Don't know about the rest of you, but I'm really missing John Clarkson!
DaveS

So do I.
However I get a psychic vibe that he will come nowhere near me.

I think the route of our disagreement is that you are talking more about the individual's you have worked with, and I am talking about the general group - " We are not short of silly people coming in to see us". Those individual's actions are stupid, however they may have good grounds to plead temporary insanity and may not necessarily be "stupid". I agree being charming to them, while taking their money is the correct attitude, are you also a politican by any chance? However, generally the group are "stupid", they are the same people who fall for the "congratulations you have won a free holiday" junk mail that comes through your door everyday and do other similarly stupid things. For this group I have a lot of contempt, it seems you can't go anywhere nowadays with encountering them and their stupidity (except this forum, which has very high standards and does appear to be without the village idiot(s), thank god). In fact, I applaud you for taking their money. I was merely stating it is because this group is so stupid they can be easily cheated into believeing in psychic's to a large extent, it is not because the performer really is psychic.

I'm not a sceptic, and I'm not a psychic, and I'm not a believer, I was just throwing in my 2 cents. I think this topic is a good debate, even if it has strayed from it's original intention it should be played out for at least a little while longer.

So...your opinion is that all the people who believe in psychics are stupid??

:confused:

I see you are a Glaswegian, Dario. So am I.
Therefore in a spirit of national unity I shall try to stop arguing with you.
I am not sure that people who believe in psychics are stupid. In fact some of them are extremely intelligent.

I once invited a magic shop owner to a psychic fair. He refused on the grounds that "he didn't want to be seen walking around among these flakes"

This highly amused me because by and large the people walking around psychic fairs were fairly normal people compared to the magicians that came in his shop. His customers had among them the biggest weirdos, flakes and losers imaginable.

Talking about Magic Shops is Roy Walton and the shop still going well?

Glasgow is great. Best place in the world to make people part with their money.I have scammed people there in great numbers. Not with psychic stuff though.
I have other deceptive activities which I might advise on some other time.

NO! my opinion is that psychic's perhaps of a slightly lower caliber than the professional con artist we have here tend to tap into the market of stupid people there is out there.

I think believeing in psychic's is stupid, but the people who believe in psychic's aren't necessarily "stupid".

Consider the arguement over (with wisdom at least), I'll PM you wisdom.

I don't believe that anyone familiar with the overwhelming deceptiveness of cold reading could ever call someone who fell pray to it's wiles "stupid".

And what of the people who believe that you, as a mentalist, possess some extraordinary abilities?
Are they stupid too?
I would hope that you have a little more respect for your audiences.

Cold reading aside when you are in deep emotional "thinking" you clearly are not so "rational" or "hyper-logic" dear Mr. Dario "Spock" Bauer (or your so dear science has not proved that also?) and so I really wish to you (and I'm sincere) never to have such big problems or traumas in your life that will temporally make you one of those "stupid" people (your words, not mines).

Paolo Cavalli

None of the people I perform for ever believe I have any extraordinary abilities, I make it clear that I don't believe in any of that and it is all about me reading body language and subliminal signals etc I do have respect for my audiences.

I don't deny it is possible for someone to get caught up in a very charismatic performance, but to generally believe in psychic ability is crazy, illogical, and it has been scientifically disproven hundreds of times.

If believeing in something that is crazy, illogical, and has been disproven by science hundreds of times over is how you define stupid, then yeh, it's a little stupid.

For every scientific test that 'disproves' the existance of telepathy, remote viewing (etc), I'll name you another that proves it.
I have right in my shelf, books with scientific tests on remote viewing made by respectable scientific organizations that proves its existance. I also have scientific tests on remote viewing that denies its existance.
This issue is not as linear as you may think.

Dario, this is going to bother you, but seems obvious that you are YOUNG.

You probably don’t know how it feels when you have to fire hundreds of employes nowing they have families, or BTW, being fired having three kids and a wife. You probably don’t know how it feels to loose everything, or being under presure to make a desicion, afraid to fail, and knowing that you don’t have the tools to make it.

