Try a different example in a similar format:
Q:"Is it true that your dog can play chess?"
A:"No. I beat him almost every single game."
I agree that this is an attempt at a joke, though not a very good one. I recently saw a joke that I found a lot better:
A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, "this is where the light is".
(link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect ).
However, when I asked, on Yahoo Answers (in the Parapsychology category, which is part of Science & Math):
In your opinion, is it possible to be "telepathic", in the sense that everybody else on this planet knows what the telepathic person thinks and perceives?
, and when somebody replied:
I knew you were going to ask this question, an hour before you posted it.
(link:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/...mY75lLjty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20090601113445AAmVwcl ), that was
not a joke (in my opinion, at least), it was a serious and rather clever answer to my question. In many respects (though perhaps not all), Yahoo Answers is better than this forum. First of all, they do not have a skeptical bias, they're not a Skeptics forum. Secondly, members are much more respectful, and less (viciously) aggressive.
Similarly, when Loss Leader answered:
I am seeing a 4 very clearly. It's almost as though I had written it myself.
in my second test on this forum, it was also
not a joke. If some of you really think that either the Y Answers or the LL answer are jokes, then I may have to seriously question your abilities to detect jokes yourself. It seems much more likely to me that I am facing here a bunch of skeptics who are ready to clutch to any straw, even the unlikeliest ones, to try to discredit or denigrate the statements that they don't like.
Regarding my openness to suggestions and the rigor of my testing, I would like to point out that I made a significant change, following one of your suggestions, when I used a MD5 hash (or another kind of hash, later). As a serious researcher, I have some constraints, I cannot do any poor test, otherwise the test will fail, and nobody will tell me again:
...
Congratulations on once again proving telepathy.
...
.
The idea that Ladewig's comment was some kind of disguised joke is ridiculous. If you really think that, then your joke detector must be badly broken, and I don't think you're helping your credibility in this way. In many years of online testing, I have learnt to read between the lines.
Regarding rigor, my tests are rigorous (even if they are less than perfect) because the raw material is visible for all to see, and people can follow the work. For example, everybody can understand that:
wrong oh! I do indeed have ESP, and know for a fact that he wrote 2!
is a credible answer (think that ESP is very real and that Michel H is "telepathic", for all answers), while
4, because drawing a circle around it makes it look like a cool Fantastic Four logo.
is not (credible). This has nothing to do with numerical accuracy in a "guess if I wrote 1, 2, 3 or 4" test, contrary to what has been erroneously claimed I don't know how many times on this forum. Credible answers have a tendency to be correct, and this is accompanied by testimonies ("I knew it!"). This (with other testimonies) seems to point to the existence of a special ESP phenomenon. My tests are actually lessons of good science (I have a very real Ph.D. degree), from which you should try to learn, instead of polluting with your nonsense and gross dishonesty.
