<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>gspencley</author><text>&amp;gt; Can you really be ripped off by psychics? It&amp;#x27;s not like you can sue a church because your prayers haven&amp;#x27;t been answered, so I&amp;#x27;m not sure of religion or spiritualism can be a &amp;quot;rip-off&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Well, I would suggest that both are a &amp;quot;rip off&amp;quot; in the sense that they offer claims without evidence.&lt;p&gt;But a distinction that I see between religious services and psychics is that religious services are not offering financial transactions in direct exchange for services. They ask for donations, and they may make claims such as &amp;quot;God answers all prayers&amp;quot;, but you are typically not offering a religious leader money in exchange for some sort of quid pro quo like having a prayer answered.&lt;p&gt;A lot of &amp;quot;psychics&amp;quot; offer their &amp;quot;services&amp;quot; as &amp;quot;entertainment&amp;quot; in order to avoid claims of fraud. But the fact remains that a lot of people still believe.&lt;p&gt;My wife and I are performing magicians, and we make it clear that what we do are parlour tricks. And yet I&amp;#x27;ve performed &amp;quot;mind reading&amp;quot; tricks for people in the past who were absolutely convinced that what I did was not a trick even though I presented everything as &amp;quot;magic tricks.&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s fucking insane and deeply uncomfortable. I totally get why Penn &amp;amp; Teller stay away from mentalism entirely. And I think this is your point: if someone is determined to accept a faith based belief system, can they really be &amp;quot;ripped off&amp;quot; when reality doesn&amp;#x27;t deliver their fantasy.&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, it depends what you offering and the audience &amp;#x2F; demographic that you are targeting. Magic tricks for entertainment presented as tricks is one thing. A &amp;quot;psychic&amp;quot; (even one that offers a &amp;quot;disclaimer&amp;quot; that it is entertainment) who knows full well they are catering to people that want to believe it is &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; know what they are doing. It gets particularly heinous when these con artists prey on grieving people who just lost a loved one. It&amp;#x27;s hard not to view a con artist presenting bullshit to a mother who just lost her 12 year-old daughter in a car accident as not ripping them off.</text><parent_chain><item><author>jeroenhd</author><text>&amp;gt; Also, Duffy was ripped off by Kasamba.&lt;p&gt;Can you really be ripped off by psychics? It&amp;#x27;s not like you can sue a church because your prayers haven&amp;#x27;t been answered, so I&amp;#x27;m not sure of religion or spiritualism can be a &amp;quot;rip-off&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If someone tells you they&amp;#x27;ll talk to your dead ancestors for money and you don&amp;#x27;t believe them, who&amp;#x27;s to say who&amp;#x27;s speaking the truth? The best you can do is use reasoning like &amp;quot;there&amp;#x27;s no scientific basis for an afterlife&amp;quot; but that&amp;#x27;s not a great defence if you&amp;#x27;re honestly trying to speak to the dead.&lt;p&gt;I agree with your other points, of course. I&amp;#x27;m just amused at the idea of suing psychics for not telling the truth.</text></item><item><author>arp242</author><text>Posting messages and making up that a friend&amp;#x27;s wife committed suicide is not really &amp;quot;stalking&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;persistently and obsessively harassing&amp;quot;. Immoral and possibly illegal? Perhaps. But that&amp;#x27;s not the same thing.&lt;p&gt;Also, Duffy &lt;i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; ripped off by Kasamba.&lt;p&gt;I think the crux of the matter is: even if you did something wrong, do things like that really need to be preserved on the internet under your real name for the rest of your life? Probably not. And do we really want Google to be &lt;i&gt;suggesting&lt;/i&gt; this content years after this minor spat, guaranteeing that people will find it?&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Right to be forgotten&amp;quot; is really about this kind of stuff IMHO: okay, you&amp;#x27;ve had your five minutes of shame and that&amp;#x27;s all fine, and now lets all move on instead of keeping this prominent for years or even decades.</text></item><item><author>csunbird</author><text>&amp;gt; Dr. Duffy posted a web report on the website “Ripoff Report” complaining about her dissatisfaction with the services she had received from the psychics on the Kasamba site. She also commented on the reports of others about the psychics. She created a chat group “kasambavictims” on Yahoo. Dr. Duffy also posted messages under a pseudonym, and began to email the site complaining that her friend’s wife had committed suicide due to bad advice given by the psychics. This was untrue.&lt;p&gt;Very interesting part. Later in the article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In relation to justification (truth), the Court found no evidence supporting Google’s argument that Dr. Duffy stalked or persistently and obsessively harassed any of the psychics.