For anyone that has noted the transparency of Jim Callahan's claims to be in control and manipulating others in some type of thought provoking performance and has been wondering what is the best solution to counter his games without feeding into them I have some good news.
Both Arthwollipot and myself have noted that Callahan uses a very silly type of retconning to re-enforce the idea that he is successfully manipulating people. He sees suggestions by various members of what he may have been doing. If he likes the feel of a certain suggestion, he will latch on to it and add some embellishment and back story to make it appear as though he was employing it all along. When people respond to this objectionably he simply says that the person is further showing his abilities.
Both myself and another member, skeptigirl, noted in the Subliminal Compliance thread that any real adeptness at psychological manipualtion could be tested and should be easy to show. We both independantly suggested that to eliminate the obvious retconning that Callahan was using, that he inform a neutral person by pm of his planned manipulation before doing so. I took the suggestion further and offered that to ensure impartiality in the observer that moderator chillzero be designated as the one to receive the pm of Callahan's planned manipulation.
In skeptigirl's line of suggestion the target would have potentially been a teenaged boy. With no offence intended to that young man, I suggested that the targets be Arthwollipot, skeptigirl, and myself; there are definitely others but we are the first three that came to mind for examples of people that were not playing into Callahan's games. I suggested that Callahan could choose one but given the kind of proficiency he indicates he has for this non-paranormal psychological technique that he advertises on his website, he should very easily be able to manipulate the three of us either separately or in a collective fashion. I also suggested that if Callahan either declined, refused, or ignored the invitiation that it would qualify as more than sufficient evidence that he is full of it in terms of his claims of being in control and that the question would reach conclusion.
I think we can put an end to this kind of silliness and do so in a manner that doesn't involve pleasing Jim with the insults and personal comments that he is baiting. Also note that Jim claims to be creating realities and in doing so creating value. Jim has no claim to or control of any value to be gained in any of the discussions or activities I refer to. These things are accomplished not because of Jim's desires but rather in spite of them. Any claim otherwise is semantic and another example of the retconning he employs.
I would ask that anyone who would like to comment on this post please quote it then respond in the Subliminal Compliance (aka psychological manipulation thread) as it is just meant as a heads up.
As an alternative to revealing the claim in advance to a neutral person, Mr. Callahan could simply write his claim in a brief sentence, then use this site:
http://www.ideaspace.net/misc/hash/ to generate a hash code for it, and post the hash code here.
For example, at that site, I have entered my prediction for the results of this test, in a simple sentence in the field labeled "Enter your e-mail address here:". I then click the "MD4" button, and the following code appears in the Hashed Result field:
17107100441d367217263e17099c32d5
The prediction I made cannot be decoded from the hash result, because the hash result is not unique to any one sequence of characters. However, it would be extremely difficult or impossible to create a different prediction that would yield the same hash code. (Changing any part of the input text results in a completely different code sequence.) So, by posting it in this message, I have created a way to verify, in the future, that I made that prediction today.
Once I reveal the prediction, anyone else can put that same sentence into the hash code generator, and determine whether or not the resulting MD4 hash code is the same as the one I posted here. (I had better write down the exact sequence of characters, including case, spaces, and punctuation, because changing any character will change the hash code completely.) If the same hash code comes out, then it is extremely strong evidence that I really did make the prediction at the time of this post.
If I later refuse to reveal the exact prediction text, or if the prediction text I report does not match the hash code, then that would mean I have failed to verify my prediction, and (were I trying to convince anyone of my ability to make accurate predictions) strongly suggest that I made a wrong prediction or no prediction at all.
This method removes the trustworthiness of the neutral person from consideration in this test. Mr. Callahan need only write a brief sentence describing his plan; that is, what result he intends to achieve using psychological manipulation during a certain future time period; and then post the hash code for that sentence in this thread. At the end of the stated time period, he can then reveal the exact text of his plan, and we can observe whether those results have occurred. By checking the hash code against his posted one, we can also all verify individually, each to his or her own satisfaction, that the plan he reveals at the end is the same as the one he began with.
Respectfully,
Myriad
