Testing a Claimed Psychic

[PsychoSarah]

I know an individual that claims to sometimes get dreams of the future. Now, unfortunately, most of the predictions are rather minor, so there's not much in the way of material to test, but there is one prediction in particular that is specific enough and on a large enough scale that I think could be testable. It goes like this:

In the year 2021, an epidemic hits the United States. The disease is airborne and so highly contagious that people commonly wear face masks. Primarily the elderly die, but people of all ages become incapacitated for long periods of time if they contract it, regardless as to their health. This results in food shortages and riots. Unfortunately, his "predictions" are restricted by realistic perspectives, so the only reason he "knows" any traits of the disease is because the dream involved him watching a partial news story on it. People commonly drive what he described as being "sealed vehicles", and it wasn't uncommon for people to be seen with oxygen tanks.

Specific enough to test, or just vague enough to be too plausible?

I'm having him write a dream journal too, in order to try and test any prediction that comes. Apparently, the prediction dreams are extremely vivid and invoke immense feelings of being watched.

I'm curious if anyone has input on how to test an "ability" the user cannot force to happen. Most predictions are of events which happen about a month later, with the 2021 prediction being the one farthest in the future.

 

[Sanoy]

It's odd for a new disease to only hit the U.S. It's also vauge enough to to be applied to most anything, as most any sickness of any significance means time off from work. It could be the flu, which is kind of happening now. It's a highly likely scenario. Over half of my wife's workplace is out from the flu, many who got the shot have had the flu twice already.

I do believe there are people who become aware of future events, but I don't think this one is a strong enough test.

 

[PsychoSarah]

It's odd for a new disease to only hit the U.S. It's also vauge enough to to be applied to most anything, as most any sickness of any significance means time off from work. It could be the flu, which is kind of happening now. It's a highly likely scenario. Over half of my wife's workplace is out from the flu, many who got the shot have had the flu twice already.

I do believe there are people who become aware of future events, but I don't think this one is a strong enough test.

It's the wearing face masks, food shortages, and riots part that makes it interesting to me. The closest thing to that type of situation for the US would have been the Spanish Flu, which occurred over 100 years ago, but I don't think food shortages and riots happened with that. Also, the specific year of 2021.

Oh my goodness, how did I forget about the oxygen tanks and altered cars!!! I'm putting those things in the OP, hold on. Those are the weirdest ones, and I forgot to add them. I feel like a moron.

 

[Sanoy]

Yeah that's sounding like a significant prediction if it comes true. The oxygen tanks really give you a sense of depth as to how deeply the disease goes.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Yeah that's sounding like a significant prediction if it comes true. The oxygen tanks really give you a sense of depth as to how deeply the disease goes.

Yeah, though I do hate having to wait 3 years to verify it, the vast majority of what he claims to get visions of are preventable negative events he refuses to allow to happen. And honestly, if I got visions of a coworker getting stabbed by a trainee with a box cutter, I probably wouldn't be willing to let those events play out the same either (a box got stabbed instead). Not much he can do about a disease, though.

 

[Albion]

Leaving the 2021 prediction aside, it should be easy enough to test the ones that concern events only a month or so out. If they fall through, you have your answer.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Leaving the 2021 prediction aside, it should be easy enough to test the ones that concern events only a month or so out. If they fall through, you have your answer.

Problem is, most of them involve the preventable death either of the psychic or someone else, and he won't let those exactly follow the dreams. For obvious reasons.

There are, according to him, occasionally ones which just predict a normal day with nothing overly significant happening, hence the dream journal. Stating what a day's worth of customers are going to buy the moment they enter a store and getting that right should be easy enough to verify, but I have to wait on something like that. Having him call over a person by full name that had never met him before was kinda funny. Poor guy was very perturbed. Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to confirm it was impossible to know the guy's name beforehand by conventional means, so it doesn't count. Was neat, though.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I know an individual that claims to sometimes get dreams of the future. Now, unfortunately, most of the predictions are rather minor, so there's not much in the way of material to test, but there is one prediction in particular that is specific enough and on a large enough scale that I think could be testable. It goes like this:

In the year 2021, an epidemic hits the United States. The disease is airborne and so highly contagious that people commonly wear face masks. Primarily the elderly die, but people of all ages become incapacitated for long periods of time if they contract it, regardless as to their health. This results in food shortages and riots. Unfortunately, his "predictions" are restricted by realistic perspectives, so the only reason he "knows" any traits of the disease is because the dream involved him watching a partial news story on it. People commonly drive what he described as being "sealed vehicles", and it wasn't uncommon for people to be seen with oxygen tanks.

