Baba Vanga - Why there is not more about her on this site!?

Yoorek

New Blood
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Joined
Apr 28, 2009
Messages
11
Hey,

This is my first post on this site. I am wondering why there is no article on this site, or a discussion on this forum about Baba Vanga. Instead what we have - Santa Claus. While indeed whether to lie to children about Santa Claus is an interesting issue, I'd say that no.1 organisation in the buisness of debunking paranormal claims should take note when a psychic preditcs a World War 3 to a specific date, and on that date there erupts a dangerous conflict. It's quite extraordinary, by any standard. Then we here about her other supposed successes, Chernobyl, Kursk, Stalin's death and so on. And of course, when you read her predictions what would happen during and after the World War 3, some of the stuff is really ludicrous. And only by looking in Wikipedia I saw one of her predictions not coming true.

But she is a serious (if that word can apply to a psychic) deal, and she is becoming new Nostradamus on the internet. And justly so. Even, despite the strongness of her claims, when some psychic gains popularity, the EDUCATIONAL foundation must do a throughout debunking. Because THAT'S how you gain new skeptics. But there is no skeptic answer to her.

And I would except JREF to do what it was ONCE doing, before it became MOSTLY light-weight, a thing that was so wonderful, and what made me a skeptic in the first place. A throughout debunking. The context. The analysis of couple of her predictions to see what is their mechanism. The record of failures. And shedding some light on this most recent prediction, whether there is some story behind it. That is what JREF has been created for, wasn't it? The analysis of paranormal phenomenon. I'm looking forward to it.

P.S. I'm not reading about paranormal or supernatural anymore, I moved on. But after I saw the Baba Vanga stuff spreading all over, I said it's time to check Randi's site after some time, because it really got me interested. And when I went here, I recalled "Ahhh, yes, it's the new randi.org, so instead of reply to a new popular phenomenon, I will find posts about Santa Clause, "Delusion to the point of saturation" and Clint Eastwood movie review. The first things that I saw here (except for "Science-based medicine,which is a good series). In the old "Swift" I would be guaranteed to find it. Anyway, what I really want is just a careful analysis of it. For benefit of all doubters and potential future skeptics, because cases like that after debunking really open eyes, and for benefit of the foundation, because analysis of her might prove very popular and invite new-comers. And not just preach to the choir, like it is doing for some time now.
 
Yoorek said:
Hey,

This is my first post on this site. I am wondering why there is no article on this site, or a discussion on this forum about Baba Vanga. Instead what we have - Santa Claus. While indeed whether to lie to children about Santa Claus is an interesting issue, I'd say that no.1 organisation in the buisness of debunking paranormal claims should take note when a psychic preditcs a World War 3 to a specific date, and on that date there erupts a dangerous conflict. It's quite extraordinary, by any standard. Then we here about her other supposed successes, Chernobyl, Kursk, Stalin's death and so on. And of course, when you read her predictions what would happen during and after the World War 3, some of the stuff is really ludicrous. And only by looking in Wikipedia I saw one of her predictions not coming true.

But she is a serious (if that word can apply to a psychic) deal, and she is becoming new Nostradamus on the internet. And justly so. Even, despite the strongness of her claims, when some psychic gains popularity, the EDUCATIONAL foundation must do a throughout debunking. Because THAT'S how you gain new skeptics. But there is no skeptic answer to her.

And I would except JREF to do what it was ONCE doing, before it became MOSTLY light-weight, a thing that was so wonderful, and what made me a skeptic in the first place. A throughout debunking. The context. The analysis of couple of her predictions to see what is their mechanism. The record of failures. And shedding some light on this most recent prediction, whether there is some story behind it. That is what JREF has been created for, wasn't it? The analysis of paranormal phenomenon. I'm looking forward to it.

P.S. I'm not reading about paranormal or supernatural anymore, I moved on. But after I saw the Baba Vanga stuff spreading all over, I said it's time to check Randi's site after some time, because it really got me interested. And when I went here, I recalled "Ahhh, yes, it's the new randi.org, so instead of reply to a new popular phenomenon, I will find posts about Santa Clause, "Delusion to the point of saturation" and Clint Eastwood movie review. The first things that I saw here (except for "Science-based medicine,which is a good series). In the old "Swift" I would be guaranteed to find it. Anyway, what I really want is just a careful analysis of it. For benefit of all doubters and potential future skeptics, because cases like that after debunking really open eyes, and for benefit of the foundation, because analysis of her might prove very popular and invite new-comers. And not just preach to the choir, like it is doing for some time now.
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Two predictions:

September 11
In 1989 she predicted the World Trade Center disaster in the following statement:

"Horror, horror! The American brethren will fall after being attacked by the steel birds. The wolves will be howling in a bush, and innocent blood will be gushing."

