JREF Swift Blog

It's Tough Being Psychic

There's an old joke that goes something like this:

A man walks into the police station and says "Officer, I'm pyschic, and I just sensed a murder. It was awful! If you go to 212 Main St. and look in the basement, I'm sure you'll find a man stabbed to death." So the officer brings the psychic along, and upon finding a body there, arrests him. "Why are you arresting me?" the psychic asks. And the officer replies, "If you were really psychic, you'd have known that's what I was going to do, and you wouldn't have come along. And if you're not psychic, you must have killed this guy to know what had happened."

Now imagine a real life scenario.

Swift reader Meg tipped me off to this story from KVOA in Tucson. It seems a home that doubled as a psychic business (on Oracle Road no less) burned badly a few nights ago. So here's the problem... if they were psychic, why didn't they know there was going to be a fire? And if they did know there was going to be a fire, why didn't they try to stop it or tell someone about it ahead of time?

Here's my theory: Maybe they're not psychic and they DID know about it ahead of time. I'll leave you to puzzle out my reasoning.