Telepathy is defined as: "the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person to another without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction."

For instructional purposes this can be demonstrated by a skit, testimony of witness, story or interrogation.

For a Mentalism performance the demonstration must include proof or verification. A thought is written down and secured.
This is prevent memory lapse, confusion or conflict, but also to prevent the other person to deliberately "mess things up."
To what extend are these "pre-cautions" based on hopes of the audience that you will fail or that plan to use trickery?

Another way of looking at this that IF the observers believe in telepathy, think you can demonstrate it and are paying attention, you do not need any verification.

The reason why we go through all the silly verification processes is that we feel one or more of those factors is missing or weak.
If effect, we have "read the minds of the observer" and not found what we desired. Is this telepathy?

If we take advantage of a chance or prompted result by taking credit for it and claiming it to be telepathy - is it? If the audience agrees, is that telepathy.

For example, you notice a woman in a rear isle glancing nervously at the door and fiddling in hand bag, so you interrupt you opening posturing disclaimers and say,
"Sometimes a telepathic channel is opened because of emotional distress. I sense that a person in the audience has a problem - a woman. She is concerned about her daughter.
I can tell you not to worry. She had car problems and is being brought by a friend - name of Kurt or Burt or something. She will call you in a few moments and explain. It is all right to go out and take that call."
The woman jumps up, waves her cellphone and dashes to the exit. Everyone else in the audience will feel they have observed telepathy and clairvoyance in action. Is it?

Rather than manipulating the mechanics of an event or the perceptions of what is occurring, you use psychological a ploys to alter the long-term memory of the event,
in fact, implanting a false memory in place of the real one. Is this telepathy? No one "knows" what you have done, so there is no witness. There is not verification.
So, the mental change is not by any "known human sensory channels or physical interaction." Is this telepathy, real or faked?

For me, the "story told after" is of prime importance in any performance. If I write down this story before performing and it becomes the story told rather than the actual events, is that telepathy?

If the audience has expectations unknown to me, and I learn of these vicariously, and adapt my performance to meet this group desire - is that telepathy?

Just musuing, and more ...

What Rhine called "PT" (Pure Telepathy) is difficult to demonstrate for the reasons you have pointed out. In particular, you need to exclude Clairvoyance, which includes picking up an impression from a thought expressed in writing.

My thoughts on this were included in my AIMC thesis and later published in Mind Blasters. You can also read the article in my blog:

https://barrydcooper.wordpress.com/2020/......article/

(See the Home page for the password.)

Barry

It is not easy to exclude precognition too. If I foresee the future I can see into the future the very moment I will open the piece of card where the spectator has written his thought or the moment the spectator will verbalize their thought. Paradoxes on the horizon...

One way to exclude precognition and clairvoyance is to have a control experiment where no one knows the target but where it is written and will be revealed once the spectator takes a guess.
You exclude it by taking it into account in your experimental protocol

Even this won't resolve the problem. Because the target must eventually be revealed, it is possible that the spectator used precognition to sense the target once it has been revealed.

Because research protocols cannot easily or reliably distinguish between clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition or retrocognition, parapsychologists often prefer the term "GESP" (General Extrasensory Perception) in recognition of this difficulty and to acknowledge that any apparent paranormal cognition could be due to any of these possibilities.

Mike

[quote]On Sep 9, 2020, Michael Daniels wrote:


Thanks for that. Since many of my abilities seem ill-defined in main jargon, I may be a Gesper

This reminds me a paradox I proposed many years ago on the Café: https://themagiccafe.com/forums/viewtopi......forum=15

When I posed the questions in the OP I was no thinking of the problems/impossibility of verifying telepathy specifically.
Glad for the input in that direction..

I was thinking more on the line "IF the observers believe in telepathy, think you can demonstrate it and are paying attention, you do not need any verification."

What can we do to eliminate the negative detractors and increase the acceptability factors such that less verification is required?

Are we fighting against popular misconceptions/ hype -- or is there a level of acceptance we overlook or sublimate through silliness?

For example, I get Mr Green on stage and ask him to think of his favorite flower. I announce he is thinking of a petunia. He exciting agrees, asking, "How did you know that?" Applause!
I then say, "Actually that was your wife's favorite. Yours was a snap dragon. You adopted her petunia as your favorite after she died of cancer." Silence.

On the first announcement the audience may have been thinking:

1) Wow, maybe he can read a person's mind,
2) That guy is probably a stooge or was told what to say,
3) it was just a good guess or coincidence,
4) the guy agreed just so that he could be in the spotlight.

Now, I might suggest that we seek how to get everyone to think (1) and none of the others, or to increase (1) or to diminish 2-4). Maybe it is enough to just eliminate any of 2-4, as
2) a totally random person that you never have contact with until the "moment of telepathy."
3) repeat performance without boredom,
4) acknowledge that this is form of telepathy too (influence, thought projection, mind control, etc.

When it comes to the second telepathy announcement, other problems/potential enter the picture:
1) this guy really can read minds and that scares me,
2) I'm OK with flowers but this is getting too personal,
3) I wonder if he does psychic readings?
4) if this is real, why isn't this guy in Atlantic City playing 21 or poker?

My point is that dealing with imagined skepticism and verification can be good, or open doors to other forms of denial or rejections. What is a good balance?
I would like to perform on the knowledge that everyone accepts telepathy in some from. How to build on that without fear or rejection?