To start off, I'm a skeptic about psychokinetic (PK) powers. The demonstrations are consistently very uncontrolled "experiments" by YouTube amateurs who seem by and large to be gullible, if not outright liars. The standard method to demonstrate alleged PK is to move "psi wheels," little pieces of foil mounted on a needle. The standard skeptic's rebuttal is that the hands generate heat, and the thermodynamics involved cause the psi wheel to move (since it takes only a tiny amount of force to move it).
In response, PK'ers now often place transparent bowls over their psi wheels, yet sometimes they get some results anyway. A good example of this is the below video.
It's on YouTube (I can't post URLs yet):
/watch?v=EuF8d8fkfIw
Unlike videos by obvious fraudsters where camera tricks are clearly easy to pull off, or Darryl Sloan's videos where the wheel's movement is so slight as to be non-notable, in this one there seems a definite correlation between the movement of the dude's hands and the movement of his psi wheel.
Someone suggested it was static electricity; others said aluminum foil isn't affected by static. I don't know jack about physics--is this accurate?
I also thought his rings might have magnets in them, although his other videos give the impression he wears those rings all the time, and I am told aluminum foil is also unaffected by magnets. (This is assuming it's really aluminum foil.) It would seem this guy is, in his own words, "a cripple in a nursing home." I can't rule out fraud entirely, but knowing how deluded people can be I'm tempted to accept his sincerity, at least tentatively, and assume that something else is still not as it seems.
Additionally, this guy and other YouTube "psychokinesis users" such as Darryl Sloan have consistently claimed that there is a learning curve to starting to do psychokinesis. Is this a result of the delusion becoming more firmly placed in their minds? Is it possible they subconsciously doing something that causes the psi wheels to move more?
Oh, I should have been calling his power "chi." Not psychic; he gets mad when people say he claims to have psychic powers. No, no--it's chi.
At any rate, although I find it suspicious he apparently can't do this without using his hands (and that scientists have never confirmed PK to work) I'm at a loss as to what's really going on here.
In response, PK'ers now often place transparent bowls over their psi wheels, yet sometimes they get some results anyway. A good example of this is the below video.
It's on YouTube (I can't post URLs yet):
/watch?v=EuF8d8fkfIw
Unlike videos by obvious fraudsters where camera tricks are clearly easy to pull off, or Darryl Sloan's videos where the wheel's movement is so slight as to be non-notable, in this one there seems a definite correlation between the movement of the dude's hands and the movement of his psi wheel.
Someone suggested it was static electricity; others said aluminum foil isn't affected by static. I don't know jack about physics--is this accurate?
I also thought his rings might have magnets in them, although his other videos give the impression he wears those rings all the time, and I am told aluminum foil is also unaffected by magnets. (This is assuming it's really aluminum foil.) It would seem this guy is, in his own words, "a cripple in a nursing home." I can't rule out fraud entirely, but knowing how deluded people can be I'm tempted to accept his sincerity, at least tentatively, and assume that something else is still not as it seems.
Additionally, this guy and other YouTube "psychokinesis users" such as Darryl Sloan have consistently claimed that there is a learning curve to starting to do psychokinesis. Is this a result of the delusion becoming more firmly placed in their minds? Is it possible they subconsciously doing something that causes the psi wheels to move more?
Oh, I should have been calling his power "chi." Not psychic; he gets mad when people say he claims to have psychic powers. No, no--it's chi.
At any rate, although I find it suspicious he apparently can't do this without using his hands (and that scientists have never confirmed PK to work) I'm at a loss as to what's really going on here.