&lt;p&gt;Am I missing something important here? Dr. Duffy clearly defamed a business with a lie, and some other people (other site users) pointed this up, in a very cruel way, to her in a forum with user submitted content. Then Dr. Duffy sues Google instead of the Ripoff Report forum?</text></item><item><author>testplzignore</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu&amp;#x2F;cases&amp;#x2F;duffy-v-google-inc&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu&amp;#x2F;cases&amp;#x2F;duffy-v...&lt;/a&gt; has some actual details of what this is about.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google</title><url>https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-23/janice-duffy-wins-12-year-legal-battle-against-google/103008954</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>arp242</author><text>&amp;quot;Ripped off&amp;quot; in the colloquial sense, not in the strict legal sense.&lt;p&gt;Most psychics don&amp;#x27;t actually believe what they&amp;#x27;re selling, whereas most priests do.&lt;p&gt;Prayer also works very different: a psychic will tell you &amp;quot;higher powers told me this man is a {good,bad} match for you&amp;quot;, whereas a priest will tell you to &amp;quot;pray and ask God for guidance&amp;quot; and&amp;#x2F;or offer you some general advice, but they won&amp;#x27;t say &amp;quot;God told me to relay that [..]&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Should they be sued for it? Probably not. But I do think most psychic &amp;quot;customers&amp;quot; get ripped off by people who are essentially little more than confidence tricksters, but I don&amp;#x27;t think most people who go to church get ripped off (outside of the &amp;quot;send me your money and go to heaven&amp;quot; kind of twattery).</text><parent_chain><item><author>jeroenhd</author><text>&amp;gt; Also, Duffy was ripped off by Kasamba.&lt;p&gt;Can you really be ripped off by psychics? It&amp;#x27;s not like you can sue a church because your prayers haven&amp;#x27;t been answered, so I&amp;#x27;m not sure of religion or spiritualism can be a &amp;quot;rip-off&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If someone tells you they&amp;#x27;ll talk to your dead ancestors for money and you don&amp;#x27;t believe them, who&amp;#x27;s to say who&amp;#x27;s speaking the truth? The best you can do is use reasoning like &amp;quot;there&amp;#x27;s no scientific basis for an afterlife&amp;quot; but that&amp;#x27;s not a great defence if you&amp;#x27;re honestly trying to speak to the dead.&lt;p&gt;I agree with your other points, of course. I&amp;#x27;m just amused at the idea of suing psychics for not telling the truth.</text></item><item><author>arp242</author><text>Posting messages and making up that a friend&amp;#x27;s wife committed suicide is not really &amp;quot;stalking&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;persistently and obsessively harassing&amp;quot;. Immoral and possibly illegal? Perhaps. But that&amp;#x27;s not the same thing.&lt;p&gt;Also, Duffy &lt;i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; ripped off by Kasamba.&lt;p&gt;I think the crux of the matter is: even if you did something wrong, do things like that really need to be preserved on the internet under your real name for the rest of your life? Probably not. And do we really want Google to be &lt;i&gt;suggesting&lt;/i&gt; this content years after this minor spat, guaranteeing that people will find it?&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Right to be forgotten&amp;quot; is really about this kind of stuff IMHO: okay, you&amp;#x27;ve had your five minutes of shame and that&amp;#x27;s all fine, and now lets all move on instead of keeping this prominent for years or even decades.</text></item><item><author>csunbird</author><text>&amp;gt; Dr. Duffy posted a web report on the website “Ripoff Report” complaining about her dissatisfaction with the services she had received from the psychics on the Kasamba site. She also commented on the reports of others about the psychics. She created a chat group “kasambavictims” on Yahoo. Dr. Duffy also posted messages under a pseudonym, and began to email the site complaining that her friend’s wife had committed suicide due to bad advice given by the psychics. This was untrue.&lt;p&gt;Very interesting part. Later in the article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In relation to justification (truth), the Court found no evidence supporting Google’s argument that Dr. Duffy stalked or persistently and obsessively harassed any of the psychics.&lt;p&gt;Am I missing something important here? Dr. Duffy clearly defamed a business with a lie, and some other people (other site users) pointed this up, in a very cruel way, to her in a forum with user submitted content. Then Dr. Duffy sues Google instead of the Ripoff Report forum?</text></item><item><author>testplzignore</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu&amp;#x2F;cases&amp;#x2F;duffy-v-google-inc&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu&amp;#x2F;cases&amp;#x2F;duffy-v...&lt;/a&gt; has some actual details of what this is about.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Woman wins 12-year legal battle against Google</title><url>https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-23/janice-duffy-wins-12-year-legal-battle-against-google/103008954</url></story>