My rant about mediums.
There are three basic propositions.
(1) All mediums are real and all of their claims are true.
(2) Some mediums are real and some of their claims are true and some
are not real and some claims are not true.
(3) No mediums are real and none of their claims are true.
I don't think that I know of anyone who accepts proposition 1, although
there probably are at least a few.
The vast majority of people in the world accept number 2.
A very, very small minority of people in the world accept number 3.
Those who accept propositions 2 and 3 can generally agree that:
(A) There are some honest mediums who make mistakes and misinterpret
events in their lives. These people have absolutely no paranormal ability
but honestly believe that they do.
(B) There are some dishonest mediums who know that they have no paranormal
ability but lie to their customers to make money.
The Question of Evidence
The difference between those who accept propositions 2 and 3 are in
what constitutes evidence for mediumship.
Basically, those who accept proposition 2 think that mediums who can produce personal information about them or their families are getting that information from dead people. They think this because they can see no other means of acquiring such detailed and accurate information and the dead are the source the mediums claim.
Basically, those who accept proposition 3 think that personal information can be acquired in many different ways and that having that information does not in and of itself support the medium's claims of where it came from, even if it's accurate. There are several obvious means of getting information (research, cold readings, etc.) in any claim of mediumship, and professional magicians who specialize in mentalism are quite capable of duplicating any feats that mediums have up until this time performed. Also, there are any number of other possibilities to consider, however unlikely they may be . For example, what if mediums have ESP and are reading the minds of their customers instead of talking to the dead? What if someone is using a time machine to collect data? And so forth.
In other words, providing detailed and accurate information, even if it were impossible to acquire by ordinary means, does not necessarily prove that the dead are talking to us. There is always more than one possible explanation.
Conclusion
The only way to prove that there is an afterlife is to produce the
ghosts, spirits, etc., themselves for study. Information supposedly from
the dead will never be an acceptable substitute because the origin cannot
be verified by third parties.
Part 2 Testing
Falsification
It works like this. Suppose you think you know of a real medium. Suppose
you have some ideas of what would constitute positive proof that the medium
has real powers. Fine. The other half of the question though is what would
constitute valid falsification. In other words, how would you know that
a medium was not real?
If he was wrong, that might be no more than he was having a bad day. If he was caught cheating, that might mean no more than he only cheated now and then when his powers were low for some reason. Does his success mean that he is real or that you just didn't catch him that time?
To be a proper test, both points need to be detailed in advance, preferably with quantifiers.
VERIFICATION - If the medium can provide 20 accurate details about his subjects under the specified conditions 8 times out of 10, then he is real.
FALSIFICATION - If the number of details is less than 20 or the required number of details is provided but less than 8 out of 10 times, then he is not real.
I just made up these number to demonstrate the idea, but every proper test needs a clear, predetermined description of both what is valid verification and what is valid falsification.
Control Groups
Every proper mediumship test should also include control groups. It's
not enough that a medium can provide personal information. There should
also be admittedly-fake mediums with a knowledge of mentalism and experience
in performing those skills in public who pretend to do readings on a different
set of subjects under the same conditions. The success of mediums and admittedly-fake
mediums can then be compared. If mediums are real, they should be able
to do a great deal better than admittedly-fake mediums. Slight variations
should be ignored.
The List
Those who accept proposition 2 and those who accept proposition 3 will
never agree. There's no point in badgering each other with repeats of the
same arguments over and over.
But I do think that it would be both interesting and productive for those who accept proposition 2 to spend more time considering how to spot and screen out the fakes. It's the one area that we can all work together on.
Rant over.
Resume normal Off-Topic programming. 8-)
Fred Askew
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