VisionFromFeeling - General discussion thread

Yeah, she made a very suggestive facebook post about Shermer coming to her room for a private reading and he fell to sleep on her pillow and he was so cute and she kept his beer bottle to remember him by. Noted mentalist, Mark Edward, called her out on the post and then she mentioned that two other people were there and nothing untoward happened. Although she did mention that she spotted some super secret medical condition that she says Shermer confirmed. She's either lying or she still is having trouble understanding what the word "secret" means.

Of course, she also claimed on facebook to have sensed a dead body that the police later found. Wonder where THAT's going to lead.

I don't know what skeptical group (if any) is setting up the gender identification test, but they'd better be very careful. This on excels at the half-truth.

Ward
 
Alison Smith. She works for JREF. So, TubbaBlubba, you are in Sweden. Is Ikonen known there? Is it the Swedish skeptics who are doing the new test? Fill us in. What's going on?

Ward
 
No, I've never heard of her before seeing this, and I've never heard of her here since. She's certainly not well-known here if she's ever claimed that.
 
By the way, the name "Ikonen" is not Swedish. It sounds Finnish (and she looks Finnish, too).
 
Yeah, her parents are Finnish, but I think she was born in and grew up in Sweden. I'm not trying to blame the Swedes. I'm just wondering if there's a Swedish skeptical organization that might be doing another test of her "powers."

Ward
 
I don't know. I'll look around a couple of Swedish skeptic websites.


EDIT: Nope, found nothing.
 
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wardenclyffe said:
Yeah, her parents are Finnish, but I think she was born in and grew up in Sweden. I'm not trying to blame the Swedes. I'm just wondering if there's a Swedish skeptical organization that might be doing another test of her "powers."
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I had the impression, though I don't follow her movements closely, that she was living in the US, and had been for some time.
 
According to the Forsyth Area Critical Thinkers (www.meetup.com/f-a-c-t) website, she missed their June meeting because she was in Sweden. Comparitively reliable sources have said that she flew to TAM8 from Sweden. She's been in school and it's summer vacation. I was under the impression that she went home in order to save/raise money. She also claimed recently that she did a reading on a close relative which also suggests she's in Sweden.

And there's this new gender test that's coming up with a mysterious skeptical group. I have surmised that she probably means the group is http://www.humanisterna.se/. They offer a 100,000 Kroner prize similar to the JREF's Million Dollar Challenge. If not them, there a skeptical group in Finland (http://www.skepsis.fi/haaste/) that offers a 10,000 Euro prize. That's just a ferryboat ride away.

She could be in the US, but she's running out of skeptical groups that would take her seriously and have the resources to mount the large scale test she's talking about. Plus she'd have to travel quite some distance (although that hasn't stopped her so far).

This is all pure speculation on my part. But since I was correct in my speculation that she'd be at TAM8, I thought I'd try again.

My biggest concern is that she's so relieved that the test will be out of the public eye. I just hope that whoever is conducting the test at least videotapes and documents everything for later publication. Otherwise it becomes a she said/they said situation. She'd LOVE that.

Again, just speculating.

Ward
 
wardenclyffe said:
And there's this new gender test that's coming up with a mysterious skeptical group.
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If we are speculating, I have an idea about the gender test. At TAM, she did a "reading" on a woman. It didn't go particularly well. Most notably, she claimed that the woman was menstruating when, in fact, the woman had no uterus. I can't help wondering if this is her spin on such a obvious failure.
 
bookitty said:
If we are speculating, I have an idea about the gender test. At TAM, she did a "reading" on a woman. It didn't go particularly well. Most notably, she claimed that the woman was menstruating when, in fact, the woman had no uterus. I can't help wondering if this is her spin on such a obvious failure.
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What an absolute clanger! I don't suppose anyone got video of that?
 
Sideroxylon said:
What an absolute clanger! I don't suppose anyone got video of that?
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I don't think so. It would be nice if someone had but not really necessary. The story is completely anecdotal (I heard it from the husband of the woman) no matter who uses it. If this really was the seed of the gender* test, it only means that Anita "really, really" changed her mind after the results were in. Again.

* Gender is the wrong word, btw. Technically it should be a reproductive organ test, unless she is trying to pick a transgendered person from a group.
 
So, uhm, any hypotheses on her? Is she mentally ill? Attention seeker? Confidence trickster?
 
TubbaBlubba said:
So, uhm, any hypotheses on her? Is she mentally ill? Attention seeker? Confidence trickster?
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Oh dear. The worm-can has been opened.

All of the above? She's a very intelligent young woman who seems convinced that she has experienced something. These "experiences" become greater with each retelling. She loves story-telling and has developed a very distinct vocabulary around her claims. This vocabulary shifts subtly with each failure. It's hard to tell if she initially believes what she says or if she talks herself into it as the story progresses. Personally, I think it is the latter but who really knows?

In person she comes across as shy and sweet, more-so if you happen to be male. This might not be an act, there is a part of her that desperately wants to be friends with everybody. When she meets people, she tries very hard to understand them. To say the right things to them. Sometimes it feels as if she is looking for some key to real and true human interaction.

Which doesn't mean that she's not manipulative or above exploiting even tenuous relationships. Although she's not terribly good at it. Her methods are awkward, even clumsy. What she lacks in stealth, she makes up for with tenacity.
 
bookitty said:
When she meets people, she tries very hard to understand them. To say the right things to them. Sometimes it feels as if she is looking for some key to real and true human interaction.
.
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Now, just out of curiosity, and not in an effort to slam Anita, but you mentioned something earlier that, during TAM, Anita tended to continually bring conversations back to her claims. Were you referring to when she was meeting people in general, or just at the time of her "demonstration"?
 
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