{"id":2527,"date":"2013-05-09T18:27:03","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T22:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oddempire.org\/weblog\/?p=2527"},"modified":"2015-05-11T16:54:23","modified_gmt":"2015-05-11T20:54:23","slug":"the-perils-of-silvia-browne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/2013\/05\/09\/the-perils-of-silvia-browne\/","title":{"rendered":"The Perils of Silvia Browne"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ispeakwithbrowne_1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I guess you could call this a trigger response, after the nearly miraculous rescue of Amanda Berry, Georgina DeJesus and Michele Knight\u00a0from a Cleveland home last Tuesday \u00a0a story surfaced about the parents of the one of the girls being informed by \u201cnoted psychic\u201d Sylvia Brown that her daughter was in fact deceased, drowned I believe is how she put it.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

On the one hand, I\u2019d comment that people who run around soliciting folks like Sylvia Brown or (Bob Edwards) are just fooling themselves. These people don\u2019t have any magical special psychic powers. They may be sensitive, but that\u2019s not special any more than the ability to drive a car is special or the ability to write. Being sensitive is a skill, nothing more. But unlike most psychics out there, I know it\u2019s not supernatural, it\u2019s psychological.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

The human mind is similar to a massively parallel computing system. Information coming from a wide variety of sources is processed and the results \u2018compete \u2018 with each other using criteria based on individual’s unique personality. The final results or predictions are then turned over to the conscious mind for action. Some people are able to plumb the sea of sensual data and return results by ways that seem magical to the uninitiated. For example; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s character Sherlock Holmes describes one who is very attune to his environment. he is able to pull out clues and reach conclusions using information that other people miss or believe to be insignificant. Nobody would accuse Doyle\u2019s character of being psychic! He\u2019s just an attuned individual – kind of a savient (and a drug addict too.)<\/p>\n

There are real people like Sherlock Holmes out there. Some are so sensitive that they can get inside the minds of criminals and predict future activities. Many law enforcement agencies have predictive analysts on staff, the rising popularity of computer \u00a0information\u00a0mining\u00a0coupled with modeling has (predictably) created whole new industries which do nothing but make predictions based on large amounts of unconnected data.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\"images\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The point is, people like Sylvia Browne are possible, however there is nothing psychic about it. They don\u2019t have special powers, they are just like anyone else. Except that they are able to pay attention to stuff most people ignore. Then, if the have a bent for such things they run around and play their \u201chunches\u201d as magically revealed \u201ctruths\u201d from the spirit world.<\/p>\n

There are some sick people who create psychic courses and career paths \u00a0leading would-be sensitives down a road of trickery and \u00a0charlatanism. Sometimes they even influence little children <\/a>to\u00a0believe\u00a0that they are super\u00a0psychics\u00a0instead\u00a0of just very\u00a0imaginative\u00a0little kids.<\/p>\n

Then there are the pathetic self-deluded types who (occasionally) have the best intentions, however their self-delusions get them into a state where whatever common\u00a0sense\u00a0they might have gets lost.<\/p>\n

But the most awful are the persons represented by Ms Browne who systematically prey on the emotions of vulnerable people. They feed on folks who might have lost a loved-one or who need counseling over a trauma in their lives. These \u201cmagical parasites\u201d leach onto \u00a0the emotions of people they should just leave alone.<\/p>\n

If people want to be\u00a0professional\u00a0consulars, there are very clear\u00a0career tracks to doing that.\u00a0Unfortunately that means going back to school and\u00a0earning\u00a0a degree (all the\u00a0\u00a0smart-cats are doing this.) Or you could end up like Silvia Browne who’s riding a horse she can’t get off of.<\/p>\n

Share and enjoy!<\/p>\n

Further reading – some of this is stomach churning.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2007\/oct\/27\/usa.jonronson?mobile-redirect=false<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2013\/may\/07\/sylvia-browne-amanda-berry-cleveland<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.randi.org\/site\/index.php\/swift-blog\/2113-yet-another-sylvia-browne-fiasco<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.stopsylvia.com\/home\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I guess you could call this a trigger response, after the nearly miraculous rescue of Amanda Berry, Georgina DeJesus and Michele Knight\u00a0from a Cleveland home last Tuesday \u00a0a story surfaced about the parents of the one of the girls being … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","WB4WB4WP_MODE":"","WB4WP_PAGE_SCRIPTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_STYLES":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FONTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_HEADER":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FOOTER":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2527"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2703,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2527\/revisions\/2703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddempire.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}