A clairvoyant is someone who attributes a supernatural gift to discover the unknown and anticipate the future.
A clairvoyant is an individual who has a supernatural ability to anticipate the future or discover what is not known. Since these faculties are impossible to verify through the scientific method, it can be said that the clairvoyant attributes them to himself without being able to reliably demonstrate the validity of his claim.
For example: “When Mara was lost, I was so desperate that I hired a psychic to ask him to help me find her” , “The commissioner confessed to me that they often work with psychics” , “A year ago I consulted a psychic who told me that all this would happen…”
The gift of a seer
The clairvoyant, therefore, claims to have the gift of clairvoyance (being able to anticipate the future or perceive hidden things). It is important to highlight that clairvoyance involves an extrasensory ability: it is not about guessing the future with the support of a machine or technology . A meteorologist who anticipates that it will rain next week is not a clairvoyant, but is a scientist who can make said assertion according to his theoretical knowledge and the analysis of information provided by satellites, computers, etc.
Many psychics claim that they “see” the future through physical signs that they observe in a crystal ball , in a deck of cards, or in coffee grounds , to name a few possibilities. In these cases, they usually claim the ability to decode a supernatural or mystical message that people normally do not detect.
Throughout history, many peoples trusted in the supposed power of seers.
The importance of trust
The supposed power of the psychic sometimes depends on how his statements are interpreted. A psychic can tell a man that, in the coming months, he will receive “great news.” The most likely thing is that, at some point, something positive will happen to the subject: in this way, if he tends to believe in the psychic, he will think that he really anticipated it.
This dynamic supported by trust is the key to the success of psychics. Generally, those who come to their consultations are people in a state of despair or deep anguish, either because they cannot find a way out of their personal problems (a group in which we can include illnesses and a terrible economic situation) or because of suffering. What causes them to have lost a loved one.
Different positions regarding the actions of psychics
There are many detractors of clairvoyance, and they tend to base themselves on the aforementioned lack of scientific evidence in this discipline. Just as those who believe that religion is nothing more than a resource to not feel so alone in the midst of moments of sadness, some assure that psychics do nothing other than profit from the suffering and despair of the weakest .
On the other hand, there is a more neutral fringe, which does not attack psychics by calling them liars, but which does not support their legitimacy either, since it does not have enough evidence to believe in them. This is a group of people who accept the possibility that things exist beyond their own understanding or knowledge , and therefore do not categorically reject them.
The “Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge”
One of the strongest rationales used by detractors is that no one in recent history has successfully undergone a scientific test to verify the existence of their powers. From this point of view, if psychics really existed, they should have no problem being examined so that science could validate once and for all the legitimacy of their extrasensory abilities and the entire world would begin to believe in them.
The "Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge" , conducted by the James Randi Educational Foundation, from 1964 to 2015 invited any individual with supernatural powers to demonstrate them in front of a jury and although more than a thousand people showed up, none of them passed the tests.