SCEPCOP Forum

Forer effect is more about general statements that can apply to anyone. What you're thinking of is confirmation bias - where we remember the hits and forget the misses.

Humans are very good at spotting patterns - but our accuracy is limited and so we will often overestimate or underestimate occurrences - we naturally see patterns, often when there is none.

As you rightly point out, it's very difficult to test in a real world setting - mainly because there is no practical way to ensure that you've noted each and every occurrence that should be included.

You can set up tests for it, but obviously those won't perfectly mirror the way these things happen in real life.

Interestingly, the world of online poker actually allows one to test this in real time. Many poker sites allow one to save all the hands played to their harddrive. Software can then run statistical tests on it. As one might imagine, poker is fertile ground for pattern spotting where people believe they see a certain pattern (ie: too many As coming out) - then when they go over the stats they will often see that their estimate was way off.

Folks I haven't had a chance to catch up with your posts. I am late for my own vacation. The would like to leave you with a thought. Here is the wiki on psychic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic

IMO and training background the only valid definitions on this page are as follows:

A psychic (/ˈsaɪkɪk/; from the Greek ψυχικός psychikos—"of the mind, mental") is a person who claims to have an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception (ESP), or who is said by others to have such abilities.

This alludes to mental processes and the distinction between inner and physical senses. There is a mirror and one lives in the imagination and the other through the physicality of the body. All sense sources feed what we call the mind.

The word psychic is derived from the Greek word psychikos ("of the mind" or "mental") and refers in part to the human mind or psyche (ex. "psychic turmoil"). The Greek word also means "soul".

Soul may come to mean the nature of stimuli which arise and influence the mind and our own being. Some other words that are used to describe the nature of a spiritual being: essence, character, various psychic energies (rage, apathy, concern, fear, etc, etc, etc). One can close your eyes in a room with people who come and go and in a proper sensitized reading space notice the change of energy in the room based on the occupants. Yup. We will get to that in a bit. For now I would like to suggest that psychic represents a wide palette of mental phenomenon including dreams, schizophrenia, spirit guides, etc. As this thread progresses I will show the mental phenomenon associated with the mystic and spiritual language.

Have a nice week. I am off for nature, water, trees, and one truly remarkable UFO conference which has produced more direct evidence of cosmic phenomenon than any lecture, video, or book ever could. Let's see what happens this year. Eisenhower's great granddaughter is one of the speakers this year. Always a wide range of material to parse.

Cheers,
TJ

Godspeed. We will look forward to your input when you return.

Are you going to the one in North Carolina? If so, one of the speakers is Dr. Richard Haines who worked for NASA and the Apollo program. How 'bout asking him his thoughts on the moon hoax theories?!?
Also, there appears to be a discussion on the Belgium Triangle UFOs. I've seen them. Twice. So I would be interested to hear the thoughts on that as well.

You know anyone? I'm certainly game!

Sorry Ninja - didn't realise you were speaking of yourself! What do you have in mind as a protocol?