That Danish astrologer...

[CFLarsen]

As you can see from his website, the Danish astrologer "E.S." Randi mentions in his February 27, 2004, newsletter, is Eskild Rasmussen. I've had a very long and tedious correspondance with him as well, before he tried his hand with Randi.

To sum up briefly how Eskild wanted the test to be carried out:

He would guess the birth time, if he got the birth place and date from a number of people, unknown to him. He would then, within a time span of 4 hours (2 hours before or 2 hours after), determine what the birth time was.

Problem was: The birth time would not be the actual birth time, but the astrologically "corrected" one. If a horoscope does not fit the person, astrologers are allowed to "correct" the time of birth, until it "fits".

Yes, you heard right: He wanted to find a fictional time, one that could not be verified against anything. If he said the time was correct, then it was correct.

This was, of course, completely unacceptable.

Also, he also wanted to calculate his own success rate. Although he probably was qualified, this was similarly unacceptable.

There were quite a number of unsolved issues, and he never got back to me on those. He naturally accused me of stalling the process....

As a side note, he has been made aware that the money is real, and that it is there. He is flat-out lying when he claims that he thinks the money's a "gimmick". He was very eager to be tested for the million bucks.

 

[Karen Boesen]

The truth about the Danish astrologer and Claus Larsen is, that Claus Larsen backed out of the experiment, because the astrologer and the work he has done so far is too serious, and E.R. was too intelligent for CL.

 

[Captain Trips]

Originally posted by CFLarsen (with some snippage by Capt. Trips for his reply)

To sum up briefly how Eskild wanted the test to be carried out:

He would guess the birth time, if he got the birth place and date from a number of people, unknown to him. He would then, within a time span of 4 hours (2 hours before or 2 hours after), determine what the birth time was.

Problem was: The birth time would not be the actual birth time, but the astrologically "corrected" one. If a horoscope does not fit the person, astrologers are allowed to "correct" the time of birth, until it "fits".

Yes, you heard right: He wanted to find a fictional time, one that could not be verified against anything. If he said the time was correct, then it was correct.

Oh, come on, I wasn't born yesterday -- unless this guy wants to do my horoscope, in which case I may have been.

 

[CFLarsen]

The truth about the Danish astrologer and Claus Larsen is, that Claus Larsen backed out of the experiment, because the astrologer and the work he has done so far is too serious, and E.R. was too intelligent for CL.

This is not correct. I did not back out of the experiment. Eskild did not get back to me with answers to a number of unresolved points.

Whether Eskild is more intelligent than me....I'll leave that up to other people to decide.

 

[El Greco]

The truth about the Danish astrologer and Claus Larsen is, that Claus Larsen backed out of the experiment, because the astrologer and the work he has done so far is too serious, and E.R. was too intelligent for CL.

Oh, I see. Now it all makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[Mortenm]

Hi Claus

As you might have seen I have had a debate with Eskild about his neural network. During that debate it seemed to me that Eskild never has tested his network, he has only trained it.

I have a little experience with neural networks, and that experience has taught me that if your neural network has a limited training set with many inputvariables (neurons), then the network will be able to learn to give you more or less any answer you want it to.

I think that there is a big risk that this is what has happened to Eskild, since he has used 150 training examples so far each with 16560 binary input variables.

The real test of the network will be when he attempts to use the network on a set of data, that it hasn't been trained for. As long as he hasn't performed such a test on a reasonable scale, I think that it is premature to contact Randi.

Furthermore the work he has performed so far appears to be open to different kinds of experimenter bias. An example of this is that Eskild performs corrections for the birth dates of the persons in his training set, and the correction process leaves room for subjective decisions, which will influence the data given to the network.

 

[Cleopatra]

The truth about the Danish astrologer and Claus Larsen is, that Claus Larsen backed out of the experiment, because the astrologer and the work he has done so far is too serious, and E.R. was too intelligent for CL.

Hi Karen. Glad to see that you are still here and posting. I am rather skeptical about your claim because I am certain that the Danish Astrologer is interested in proving to everybody that his theories have some base.

If he has any problem with Larsen , he might contact the foundation directly or contact the director Col.Bidlack to discuss any problem he might have.

 

[Zep]

The truth about the Danish astrologer and Claus Larsen is, that Claus Larsen backed out of the experiment, because the astrologer and the work he has done so far is too serious, and E.R. was too intelligent for CL.

Karen, this is an ad hominem comment. Like in soccer, it is called playing the man, not the ball, and is usually a foul.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Sure sounds foul to me. Or it that "fowl", as in "Chicken-hearted barstards!"

 

[Zep]

Karen,

You claim that Eskild was "far too serious" and "too intelligent" for Claus. OK, then - please ask him to post here all his evidence so that the assorted intelligent and serious people here can see how intelligent and serious Eskild actually is.

There's nothing like using good solid evidence to back up your claim. So may we see it, please?

Zep

 

[Jeff Corey]

Zep,
I appreciate your gentlemanly conduct toward Karen, but I think it's all wasted, what you and the other gents and ladies do, being polite and asking real questions and all.
I don't think she's ever going to answer your questions.
Because she's one of those astrological vampires (Draco or Dracule), who scams and cons silly people and fights for her means of support by any means whatsoever.
Just remember the old song:
There is nothin' like a Dane!
Nothin' in this world...

 

[Zep]

Zep,
I appreciate your gentlemanly conduct toward Karen, but I think it's all wasted, what you and the other gents and ladies do, being polite and asking real questions and all.
I don't think she's ever going to answer your questions.
Because she's one of those astrological vampires (Draco or Dracule), who scams and cons silly people and fights for her means of support by any means whatsoever.
Just remember the old song:
There is nothin' like a Dane!
Nothin' in this world...

All granted! But there is more to my questions than the questions themselves.

What I am giving Karen, and indeed any other otherwise rational astrologer or paranormal believer, is an open forum of receptive people who are prepared to accept, evaluate and discuss their presented evidence for their claims. Then they can't possibly say to anyone else truthfully that they have been refused a receptive hearing by skeptics and scientists.

And that's a big thing, because that seems to be their mainspring for enduring emnity towards REAL science. They behave just like the fundie religions - they are "right" because they are rejected and prosecuted! But alas, they get neither here, at least from me, so there goes those excuses!

 

[Brown]

I hope that if we do establish an adult discussion,

1. Someone will ping me with a private message. I am not interested in being pinged, however, if the discussion involves juvenile insults.

2. Everyone, long-time JREF contributors included, will keep the discussion on a civil level, and will not try to interrupt the dialog. There are still some of us who are interested in learning what their specific claims are and what evidentiary support these folks have for their assertions, and I'd prefer it if you didn't "interfere in my education."

That said, I have no expectation that we will be able to establish such a dialog, but I wanted to be on the record: I am still willing to learn.

 

[magicflute]

All you have to do is go back over the thread with Karen and you can see how she operates. What ever you do or say (remeber the ankle joke?) she will put her own spin on it until it meets her needs. I am glad the younger skeptics have more patience than I. I guess that when you hear the same crap over and over again for 54 years, your patience tends to wear thin. When people are victimized all around you by these bloodsuckers it is hard to keep a civil tongue. Randi has been at it 21 more years than I, so I understand his outbursts at time. It is one thing to keep you mind open to new things. It is quite another to be almost forced to keep disproving the same crap over and over again ad nauseum.