Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Post 6: Psychic Crime Detectives and Cold Reading

Ambiguity and vagueness are a psychic's best friends. Crime detectives like Noreen Renier thrive on confirmation bias. When tasked with finding a man who went missing, Noreen described a place that had bricks, railroad tracks and a bridge. This of course was after the man's brother recommended that police check out an abandoned quarry. It conveniently turns out that bricks, railroad tracks, and bridges are all common objects found in a quarry. It's like finding milk in the refrigerator. The missing man's body was recovered there, submerged in a lake. However, in other cases, she was very far from being correct. In a separate case, she made several claims, only one being correct -- that a murdered man would be found in a "wooded area." What constitutes a wooded area? A forest? A thicket? A yard with a few trees in it? Any one of these places could be considered correct, and it becomes easy to say "Look, the psychic was right," because of the appeal of confirmation bias.

Cold reading follows the same principles. Palm readers and the like use phrases like "You will face hardship in life," when every person on this earth experiences something they perceive to be a difficult time, and again, confirmation bias plays a big role in our susceptibility to these farces.


  1. I have gone to a psychic before for a reading and it was definitely the cold reading method. Despite the appropriate ambiance and attire at the shop I was pretty disappointed by the experience. Previous to actually reading my palm, the woman asked my some casual questions like "what's your name?" "how old are you?","have any siblings?" With this information alone, I think I could establish a fair amount about the person's everyday life and be able to make assumptions and predictions which would later amount to being clairvoyant. During the reading, my love line revealed that I would marry a man strong in faith and we would have three children. My life line revealed I would live a long life and my thumb revealed I had strong willpower deep within me. The first guess she made was a commendable one considering my name is Grace but she missed the mark on my sexuality when she assumed I was religious. Secondly although I am one of three siblings, I don't intend on having kids. People's minds’ do change over time but jumping from zero to three is a stretch. Lastly I would like to think that my willpower is strong, but wouldn't we all? Part of me and a lot of people would like to believe that there are people out there with amazing abilities that simply aren't coming forward to profit on them. But until there is evidence, there is no way we can consider psychics real.

  2. I liked your analogy of finding milk in the refrigerator. If I were a psychic guessing at where a man in Colorado may have gone missing, I may say that he is somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 feet; a mountain; and I'm seeing through his eyes, the letter S. Maybe it was the car or license plate he was taken there in. Maybe a sign he had seen. Or I might say he is by a Walmart or McDonalds.