![\"Business](\"http:\/\/files.onlyimage.com\/free\/api\/creation\/764\/sacred-feather-in-love-relationships-psychic-readings-advisor-at-252x252-1464622.jpg\" "\\"Sacred")
<\/a><\/p>\nIf there is one seasonal tradition on this blog, it is an annual visit to the New Year\u2019s predictions of a certain self-styled psychic, prophet, and man of spirit\u2014in fact, \u201cSpiritman\u201d Joseph Tittel<\/a>. As psychics go, he\u2019s nothing out of the ordinary; his predictions are typically vague, elastic, and generic; like all the others, he lights with glad cries on anything that could even remotely be construed as a hit, while ignoring the vastly more numerous misses. The 2015 predictions, the fourth set I\u2019ve looked at, are just as pathetic as the first three.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how his predictions work, according to him. A few weeks before the end of the year, he lets the universe know he\u2019s ready for action, and the universe obliges with intuitions, dreams, and headlines for the coming year. Yes, headlines. He jots all these down, podcasts them<\/a> on New Year\u2019s Day, and then puts the written version<\/a> up on his blog; in 2015, the written version of about a hundred predictions went up in late January. And, to be brutally honest, he\u2019s terrible at it. When podcasting, he rambles, witters, loses his place, repeats himself, fumbles for words, and occasionally rants. The written version is functionally illiterate. As for the content\u2014well, its chief virtue is that it so beautifully illustrates the fatuous vacuity of psychic forecasts.<\/p>\n It would be repetitive\u00a0 to go through the predictions in detail this time, as I have in previous years; I leave it to the masochistic to go through and spot the ones he will claim as hits. I will point out that the most dramatic development of 2015, the astonishing refugee crisis, did not rate a mention. For variety, however, here is an informal taxonomy of Spiritman\u2019s effusions, with comments:<\/p>\n Category One: generic , unsurprising predictions about the bleeding obvious: earthquakes in California, trouble in the Middle East, nasty weather in Texas. These are safe predictions, and also totally without value. One yearns for a psychic who could produce the sort of prophetic warning that might actually save lives, like in the movies.<\/p>\n Category Two: vague and elastic predictions about dramatic events: somewhere in the world, a bridge will fail, Category Three: \u201cpredictions\u201d that are actually projections of events or trends at the beginning of the year, at the time the predictions were made. These can be especially entertaining if they echo pundits who get it wrong: for example, those who predicted in December 2014 that the price of gas would shoot back up by the end of 2015; or the gossip mags who spent all year confidently expecting Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s second baby, unlike Beyonc\u00e9 herself. The other danger for the psychic is that such \u201cpredictions\u201d do not take unanticipated factors that might arise during the year into account\u2014exactly the sort of factors that psychics, if they actually had any real powers, should foresee.<\/p>\n Category Four: highly specific, novel, and falsifiable<\/em> predictions: a fire in the White House, a triple-asteroid strike, a worldwide broadcast by hackers cutting into regular programming, the death of two ex-presidents and up to three singing stars of Bob Dylan\u2019s calibre. When falsified, these are also conveniently forgotten.<\/p>\n Category Five: shots in the dark that are basically content-free.\u00a0 Example: \u201cSwitzerland kept coming to me but I GOT NO CLARITY ON THIS WHATSOEVER.\u201d Therefore, anything that happened in Switzerland over the year could potentially be claimed as a hit.<\/p>\n![\"345_GreenlandMeteor\"](\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/files\/2015\/12\/345_GreenlandMeteor-300x253.jpeg\")
<\/a>\u00a0a plane will crash, a flood, fire, or tsunami will hit the news.\u00a0 These are also safe predictions, because such events\u2014however dramatic\u2014are guaranteed to happen several times annually, somewhere in the world.\u00a0 Occasionally, the prediction will include details like month, general location, or death toll, which never match<\/em> the claimed fulfillment; those details, however, are conveniently forgotten.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/files.onlyimage.com\/free\/api\/creation\/972\/soul-healing-sessions-savonn-champelle-psychic-medium-spiritualsavonn-champelle-300x169-17158.jpg\" "\\"Soul")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/files.onlyimage.com\/free\/api\/creation\/799\/geometry-how-measure-area-free-images-ad-452x254-1354765.jpg\" "\\"Geometry")
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