Psychic Samurai applies for MDC...apparently...

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steenkh said:
That may well be so. In that case it will never be possible to test anything involving spoken words.
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At least not in the case of allegedly spoken words on recording media. That's why I called it irretrievably broken. To JREF, just about any nebulous sounds recorded can have mundane explanations. To The Professor, any nebulous sound will be evidence of the paranormal. I can't imagine anyone ever being able to convince him otherwise but I can imagine his :mad: posts.

I think he just needs to reword his claim. His claim as worded can never be objectively observed.

Czarcasm: As far as I know, The Professor is still an active claimant.
 
RoboTimbo said:
I think he just needs to reword his claim. His claim as worded can never be objectively observed.
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To be honest, I was surprised the JREF accepted his claim in the first place. I understand that they were bending over backwards to allow a test to take place given The Professor's self-imposed time constraints, but I really don't think it actually helped matters. As it is, we're left with all this faffing around with bits of protocol without ever having a solid target to aim for. Does anyone know what The Professor's claim actually is? He says something somewhere at a particular time and something will happen to something. That's not a claim. His claim as worded can never be objectively observed because he hasn't actually made one.

What we actually need to do is forget the last 1400 posts and start again with a claim by The Professor. Then we can start worrying about how to test it. Or, given that The Professor has apparently disappeared, we could just not.
 
RoboTimbo said:
... As far as I know, The Professor is still an active claimant.
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As long as the applicant continues protocol negotiations in good faith with the JREF (not necessarily posting anything on the forums) then, historically, their claim remains open.

steenkh said:
... The result needs to be self-evident, and is it self-evident if 10 people find that they heard the same words, or is it self-evident only if 100 people find they heard the same words?
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Mojo said:
If a number of people are exercising judgment, then judgment is being used.
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This is all speculation based on interpretation of the MDC rules. The bottom line is the JREF's acceptance of the protocol. I do not recall any remarks from Jeff Wagg or RemieV regarding the acceptability of a panel of listeners as part of a protocol.
 
I'm not aware of any correspondence with Jeff Wagg and The Professor,it cannot be discussed on Magic Cafe anymore as it gets threads locked so maybe Jeff could post and say if TP has contacted since halloween.
 
steenkh said:
That may well be so. In that case it will never be possible to test anything involving spoken words.
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Early in this thread TP actually seemed happy with the idea of "the voice" answering up to 10 questions unknown to him before the actual event, and handed to him in sealed envelopes during his "whatever it was going to be". For some reason, he dropped this very quickly, and later refused to even acknowledge that he had thought it was a good idea.

I believe that testing spoken words using this as part of the protocol would be acceptable to JREF, and the answers, if correct and unambiguous would be proof af a paranormal event.

Norm
 
There is nothing to stop The Professor suddenly contacting Jeff in three months time and saying the application is still open.

On the other hand we have in the application thread this by RemieV (back in September)
I am asking you to, once more, please clarify how this test could ever be objective in any way. And if you are again unsuccessful, then I see no reason to leave your Challenge file open.
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Also we have The Professor making straw man attacks against the challenge. He has also failed to come up with any sort of workable protocol, despite several months having passed.

Worst of all his behaviour indicates that he has not performed any sort of paranormal event before. This is against the spirit of the challenge.
 
Again, I do not see any reason for this alacrity in demanding a protocol now.

The man has slightly less than a year to dicker about with equipment, spirits, paranormalists, psychiatrists, whatever he may please - let him take his year if he so pleases.

It's no real skin off our nose.

~ Matt
 
MattC said:
Again, I do not see any reason for this alacrity in demanding a protocol now.

The man has slightly less than a year to dicker about with equipment, spirits, paranormalists, psychiatrists, whatever he may please - let him take his year if he so pleases.

It's no real skin off our nose.

~ Matt
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Will that be enough time. He submitted his application back in August. Since then he has produced two protocols, neither of which are any good. He has only about 10 months to finalize the protocol. On current treads that will not be enough time.


That is assuming he still wants to do it.

But I do agree that it is no skin off our nose if he does not continue. I say let this thread die.
 
MattC said:
Again, I do not see any reason for this alacrity in demanding a protocol now.

The man has slightly less than a year to dicker about with equipment, spirits, paranormalists, psychiatrists, whatever he may please - let him take his year if he so pleases.

It's no real skin off our nose.

~ Matt
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I would have no trouble with this, if he was actually acting in good faith.
 
chillzero said:
But steenkh - in your example, one other person using their judgement disagreed. Why is that not a problem?
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steenkh said:
That was just an example to keep it in the normal protocol spirit. There may always be a person who is hard of hearing. If you play a clear tape recording to a number of people you will always find one who did not catch what was said ...
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But what if the one person who disagrees is The Professor?

