People really do exist that can read your mind.

Kilgore Trout said:
(Psst. I think you mean Carnac the Magnificent..)

Good story though. And as an aside, James Randi found an evangelist doing that trick when he was a kid. I'd seen the trick before, be never figured out how it was done until I read that about him.
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Thanks, I did! Dang, and I used to be such a fan of those segments....see this is why I can't be a mind reader--can't even read my own, sometimes.
 
Spektator said:
Thanks, I did! Dang, and I used to be such a fan of those segments....see this is why I can't be a mind reader--can't even read my own, sometimes.
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Really frustrating. Happens to me all the time. I really hate when I have something "on the tip of my tongue" but I don't have a mirror handy. ;)
 
Myriad said:
Happycats, if you're still following this thread, can you tell me if you're certain he showed you the answer he'd written after each question, or is it possible that he just passed you the folded paper on which he'd written his answer after each question (but before you told him your answer), and you looked at all of them at the end?

That's the kind of detail people here have been talking about, when they say you might be misremembering details that didn't seem important at the time.

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About a week ago or so, before you posted this message, I started reading the replies about my memory possibly being a little off, and so I started to think of where I possibly might be a wrong. You are right. The only part I have doubts on, is whether I read his answer after each question, or whether I read all five of them at the end of the game. He might have lined up the folded pieces of paper in front of me, and at the end is when I went through them. So please, enlighten me, because I still think the man has a 6th sense of mental telepathy.

I just saw the Derren Brown show for the first time, along with many of Chris Angel's Mind Freak shows that are both airing on TV, and I think that they both have a 6th sense if you ask me. They are both using more than magic and illusions in some of their performances. I think Derren Brown has the ability to read minds, and that he just doesn't want to admit it. How else can you explain how he can accurately guess how much cash a person has in their wallet over and over again with many different people he stopped on the street in NY City? He claimed to have done it by asking the people questions about themselves before hand, but the questions were ridiculous in nature. He may as well have just asked them all what color the sky is. If any of you watched the same show, I'm sure you will agree. And what about the conductor of the orchestra he messed with too. And what is up with the levitating that Chris Angel does in public places?

I think that if a person ever admitted and proved to have mental telepathy, that their lives would be in danger. Along with having a hard time making/keeping friends. So instead of admitting to it, they play it off as part of magic/psychology/illusion/whatever.
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happycats, Derren Brown is a well known skeptic who hates psychics and he doesn't believe in the supernatural.. So it's pretty ironic to say that he can read minds.

What you didn't mention about the wallet effect is that he wrote the results down, instead of saying it out loud..

Remember what I told you about mentalists who write things? ;)

And Criss angel is also just a magician, a pretty bad one I must add.. How does he levitate? Same way Superman does, camera tricks and actors.
 
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BTW - No offence, but if you still think people are supernatural even when they admit they are only magicians, then I can see why you've believed that words trick for 15 years.
 
it really is sad that someone like derren brown can openly say he is not psychic and there will still be people who are so deluded that they won't believe him just because he's a good mentalist.

as for criss angel levitating. without wanting to expose anything i personally know exactly how criss angel does every single one of his levitations and none of them are anything more than an illusion and all are available to buy from magic shops.

just because you lack the lateral thinking required to figure out how he does it doesn't mean that it MUST be supernatural. let's just say that if a magician can ever levitate in front of an unpaid audience surrounded 360 degrees then i will.... actually no, i will still not believe that it is supernatural! hah!

there is actually a method to do it something like 260 degrees surrounded but it was never released because it is too dangerous. google 'hoverman' and you will find a demo.

why are you so desperate to believe people can fly happycats?
 
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happycats said:
Myriad said:
If any of you watched the same show, I'm sure you will agree.
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erm no i watched the same show i couldn't agree less. you know why? BECAUSE I'M A MAGICIAN! anyone with sufficient knowledge about how magic works knows that derren brown is NOT psychic. If you are really interested i suggest you start getting into mentalism and magic. once you understand the principles you will see how easy it is to create illusions.



happycats said:
Myriad said:
I think that if a person ever admitted and proved to have mental telepathy, that their lives would be in danger. Along with having a hard time making/keeping friends. So instead of admitting to it, they play it off as part of magic/psychology/illusion/whatever.
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lol. then why are there so many people out there who are convinced that they're psychic shouting very loudly about it all the time? uri gellar? sylvia brown?

and why would anyone's lives be in danger if they were psychic? that makes no sense. it would actually be the opposite: they would be hailed as gods and become very rich very quickly.
if they were genuinely worried about their safety surely they would not make a career out of doing 'impossible' things! don't you think that might make 'the powers that be' a tad suspicious if there was really no non-supernatural explanation for criss angel and derren brown's powers?
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happycats said:
How else can you explain how he can accurately guess how much cash a person has in their wallet over and over again with many different people he stopped on the street in NY City?
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Do you really believe everything you see on TV? Have you really never considered that maybe they only show the ones he gets right? Or that it is all just acted out for the camera? There might even be a genuine magic trick involved rather than just editing.

If you don't think any of that is possible then I have some pet dinosaurs I'm looking to sell. Although there might be some bits of frog involved. I saw on the TV, so it must be true...
 
happycats said:
I think that if a person ever admitted and proved to have mental telepathy, that their lives would be in danger. Along with having a hard time making/keeping friends. So instead of admitting to it, they play it off as part of magic/psychology/illusion/whatever.
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This is one of the myths, misconceptions, excuses, frequently used by woos that surprises me the most that they are using. I mean, it's like they want to play themselves off as a persecuted minority. When in fact woo is so common that it amazes me that they can't see it/think we would fall for this.

