Basic questions

This poster was recently present at a ‘coffee-table’ discussion which illustrates an all-too-frequent state of affairs encountered by aspiring critical thinkers and sceptics when “extraordinary” claims are asserted.

It has been mentioned in the news media that a well-known TV ‘psychic’ intends visiting “wildlife warrior” Steve Irwin’s widow, apparently (to give Mrs. Irwin a ‘reading’) to impart a message to her from the late media personality and wildlife park operator, that is, to facilitate a communication from ‘the other side’. Yours truly went on to briefly relate some unflattering practices employed by the ‘psychic’ which are public knowledge, and the general incredibility of the many self-proclaimed seers.

As the reader might anticipate, one of the others in attendance provided the riposte that while she acknowledged (however reluctantly) that many, if not most, of these so-called intuitives are charlatans or misguided folk almost certainly not possessing paranormal abilities, she and her husband – a number of years before – had visited a psychic who had been able to tell her husband something very noteworthy which even she did not know about him!

The problem is in this sort of social situation what can one do when confronted with such an anecdote – of the type sometimes intentionally introduced as an ‘argument stopper’. Given the nature of the story presented, and in contrast to, for example, someone describing their sighting of a ‘UFO’ in the sky, with the prospect of independent sources of evidence holding some potential to shed light on what the sighter may actually have witnessed†, with this matter we have at hand a mere testimonial, and one very ardently held to by its proponent. Should we confine ourselves only to this we would have nothing, in practice, with which to ascertain in a meaningful way what really happened and the true explanation of it: a ‘remarkable tale’ that is very largely or even completely uncheckable.

We can imagine a circumstance in which we had been present at the psychic reading with a tape-recorder. We would then at the very least have a clear and accurate (audio) record of what the exchange was between the psychic and her clients, presuming that the psychic or an assistant did not have an opportunity, away from our observation, to ‘milk’ information prior to the reading itself. This would be important for us in our analysis of what was actually said and how it was interpreted and reinforced – note the Forer effect and cold reading* – both at the time and later through memory effects and rationalization, etc. For without this tape-recording we are at the mercy of reconstructive memory and the pernicious influences of such things as Confirmation bias and Subjective Validation.

But the larger point is that when faced with such stories, unless any obvious flaws are embedded in the account given, there may very well be little we can do with the content of the story itself to show that what the experiencer believes happened perhaps did not occur quite in the way they now view it, that is, a presumption that the ‘reader’ used some sort of “psychic ability” to discover and tell of this ‘hidden’ piece of information: or at any rate did not produce the information by any ordinary means available. One alternative approach is to offer what is known about the modus operandi of folk calling themselves ‘psychics’, ‘mediums’, and the like – the body of scientific research and observations, our background, base rate information on the subject – in response to the story-teller’s lack of receptivity and outright resistance to challenges to their anecdote.

Another way that the matter can be looked at is to ask the story-teller to imagine whether they think it likely the psychic would produce compelling evidence of psychic ability if scientically tested: having the soothsayer engage in their ‘trade’ under fair conditions which would allow the demonstration of the claimed phenomenon but enable testers to carefully observe the actions, procedures, and methods used, as well as to analyze the results produced by the practitioner and clients’ reactions to these activities, etc. Bearing in mind that any investigation of the ‘uncanny’ event referred to above would seem to stand little chance of directly exposing the true basis of the incident.

However, the bottom line is whether the story-teller even sees the truth of their anecdote as something which should be examined or verified: they may view the experience as having a kind of mystical quality which, though they have stated it in factual terms, is not something they are willing or interested in subjecting to any kind of test, or even perceive it as a matter appropriate for rational inquiry.

If the latter is the case no argument, however well-founded or well thought out, is likely to persuade the experiencer that any doubts about it are or can be legitimate.

For those who might opine “why shouldn’t we just take our interlocutor’s account (and interpretation) of their experience with the psychic at face value?” it should be remembered that the event declared to have happened is of an extraordinary character – specifically something which as yet is quite unconfirmed – the burden of proof rests with those who advocate the reality of such (alleged) events. If the reporter merely referred to a commonplace occurrence, such as a hail storm, a traffic incident, or an electricity ‘outage’, and assuming they are usually a reliable informant, we would be have precious little reason to wish to expend our energy contesting the truth (or feasibility) of their anecdote – such a concern would simply not arise.

†and especially where the person reporting is inclined to attribute the experience to something strange or other-worldly.

*as well as an old standby: simply asking barefaced questions of the client then later on, with a certain amount of artistic flair, feeding back this same information, and perhaps also adding to this by taking a risk of making a few somewhat conservative inferences from the information already gathered.

(see also: personal experience, Some tongue-in-cheek suggestions, Cold Reading, Confirmation bias, Forer (Barnum) effect, Belief perseverance, Selective exposure, Neutral-evidence principle, Diagnosticity)