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Psychics Appeal System

Don't get ripped off, get even.
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(+6, -2)
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When a psychic gives you advice it should be subject to the same expectations as advice from any other professional.

Accountants and lawyers have a fiduciary duty to their clients. When they deliver advice which later proves to be deliberately wrong, resulting in deleterious consequences they are often sued for negligence.

Your tarot reader intimates to you your wife is cheating on you; you start an argument with her that leads to her proving she's not, but straining your relationship to breaking point. Off to court.

Romella The Gypsy peers into your empty teacup, gasps in horror and tells you to avoid tall, dark men today. You realise she means your boss so you call in sick. The raise you were going to get is cancelled because, though you weren't to know it, you were borderline based upon your attendance record. Economic Loss... she should have known that, too.

UnaBubba, Jun 22 2002

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       thinking about how you are going to *prove* all this, considering that there are just the two of you in a little booth and nothing is written down or recorded - led me to wondering if you had any comeback on the priest who hears your confession and gets the penance wrong - just a thought.
po, Jun 22 2002
  

       The only advice I've ever gotten from a psychic is to come into his/her lair to hear how lucky I am. Never went any further than that. If everyone stops going, we can rid the streets of these charlatans. (It's ok to rant in an annotation, isn't it?)
tharsaile, Jun 22 2002
  

       garb it with the obscure is my advice.
po, Jun 22 2002
  

       Just for such legal purposes, they all now include fine print in their advertisements stating that they provide an entertainment service only and that no advice is actually given. I imagine that there would suddenly be far fewer "psychics", "mystics", "seers", and "readers" in business if they were held accountable for any damages that resulted from their professional opinions. How would certification and licensing be handled? Would one take some sort of test?
BigBrother, Jun 22 2002
  

       Maybe you should take out a class action suit against the daily newspapers when their horoscopes don't work out right.
DrCurry, Jun 22 2002
  

       Just out of curiosity, why should we rid the streets of them? They serve a rather useful function in terms of idiot detection. A fool and his money... Besides, the greater they rip people off, the wiser those people might become the next time around.
RayfordSteele, Jun 22 2002
  

       This could really injure a flourishing industry. Without the advertising revenues from psychics, how would fine publications like the Enquirer (or other tabloid in your respective land of origin) ever stay afloat?
polartomato, Jun 22 2002
  

       RS: Confucius say, when a man with money meets a man with experience, the man with experience ends up with the money and the man with the money ends up with experience.
DrCurry, Jun 22 2002
  

       one of them gets punched.
sappho, Jun 23 2002
  

       a beautiful restatement of the second law, there DrCurry..
yama2, Jun 23 2002
  

       {vaguely related comment} UB, you will love "Minority Report."
waugsqueke, Jun 24 2002
  

       I saw it on Friday afternoon. Not a bad film, in all. It suffers a little inthe early stages, where the original story was being followed, to a modernised screenplay.   

       The premise is interesting. I had read an abridged version of Philip Kindred Dick's novel, several years ago.   

       He did some good stuff, from inside the purple haze. Notably "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?", which went on to become "Blade Runner"; And of course, "Total Recall", born of "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale".   

       It never occurred to me that this idea is very similar to the movie. I thought originally of posting this idea on Wednesday, and calling it Fortune Sellers. Obviously there is a destination to our actions ;^)
UnaBubba, Jun 24 2002
  

       Great little critters, weren't they? I loved 'em.
UnaBubba, Jun 24 2002
  
      
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