This coming Friday, November 16, Larry King is hosting another hour of credulous guessing games with cold readers John Edward and James van Praagh. To make the show less painful, I developed a John Edward / James van PraaghBingo card. Check off a square for every lame cold-reading trick you note. I hope you find it amusing.
Actually there is another reason for doing this. It can help explain to believers what is really going on with these cold readers. From personal experience in doing this, I can say that if you explain in advance to believers what Edward and van Praagh are going to do, some can be convinced. Playing Bingo just adds to the fun.
Folks, this is a great way of spotting the standard gimmicks – of which regular readers of SWIFT will already be aware, of course. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to spot these methods, and how both Edward and Van Praagh will use the tried-and-true methods described, simply because they have no other way of doing the act.
To top off this dandy little game, watch the video by artist Jose Alvarez. This is a small part of his current one-man show at The Kitchen gallery in NYC, just opened and running through December 22nd. Alvarez was the “channeler” about whom you can read at tinyurl.com/2y52xf – just do a search for “Carlos.” This is one of the most powerful, succinct, evidential examples of the deceit, cruelty, and “formula” gimmicks that these scammers use to convince their victims. This video shows the anatomy of his trickery and the length to which he'll go to exploit people's grief and vulnerability, as well as the media's eagerness to promote it. It should be played in classrooms everywhere, in my opinion – especially for young people still unaware of these tricks.
Of course, if The Boys have their wits about them, they’ll arrange to have their own callers telephone CNN, and those callers will simply agree with everything that John and James offer them. But that would be cheating, wouldn’t it? CNN could arrange to trace each of the calls, and find interesting data there, if they wanted to…
... written by Christian Burnham,
November 14, 2007
We really need some way of doing randomized bingo cards. At the moment every reader is going to win at the same time- and the pot will have to be divided equally amongst several thousand.
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... written by Hollerith,
November 14, 2007
I am not a professional (she said modestly) but I do cold readings with cards (or tea-leaves or anything handy). I tell them I am going to do a cold reading and that they must watch out for unconsciously giving me feeds, etc. Then I go into my patter. By the end, they are saying that I am denying my true psychic gifts and that I am awesomely accurate. Next time, I'll give them this bingo card. Even then, I doubt it will help. I mean, I TELL them what I am going to do.
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... written by Simon,
November 16, 2007
Randi will know of this, there is an old social psychology experiment where two groups of people are asked to read two political articles. One group is already very LEFT-WING and the other RIGHT-WING. The LEFT group is give a very well written article for a right-wing party, and a poorly written article for a left-wing part. The RIGHT-WING is of course given the opposite. When later asked, the groups still ascertain that their political party article is on point, and the other is rubbish.
PEOPLE'S PRE-CONCIEVED IDEAS ABOUT SOMETHING AFFECT THEIR JUDGEMENT!
That's why you have trouble Hollerith
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... written by Angel,
November 16, 2007
I guess the show didn't go as planned but I did pick up some Bingo words from Lisa Williams especially her little "random" street reading. I picked up on "the dead relative is ok", "asked about a child", and a "Birthday". These seem very general to me, yet the passerby totally connected on these subjects. As soon as the women let Lisa Williams know that she was talking about her dead brother, Lisa took that leverage and drained for all it was worth until she got a birthday and something about a child out of the woman being read, more specifically the child thing was about a miscarriage. Lisa is a very good interrogator, not a "psychic".
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... written by Erin Butler,
November 19, 2007
"Did you see a John?"
Some would consider that an impolite question to ask a lady...
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