Posts tagged: Superstition
Klint Finley
Palm reader turned cognitive scientist Ray Hyman wrote:
As we have seen, clients will readily accept stock spiels such as those I have presented as unique descriptions of themselves. Many laboratory experiments have demonstrated this effect. Forer (1948) called the tendency to accept as valid a personality sketch on the basis of the client’s willingness to accept it ‘the fallacy of personal validation.” The early studies on personal validation were simply demonstrations to show that students, personnel directors, and others can readily be persuaded to accept a fake sketch as a valid description of themselves. A few studies tried to go beyond the demonstration and tease out factors that influence the acceptability of the fake sketch. Sundberg (1955), for example, gave the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (known as the MMPI) to 44 students. The MMPI is the most carefully standardized personality inventory in the psychologist’s tool kit. Two psychologists, highly experienced in interpreting the outcome of the MMPI, wrote a personality sketch for each student on the basis of his or her test results. Each student then received two personality sketches– the one actually written for him or her– and a fake sketch. When asked to pick which sketch described him or her better, 26 of the 44 students (59 percent) picked the fake sketch!
Sundberg’s study highlights one of the difficulties in this area. A fake, universal sketch can be seen as a better description of oneself than can a uniquely tailored description by trained psychologists based upon one of the best assessment devices we have. This makes personal validation a completely useless procedure. But it makes the life of the character reader and the pseudo psychologist all the easier. His general and universal statements have more persuasive appeal than do the best and most appropriate descriptions that the trained psychologist can come up with.
Full Story: Skeptical Inquirer: Cold Reading: How to Convince Strangers That You Know All About Them
See also: The Forer Effect
Klint Finley
In 1993 the Neoist Alliance protested Ian Stuart’s performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Harlequin, promising to levitate the Pavilion Theatre 25 feet off the ground. Thee Temple Ov Psychic Youth (TOPY), however, lead a counter protest to stop the levitation, concerned that the levitation could create “a negative vortex would be created which could seriously damage the ozone layer.”
As the handful of individuals who’d decided to cross the picket line arrived for the concert, they were met with chants of ‘Boycott Stockhausen’ from our ranks, to which the TOPY activists replied with cries of ‘Stop The Levitation’. The counter-demonstrators pleaded with concert-goers to remain outside the building so that they could participate in a set of breathing and visualisation exercises designed to prevent the levitation. Once the concert began, the two sets of demonstrators prepared themselves for a psychic battle outside the theatre. These street actions drew a far larger crowd than the Ian Stuart recital inside the building. Passers-by were reluctant to step in front of the waves of psychic energy we were generating and soon much of the street was at a standstill. The Brighton and Hove Leader of 20/5/93 quoted one shaken concert-goer as saying, ‘I definitely felt my chair move. It shook for a minute and then stopped.’ The Neoist Alliance also received reports of toilets overflowing and electrical equipment short-circuiting, although these went unreported by the press.
While TOPY were adamant that their actions prevented the Pavilion Theatre being raised 25 feet into the air, the Neoist Alliance considers the protest to have been a complete success.
Full Story: The Stewart Home Society: OUR TACTICS AGAINST STOCKHAUSEN
(via Peter Bebergal)
The great and powerful internet auction house eBay has henceforth banned all sales of wizardly enchantments and magic spells, even if you have a vacuum cleaner’s worth of gold to offer.
Indeed, the company knows not what it does, unaware that the hour of the dragons grows near. Not only has eBay banned the sale of spells, but it has also prohibited the sale of potions. Yes, that even includes the +2 Potion of Dragonslaying — the fools! Psychic readings are similarly forbidden.
Read more at http://www.tecca.com/news/2012/08/15/ebay-magic-potion-psychic-reading-ban/#HhbovxHjcM6L82FJ.99
Tecca: Alas! eBay to ban sale of magic spells, potions
See also: Square prohibits its service from being used for “occult materials.”
From Science Daily:
In basic neurological terms, synesthesia is thought to be due to cross-wiring in the brain of some people (synesthetes); in other words, synesthetes present more synaptic connections than “normal” people. “These extra connections cause them to automatically establish associations between brain areas that are not normally interconnected,” professor Gómez Milán explains. New research suggests that many healers claiming to see the aura of people might have this condition. […]
Many local people attribute “paranormal powers” to El Santón, because of his supposed ability to see the aura of people “but, in fact, it is a clear case of synesthesia,” the researchers explained. According to the researchers, El Santón has face-color synesthesia (the brain region responsible for face recognition is associated with the color-processing region); touch-mirror synesthesia (when the synesthete observes a person who is being touched or is experiencing pain, s/he experiences the same); high empathy (the ability to feel what other person is feeling), and schizotypy (certain personality traits in healthy people involving slight paranoia and delusions). “These capacities make synesthetes have the ability to make people feel understood, and provide them with special emotion and pain reading skills,” the researchers explain.