Specific enough to test, or just vague enough to be too plausible?

I'm having him write a dream journal too, in order to try and test any prediction that comes. Apparently, the prediction dreams are extremely vivid and invoke immense feelings of being watched.

I'm curious if anyone has input on how to test an "ability" the user cannot force to happen. Most predictions are of events which happen about a month later, with the 2021 prediction being the one farthest in the future.

The problem with that particular scenario is that it's fairly vague, and it's plausible that an air-borne influenza virus could cause a pandemic of that scale. Most forward-looking governments have contingency plans and stocks of antiviral drugs, and there is continuous monitoring of flu virus mutations, particularly bird-flu. There are also high-security research labs experimenting with the mutations that would convert a relatively harmless bird-flu virus into a virulent air-borne variety (it only takes a few mutations).

If I dreamt that a large passenger aircraft would crash into an American city in 2021, and it happened, would you be convinced that I'd seen the future - or that I'd had a dream that happened to coincide with it?

To be interesting, such a dream would have to be very specific and accurate in several unrelated areas.

I don't even see a practical way of analysing a large number of 'prophetic' dreams to try and get a statistical estimate - what would the control group be? what would be the measures of specificity, accuracy, and correlation?

The more dreams that are recorded, the more chance of a coincidental correlation, so you have to take all dreams into account and tally the hits and misses. This is a common mistake of people who think they predicted something in a dream - they forget all the dreams that failed to predict something, and ignore the likelihood of one of those dreams coinciding with a future event.

 

[Albion]

Problem is, most of them involve the preventable death either of the psychic or someone else, and he won't let those exactly follow the dreams. For obvious reasons.

There are, according to him, occasionally ones which just predict a normal day with nothing overly significant happening, hence the dream journal. Stating what a day's worth of customers are going to buy the moment they enter a store and getting that right should be easy enough to verify, but I have to wait on something like that. Having him call over a person by full name that had never met him before was kinda funny. Poor guy was very perturbed. Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to confirm it was impossible to know the guy's name beforehand by conventional means, so it doesn't count. Was neat, though.

By preventable death, I assume you mean something that would happen if other factors did not come into play--such as the psychics own warnings. To me, that doesn't prove anything, but I see how you are thinking that you have to find just the right predictions for your test and document them carefully. If almost all predictions are later prevented or else were terribly vague in the first place, I personally wouldn't put much stock in the psychics claimed powers.

 

[durangodawood]

I know an individual that claims to sometimes get dreams of the future. Now, unfortunately, most of the predictions are rather minor, so there's not much in the way of material to test, but there is one prediction in particular that is specific enough and on a large enough scale that I think could be testable. It goes like this:

In the year 2021, an epidemic hits the United States. The disease is airborne and so highly contagious that people commonly wear face masks. Primarily the elderly die, but people of all ages become incapacitated for long periods of time if they contract it, regardless as to their health. This results in food shortages and riots. Unfortunately, his "predictions" are restricted by realistic perspectives, so the only reason he "knows" any traits of the disease is because the dream involved him watching a partial news story on it. People commonly drive what he described as being "sealed vehicles", and it wasn't uncommon for people to be seen with oxygen tanks.

Specific enough to test, or just vague enough to be too plausible?

I'm having him write a dream journal too, in order to try and test any prediction that comes. Apparently, the prediction dreams are extremely vivid and invoke immense feelings of being watched.

I'm curious if anyone has input on how to test an "ability" the user cannot force to happen. Most predictions are of events which happen about a month later, with the 2021 prediction being the one farthest in the future.

I'd be impressed if someone I knew predicted the year of a USA pandemic severe enough for food shortages and riots.

Whats a "sealed" vehicle? Is this like people duct taping the seams on the body of their cars?

 

[PsychoSarah]

I'd be impressed if someone I knew predicted the year of a USA pandemic severe enough for food shortages and riots.

Whats a "sealed" vehicle? Is this like people duct taping the seams on the body of their cars?

His descriptive powers are not the greatest, but it sounded like the interior was lined with plastic like portions of ambulances sometimes are to prevent contamination

I'll try to get a better description out of him when I get the opportunity, though, and I'll try to avoid any leading questions as much as possible.