"Brethren" is believed to refer to the "Twin" Towers or the "Brothers". "Steel Birds" are obviously the jets. The part about the bush is believed to refer to President Bush.

[Submarine similar to the Kursk which sunk as foretold by Baba Vanga]
Russian Disaster
In 1980, she even predicted:

"At the turn of the century, in August of 1999 or 2000, Kursk will be covered with water, and the whole world will be weeping over it."

Kursk was the name of a large city in Russia, also the site of the largest tank battle of WWII. Nobody could understand how the city would be covered by water but the meaning was clear on August 12, 2000, when the Russian submarine, Kursk, named after the city, suffered an explosion and left the survivors for dead at the bottom of the ocean. I remember this news story well. The Russian government did nothing to try and rescue the survivors while the British and Norwegian rescue attempts failed. Baba Vanga was even able to predict the month and a 50% chance of the year this would happen.
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http://www.theastralworld.com/prophecies/babavanga.php


Nothing like a little creative retrointerpetation to help the prophesies come true.
 
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Yoorek said:
I am wondering why there is no article on this site, or a discussion on this forum about Baba Vanga.
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I suspect it's because most people have never heard of her. I certainly hadn't until I read your OP. I don't go looking for this sort of stuff, and I doubt most regular posters here do either.

I just read her wiki entry. Nothing special. The usual mixture of mostly failed prophecies and a few lucky guesses.
 
Well,you see, if all of her cases are like Kursk and 9/11, especially Kursk, then with connection with that World War 3 thing, if someone wouldn't be "skeptically biased", he would say that she had something there. If all of her prophecies were like that. The question is, how about her non-famous, failed prophecies. Investigating those would put those "succeses" in the context. Maybe, like many other prophets, she said a lot of things that didn't happen, and those would really appear like lucky guesses. But only then.

And I don't how you could see many failures in Wikipedia. There was only one, on Indonesia. And maybe she didn't reach America, but in Europe she is really popular after this Korean incident. And now the net world wide is full of her.

And saying that WW3 will begin AT EXACT DATE of a very dangerous confilict, it's very interesting coincidence, wouldn't you say?

Just playing devil's advocate, and asking things from a perspective of a random young person without crystallized worldview (neither skeptic or a hard-core believer), who got interested in the case.
 
The usual problem with "prophets" is establishing that the prediction was documented before the (supposedly related) event.

What witnessed evidence exists which documents her "successful" predictions?
 
Also, as was the case with Nostradamus, the "predictions" are so vague that they can be contorted into accuracy after the fact.
 
Yoorek said:
And I don't how you could see many failures in Wikipedia. There was only one, on Indonesia.
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Only one in the "Future" predictions section, which starts in 2008. There's nothing to suggest she made any accurate predictions for dates earlier than this, and the only one mentioned - supposed to occur in 2005 - also failed to happen.

And maybe she didn't reach America, but in Europe she is really popular after this Korean incident.
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I'm in Europe. Like I said, I'd never heard of her.

And now the net world wide is full of her.
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The bits I visit aren't.

And saying that WW3 will begin AT EXACT DATE of a very dangerous confilict, it's very interesting coincidence, wouldn't you say?
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No. If WW3 had started this month, that would have been an interesting coincidence. Yet another skirmish on the N/S Korean boundary? Not so much.
 
You're all right, though it doesn't exhaust the subject in the least, yes, you're all right. I just don't understand the reluctance about giving it a closer look. Maybe you didn't reach the information about her - I did. In my part of europe she is a hit. In paranormal part of the internet she is also popular after Nort Korean incident. But I don't understand the reluctance to giving her a full-blown expose. Let's look what JREF's site has been up to lately (excluding "Science-based medicine" which is really good and some internal JREF information, reports from DragonCon etc.) -Santa Clause, James Randi making fun of an mentally ill person, Clint Eastwood movie review, another tribute on Carl Sagan, James Randi's thoughts on getting old, Chiniese literacy report, Harry Houdini story, Pareidolia and 2012 (ok, those are kinda fun), later Bigfoot (really?), Arthur C. Clarke (AGAIN?) and Geller (AGAIN!?)....What I'm saying is that Baba Vanga is much more interesting that all that, and popular, if only in my part of europe and in paranormal part of the internet, after North Korean thing.
 
