CX

Charlatans cheat people on purpose. John is sincere.

tronvillain

You think that he believes he's actually communicating with the dead?

Mageth

He practices cold reading. He knows he practices cold reading. He lets his audience think he's really communicating with the dead. He's a charlatan.

Successful charlatans come across as sincere. Otherwise, their career would be short.

CX

Yes. My brother was associate producer of the show. I trust his judgement. John and the people close to him definitely believe he talks to the dead.

CX

You know this how?

Mageth

Others who can do what he does better than he can admit to the fact that they do it using cold reading techniques. Cold reading is a well-known technique that mediums have used since time immemoiral. If there's a viable, known naturalistic explanation to what he does, I'll go with that over the supernatural every time.

Articles like <a href="http://www.skeptic.com/newsworthy13.html" target="_blank">this one</a> back up my position, and expose information such as the heavy editing that's performed before his readings are broadcast and go into detail about other tricks he uses.

tronvillain

Even if I was to believe your brother was an associate producer of the show, I wouldn't trust him to be able to determine whether or not Edwards is sincere.

tronvillain

Mageth:
Well, that could be used to argue that he is only cold reading unintentionally, believing that his abilities are real.

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: tronvillain ]</p>

Mageth

Tron: true, but the article I posted exposes evidence that Edward knows what he's doing.

Question: if a person could really communicate with the dead, then why would they need to practice the known techniques of cold reading? Couldn't they just walk up to a stranger and say "Your Grampa Hubert says Hi!"?

tronvillain

Oh, I don't think he's sincere, I was just pointing out that having a lower hit rate than people who admit what they're doing isn't an argument that he knows what he's doing.