Full Story: Science Daily: Synesthesia May Explain Healers Claims of Seeing People’s ‘Aura’
(via Matt Staggs)
I’ve long suspected this to be true. I’ve met a couple of people who claimed to be able to see auras and didn’t seem to be liars or crazy.
Talking with Gods, the Grant Morrison documentary, is now available on DVD or for download from the Halo Eight Online Store or DVD from Amazon.com.
Update: There’s also a new expanded two disc version. If you already bought the original, you can also buy disk two separately, both on DVD or as a digital download.
Also, Wired has an interview with Morrison on his new Batman, Inc. series which sounds pretty interesting (perhaps he’ll get to incorporate his ideas from his aborted Wildcats series):
Superheroes have always been about becoming whatever we’ve needed them to be at any given time. Lately, we’ve made them like Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s The Ultimates, weaponized supersoldiers working for the military-industrial complex, which then grew into Iron Man, who is a superhero celebrity, an everyone-is-a-star kind of thing. But give it another five years and it could be cosmic seekers again, because of the new drugs coming onto the market. Or it could be something else entirely. They’ll take the form of whatever our dreams or ideals happen to be. […]
Most corporations seem pretty demonic. Corporations as entities are strange things. Because no one person is really in charge, we’ve conjured some predatory, ravenous entities. But Batman, Inc. is an attempt to reimagine what a good corporation can be. It’s not the first time this has happened in comics: Joe Casey tried to imagine the same thing with Wildcats. But this will be Bruce Wayne’s attempt, and I think it’s going to be quite progressive.
Wired: Grant Morrison’s Batman, Inc. Births Comics’ First Zen Billionaire
I think a case could be made that Adrian Veidt (himself based on Tibetan Buddhist Peter Cannon) as the first comics’ first “zen” (used loosely) billionaire.
Alan Moore and his wife/collaborator Melinda Gebbie were interviewed at The University of Northampton’s Magus: Transdisciplinary Approaches to the Work of Alan Moore conference. Above is the first part. The rest is on this playlist.
During part 4 Moore says that he wrote about 1/3rd of the Gorillaz John Dee opera libretto, but the project has now been canceled. The good news is that the portion Moore finished will appear in the next issue of Strange Attractor. Moore says he began writing the libretto in good faith, without contract or pay, with an agreement from the Gorillaz that they would contribute a few pages to issue 3 of Dodgem Logic. Eventually, Moore found that no one else seemed to be working on the opera and more and more was expected of him - costume design, stage design ideas, etc. When the Gorillaz failed to deliver material for Dodgem Logic, Moore backed out of the project.
(via Arthur)
Also: Alan Moore promotional interview for Dodgem Logic # 3 (I’m sold!)
I think this is the original Channel 4 Disinfo show segment. There doesn’t appear to be any Morrison here that doesn’t appear on The Disinformation: Complete Series DVD, but it is a different edit.
Update: Richard Metzger writes that this segment is “quite a bit” longer than the version release on DVD.
(via Phase II).
Here’s an interview on the Family Ov Psychick Individuals web site with Alaura O’Dell:
While Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye Breyer get a lot of attention these days because of the recent PTV3 tour and their attempt to be a pandrogynous unity, the former wife of Genesis P-Orridge and mother to his two daughters, Alaura O’Dell (formerly known as Paula P-Orridge), stands behind. She also appeared on many Psychic TV albums for over a decade, but now her name doesn’t even appear within the liner notes of the reissues any more.
Time to ask her a few questions about her role in PTV, her relation to Genesis, her view on gender issues, and her current life. The interview took place by mail, questions by Peter Schmelzle of fopi.net and Robert Schalinski of Column One. Many thanks to Alaura for answering so open and comprehensively.
Full Story: Family of Psychick Individuals.
(thanks Trevor)
For more on Genesis P-Orridge, check out our dossier on him.
Barbelith is running a frickin’ huge interview with Grant Morrison. I haven’t had time to read much of it yet, but it sounds pretty interesting.
Suddenly I thought, ‘What the Hell is Disney?’ Walt Disney’s dead now but Disney persists as a concept and people who were born after the death of Walt Disney grow up and assume positions within Disney. What are they assuming positions within? It’s in this really devotional way too. What makes you grow up to wear a Mickey Mouse head and go round scaring children? Or ‘I’m going to end up on the Board of Directors of Disney?’ Why, why do these things occur? So I was just seeing them as in the way the Demons in the old Grimoires were seen which was kinda aggregates of power to which people could adhere themselves to or join in cultish fashion so I began to think I could talk to them like that and use ceremonial magic methods to talk to corporations and found there were ways of doing it - that’s why I’m wearing a suit - this is my magical garb for this working. That_s why we evoked gmWORD Ltd. They’re very powerful, ravenous weird things -corporations, strange to deal with.
