Orson Welles on cold reading

[Yeah_Right]

I am not sure that anyone here has seen this, but this is Orson Welles explaining cold reading.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjPsnfysrp8&feature=related

 

[bonzombiekitty]

I liked his bit about cold readers starting to believe their own tricks because they do it long enough they no longer consciously process the information, it just happens.

 

[cambion]

Yeah, I've seen that before, good stuff. I've noticed a lot of the super-fringe CTers on youtube site him as a source on moonlanding and Illuminati conspiracies. Does anyone know where that comes from?

Welles was a super fascinating and intelligent man, it would be a bit of a shame to hear he was wrapped up in woo baloney.

 

[Bram Kaandorp]

I liked his bit about cold readers starting to believe their own tricks because they do it long enough they no longer consciously process the information, it just happens.

Could this be what happened to a certain Derek? Because he seems so genuinely distraught when he is doubted, that it can hardly be acted (or maybe I'm naive that way).

 

[Brown]

At first, I thought this was a video of Rush Limbaugh. Until I turned up the volume.

Orson did some tricks that he passed off as "paranormal" on some of the talk shows, some of the tricks quite good.

But he also (if memory serves) totally blew a trick on one talk show, and "explained" it by saying that it was an "experiment" that would be counted as "a failure." In other words, it wasn't a blown trick due to his own lack of skill as a conjuror (or perhaps the lack of skill of a confederate), but rather, it was just a test of a mysterious power, and that mysterious power sometimes mysteriously doesn't work, thereby making it even more mysterious, you see?

And the audience seemed to buy it.

 

[EdipisReks]

Yeah, I've seen that before, good stuff. I've noticed a lot of the super-fringe CTers on youtube site him as a source on moonlanding and Illuminati conspiracies. Does anyone know where that comes from?

Welles was a super fascinating and intelligent man, it would be a bit of a shame to hear he was wrapped up in woo baloney.

those fringers clearly never watched F For Fake.

 

[dogjones]

Yeah, I've seen that before, good stuff. I've noticed a lot of the super-fringe CTers on youtube site him as a source on moonlanding and Illuminati conspiracies. Does anyone know where that comes from?

Welles was a super fascinating and intelligent man, it would be a bit of a shame to hear he was wrapped up in woo baloney.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Saw_Tomorrow

The film leans on the side of the credulous if I recall.

 

[AdMan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Saw_Tomorrow

The film leans on the side of the credulous if I recall.

I like this bit from that Wikipedia article:

Welles himself completely rejected the central theme of the film after having made it.... Perhaps Welles' most public detraction from the subject matter of the film occurred during a guest appearance on an early 1980s episode of The Merv Griffin Show; "One might as well make predictions based on random passages from the phone book", he offered when asked about the film, before moving on to discuss other projects more interesting to him personally.

 

[Brown]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Saw_Tomorrow

The film leans on the side of the credulous if I recall.

You recall correctly. To the extent it wasn't making stuff up or retrofitting or taking extreme "license," it was flat-out wrong. Or perhaps not: maybe Ted Kennedy DID become president and I simply overlooked it.

It seems pretty clear that Saddam Hussein had himself depicted in some public portraits as wearing blue turban-like headgear, in the apparent effort to invoke the notion that the third great world leader (after Napoleon and Hitler) would be a man in a blue turban. The blue turban was played up in the movie, and it so wouldn't surprise me if Hussein had seen the movie.

 

[John Albert]

That's pretty awesome. Thanks for that!

Orson Welles was such an amazing guy.

 

[MG1962]

It seems pretty clear that Saddam Hussein had himself depicted in some public portraits as wearing blue turban-like headgear, in the apparent effort to invoke the notion that the third great world leader (after Napoleon and Hitler) would be a man in a blue turban. The blue turban was played up in the movie, and it so wouldn't surprise me if Hussein had seen the movie.

You will probably find it is commonality of two visions converging. Saladin would have been known to Nostradamus, and many Arab leaders have seen themselves as the new Saladin and leader of the united Arab world.

 

[hgc]

Just came across this video. I was going to start a thread, but thought I'd search for a previous one first, and glad I did.

What a blast. I love the description of how frauds can come to believe their own hype, through what we'd call unconscious competence.

 

[tuxcat]

Back when I was a "medium" even I started to believe my own success through confirmation bias (count the hits and ignore the misses) and through making up preposterous ad-hoc special pleadings for my misses, like "the message is unclear" and "the light [electric light hanging from ceiling] is interfering!".

I'd agree with Post no 2 here - simply you do it so often it becomes unconscious and you don't register doing it.

 

[Ladewig]

Great clip.

 

[kerryoke]

That was awesome. Thanks for posting that. Orson Welles was such an interesting person.