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Online ESP test-scary!

I got the entire test wrong.

But, I didn't know a video could pause itself automatically like it did.
That was the coolest part for me.
 
Well, I got all three wrong. Apparently I don't possess natural psychic ability. But, I had a .512 probability of getting them all wrong so ... yea.

Also, you say that you got freaked out twice. Does this mean you got the right shape twice? If I did my binomial right (I'm not all that good at probabilities) you had a .096 probability of getting two out of three. Almost one in ten.
 
Blah blah..boring. Bad thing is, this kind of thing actually does fool people into believing the woo.
 
From the video - "Only 20% of people are successful on this first attempt."

As a transmitter, Ivan sucks.
 
Im beginning to get an inkling of part of the method. It requires an assistant to operate the test, so working it solo won't get results! ;)
How/where the assistant learns the method I dunno.
 
Leftus said:
From the video - "Only 20% of people are successful on this first attempt."

As a transmitter, Ivan sucks.
Click to expand...



But, amazingly, his success rate is exactly 1/5! And there were 5 shapes! What are the odds??!?!

;)
 
Denver said:
I got the entire test wrong.

But, I didn't know a video could pause itself automatically like it did.
That was the coolest part for me.
Click to expand...

I'm in complete agreement with you on this:

how'd they get the video to pause? I wanna learn how to do that.

(That was the most amazing bit to me. I knew they were going to choose the star because every mentalist knows that the star is the one people will pick most of the time).
 
I was 100% sure it'd be that old trick of making you concentrate on one card, which you wanted replaced by another card, for then to replace all the cards without you noticing because you focused so much on one of them.

Instead it's that tired old trick in which they know most people pick certain objects over others, and then use those statistics to pretend they're reading minds.
 
I kept picking the square... I kept picking wrong. No million dollars for me!

I did notice if you play the video again, it picks a different one.
 
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JFrankA said:
I'm in complete agreement with you on this:

how'd they get the video to pause? I wanna learn how to do that.

(That was the most amazing bit to me. I knew they were going to choose the star because every mentalist knows that the star is the one people will pick most of the time).
Click to expand...

Hmm, that's interesting; I chose the star, but it was never the one chosen on the video. Are you saying it was chosen when you watched it?
 
zooterkin said:
Hmm, that's interesting; I chose the star, but it was never the one chosen on the video. Are you saying it was chosen when you watched it?
Click to expand...

Interesting. Reading the thread now, I'm presuming it's a different answer every time you access it.

All three of my "tests" were the star.

Now I know how/why the video is paused. It redirects you to another video as part of the script. Very sneaky.... :)
 
JFrankA said:
how'd they get the video to pause? I wanna learn how to do that.
Click to expand...
It's a Flash-based video. You can embed "pause" queues into it, using the Adobe Media Encoder (and the player would have to be written to pick up on them).

Alternatively, it could be done with JavaScript. I have seen Internet-based video clip editors that allow the user to pause a video between a range of the spots, that they wish to examine.
 
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It obviously couldn't be a real 'old VHS in my parent's attic', because of the self-pausing - I didn't even realise we were supposed to believe that part.

Interesting, isn't it, that on a skeptics' forum people would confidently post the wrong explanation without (apparently) subjecting their hypothesis to some simple tests. I have noticed before on this forum that, in their zeal to debunk 'woo', people will snatch at the first non-paranormal explanation that comes into their heads, however implausible, and insist it must be right (also happens in Conjuror's Corner).

I tried it once, and got all three - the star each time. That's likely to be a common result - see the real explanation. But I wasn't satisfied with the 'tired old' statistical explanation, so did some investigating. Obviously, the first thing to find out was whether the cards were the same every time.

I wasn't thinking in terms of a 'magic' trick - hadn't noticed the 'misdirection' to get you to use an assistant - so I just assumed there was something that increased the probability of correct guesses beyond chance. The question was then: it either is or isn't using feedback from me to 'guess' my choice. Seemed likely that it was, given that (i) the elaborate setup makes it possible, and (ii) it would give the best results. If so, it had to be something to do with the mouse-click, so I tried varying everything I could about it - in particular, the length of the pause.

I did indeed get different cards - ruling out the facile statistical 'explanation'. However, I didn't notice that I was clicking in different places, so missed the crucial connection (also, as I said, I was thinking in terms of a single player, and probabilities). The only thing I could think of was that it had to do with the length of the pause - some correlation with the position of each card in the row. I wasn't happy with this (that's why I didn't post it!), but gave up as I had no more ideas - anyway, I was indeed totally wrong!

Thank you, Azrael, for getting me to waste half an hour on the fruitless attempt :rolleyes:.
 
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