering to the credulous masses, from the little that I've seen of his show. I'm certain that writing to him or the producers of this horrid talk show would be futile. Ms. Browne won't even tolerate criticism on her own website and ignores email sent to her of the same. We all know the lengths to which one must go to slip by Larry King's caller screening (don't want to upset poor Sylvia and possibly lose ratings, you know). The blinders are firmly in place and all that she sees is the monetary flow into her bank account from her credulous followers.

The best part of the LKL show about which I mentioned was that the real "star" of it was little Mattie Stepanek. Every caller had glowing comments for him, not much praise or care for Sylvia (Yeah, baby!). Still, I feel sorry that such a wonderful and brave child has been diluted and deluded by the usual indoctrination into these belief systems (gods, angels, and whatnot). I also feel for him since I know the process and its unswaying grip. Wasn't the smartest person, but was up there. Still deluded by my parents' beliefs until I was nearly twenty. It was a painful separation, but one that I now wish had occurred much sooner.

Kuroyume

[Eos of the Eons]

I also feel for him since I know the process and its unswaying grip. Wasn't the smartest person, but was up there. Still deluded by my parents' beliefs until I was nearly twenty. It was a painful separation, but one that I now wish had occurred much sooner.

Yeah, and the crap on shows like Montel only furthers the delusions in the kids when mommies can't peel their eyes from the screen when sylvia is on spewing her crap. I can't even watch commericals where sylvia is admired on the Montel show. I change the channel for those commercials even. Then I grumble about idiocy and try to refrain from cursing in front of my kids. I can't wait to go back to work.

[Blondin]

I missed this last 'manifestation' of Sylvia but I saw two previous ones. On those occasions she made a lot of statements to callers about their dearly departed and then practically every one got disconnected before you could hear any kind of response - positive or negative. I guess we're supposed to assume that the things she is telling these people must be all 'hits' because you never hear anyone contradict her.

This seems like such an obvious trick yet I've never heard anyone mention it before.

[kuroyume0161]

Originally posted by Blondin
I missed this last 'manifestation' of Sylvia but I saw two previous ones. On those occasions she made a lot of statements to callers about their dearly departed and then practically every one got disconnected before you could hear any kind of response - positive or negative. I guess we're supposed to assume that the things she is telling these people must be all 'hits' because you never hear anyone contradict her.

This seems like such an obvious trick yet I've never heard anyone mention it before.

There are many and varied tricks used by these so-called psychics to attain information, positive consent, or an "aura" of correctness.

There are two widely known methods: cold and hot reading.

These are sometimes mixed as a warm reading technique. With hot reading, information about the person is skillfully acquired (usually sereptitiously, but not always), is known apriori, and is just regurgitated to make it appear as if the psychic is pooling it from some ethereal source.

With cold reading, there is more art than skill. Here, the psychic is eliciting information through feedback from the victim, by posing "statements" about them as questions - "You have an 'M' in your family?" - and reading the victim's characteristics, body movements, voice, and other hints. Misses can either be rectified by expanding the generalization, putting it off to the future, expanding the personal contact range of the victim, or just quickly dropping it and moving on to another line of guesswork.

In the case of phone consultation, I imagine that the tact of only letting the caller ask the question could be useful since no more feedback will occur. This would give the psychic an open season for spewing a tale and no registration of hits/misses will therefore occur. Then, the willing victim will assuredly, by faith in the psychic, work diligently to make any connections possible to validate the reading. This is neither art nor skill, just a plain psychological trick. The psychic can say just about anything and the victim will rationalize the statements to fit. Very sad indeed...

Kuroyume