Hello Bill,

Thank you for your post. I'm sorry but my english isn't good enough to understand all what you said.
It is very frustrating to communicate by written messages only, because it reflects only a portion of the message and if you add the problem of translating my ideas into a foreign language you can imagine the distortion !..

I really understand the problem of Ian. But I still think that he could have found another solution. For example : "As I had problems with french orders you have to know that if you order from France I won't be
responsible if the order doesn't arrive to you. So order at your own risks. And do yourself the approaches to the postal services to solve the problem". It would be a solution less agressive. By the way it was his previous way of working. I ordered his book about Cold Reading and.......... I received it very quickly !.. But now he gives me no chance at all !
You know Ian could be surprised by the french orders all arriving to destination in the future and finally decide to do business normally with french mentalists after several good experiences. Who knows exactly why Ian had many problems in the past with French orders ?


I never said that skeptic are people who doesn't believe ! It's the opposite : they believe that many things don't exist before having any proof of their belief... They are as blind as the believers are. The real skceptics (in the Greek definition) is a person who doubts but who keeps an open mind. It is why I think a good attitude is found between believers and skceptics : to believe that I could be surprised by the discovery of new laws of nature. (sorry for the bad english, I hope I am clear enough).

Many scientifics had proven that people would die by heart attack if they tried to travel by train. But some people "believed", non scientifics, that it wouldn't be the case. And they tried. Thanks to them...

Rationnality is an invention of the conscious mind. But subconscious know many things that surpass the conscious. It is wrong to pretend that knowledge come from rationnnal thinking !
So many important discoveries are made by day dreaming and non-rationnal process. Read the history of science and the biography of big names like Eisntein, Franklin, Newton...

It would be very interesting to debate on this question but too difficult by messages on this forum and too tiring for me because I spend a lot of time to write a simple message so imagine for a philosophical debate !
But if you decide to learn French, tell me and I would love to debate again !..

Best,
Fred Darevil

The above postings are the longest and most meandering in the whole Cafe... I spotted it first, and I claim my prize!

Fred,

You said "The real skeptics (in the Greek definition) is a person who doubts but who keeps an open mind."

Actually, thats one of the points I was making. We are on the same wavelength there. I do try to distance myself from those "skeptics" that just rush to attack instead of think.

Yes, language can be such a barrier when trying to communicate, especially on these boards!

to maybe drive some traffic there, im going to post a topic on gathering statistical data for use in cold readings, maybe we can pool our data. I havent found a thread on this yet.

Drew: I answered his post paragraph by paragraph. I could have sign posted for you, but its hardly "meandering". Now longest... could be. We talked about alot of things. Don't worry, I assure you my normal life wont allow that kind of time too often

Hmmm... I could always order an extra copy from Ian and then ship it to you via Airborne Express or some other service that offers tracking.

Of course, it might get a bit expensive to obtain it this way, but if you really want it, it might be a solution?

Regarding the science line of questioning...

Yes skeptics are people who doubt. Most self-proclaimed skeptics are biased and doubt based on preconceived notions. But lets keep in mind that there may be a good reason for those notions to exist. Let me explain.

Science cannot prove anything (refer to Hume's Induction problem). It can only test a hypothesis over and over again under different conditions until we have seen it happen enough times that we feel there is a good chance it will happen again. If I take a billiard ball and drop it I am fairly certain that here on earth, the ball will fall. Not only that, I am fairly certain it will do it with specific acceleration. We have seen it so many times happening that we have some level of confidence on the hypothesis of gravitational attraction.

Popper put it this way: A good scientific theory is such that it can be tested easily for failure and yet it doesn't fail. He called it degree of falsifiability. The easier it is to falsify a theory which withstands falsifications, the better the theory. It only takes one billiard ball falling up to grant a verification of the theory.

Can we then say that if we test the theory of psychokinesis enough times with failure, we can conclude that people cannot move objects with their minds? We cannot. But at the same time each failure adds to the probability that the hypothesis is wrong. This is the converse of Popper's notion. And unfortunately we cannot prove a negative. The fact that something does not happen does not mean it doesn't exist as a phenomenon. We just have to question, why after all the testing the phenomenon doesn't show up. A good possibility is that the phenomenon does not exist. And while not strictly scientific, and perhaps a biased preconception, this is why many skeptics "negate" the existance of some things. It's not just dogma, but lack of evidence after many trials.

Science is beautiful because it does not have preconceived notions (scientists may have, they are afterall human). Science will observe nature and make models from the observations, not the other way around. If nature does not behave as we theorize, then science changes. This constant adjustment property of the scientific method is what makes it so beautiful, so effective and so powerful.

Along a different line... Rationality is not an invention. Reason is bound by logic, which is a discovery more than an invention. It is true that deductive logic cannot really create anything new, it just extends the consequences of a given premise. But inductive logic and analogy are rational tools that do allow us to create. Whether the process of creation is conscious or subconscious, is a matter of debate.

What is true is that there is a myth surrounding the creation process, especially that of genius. We are led to believe that somehow magically, through a dream or some such mecanism, genius puts together marvelous ideas. This is just folklore. Good stories, but fictional ones.

