OMG.   My wife's brother sent her a movie over the internet about a Bulgarian woman named Vanga who can supposedly see into the future.   Now.....  my wife actually believes in this stuff.  Me, I am very skeptical, having met my fair share of assorted snake handlers up here in the woods of North Georgia.

Does this woman actually have any surreal powers?  What say you?

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Make each day count to improve yourself and those around you

To phrase it correctly "Did this woman have any surreal powers?"

It's the same story as with Nostradamus, depends on your interpretation.  Unlike Nostradamus though, she was very prolific, she was meeting people daily, so there are probablly millions of predictions she made.  It certainly appears that she had some clairvoyance in her, since she wasn't talking just about the future, but about the present as well, and very often was spot on the money.  Judge for yourself.

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Maybe it's just the natural skepticism in me.  I think all people who predict the future simply use the "shotgun" approach.   You throw enough stuff out there and some of it is bound to hit it's target.  Then, everyone says "see, she said this would happen".   But in reality, they are usually about 98% wrong and people only remember the 2% she got right.   Is this the case here?   I wonder what percentage of the things Nostradamus predicted haven't happened?    We only hear about the things he supposedly predicted.                                                                          

Natasha says even big political leaders of the time "aka Stalin.. etc..." went to see her and hear what she had to say about them.   This seems a bit .....  huge.  Is there really more to this woman than meets the eye?

Now... don't get me wrong.   I believe that God can give a person a gift.   Maybe she had this gift of seeing the future. After all, God gave John the gift of seeing what would happen in the future.  Others were given the gift of healing by God.   So... anything is possible.  

I'm just skeptical.   But I will watch your link.

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Make each day count to improve yourself and those around you

Eastern Europeans are superstitious in much bigger percentages than westerners are.  This helps -- faith is a very self-fulfilling animal.

I personally, am even more skeptical than you are abt this stuff.. I would only look at what they get wrong :)

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"The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money" -Margaret Thatcher

Okay, I read 412's link to wikipedia about Baba Vanga.    I am now even more skeptical.  This sounds alot like exaggerated folklore.   My wife and my two Ukrainian children are now swearing by her. 

Egor is correct about Eastern Europeans being more superstitious than westerners.   I've never seen this unexplainable willingness of my wife to believe what this movie says without questioning the validity of it.   Possible,  yes.   Proboble?    no.

I have a big question.....   did Vanga predict for free or was there a little "charge" involved?   The answer to this question will reveal a lot.

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Make each day count to improve yourself and those around you

I don;t think she was charging, but people did things for her.... so I don;t think it was for money...

Me don;t believe in this crap as it would violate known laws of physics ...... and if those are crap, we're all screwed :)

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- Независимость - это когда в 20-й раз наступаешь на одни и те же грабли, а русские уже ни при чем....

Her very first exhibition of clairvoyance came when a goat from her father's heard was stolen.  Being blind, she was able to describe the place where the goat was perfectly.

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Even if I saw something like that happen in front of me, I would not call it clairvoyance.  Maybe she knew something.  Maybe she knew the thief.  Maybe they conspired to do this together

But when exaggerated by a chain of illiterate bulgarian peasants (whose predisposition to superstition is high), then turned into an urban legend that spread through Eastern Europe, and is now written in 2009 on Russianatlanta.net, digesting stuff like this really does take simple faith.  Not anything deductive. Which is fine, it just won't convince anyone who doesn't already believe in this stuff.

Interestingly, this stuff always convinces the believers, even though believeng in clairvoyance does not in itself make the event you described true.  Just a sidenote about the mindset. I have always found this an interesting subject in sociology.  Explains why every culture had a religion worshiping completely randomly selected beings/objects, and being absolutely convinced that their object(s) are clairvoyant in the sense that they are responsible for certain aspects of fate. 

In my non-professional opinion, there is a psychological void in the frontal lobe of the human brain, that needs to believe is stuff like this.  It can be partially satisfied instead by factual information, knowledge and rationality, but not as cleanly.  Something is still missing. 

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"The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money" -Margaret Thatcher

She could diagnose people with very high degree of accuracy, that ability was tested, and not once.

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412, this is all word of mouth, unknown percentage is made up completely, or a variation on a redundant story, and when she was wrong (which i would assume is most of the time) its wasn't "newsworthy".

If there was some sort of official statistic kept by a reliable source, thats another thing, but this is never done in these cases.  I wonder why.

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"The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money" -Margaret Thatcher

Egor:

In my non-professional opinion, there is a psychological void in the frontal lobe of the human brain, that needs to believe is stuff like this. 

Looks more like a need for excitement, especially among barely educated peasans IMO. "OMG did you hear what Vanga said?!!! My bladder is boiling I can't hold it anymore!". Pretty much what we now call water cooler talks or urban legends. Just got one today from my wife abour ATM pin codes... Unfortunately it was kinda hard to google info to check by then.

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