The forum and the foundation are not the same thing - though many seem to assume they are. The foundation is the part you need to contact as you seem so inclined. The forum is where we discuss things of interest, problems, skepticism generally and specifically, philosophy, current events, film and television,sports, the failings and/or worship of foods, etc. Your topic is a possible discussion area but no more or less than that. If enough people are interested, it will happen - but, again, the forum is on the JREF site but is not the JREF.
 
Welcome to the forum. :)

Yoorek said:
You're all right, though it doesn't exhaust the subject in the least, yes, you're all right. I just don't understand the reluctance about giving it a closer look.
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Who is reluctant? The members here--the JREF?

Maybe you didn't reach the information about her - I did. In my part of europe she is a hit. In paranormal part of the internet she is also popular after Nort Korean incident. But I don't understand the reluctance to giving her a full-blown expose. Let's look what JREF's site has been up to lately (excluding "Science-based medicine" which is really good and some internal JREF information, reports from DragonCon etc.) -Santa Clause, James Randi making fun of an mentally ill person, Clint Eastwood movie review, another tribute on Carl Sagan, James Randi's thoughts on getting old, Chiniese literacy report, Harry Houdini story, Pareidolia and 2012 (ok, those are kinda fun), later Bigfoot (really?), Arthur C. Clarke (AGAIN?) and Geller (AGAIN!?)....What I'm saying is that Baba Vanga is much more interesting that all that, and popular, if only in my part of europe and in paranormal part of the internet, after North Korean thing.
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I'm in the US, and never heard of Baba Vanga before. But my interest in these matters is limited.

I can only speak for myself, of course. The forum is driven by the membership--members start threads, and if others are interested in the topic, a long thread and discussion will ensue.

As to Mr. Randi and the JREF, as a member, I honestly have no idea how they choose what to write about or speak out about.

I agree with Kuko 4000, your concerns might be best addressed to Randi and Grothe directly.

Again, welcome to the forum.
 
Thank youfor all the welcomes. My "complaints", so to speak, were not adressed to the members of the forum, but to JREF. I contacted D.J. Groethe. I thought that Baba Vanga was bigger news, my bad. She's still significant in some parts of the world, and in paranormal forums. I decided to ignore Baba Vanga, but when I started typing into google a name of a restaurant that begins with "bab.." and the first thing that popped up was Baba Vanga and World War 3 I thought it's bigger news. Even if you didn't hear about Baba Vanga before...Isn't the subject of her, even from what I wrote so far, more interesting that Arthur C. Clarke, Geller, Santa Claus, some deluded idiot that wrote to randi etc.?

Again, I was just adressing the JREF in general here, and not members of the forum. Thanks for the answers.
 
Well, now we have a Baba Vanga thread here, as well. :)

I'll just head out and buy a gun and some canned food, since WW3 has started and all. :p
 
Ririon said:
Well, now we have a Baba Vanga thread here, as well. :)

I'll just head out and buy a gun and some canned food, since WW3 has started and all. :p
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I thought we were supposed to buy string?
 
Yoorek said:
but in Europe she is really popular after this Korean incident.
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shes not popular in Europe at all, if I wasn't a frikkin genius I would never have heard of her either
:p
and what I did hear of her was that she was another rustic mystic who said some bollocks (like they all do) and then died before any of it came true
I'm really looking forwards to achieving immortality in 4599CE, thats gonna be cool
;)
Emet said:
And duct tape.
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Don't believe the movies, duct tape doesn't keep people quiet unless you force the panties into the mouth first
:degrin:
 
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Ririon said:
Well, now we have a Baba Vanga thread here, as well. :)

I'll just head out and buy a gun and some canned food, since WW3 has started and all. :p
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And how stupid are we all going to look if that exchange the other day between North and South Korea evolves into a World War.

