Rediscovered!

Wow. Talk about a blast from /my/ past.

I recently rediscovered this blog, having completely forgotten my experiments here. So it goes!

If you’re looking for more, from gaming to atheism to skepticism in general, come find me over at:

http://site29a.com – the Hexadecimal Number of the Beast – home of the Random Poe Generator!

… well meaning, but –

The meat here starts around the two minute mark.

What I want to point out is that this woman doesn’t actually believe she’s a scam artist – but she does believe that she can look at photographs and tell you if the people involved are living and dead.

The important thing to note here is that she uses cold reading techniques to try to confirm her statements with Randi – she throws out extra data, trying to indicate how well she knows these souls, looking for ‘hits’ – but Randi gives her no approval one way or another.

Sadly, it’s very easy to delude yourself when you seek outside confirmation. Is she deliberately trying to throw this out there as false? no. But she’s definitely not doing anything WRONG – she’s just mistaken as to what rate of success trumps chance, and is operating from conversational cues.

Or so I think, anyway.

The Anatomy of a Psychic Experience

For a while, and for the pure fun of doing it, I used to play the Gypsy at renfaires and other, similar venues. It was great fun – putting on the show as a mysterious fortuneteller, watching people oooh and aah as you helped them ‘solve all of life’s problems with but a simple consultation of the cards.’

It was purely for amusement, I thought. I mean, who believes the white guy with a hokey gypsy accent and the shiny, modern Tarot deck picked up for ten bucks at the local new age store? It only got weird when people I knew, my friends who’d come by to see the show, started asking me for readings ‘off-camera’, claiming how ‘talented’ I was and how incredible the experience was for them, and how they never knew anyone so accurate…

… er. It was a trick. A show. Nothing more.

It was, however, a valuable experience – it taught me how the entire scam works, from an inside perspective, and how easy it really is to get caught up in the heady power of it all. And.. frankly? I was by no means a pro – I was just decently observant. Drawing on that experience, let me lay out for you psychic hopefuls the anatomy of the scam – how it works, so that when you experience it you may get an alarm bell or two.

Ready?

The Snake Oil Toolkit

I have a very hard place in my heart for those that take advantage of poor souls in search of a cure to what ails them. From faith healers to new age spiritualists, I growl at them all – because, frankly, they hit close to home.

My wife, you see, is unable to have children for medical reasons. Because of that, and because she wishes to, she’s been the target of more smiling glad-handing then I really care to remember. Time after time, someone offers a miraculous cure for something, and she gets all hopeful – only to face the inevetable dissapointment when it falls apart or doesn’t work as advertised. If it can happen to her – a reasonably intelligent, very critical soul – I fear how often it happens to others.

The point of this particular essay is to arm you against quackery – to give you the tools you need to discern whether the new fantastic cure you’re looking at is likely to have bearing on the condition you’re dealing with. You can level this at your doctor as easily as you can that wall of homeopathic remedies. Believe me, one of them will pass our test, and one of them won’t. There are five telltale signs of snake oil. If what you’re looking into matches ANY of these signs… beware.

VideoLink: Darren Brown and Richard Dawkins

Cold reading really is an easy trick – half intuition, half advanced people-watching, tied together with ambiguousness and mysticism and patter.  Here’s a breakdown of how it works – by one of the masters.  Enjoy!

 

The BLAST –

What got me started on this entire crusade, back in the day, was a meeting in 2006 with a sales rep for Tunguska Blast.  He was a very nice blonde fellow in a very nice suit – and while I don’t remember his name, here in 2008, I do remember the very expensive watch he wore and the carefully cultivated image of quality he offered as he spoke to a good forty people in the meeting room of a local hotel.

It wasn’t my first exposure to a scam – but it was one of the most abjectly repellant ones I’ve ever seen.

I tasted his fruit juice, and listened to his speil.  I watched as he preached to the crowd and pulled people in to the idea of not only getting very very healthy, but getting rich while doing so.  After all, if you’re going to have a panacea – what better way to sell it than to get a multilevel marketing scheme going at the same time?

I was less brave, then, and while I didn’t fall for the pitch, I didn’t stand up and say anything either.  To this day, I regret it.   Consider this, then, me standing up.  So.  Let’s take a long, hard look at Tunguska Blast.

A thin and feeble candle –

There’s something utterly compelling about a new ‘blog – and intimidating, honestly.  Here stands the ultimate in unlimited white canvas, where all the content is ultimately produced, offered, fixed, shoved, and mangled by one single author (sometimes a group, but I’m not that insane yet) in some small effort to offer something productive and useful on the morass that is the ‘net.

And I said all that without taking a breath.  Aren’t you impressed?

This ‘blog, however, is a little different.  It exists because of outrage.  Anger.  Pure annoyance and snarliness that grows worse and worse as I grow older.  Like Don Quixote, I am setting out to tilt at a massive windmill.. one that others have tilted at before, and with limited success.  Luminaries like James Randi and modern masters like Brian Dunning – you’ll see their links to the right – have made entire careers out of trying to show people what I’m setting out to show people, and I have no basis for believing in success where they’ve failed.

What makes me different, however … well.  

I’m a businessman, not a scientist.  I’m a pedagogue, not a magician.  I am a normal schlub like everyone else, one who’s watched too many people get sucked in (as I have, once or twice!) by unspported promises from unscrupulous people, or .. worse.. the dupes of those people who promise everything for nothing at all.

And I’m tired of it.

I’m tired of cheats, tired of scams.  I’m tired of people who take advantage of the trust of others – and you know?  I’m ready to do my part to take them down.

So – that’s what this weblog is.  It’s some small attempt to expose, decry, batter, break and ultimately end the scams you face every day.  If we didn’t give ‘em money… well.  There’d be no point.

So welcome.  Feel free to come in, feel free to spread the word if it is even somewhat helpful.  Above all?  Listen to everyone, and question everything.  It’ll keep your wallet fatter, if nothing else.