I mean, for goodness sake, whole countries are entirely based on woo. Even in more secular modern societies woo is abundant. I am surrounded by it, in a country (Sweden) that some (not least many Swedes themselves) claim is a "wonder of rationality" (yeah, right ;) )

It is quite easy to see that anyone who claims any wooish powers make lots of friend everywhere, get a lot of attention, gets invited to TV-shows and if they play their cards right, can get quite rich of off easily fooled followers.

I have several friends who think they can see ghosts or have budding powers after doing on-line or magazine tests, or whatever, and part of this is interest and belief in woo, and another part is sheer attention-seeking. Have you ever been to a party where a woo tries to take over and be the center of everyones' attention as they try to go around and read peoples' auras, and things like that? It can really be annoying!

As I mentioned in my very first thread on this forum, since I dress in a sort of wooish manner I often get approached by woos in social gatherings. I've never noticed that it's considered particularly strange to go up to people you don't know and claim you're a psychic or can see ghosts or talk to angels, or is a dowser, or... I can't even remember all the things people have felt they needed to tell me :rolleyes:

Today people do not expect to be burned on the stake when they tell you they can do this or that, they expect a WOW and admiration and keen interest from other people, and are quite proud of their "abilities." At the very least they expect total respect for it. It's not politically correct today to criticise people's beliefs. If someone comes up to you and says they are Pagans of the kind who literally believes in the gods of ancient Greece, you are not suppose to raise an eyebrow, roll your eyes and say, "OooooK, yeah, right, sure you are!" No, you are suppose to respect this, and preferrably be interested too.

Why wouldn't they admit it? Because they are afriad of having a hard time making/keeping friends? Hardly!! It's cool to be woo, you know! :rolleyes:

And as for being in danger... Yeah, if they really had those powers, don't you think they would have been assassinated, or lynched, or kidnapped by the governments (or whatever "danger" means here) a long time ago? I mean it isn't like people started to announce their psyschic powers the last year, or so. They have been doing that for a loooong time, and it hasn't really been that dangerous to do so since they stopped burning witches.

Besides, if someone was out to get Criss Angel, couldn't he just fly away? :D
 
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happycats, do you also believe that Houdini had supernatural powers? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was convinced that he had, even when Houdini explained to him exactly how his escapes and illusions were performed. Unless you want us to think that you are as gullible as Sir Arthur you really should educate yourself about the methods used by stage mentalists and "psychics".

As for levitation, have a look at these two videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRaRbMixraE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW6pVFOpE6Q

After watching the first, do you think the second is any more convincing?
 
dannagain said:
it really is sad that someone like derren brown can openly say he is not psychic and there will still be people who are so deluded that they won't believe him just because he's a good mentalist.
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AFAIK, that's why Randi stopped doing mentalist tricks in his shows. He was completely sick of people claiming he had supernatural powers even after he had told them point blank, face-to-face, black on white, that he didn't have any powers and that it was tricks, tricks and more tricks.
 
Once, in my local pub, I pretended I could read palms. I knew most of the people there quite well, so I expected they'd see through it pretty quickly. But I had them lining up for a reading!

I didn't go quite as far as "and this means your name is... Jim? John? No, definitely Jim," but on the other hand ;) I was saying things like "and these three lines converging here means you have three children. This broken line here shows you've been divorced, but this other line shows you're happily married again."

I've known some of these people for 20 years, and I didn't tell anyone anything they would not have expected me to know. OK, I bunged in a little more "technical" stuff about the head and heart lines, etc., but all I was doing was interpreting the lines on their hands to fit what I already knew about them.

It got quite frightening. When I fessed up, some people shook their heads gnomically, and explained how I was at least a little bit psychic even if I didn't know it. Nobody asked why I'd never mentioned the palm-reading bit before.

I believe Randi had an astrological alter ego, Zo-Ran, and gave up his randomised horoscopes when people began to believe a little too fervently. Some people just seem disposed towards seeing wooness everywhere.
 
I once did my own little demonstration on a co-worker who was going on about this astrology rubbish. First I prepped her by claiming that I had a "foolproof" method of personality reading which "has never failed". I got her date and place of birth. Then I totally ignored them, typing in random dates and locations into three different free astrology sites, then chopping them up and mixing them together. I presented her with the "reading", and you can guess what her response was. Hint: Forer effect.

I came clean and explained how I did it, and we had a good laugh about it. Then she said that she still believed in astrology, despite my demonstration, and I gave up.
 
Oualawouzou said:
AFAIK, that's why Randi stopped doing mentalist tricks in his shows. He was completely sick of people claiming he had supernatural powers even after he had told them point blank, face-to-face, black on white, that he didn't have any powers and that it was tricks, tricks and more tricks.
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This whole thread explains the reason why "magical secrecy" has to be abandoned. It's holding back our species and it's EVIL because so many people are so easily mislead. End secrecy now to advance the cause of rationality, PLEASE!
 
"Think of your ATM card PIN number."
"Okay." (1876)
"Your ATM card PIN number is 1876."

No need for all the theatrics and paper folding, etc.

Presuming that the mind reader was not recently behind you at the ATM. :D
 
LTC8K6 said:
"Think of your ATM card PIN number."
"Okay." (1876)
"Your ATM card PIN number is 1876."
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[nitpick]PIN already stands for Personal Identifcation Number, so there's no need for a second "number".[/nitpick] :)
 
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