You don’t know yet how does it feels to see your life and think “that was it?”. You are still looking your life and feeling it’s going ‘up’. You feel strong and self-confident. Is natural.

But, will all due respect, don’t worry. As Casanova said: “Youth is a curable disease”. At some point, by passing trough life, you will acquire mercy.

Actually psychic ability hasn't been "disproven" by science. It just hasn't been verified yet.
The psychics just haven't got around to proving it yet.And the sceptics say that the burden of proof rests on the psychics. As if the psychics care. We have other things to worry about like "is the client going to show up for his appointment?" or "has anyone complained about me to the police this week?"

Some very distinguished people and intelligent people believe in psychic phenomena. I am not one of them but I could hardly call a believer stupid.

Same thing about religion. There is utterly no proof for any of it. In fact it seems odd to me that there are so many religions. They can't all be right yet they all think they are. I bet a few if not all of them are completely wrong.

Yet we do not have the nerve to say that believers in religion are stupid. The Pope? The Archbishop of Canterbury? The Dalai Lama? The Chief Rabbi?

Some Presidents of the United States including the present one have been deeply religious. Are we calling them stupid?

Oh. Wait a moment.

Ah! I see what you mean.

Never mind. Forget I asked.

Dario, thank you for your "partial informed only" answer. What Sariel said if indeed right. Even if your young age you tend to make all black or white, reality (odd word sometimes... LOL!) is more a mixture of colors than what you might think.

I gather that respecting your audiences, if you do perform something by means of a TRICK you tell them out of the respect you have for them and you not just tell them is all body language or NLP (or whatever) ... because this would only be another kind of lie, different from saying that you're psychic, but still a lie.

But, if you would do so, in my opinion (and it's MY opinion!) then I would see no difference between magic and Mentalism (assuming that you see a difference between the two, as I do).

If you don't see the difference or don't think a difference may exist, then of course I understand better why you are so "hard" at labelling vulnerable people as stupids.

Paolo Cavalli

This has gone too far! We started out maligning a spoon-bender and have degenerated to slandering snake-oil salesmen!

The people want snake oil, so why deny them?

Yours,

Paul

"they may have good grounds to plead temporary insanity and may not necessarily be "stupid""

I understand hard times can hit anybody, and cause them to do and believe literally anything, almost like creating an altered state. But In My Opinion, taking a level headed view of the whole psychic/paranormal thing and coming out with answer's like Uri Geller can read minds is wrong, this is just my opinion. Same with religion, from my perception of the world, I cannot believe how people are conditioned to blindly accept it. Enrique, perhaps you are right, I have had less experience of the world and over time I am sure my perception will change, but right now paranormal/psychic seems "stupid" to me. We could really do with a better word for it.

Paolo, I don't do "TRICK"'s and I don't lie.

I do not use gimmicks, I have an invisble deck for emergencies, but I have yet to use it. I don't use nail writers or imp pads or do book tests. The only thing I use is an un-gimmicked deck of cards. I don't do tricks and call it body language, I perform effects that have some sleight of hand and some genuine psychological techniques (psychological forces and reading the spec using lie detector ideas). I don't lie about the fact I combine the two or claim to have anything more, I do my thing and let them believe what they want (and it's never psychic ability). It is a genuine deception. The world isn't black and white, but it is very predictable.

Lets not descend into petty name calling paolo, I'm not particularly scientifically inclined, just a realist.

Magic and Mentalism are two different arts, but they are just labels, there is no clearly defined definitions of either.

As amusing as this is, I've got a funny feeling it is coming to end, so goodnight.

DB

No names calling Dario, just asking info.

Well if you don't use tricks or sleight, I bow to you because you maybe one of the major body language experts in the word!

Now, you clarified for me that you claim you combine methods... that's all I wanted to know.

Sorry you felt I was attacking you when infact I was trying to understand if you did "lie" to your audiences or not... hmmm... I wonder why!

Ah... yes, goodnight.

Paolo Cavalli