ESP Reactions
Lately I’ve been a lot busier than even I am used to being. As such I haven’t had the time to consider articles for discussion. Fortunately it is the Easter weekend and free time is a bit more abundant.
I was reading an article called “Ask iGod” which I stumbled on to from the “On the Internet nobody knows you’re a God” article. Neither was really intriguing in on of itself. However I did find a site I’ve visited in the past which has jolted my curiosity.
The site is an ESP experiment. For those of you who are not familiar with the abbreviation “ESP”, it stands for extrasensory perception. The site is conducting an ESP experiment. Please do check it out and participate in the short experiment. While it is a fascinating experiment, the explanations of how people think it works, are short of gold.
Check it out and read on.
As much as I love studying people’s reactions to things, this is a priceless example of unfiltered human reactions. Let me give you a few of my favorite explanations.
Perhaps my most favorite ESP experiment explanation,
From Bill:
Cliff,I tried three times and you missed twice. Better luck next time.
Bill
If you are none the wiser, there does not appear anything intriguing about this fellow’s explanation. Isn’t it possible that the experiment failed two out of three times? There are several things that can be deduced about Bill just from his simple comment. For one, Bill was very shocked when he did the ESP test 3 times and all 3 times it read his mind. Bill however, was not a believer in ESP but yet he lacked an explanation as to how his mind could have been read 3 times. So in order to spite the author of the experiment he proclaims that the experiment actually isn’t accurate (random guessing perhaps) at all.
From Lucille:
it was a ….trick….wasn’t it? really cool site, too. seldom do I have the fun of being impressed with one of the links my cyber friends send me…but yours was a breath of fresh air. I book marked it so I can explore it more in lengths later…but, then again, I bet you already knew that, right?
Isn’t it fascinating that many people are so innocent in their perception of the world? A breath of fresh air, what does that even mean in this context? It is as though the site has instilled or rekindled some sort of hope in Lucille all the while part of her is a skeptic.
From: “Brett K.”
Dear Dr Pickover, I am writing in response to your amazing esp experiment. Since having seen it last night, the world has become a much more interesting place. The solution to your experiment, whether simple or so advanced, that a mere person such as myself will never explain, has intrigued me all the same. Like everone else, I have some theories. Whether right or wrong here they are.1. You are an Alien.
2. You are the most amazing software writer on this planet.
3. Like everything else in this universe history is repeating itself.
4. My thoughts are creating my reality.Thank you for your amazing insight. It must be amazing being you. Brett K.. Melbourne Australia.
And finally,
From: “OpheikensFamily”
Right every time, I can hardly believe it – Some things are bigger than us!
So what is your explanation?
Filed under: Entertainment, People | 3 Comments
That is an awesome trick. It took me several minutes to figure it out, but it’s amazing how simple it actually is. It should work 100% of the time unless the person misreads the cards or the creator of the site specifically made it such that some of the links don’t do the trick completely. Let’s just say that no matter what card you pick, it will be absent from the second set of cards (unless they intentionally didn’t do it for every link). One problem, though, is that some people will view the second set of cards and think that it didn’t remove their card because they notice another one gone first. Quite the interesting set of psychological factors at work.
That’s an experiment?
I picked a card, went to the next page and immediately saw that none of the cards were the same as the previous page. Maybe it’s because I play too much poker or maybe it because I thought about what people would be most likely to pick which made me notice all the cards on the first page but I was pretty disappointed when the next page showed up and I instantly figured it out =(
That is funny. My fav is this comment in the HTML source: