A different subject:
I figured that sense the rational responce squad dealt with irrational claims, this would be the best place to seek answers. Actually, its not answers, but advice I'm looking for.
To be breif, allow me to just explain the situation. I live in Lexington KY, and every so often, there is a psychic convention a few seconds from my house. I convinced the guy running it that I was psychic, and he believed me. Not only that, but he gave me a 45 minute to one hour speaking role in his convention.
Now, I'm an atheist first, and a magician second. I'm pretty good at mentalism and the liking. My plan for this was finding out who in the audience was skeptical of ESP, then going through my heavily practiced ESP routine, and finding out who was still skeptical. Afterwards, I explain the irrationality of 'psychics' and debunk my entire routine. I also debunk the cold reading and 'animal talking' people who went before me.
I figure that only will take 20 minutes, though. What else should I do with my time (assuming they don't taze me). Any ideas are acceptable. Make it as outrageous or as thought provoking as you'd like,
And of course, I'll record it all.
Thanks for your time,
r1ddleb0x
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Riddlebox, i congradulate you on making an entire convention of people look like fools in under 20 minutes ^_^
I would also love to see this recording, would be good for a hoot
Ideas for extra time,
Speak with the dead
Speak with dead animals >.>
Oh! how about a spiritually possessed ventrillaquist doll?
(if you cant do ventrillaquism, just place a cell phone inside him, should work wonders with a microphone and a friend)
What Would Kharn Do?
Well, I figure I would integrate the cold reading ideas into the routine. As for speaking to animals, I have no idea how people seriously believe in that. If you ever encoutner someone who can speak to animals, the one way to debunk them is to hear them ask "what is the pets name?" If the animal knows ANYTHING AT ALL, then it should know its name...
I also notice that all of these people are HUGE christians. They believe a god gave them their 'powers.' I'll see if I can integrate some nice atheism into the routine (although I might not, because theists tend to ignore anything from an atheistic POV. I want to convince people that psychics are bullshit, not theism.)
But thanks for the post. One of my friends suggested that I take someone I know and say "I'M TRANSMITTING THOUGHTS NOW!" and have someone stand up a few seconds later and go 'YES I AGREE!' and another person stand up and go '42!'
Welcome to the hizzle! Sounds like a good idea - a lot like what James Randi does.
Well, I went today to scope things out (I speak tomorrow) and to see whats up. One guy who claimed to speak to ghosts talked about atheism, and his argument against atheism went EXACTLY like this:
"I had a friend who was atheist and i asked him one day 'ARE YOU A TRUE ATHEIST' and he said 'of course.' So what I did was say 'hey come here' and I SLAMMED HIS HAND IN A BOOK. He yelled out 'oh my god' and I said 'you aren't an atheist, you just cried out to god'"
Seriously, I could not make this up. If I weren't speaking the next day, I would definitely say something to this idiot. Tomorrow, I'll make sure to call him out on it, assuming he is there.
I would have yelled, "You MotherF*****!"
"See, you F***ed your mother!"
I'd have broke his jaw.
Maybe try something along the lines of faith healing like Peter Popoff, or the psychc surgeons. Probably won't expect someone with serious illness to be in the audience, but if you could "cure" someone with a headache or a cold by shouting "jesus", then revealing the hoax, you might actually cure a few cases of irrational thining.
At any rate, it's awesome you're doing this, and let us know what happens.
There are no theists on operating tables.
Well, to be honest, the entire convention was sortof a dud.
The guy in the email told me there would be about 300 people there. Well, both days, there were MAYBE 50, if that. HOWEVER, I still went on.
I had 5 people, plus my girlfriend, in the audience. My girlfriend is not very camera literate, and only recorded the "psychic" act I did. Basically, I did 5 card forces in an unopened deck of cards to all 5 people, and then "predicted" their cards in order. I also used numbers, stating "Scientifically, the odds of this happening would be in the BILLIONS" and they believed it and ate it up. I also did another trick where they all "predicted" the color of every card in the deck correctly, once again starting huge odds each time. If I seriously wanted to, I could have easily frauded these people out of money. However, afterwards I debunked my tricks, and then continued to debunk the "I Speak to Princess Diana" lady who went before me. I also debunked the "I Talk to your pets" lady (I mean, anyone can do that, animals don't talk to tell you that you are wrong...) and did some Uri Geller demonstrations. Afterwards, a guy came up to me and said he payed 30 dollars for one of the ladies there, and "she didn't know jack SHIT about anything." He thanked me for my presentation, and talked about how he loves America because I was allowed to present my opinion. He also enjoyed the fact that I'm Army enlisted, so I think that I sorta helped out on the psychic skepticism.
I don't plan on uploading the videos of the tricks, but if you guys want to see them, just for humor merit, tell me and I'll see what I can do.