How does she read minds?

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People like to believe all sorts of horse dookie, but that doesn't mean there's anything credible to it. How is this any different from believing in angels or shape-shifting alien lizardmen from the centre of the earth?

So to answer your question, no she said she's just a magician. She doesn't claim supernatural powers. But the whole "extraordinary claims needs extraordinary evidence" and "of course she's no extraordinary" doesn't explain how she did it.

true, but I keep an open mind (as you know )

OK so you don't think she did anything supernatural. As for how she did it, I can think of a couple of partial explanations. She wouldn't be a very good mentalist if people could explain in good detail how the trick was done.

I used to watch John Edward who claimed to be able to channel the dead. In order to "connect" her would keep asking questions. Basically very advanced deductive questioning which eventually locked in gender, age, background, person's relationship to the living, supposed messages to the living etc. I'm not saying he's making it up, but Edward asks so many questions it becomes plausible he's following some form of technique.

In stark contrast Shah merely asks a single question and somehow cracks a complete random answer. I have watched the debunking video of Derren Brown and (with all respect) don't buy his claims that all mentalists follow the same ideas he proposes. Infact I think he himself may have staged the Verve song for the clicks. Sure, in theory possible to debunk, but not very convincing.

That’s how it appears. Well, she didn’t ask just one question. At any rate, I only provided the Derren Brown video to demonstrate some of the techniques they employ. There are many possibilities, though. We don’t know what occurred before the show, so at best, it’s all just conjecture anyway. If it’s a topic that interests you in general, exploring other debunking videos may be worthwhile.

I'll have to assume Shah sets this up prior, otherwise it's impossible.
It's strange to me that people assume all psychic abilities are fake.

When our intelligence agencies
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R000100280009-3.pdf
And police
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-libra ... olice-work
regularly use psychics?

Mighty strange.

I gather that evidence for the notion that the police find psychics useful isn't really there when it's looked into. They've followed up on the "tips" that psychics have given them, but that seems to be mainly down to their duty to check out all tips given to them by the public about serious crime, if the tips were in any sense plausible and didn't cost billions to look into.

"No psychic detective has ever been praised or given official recognition by the FBI or US national news for solving a crime, preventing a crime, or finding a kidnap victim or corpse."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_detective

The conviction that all "psychic abilities" are fake may arise from the lack of hard evidence that any of them are genuine. Extraordinary claims, etc. As a scientist I can't entirely rule it out, but the degree of my suspicion that psychic abilities are genuine is on a par with my suspicion that there really is a god called Thor, i.e. negligible for all practical purposes.

The first link cyberdora posted is from an article that must’ve been written in 1978/79. It’s not dated that I could see or appropriately sourced, but it references a study that was to be released in the coming March. I found it, and it’s dated 1979. Here’s what the abstract of the study says:

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1980-07508-001

One more interesting thing about the first link CD posted is located at the very bottom of the article. It says that agencies should contact Stu Gluckman, Research and Analysis Station, OCCIB, Department of Justice. I decided to briefly research Gluckman and found this interesting tidbit in his obituary: “Stu worked for the CA Dept of Justice from 1975 until his retirement in 2001. Stu's desire to help others led him to start his own business, ‘Spirits Rising Massage Therapy’.” Perhaps not the most rational or unbiased individual in the world.

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituar ... an-7081115

The second article dates from 1993. It mentions the psychic Dorothy Allison. I found the following interesting although there are other articles about her:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Allison_(psychic)

I think well-educated people in positions of authority can make irrational choices sometimes, perhaps especially in the past when these things were just starting to be systematically studied, so citing the fact that governments employed psychics doesn’t necessarily lend them credibility. Over the past few decades, research has demonstrated their overall inefficacy. That’s not to say that coincidences, secret access to knowledge, intelligent guesses, etc. don’t happen sometimes, but in order to prove psychic ability, we’d need extraordinary evidence.

Yeah I take it psychics aren't part of the force, but they are consulted (here in Australia).
https://www.mamamia.com.au/debbie-malone-psychic/

Here's one that's hilarious
The only time the Swedish police has seeked the help of a psychic medium to find a killer. He failed to help them and it later turned out to be the police officer standing next to him that was the killer.


Dude in for a rude shock, needs to get his psychic radar a tuning

Maybe she's related to Reveen.

That could only work if he did nothing else with the screen except enter his passcode.

Yeah, that was only one idea although I do recall it playing some role in someone’s routine in the past, but I can’t remember whose. I think it’s much more likely that it was entirely made up or some camera filmed him unlocking it. It wouldn’t be a very difficult thing to observe in a conversation, either.

It's a clever act though - I suspect she's a very keen observer and can catch minute changes in expressions or tone of voice. Rather like how a dog can pick up on human emotions; no telepathy required.