But she deserves some credit - who's ever been brave enough to predict any sort of a future for Bulgaria :eek:
 
Yoorek said:
Thank youfor all the welcomes. My "complaints", so to speak, were not adressed to the members of the forum, but to JREF. I contacted D.J. Groethe. I thought that Baba Vanga was bigger news, my bad. She's still significant in some parts of the world, and in paranormal forums. I decided to ignore Baba Vanga, but when I started typing into google a name of a restaurant that begins with "bab.." and the first thing that popped up was Baba Vanga and World War 3 I thought it's bigger news. Even if you didn't hear about Baba Vanga before...Isn't the subject of her, even from what I wrote so far, more interesting that Arthur C. Clarke, Geller, Santa Claus, some deluded idiot that wrote to randi etc.?

Again, I was just adressing the JREF in general here, and not members of the forum. Thanks for the answers.
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Not interesting at all.Just another fraud,like all so-called psychics.
 
I'd never heard of her prior to this thread, and typing bab into google doesn't bring baba vanga up as any of the suggestions, though typing baba does bring it up as the fifth suggestion.

The top result in google (limiting the results to UK pages) just now is investbulgaria.com, a puff piece as part of a push for investing in Bulgaria. Maybe she's not as famous as you seem to think?

There is always conflict somewhere in the world, it's really not such a stretch to predict unrest somewhere in the world for any random month. If WWIII is declared, and is deemed to have begun this month, then that would on the face of it be a successful prediction. So far, not so much.
 
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Agatha said:
The top result in google (limiting the results to UK pages) just now is investbulgaria.com, a puff piece as part of a push for investing in Bulgaria. Maybe she's not as famous as you seem to think?
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Google now has a learning capacity, it will reorder the results in line with whats been typed in before
;)
 
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I typed baba vanga failed predictions into google, and the top two results were both links to the hotbed of insanity and paranoia that is the David Icke forum.

I don't think I'll go to bed worried about WWIII starting by next Tuesday. ;)
 
Yoorek. For a self proclaimed sceptic you seem to be investing a lot of faith in Baba.
Why would this prompt you to join the JREF Forum and proclaim her abilites so loudly?

What is your real interest in this?
 
Marduk said:
I got
....
then the weirdest website of all
www.forums.randi.org
:p
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Case closed, wouldn't you say? :D

What I'd quite like to see is a list of her predictions for the past - I see an 80% success rate bandied about on forums and webpages, and the two predictions retrofitted to the Kursk submarine tragedy and 9/11 - but every site I've looked at so far seems strangely quiet on other predictions that she made about events prior to 2010.
 
Yoorek said:
Let's look what JREF's site has been up to lately (excluding "Science-based medicine" which is really good and some internal JREF information, reports from DragonCon etc.) -Santa Clause, James Randi making fun of an mentally ill person, Clint Eastwood movie review, another tribute on Carl Sagan, James Randi's thoughts on getting old, Chiniese literacy report, Harry Houdini story, Pareidolia and 2012 (ok, those are kinda fun), later Bigfoot (really?), Arthur C. Clarke (AGAIN?) and Geller (AGAIN!?)....
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... looking at a peer reviewed study claiming to have experimental evidence of pre-cognition and asking for the raw data in order to check the validity of the statistical methodology... you forget that one.
What I'm saying is that Baba Vanga is much more interesting that all that, and popular, if only in my part of europe and in paranormal part of the internet, after North Korean thing.
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I don't think the fact that three predictions from someone that can be interpreted as having similarity to events that happened is more interesting than the claim I mentioned above.
 
Followers of psychic twist "predictions" to fit events after the fact. What exactly is worth discussing here?
 
Yoorek said:
Well,you see, if all of her cases are like Kursk and 9/11, especially Kursk, then with connection with that World War 3 thing, if someone wouldn't be "skeptically biased", he would say that she had something there.
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Firstly this paragraph doesn't make much sense.
Secondly she made a couple of predictions which her supporters, by means of careful quote mining and post-hoc interpretation, claim came true. Not a great success rate' I'm assuming that if she had any more such "successes" you'd have mentioned them.

Yoorek said:
If all of her prophecies were like that. The question is, how about her non-famous, failed prophecies.
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Failed prophecies tend to be glossed over, explained away or just ignored by believers.

Yoorek said:
Investigating those would put those "succeses" in the context. Maybe, like many other prophets, she said a lot of things that didn't happen, and those would really appear like lucky guesses. But only then.

