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29th April 2014, 04:28 AM | #201 |
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For years, I received evidential messages from my grandmother. At different churches, by different mediums, up and down the country. The mediums often told me personal things they could not have known. The sheer weight of evidence gradually convinced me the mediums were doing what they said they were doing, and speaking to the departed spirit of my grandmother.
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You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say there are no stars in the heavens during the day? O man because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God. Sri Ramakrishna Even in the valley of the shadow of death two and two do not make six. Leo Tolstoy |
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29th April 2014, 04:32 AM | #202 |
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You properly use purportedly here. How can you then conclude that this purported negative psychic energy is something you actually suffered?
Seriously, Scorpion, it's either real or it's not. If you feel strongly from one side then why not the other? If you know you suffer this sensitivity, why are you not sure about the mediums and their chaneling? Could you be open to the idea that you are suffering an illness of the mind* and its processing of the senses? That the entire spiritual edifice is mere fiction employed by you to alleviate some of your very real symptoms? If there is no way you could possibly ever make room for this other version, then you are stuck where you are. Maybe you are even denying yourself options for recovery, but if not, then I suppose your fiction serves you well enough. Posting on the forum is only going to keep facing you with reality. Maybe you want this. If so, stick around. (* I am not calling you crazy, that is a slur I would never perpetrate) |
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29th April 2014, 04:34 AM | #203 |
Troublesome Passenger
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Have you ever investigated cold reading?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading http://www.randi.org/library/coldreading/ http://www.gypsypsychicscams.com/exp...it-tricks-you/ Because you really ought to. |
29th April 2014, 04:49 AM | #204 |
Schrödinger's cat
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People fooled by the likes of John Edward and Sylvia Browne say exactly the same thing. Here's a thread started by someone who visited many psychics that she dismissed as fakes before convincing herself that Edward was the real deal:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=248380 Even assuming that the mediums you saw were (unlike Edward and Browne) as honest as you are, your perceptions and memory simply aren't reliable enough that any amount of anecdotal evidence should be sufficient to convince you. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. Confirmation bias, the Forer Effect and the malleable nature of memory remain the most likely explanation of your subjective experiences. |
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29th April 2014, 04:50 AM | #205 |
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Years of readings in series of churches by mediums who know you and know each other.
Do you see at least one possible mundane explanation for their readings? ETA: Plus what Pixel said. Take it to heart, those words are distilled wisdom. |
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"If I hadn't believed it with my own mind, I would never have seen it." - thanks sackett "If you stand on a piece of paper, you are indeed closer to the moon." - MRC_Hans "I was a believer. Until I saw it." - Magrat |
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29th April 2014, 06:41 AM | #206 |
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OK, Scorpion, let's try this.
The human brain is hard wired to look for patterns and to ascribe significance to those patterns; it's how we make sense of the world. As I sit here typing this my brain is being bombarded by information from all of my senses, but only a tiny fraction of that information is being brought to the attention of my conscious awareness. Whilst I pay attention to the screen and keyboard other sensory input (e.g. the sound of the occasional passing car in the lane outside) is being filtered out by my brain because it is not relevant to the task on which I am engaged, though if I deliberately direct my attention to it I will start hearing it again. My brain, your brain, everybody's brain is doing this all the time. If we paid conscious attention to all the information that floods into our brains all the time we would be completely overwhelmed. To see the relevance of this, let's take an example in which you probably don't have so much emotionally invested. Let's use astrology. I have known several people - perfectly intelligent, rational people - who were utterly convinced that there is something to astrology because they people they knew were so accurately described by their astrological signs. Yet when data is collected and analysed statistically (and many such studies have been done) no such correlation is ever found. People are, in fact, just as accurately described by their astrological signs as they would be expected to be by chance. No more and no less. So how is it that so many intelligent, rational people have managed to convince themselves of something which isn't true? Let's imagine that I'm wondering if there is any truth in astrology and I know two people of a particular sign, two of whose main characteristics are, say, intelligence and laziness. One of the two people is intelligent and hard working, the other is stupid and lazy. Every time I see the intelligent one being intelligent I'll think "Aha! Intelligent! Typical Aries!" (or whatever sign it is), and likewise when I see he the lazy one being lazy. But there's no corresponding Aha moment when I see them behaving differently to the way I expect, because that data doesn't fit the pattern I expect to see, and my brain therefore filters it out as noise. I only notice and remember data which confirms my expectation - that's the signal. That, in essence, is confirmation bias, and it's a bias which is built into the way in which our brains work. Can you see how it can inadvertently mislead us? There a former professional astrologer called Rudolph Smit who spent many years confidently producing horoscopes which all his clients assured him were amazingly accurate. One day he went through one such horoscope with a client who gave him the usual highly positive feedback, then finally asked him why he was calling her Mrs [X] when her name was actually [Y]. Only then did he realise to his horror that he'd picked up the wrong horoscope and the one he'd just discussed with her was for someone else entirely. He describes his painful journey back to reality here: http://www.astrology-and-science.com/a-pass2.htm Do you have the integrity of Rudolf Smit? Are you prepared to subject your cherished beliefs to critical analysis? Or are you going to continue to handwave away the reasons why your convictions are unsupportable by pretending that you are some kind of superhuman who is not subject to the fallible perceptions and cognitive biases of the rest of the human race? |
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29th April 2014, 07:08 AM | #207 |
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Nice post Pixel, I'm off to read that page.