 

[DennisTate]

I know an individual that claims to sometimes get dreams of the future. Now, unfortunately, most of the predictions are rather minor, so there's not much in the way of material to test, but there is one prediction in particular that is specific enough and on a large enough scale that I think could be testable. It goes like this:

In the year 2021, an epidemic hits the United States. The disease is airborne and so highly contagious that people commonly wear face masks. Primarily the elderly die, but people of all ages become incapacitated for long periods of time if they contract it, regardless as to their health. This results in food shortages and riots. Unfortunately, his "predictions" are restricted by realistic perspectives, so the only reason he "knows" any traits of the disease is because the dream involved him watching a partial news story on it. People commonly drive what he described as being "sealed vehicles", and it wasn't uncommon for people to be seen with oxygen tanks.

Specific enough to test, or just vague enough to be too plausible?

I'm having him write a dream journal too, in order to try and test any prediction that comes. Apparently, the prediction dreams are extremely vivid and invoke immense feelings of being watched.

I'm curious if anyone has input on how to test an "ability" the user cannot force to happen. Most predictions are of events which happen about a month later, with the 2021 prediction being the one farthest in the future.

Interesting..... but
dreams and visions of the future that are given even in near death experience accounts..... .I suspect already happened in the most recent time line / example of applied Multiverse Theory.........
and can actually be avoided in our time line if we will change our ways..........

His prediction is no joke though......

I consider that post #56 on this page is an example of something similar from the 1975 near death experience of Dannion Brinkley.


Multiverse Theory and multiple Ezekiel 37 type events.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Interesting..... but
dreams and visions of the future that are given even in near death experience accounts..... .I suspect already happened in the most recent time line / example of applied Multiverse Theory.........
and can actually be avoided in our time line if we will change our ways..........

His prediction is no joke though......

I consider that post #56 on this page is an example of something similar from the 1975 near death experience of Dannion Brinkley.


Multiverse Theory and multiple Ezekiel 37 type events.

Based on his descriptions, all events he predicts only change if he does something different. His prediction ended in a car crash that resulted in death, not death from illness. Thus, the event his choices can change is not the illness spreading across the United States, but the car crash at the end. Ain't that a kick in the shins?

I didn't bother to mention the car crash part before because it seemed to me to be an insignificant part of the dream as far as predictions go.

 

[Nithavela]

I know an individual that claims to sometimes get dreams of the future. Now, unfortunately, most of the predictions are rather minor, so there's not much in the way of material to test, but there is one prediction in particular that is specific enough and on a large enough scale that I think could be testable. It goes like this:

In the year 2021, an epidemic hits the United States. The disease is airborne and so highly contagious that people commonly wear face masks. Primarily the elderly die, but people of all ages become incapacitated for long periods of time if they contract it, regardless as to their health. This results in food shortages and riots. Unfortunately, his "predictions" are restricted by realistic perspectives, so the only reason he "knows" any traits of the disease is because the dream involved him watching a partial news story on it. People commonly drive what he described as being "sealed vehicles", and it wasn't uncommon for people to be seen with oxygen tanks.

Specific enough to test, or just vague enough to be too plausible?

I'm having him write a dream journal too, in order to try and test any prediction that comes. Apparently, the prediction dreams are extremely vivid and invoke immense feelings of being watched.

I'm curious if anyone has input on how to test an "ability" the user cannot force to happen. Most predictions are of events which happen about a month later, with the 2021 prediction being the one farthest in the future.

Wait until December 31 2021. Such an epidemic is specific enough to be a pretty good indicator.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Specific enough to test, or just vague enough to be too plausible?

I'm having him write a dream journal too, in order to try and test any prediction that comes.

That seems specific enough, but yes... testing requires waiting. In the meantime, I think the most useful thing is to see how certain he is of the date 2021. We know how End-of-the-World predictors add a few months every time they're wrong.

If you are trying to do a formal test with his participation and involvement, get him to sign and date a statement with the particulars of the prediction. Obviously he should wholeheartedly agree with the details that end up in the list. Something like:

In order to be considered a true prediction, the following things must occur in the year 2021:

-an extremely contagious airborne disease strikes the US
-it incapacitates for a long time (weeks? months?) those who contract it, and kills many (hundreds? thousands?)
-food shortages and riots occur in the US, because of this disease
-'sealed vehicles' become common to avoid infection
-people travel with portable air to avoid infection