For a good account of how creative genius really opearates I recommend Michael Shermer's book "The Borderlines of Science". It talks about skepticism, science, rationality and the myth of creative genius.

So all topics discussed are included, isn't that great?

As for myself I try to keep an open mind and not store any preconceived notions about the world.

-Alain Bellon

alain:
i always use hiesenbergs uncertainty priciple to explain how nothing can really be proven. there may some day be a way to observe without effecting, but for now of course its not feasible.

in sagans "science as a candle in the dark" he dedicates a whole chapter that almost seems like an address to skeptics to reign in their attack instinct and try to be more sensitive to those who believe on faith. it really should be required reading for some of the people in PSIcops and even the skeptic society.

if you liked shermers book, and you havent read the afforementioned sagan book, i highly reccomend it. i read shermers "why people believe wierd things" right before the sagan book, and realized that shermer is very much a student of the latter.

Bill,

The Sagan book you refer to is actually titled "The Demon Haunted World." The title you gave is a subtitle. I just finished reading it, and I also give it my highest recommendation.

Quinn

ack, whoops, i was thinking ahead of myself. yes, it is "the demon haunted world", and that is the subtitle.

for those interested, it is ISBN 0-345-40946-9. and it retails for 14 bucks.

why a science book here? well, I find alot of it to act somewhat like a manual for how people who believe paranormal things think.

for someone who uses CR, it really lets you expand CR theories easily because you know what the weakenesses are in the sitters thought processes are, and allows you to exploit them.

its these kinds of things that made it mandatory in college to have a week focused on ethics in every persuasion/comm class...

Hello,

Thank you for your proposition Philemon. I'll think about it.

Alain : I loved your post. Very clever. You are perfeclty right : rationnality is not an invention but a discovery. Thank you.

Drewmacadam : I'm not sure about the translation of "meandering". In my dictionnary there are two definitions : one is pejorative and the other not. But I don't think that you are the sort of guy who makes judgements about things he doesn't like or understand. Obviously you can LIKE or not something but you can't say : THIS post is meaningful and THAT one is meaningless. But I'm sure you know that.

Thank you all for your interesting messages.
Best,
Fred

Am I the only person who has been threatened with physical abuse by their partner when practicing SOT for not revealing the method and getting over excited!!!

fred,

when he used "meandering" in this case, he meant somewhat off track, without a purpose, without focus. In most cases that is meant to be an insult. I don't know him, so it doesn't really matter.

i do have to comment on your use of the english language. I once hosted a japanese exchange student, and because the student had to practice so much to learn to write english, her writing was the absolute most beautiful printing I had ever seen. i thought it might be because her native language is so much more intricate to write.

your posts remind me of that because you have to work a little harder to find words, but in the end, you posts turn out to be refreshingly straight forward, as opposed to the veiled eloquence we native english speakers try to accomplish. and the best part is that what might have seemed harsh (although true) from an english speaker, is excused, and still very true!

Karmic: I ordered my SOT pack about a week ago, so I think it should be arriving soon here in the US.... and your post just makes the wait a little more unbearable. I cant wait to start with it.

My copy arrived today.
Heh heh. Heh heh heh heh heh.

Ian, you underhanded devious son of a you-know-what!

This is tooooo cool!

Delighted to announce mine arrived also.

Mine has arrived. Wicked one Ian.

/bamba

Got mine today, and it's worthless. Utter rubbish. A totally unworkable principle, humorlessly described in a poorly produced volume. Don't waste your money on this useless piece of hype.

*Sigh* You all aren't buying this for a second, are you? I knew it. I really need to get better at this "blatant lying" thing if I'm going to get anywhere with mentalism... but it was worth a shot to keep the rest of you away from it!

The truth is, Ian has really got a gem here. The principle is dastardly, the routine ideas are first-rate, and I imagine I'll be up the better part of the night toying with different applications.

Kudos and thanks, Ian! Now, let's talk about that price increase...

Quinn

Mine arrived in the mail yesterday, and I must admit, I spent the following hour devouring this excellent little tome!

I'm not quite sure how I'm going to use the principle yet, but I know it'll find its way into my repertoire before too long.

I haven't purchased this yet, but I was wondering if you can perfrom an effect that goes as follows:
You ask spectator to shuffle the deck as well as he can into a random order. You take the deck back and without looking at the faces, you separate them into red-black order one at a time as in Out Of This World.

If I can do this, then I will most likely buy this from Ian. Think about the routine you can build. First the spectator shuffles and you separate the colors, then you can "shuffle" and perform Out Of This World to the spectator. And they'll have no clue how you AND they were able to do the same thing!

darmoe,

SOT path is ian-rwoland.com > enter > items to buy > SOT (2nd link in list of things to buy) > passworded page > voila.

Cardguy,

Yes, you can do what you describe. In fact, the book gives some nice ideas for linking the principle to an OOTW routine.

Quinn

Anyone thought of incorporating SOT with Ben Harris' Zoom?