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"If I hadn't believed it with my own mind, I would never have seen it." - thanks sackett "If you stand on a piece of paper, you are indeed closer to the moon." - MRC_Hans "I was a believer. Until I saw it." - Magrat |
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29th April 2014, 07:44 AM | #208 |
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29th April 2014, 08:27 AM | #209 |
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Hmm... it's odd that despite the certainty and clarity of these anecdotal effects and sensing of psychic energy, auras, chakras, and so-on, there's a marked reluctance to actually test or demonstrate them - yet someone like Derren Brown can demonstrate cold-reading, mind-reading, and a variety of pseudo-psychic phenomena in public and on camera at the drop of a hat.
When the faker is more wiling to demonstrate and more convincing than the 'real thing', eyebrows are rightly raised. |
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Simple probability tells us that we should expect coincidences, and simple psychology tells us that we'll remember the ones we notice... |
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29th April 2014, 09:27 AM | #210 |
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The whole point of it is that I have visited many different churches, with many different mediums that I had never seen before. But they still gave me evidential messages. Things they could not have known about me.
I actually sat in two developing circles myself, until deciding that psychic development was not for me as I suffered too much with my nerves. But I had a friend named Trevor Williams, who was my age, and I watched him develop psychic powers in front of my eyes. He is still a practicing medium today, and there was no way he was trying to fool me in the early days when I sat in his circle. I am not as gullible as you may suppose, as in my search for the truth I have visited a number of cults, but I rejected them all for one reason or another. That includes scientology, Japanese Buddhism, The divine light mission, and others. I decided they were all bunk. But my overall experience of spiritualism has been positive. |
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You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say there are no stars in the heavens during the day? O man because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God. Sri Ramakrishna Even in the valley of the shadow of death two and two do not make six. Leo Tolstoy |
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29th April 2014, 09:34 AM | #211 |
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You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say there are no stars in the heavens during the day? O man because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God. Sri Ramakrishna Even in the valley of the shadow of death two and two do not make six. Leo Tolstoy |
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29th April 2014, 09:36 AM | #212 |
Schrödinger's cat
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Once again: the clients of mediums you would probably agree are not genuine (not to mention Derren Brown) would say the same thing. I know you find anecdotal evidence convincing, I know why you find anecdotal evidence convincing, but I also know why you really should not.
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"If you trust in yourself ... and believe in your dreams ... and follow your star ... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things" - Terry Pratchett |
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29th April 2014, 09:40 AM | #213 |
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Scorpion, I appreciate your replies but they don't address most of what I said. I think I get the picture and that you are resolved to your views. Good luck, enjoy the forum. I'll lurk for a while.
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"If I hadn't believed it with my own mind, I would never have seen it." - thanks sackett "If you stand on a piece of paper, you are indeed closer to the moon." - MRC_Hans "I was a believer. Until I saw it." - Magrat |
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29th April 2014, 10:42 AM | #214 |
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The bolded part contradicts the phrases that follow. It's good that you recognized that several stops on your journey were bunk, but there's some seriously low-hanging fruit in that list. The big mistake was your false premise that there was some spiritual, New Age truth to discover in the first place. Convinced of that - based on misleading experiences filtered through a fallible human brain - you hunted around to find the particular flavor of spiritualism that felt right to you.
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29th April 2014, 10:42 AM | #215 |
I say nay!