The reason for the "self-evident" requirement is that having an agreed and objective measure of success prevents the claimant arguing after the event that they in fact succeeded but the judges had been "fixed". We can have any number of judges failing to recognise what was said,but this can't prevent a claimant from saying "I did so hear it!" This is precisely the situation the Challenge rules are set up to avoid.
 
steenkh said:
These test persons could be persons who were not in any way told what they were listening for.
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Whatever they're told, if The Professor disagrees with their collective judgment we arrive at the specific situation that the Challenge rules are designed to avoid.
 
It would seem that the ball is most decidedly back in the Professor's court. He has yet to propose anything even vaguely resembling an acceptable protocol, or to acknowledge the fatal flaws in the protocols he has proposed. I would not be surprised if he pops up again sometime around next Halloween, but I'm not holding my breath. Perhaps he was carted off by the spirits. Perhaps he is recovering from the stress of the ordeal. Perhaps he is searching for an easier route to publicity.

Has he been active on any of the other sites where he previously posted, such as the Magic Cafe?
 
Mojo said:
Whatever they're told, if The Professor disagrees with their collective judgment we arrive at the specific situation that the Challenge rules are designed to avoid.
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I do not see what is different in this situation than if he disagrees with any other part of a protocol. If the claim was that a voice would appear on a tape recorder unconnected to a microphone, he might listen to the tape and say "clearly a voice" and the test officials may not be able to hear anything but noise. If the claim was that certain words would be distinguishable, the same could happen. How can self-evidence be determined with anything connected with human languages as long as voice recognition software is not good enough to recognise normal spoken language?

But let us leave this discussion. After all, we do not really know what would be acceptable to the JREF.
 
gdnp said:
Has he been active on any of the other sites where he previously posted, such as the Magic Cafe?
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The last thing of any relavance that I read was this (from "Protocol help for Psychic Samuria" [sic] on Magic Cafe):

Psychic Samurai (Nov 7 said:
Rockwall ... Alison Smith was Extremely Biased as to the JREF MDC and as a result she was removed or removed herself. Doesn't matter either way. I'm sure she is a nice person in the long run.

However, demanding that I make a list of how a FRAUD could be perpetrated is a waste of my time. That is in the "Expert" field of the JREF and James Randi. It is actually his claim to fame!

What if I listed 24 different ways and the JREF says .. "Well, there might be 25?" ...
What then? My claim and protocol are thrown out? And Randi never has to risk the Million?

I'm sure you can see the LOOP HOLE thinking in making the Claimant eliminate the FRAUD.
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IMHO, he seems to be moving farther away from any serious negotiations.
 
All discussion of MDC and TP are pointless on Magic Cafe-the threads get locked quickly.
I think though TP has gone for good,and his big build up -along with Jim Callahan,fell flat on it's collective ass.
 
Azrael 5 said:
All discussion of MDC and TP are pointless on Magic Cafe-the threads get locked quickly.
I think though TP has gone for good,and his big build up -along with Jim Callahan,fell flat on it's collective ass.
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Not only will TP be back, he will also bring up new angles to this ordeal. Whether that develops into a protocol or even a test remains to be seen.

The key to effective promotion is: "Make them want more." From the looks of it, TP has you by the dangles, A5.

Disregarding his special touch, I understand why he describes people as "snarky".
 
The only more I want,is for him to take the MDC.
Didn't care about him before his claim and won't after.
 
steenkh said:
I do not see what is different in this situation than if he disagrees with any other part of a protocol. If the claim was that a voice would appear on a tape recorder unconnected to a microphone, he might listen to the tape and say "clearly a voice" and the test officials may not be able to hear anything but noise. If the claim was that certain words would be distinguishable, the same could happen. How can self-evidence be determined with anything connected with human languages as long as voice recognition software is not good enough to recognise normal spoken language?

But let us leave this discussion. After all, we do not really know what would be acceptable to the JREF.
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It's not that hard, but TF would have to be willing to cooperate, which he his not.

The 10 witnesses could retire to seperate locations and write down, say, 10 words they had heard. A predetremined number of words would have to agree with each other, and/or the Prof's description, written out of their hearing, of course.

Care would have to be taken to prevent collaboration, and eliminate common words like prepositions.Well, maybe it would be hard, but it at least seems possible. TF is only interested in doing his magic trick, though, he made that clear when he submitted the second protocol.
 
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