A counterpoint... Perhaps unrelated, but ... erm... perhaps related...
Most of this discussion focuses on whether or not the reading is truthful and not on whether it's helpful. I admit that the helpful bit is really hard to assess and could be dangerous[1], but ...
My wife's father and mother died within a year of each other. She talked to a friend and the friend gushed about a particular 'psychic', blah, blah, blah. My wife talked with the psychic, took lots of notes and reviewed them with me. I had lots of reasons that could explain each of the seemingly inexplicable notes. But my question to my wife was: are you more comfortable with the loss of your parents? She said "Yes" and "Do you think she was telling the truth?" And I said that it doesn't matter; I'm happy that you're more comfortable, so why bother thinking about that question.
So a year later my wife informs me that she made an appointment <<for me>> with the same psychic (WTF?!). Whatever, I'll go with it. Time comes. I get on the phone with the psychic. She's very nice, etc. I don't mention that I'm an atheist, reductionist. The conversation is <<fucking fascinating>>. She talks about my business. She talks about an upcoming venture financing event. Etc. At the end of the hour, I said [somewhat to hear her response] that I didn't believe that she was communing with the spirits, etc, but that the discussion had been immensely valuable and that I would plan to talk with her again. She laughed, said thank you, we exchanged pleasantries and ended the call. And, as I told friends, I was serious. I don't know how she pulled the information from me (and I have bigger things to worry about), but I now have access to someone who can pull incredible information from me and that's fantastic.
So I've stepped away from the whole is-reading-true-or-false question (it's false...) and have focused on is-this-discussion-valuable. In the space of an hour, a woman I've never met was able to engage me in a discussion that touched on deeper professional issues than very close personal friends of 10 years have been able to do in many more hours of discusion.
[1] this way lies confidence tricks... I'm not sure where the line is with psychics, but I'm confident that I could avoid it... I'm less confident that other people could.
> She talks about my business. She talks about an upcoming venture financing event. Etc.
"Hi, Ms. Psychic. I'm Mrs. Dregs, we've talked before; remember, I live in the purple house and have two dogs and called to ask about my parents? … I knew you'd remember! I'd like to set up an appointment for my husband, Mr. Dregs. He's been so busy working on his startup, CoffeeCo; I was hoping you could help guide his way. … No, Feb 17th won't work, he'll be busy preparing for his presentation at Y Combinator then. … Oh, yes, the 12th would work great, I'm so glad you could squeeze him in then, thank you!"
Fair enough, but my wife made the appointment a month or two in advance and the venture financing was 4 months away and I don't think that I'd mentioned the possibility to her (we're a cash-flow shop). But other than missing the point entirely, you were spot on (by which I mean: totally wrong). [<--That Mitchell And Webb Look anyone?].
Also, as my original comment noted, I think psychics are BS. My point was that value may be be extracted from them.
I also don't believe in psychics, but I do think that someone skilled in this kind of intuitive stuff can really help you think about your situation from the outside. I mean, that's what psychotherapists do, and many are very good at it. I think it would be fair to be critical of the style of astrologers as compared to a good therapist, but like you, I think that sometimes the kind of serendipitous input from such a source can be very interesting.
I got the point of your post. I just thought I'd take a tangent to make a possible suggestion as to how the "psychic" extracted the information from you (since you did not indicate that you deduced how it was done). No need for snark.
He's not saying this person found out something about him that he didn't tell her.
He's saying that this person was able to pull things out of him in conversation that other people normally wouldn't, and that he doesn't quite know how. He's also saying that she engaged him in a conversation about it in a way that was useful to him.
I don't see him claiming any kind of mystic powers or anything - just that this person was very good at pulling information out of him through conversation and summarizing it in a beneficial way.
My father also seems to believe in psychics and that kind of stuff, and i always tried to convince him that it was a scam, but he said that surprisingly many things predicted did happen.
Until one day i realized that maybe one important function of psychics is to provide some kind of hope or give more confidence about the future, especially for people who are not passing trough good times, the problem for me is that i am too skeptical and can't fall into that delusion.
Well Hacker News is probably also at least 50% cold reading (I made that number up, but still). It's a constant repetition of what we want to hear. Similar to the Men's Health Magazines that tell us we can get a sixpack stomach within a week.
I mean it is only a matter of time until somebody (maybe a psychic, or a venture capitalists) figures out what we want to hear and feeds it to us. Of course the psychics also had to adapt to modern times.
Most of this discussion focuses on whether or not the reading is truthful and not on whether it's helpful. I admit that the helpful bit is really hard to assess and could be dangerous[1], but ...
My wife's father and mother died within a year of each other. She talked to a friend and the friend gushed about a particular 'psychic', blah, blah, blah. My wife talked with the psychic, took lots of notes and reviewed them with me. I had lots of reasons that could explain each of the seemingly inexplicable notes. But my question to my wife was: are you more comfortable with the loss of your parents? She said "Yes" and "Do you think she was telling the truth?" And I said that it doesn't matter; I'm happy that you're more comfortable, so why bother thinking about that question.
So a year later my wife informs me that she made an appointment <<for me>> with the same psychic (WTF?!). Whatever, I'll go with it. Time comes. I get on the phone with the psychic. She's very nice, etc. I don't mention that I'm an atheist, reductionist. The conversation is <<fucking fascinating>>. She talks about my business. She talks about an upcoming venture financing event. Etc. At the end of the hour, I said [somewhat to hear her response] that I didn't believe that she was communing with the spirits, etc, but that the discussion had been immensely valuable and that I would plan to talk with her again. She laughed, said thank you, we exchanged pleasantries and ended the call. And, as I told friends, I was serious. I don't know how she pulled the information from me (and I have bigger things to worry about), but I now have access to someone who can pull incredible information from me and that's fantastic.
So I've stepped away from the whole is-reading-true-or-false question (it's false...) and have focused on is-this-discussion-valuable. In the space of an hour, a woman I've never met was able to engage me in a discussion that touched on deeper professional issues than very close personal friends of 10 years have been able to do in many more hours of discusion.
[1] this way lies confidence tricks... I'm not sure where the line is with psychics, but I'm confident that I could avoid it... I'm less confident that other people could.