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Memento Mori |
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29th April 2014, 10:53 AM | #216 |
a carbon based life-form
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29th April 2014, 11:03 AM | #217 |
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29th April 2014, 11:29 AM | #218 |
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I'm pretty much on board.
Some post here to have a genuine dialog. Others seem to just want to make their cases by assertion. Without evidence to support assertions there's no real exchange of ideas. |
29th April 2014, 03:31 PM | #219 |
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1. He'd never do that. 2. Okay but he's not currently doing it. 3. Okay but he's not currently technically doing it. 4. Okay but everyone does it. 5. He's doing it, we can't stop him, no point in complaining about it. 6. We all knew he was going to do it which... makes it okay somehow. 7. It's perfectly fine that's he's doing it. |
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29th April 2014, 04:12 PM | #220 |
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29th April 2014, 04:15 PM | #221 |
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29th April 2014, 04:38 PM | #222 |
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mistake
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29th April 2014, 06:17 PM | #223 |
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I'll certainly do my best.
I had occasion to listen to a tape a friend made of a session with an "intuitive". They had me listen to show how accurate it was. I found it quite the opposite. Just one example: The intuitive said something like, "I'm seeing two children?" Since my friend had only one, they said so, which elicited, "But I'm seeing two. Is there another child, maybe one you wish for or are trying to have?" Clearly turning a miss into a hit. There was nothing in the entire session I found remarkable in the least. But they remain convinced he was tuned in "intuitively" somehow. As an aside, this intuitive passed away recently, and his memorial service had over a hundred people attend. His alleged skills were accepted by quite a few people. |
29th April 2014, 09:25 PM | #224 |
Scholar
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You are a terrible judge about these experiences. I don't mean that personally: we all are terrible at judging past, personal or emotional experiences. Our confirmation bias can skew our perceptions. Our memories are really bad at ... well, remembering things. Our minds can build stories about our lives that differ wildly from what actually happened.
Go to a medium, preferably in a town you have never visited. Stay anonymous - don't give them your real name or any real nickname, especially if you are well known in their circle of business. Don't give them your phone number. Walk to the business - don't use your car. Pay with cash. Don't let the medium see the contents of your wallet. Record the entire reading, plus anything said before or after the reading. Use your own recorder. Even if you can legally record without their permission, ask anyways - it is only courteous. After all, you don't want to miss anything they say. If they are real, there is no reason they should refuse. Promise to keep the identify of the medium anonymous, and keep that promise. Post the transcript here, or in any skeptical forum. Or have a smart, skeptical friend look at it. Change or redact personal information if you want, but specify what you changed. If you really want to find the truth, don't cheat. There is a reason that medium isn't claiming the million dollar reward, and it has nothing to do with some higher authority preventing her from proving her own powers. Don't do this for me. Do it for yourself. |
29th April 2014, 09:26 PM | #225 |
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How can you claim you have a genuine desire to search for the truth, then invoke special pleading every time an easy way to put your beliefs to the test is presented to you? You basically respond by saying (paraphrased): "the spirits will not allow such scientific validation, this would invalidate their purpose..."
That is RUBBISH. If you truly believe that, your search is long over and it has ended in a bad way. There will be no search, your mind is made up. I haven't seen the other referenced thread, so after 6 pages of reading this thread, I haven't the slightest idea of what has brought you to this forum. You can't be convinced, and absent any evidence you will not convince. So, again, why are you here?? |
29th April 2014, 10:39 PM | #226 |
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30th April 2014, 02:45 AM | #227 |
No longer the 1
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Indeed. The self-deception runs deep.
This is actually good advice. I suggest you now actually apply it; for example "psychic" phenomena and post-mortem communication break several well established principles in physics. Principles which, unlike "psychic" phenomena and post-mortem communication, have been repeatedly demonstrated to be correct. Why? Why is using these supposed "psychic powers" different from using intelligence, application or any other ability? Wow, the arrogance and self-delusion just drips from your every post. It's interesting how similar your beliefs are to the xian loons who believe in the "prosperity gospel". |
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As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. |
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30th April 2014, 04:45 AM | #228 |
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A smiley spanking
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"If I hadn't believed it with my own mind, I would never have seen it." - thanks sackett "If you stand on a piece of paper, you are indeed closer to the moon." - MRC_Hans "I was a believer. Until I saw it." - Magrat |
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30th April 2014, 06:25 AM | #229 |
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Like I said in an earlier post, a medium I had never seen before told me I had a brother that died in the war as a baby, and she even told me his name.