And I don't how you could see many failures in Wikipedia. There was only one, on Indonesia.
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I'm not sure what you're attempting to say. Are you claiming that this person only has one failure?

Yoorek said:
..... but in Europe she is really popular after this Korean incident.
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No she isn't. Neither I nor anyone else in Europe that I have asked (including a number of journalists) have ever heard of her.

Yoorek said:
And now the net world wide is full of her.
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A few of her supporters are attempting to stir up interest? And being laughed at.:p The only news reports are generic spacefiller stuff in small eastern European journals.
So what?

Yoorek said:
And saying that WW3 will begin AT EXACT DATE of a very dangerous confilict, it's very interesting coincidence, wouldn't you say?
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Not really. Sabre ratting from North Korea is commonplace; the current power shifts around the succession make such incidents more likely.
Also you have yet to prove that she did make any such prediction.

Yoorek said:
Just playing devil's advocate, and asking things from a perspective of a random young person without crystallized worldview (neither skeptic or a hard-core believer), who got interested in the case.
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Right......................:D
 
catsmate1 said:
I got ATS, nostradamus2012.com, godlikeproductions, lots of youtube, rightpundits.com and similar reliable sources.............:D
Interesting a number of people seem to be denying that she ever made any such prophecies.
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You got a membership at ATS ?
:confused:
 
Ok, I've been pwned. I guess, being in Eastern Europe, I over-estimated her impact. That coupled with some of my frustration that JREF became more and more leigtweight, in it's new form. Yes, there are exceptions, like this article about this peer-review study that I missed. And I still think that examinations of such cases are beneficial. Even if we had that before, James Randi tends to go over the same subjects over and over and over again, some of them really light-weight and not taken seriously by anyone I know like Geller and Popoff and so on (though I know it's regional). So why not the examinations of how prophecies work, examples of "careful quote mining and post-hoc interpretation" that are going on such cases. I can assure you that globally, much more people take prophecies like that seriosly, than Geller, Popoff, Sylvia Browne and so on. And I think article about unkown Baba Vanga would be more fitting on this site than than Clint Eastwood movie review. But, ok, I admit I've been pwned.
 
Yoorek said:
And I think article about unkown Baba Vanga would be more fitting on this site than than Clint Eastwood movie review. But, ok, I admit I've been pwned.
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Sorry why would information about an unknown charlatan be more interesting than a movie probably a lot more people have heard of and are interested in?
 
Because mechanisms of so called "prophecies" are much more important. Because what is important is teaching people how to think about such cases. Because Baba Vanga or some other prophet who happens to be famous, the critical analysis of a specific case, dissection of how an alleged great success can be dissolved into bunch of careful quote mining,post-hoc interpretation, outright lies, and luck is what opens eyes, and makes new skeptics. This is my opinion.
 
So called 'Prophecies' don't have a mechanism other than 'making some stuff up'
 
Pixel42 said:
No. If WW3 had started this month, that would have been an interesting coincidence. Yet another skirmish on the N/S Korean boundary? Not so much.
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A quick Google News search, 10 minutes ago:


China To Koreas, US: Instead Of World War III, Let's Talk
Forbes (blog) - Gady Epstein - ‎11 hours ago‎
Talks are the logical next step after Kim Jong-il provokes the world; talks are, in fact, what almost every Korea analyst says Kim is seeking whenever he ...


N Korea Bombs S Korea- Start of WWIII?
Examiner.com - Lee Myung-buk - ‎Nov 24, 2010‎
... and quotes from other news sources that indicate that South Korea will undoubtedly retaliate, testing alliances and possibly starting World War III. ...


Obama on Korea: Is This the Right Way to Deal With an Unstable Nuclear Power?
ABC News (blog) - ‎Nov 24, 2010‎
This has all of the potential for World War III. This is a bad, bad idea. America needs to STAY OUT OF THIS. North Korea is a deadly threat to Asia and ...


Yeonpyeong Island 'a good choice for World War III': report
The Korea Herald - ‎15 hours ago‎
The British paper Telegraph on Sunday reported on the aftermath of the North Korean bombardment of the island and the rising tension between the two Koreas ...


I bet South Korea wish they had F-35's right now
F-16.net - ‎Nov 23, 2010‎
I guess its time to prepare for WWIII and time for the F-22s and F-35s to go help out an ally. Japan isn't too far away with F-15Js though but agin, ...
 
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