I did not know this until I went home and asked my mother about it. What more quality of evidence does anyone need? |
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You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say there are no stars in the heavens during the day? O man because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God. Sri Ramakrishna Even in the valley of the shadow of death two and two do not make six. Leo Tolstoy |
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30th April 2014, 07:39 AM | #230 |
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In order to judge the quality it would be necessary to have the full transcript of what happened. Exactly what words were used? Memory can be fickle, and it is very likely that you turned a miss into a hit by asking your mother about it. And we do not know how many other misses and hits there were.
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30th April 2014, 07:45 AM | #231 |
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That's just one item that appears striking; how many others were anything like that memorable?
And yet even that one is open to many non-psychic interpretations. Here are a some possibilities: 1. The events were not as clear-cut as you remember them, for example, the details given by the reader might have been more vague, but led to your finding out about your brother, and you subsequently remembered them as being more specific - this kind of retrofitting is very common and quite unconscious - it's how memory works. 2. You have unconsciously merged two separate memories and created one that didn't happen, e.g. blending the memories of a surprising reading and hearing about your brother - this too is very common. 3. The reader was fishing, and would say something like this to many people. It sounds unlikely, but they'll often put in that kind of statement, knowing that misses will be quickly forgotten, but hits will make an impact. A lot of baby brothers died during the war! 4. Unknown to you, the reader did know your family. Others here can probably suggest more possibilities. You will obviously deny all these and other possibilities of being mistaken, because you believe you remember exactly what happened, but it's become clear from memory research that episodic memory is far less reliable and far more likely to be distorted than we ever thought - many of our cherished memories are distorted, embellished, or may not have happened at all. Remembering lots of detail and colour is no guide to reliability either - when memories are distorted or falsely recalled colour and detail is often inserted, making them more vivid than memories known to be authentic. A number of interesting experiments have shown how fragile episodic memory is - for example, about a third of the people who were exposed to a fake print advertisement that described a visit to Disneyland and how they met and shook hands with Bugs Bunny later said they remembered or knew the event happened to them. Many of them were adamant it had happened - one even recalled grabbing Bugs Bunny's carrot. But none of them could ever have met Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, he's not a Disney character, he's the Warner Bros. mascot. Gaining a false memory is that easy. Whether or not you're prepared to question your memory of this episode, the links posted earlier are well worth following to discover what's known about memory and its failings - as they say, forewarned is forearmed! |
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Simple probability tells us that we should expect coincidences, and simple psychology tells us that we'll remember the ones we notice... |
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30th April 2014, 08:40 AM | #232 |
a carbon based life-form
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30th April 2014, 08:47 AM | #233 |
a carbon based life-form
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30th April 2014, 09:22 AM | #235 |
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30th April 2014, 09:25 AM | #236 |
Illuminator
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I am quite clear that I was told my brothers name, and his very existence, and the circumstances of this death, which I did not know about. It is a shame that I did not tape record the message.
I went straight home and asked my mother, immediately after church. I am sure my memory of this is accurate. |
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You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say there are no stars in the heavens during the day? O man because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God. Sri Ramakrishna Even in the valley of the shadow of death two and two do not make six. Leo Tolstoy |
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30th April 2014, 09:30 AM | #237 |
Illuminator
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dlorde, with regard to point 4, the medium was from out of town, and I had never seen her before. My mother had never been to the church, and was not a spiritualist.
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You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say there are no stars in the heavens during the day? O man because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God. Sri Ramakrishna Even in the valley of the shadow of death two and two do not make six. Leo Tolstoy |
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30th April 2014, 09:31 AM | #238 |
Schrödinger's cat
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A former colleague once told me that his most successful chat up line when going round the bars looking for a one night stand was "you're a Pisces, aren't you?". Obviously he'd be wrong 11 times out of 12, in which case he'd move on and try again with another girl. When he did eventually happen across a girl of that sign she would almost always be extremely impressed, and he would then launch into a well practised routine which he assured me had an almost 100% success rate at getting her into bed.
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"If you trust in yourself ... and believe in your dreams ... and follow your star ... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things" - Terry Pratchett |
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30th April 2014, 09:46 AM | #239 |
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Yes, people are always sure that their memory is accurate, but it rarely is. This has been documented over and over again. I do not blame you: I have also remembered things that later turned out to be impossible.
And then on the other hand, your memory could be accurate, but it is just not very likely. A transcript would have been nice. |
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30th April 2014, 09:52 AM | #240 |
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