Comments on: Who Want’s to Predict the Lottery?

By: Farhan Rehman

Farhan Rehman — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:34:20 +0000

@Dean I did see him describe the coin toss experiment being based on nothing more than maths, but from a statistical point of view, the probability of one person accomplishing 10 successful combinations, whilst the other person only gets one combination is most definitely skewed given my basic understanding of probability and statistics.. There's also the work of William Tiller, where thoughts have been shown to directly affect physical reality, especially in skewing seemingly 'neutral' probability based events, (see What The Bleep Do We Know!? for a more detailed explanation of this worldview). There is also the work of Rupert Sheldrake that talks about morphogenetic fields, and how a group effect is both possible, and probable in terms of generating a telepathic effect, especially with his theory of morphic fields.

By: Dean

Dean — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:43:29 +0000

Farhan, if you’d watched the program properly, you’d have seen that the support group of people for the coin toss experiment made no difference – it was based on maths.

Derren Brown doesn’t believe in anything psychic. Although the wisdom of crowds theory does exist, that’s not how he predicted the 6 lottery numbers. Sure, he got them together and they managed to get 4, but that final ‘prediction’ was done using a camera trick.

By: Farhan Rehman

Farhan Rehman — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:55:16 +0000

@Robert – hehehe, indeed.. But having read the book the Wisdom of Crowds, and understood some of the basic principles behind divining/psychic precognitive type stuff, and also seeing some of his more obvious uses of suggestive subconscious pre-suppositions, I’m curious to figure out if it’s a Wisdom of Crowds approach that did it – or the sheer desire of a large enough support group (i.e. all the people who were watching the show and wanted him to get it right), that led to him getting the right numbers.. If you think about how he got the support of a few people, to influence a few coin tosses, this isn’t that much different, just to a larger order of scale, in some regards..

@Seung-Wook, @Mark, @Luke, you’ve all been added to the list

By: Robert (thirstforwine)

Robert (thirstforwine) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:49:40 +0000

You do realise it was VERY carefully set up so that when, not if, this fails to make any significant difference, he can say it was because you weren’t disinterested enough, not in the right state of mind. Have fun though!

By: Luke Edge

Luke Edge — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:12:16 +0000

Sign me up Farhan . . . . . . . would come in handy at the moment!
And like yourself and mark, really interested to see if it could be done.

Luke

By: Mark Shaw

Mark Shaw — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:17:01 +0000

Hi Farhan, like you, I watched the programme. I am really interested in the idea of what you think about, you bring about… It will be fun to have a group of us, working together to see if we can replicate what was on telly..

It may well be a trick, but it will be fun trying to see what we can achieve. It will also be great to meet some new peeps in the process of trying.

The only thing that I am not sure about is the level of commitment needed. I am happy to stay for the long haul, but perhaps an indication of what that entails should be communicated to all the participants..

What a great case study… what a great story… lets make it happen…

best

Mark Shaw
07990 743 564
mark@markshaw.biz
twitter.com/markshaw

By: Seung-Wook

Seung-Wook — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:01:54 +0000

Hey Farhan, just saw your tweet haha I’d love to have a go.

By: Tweets that mention Who Want’s to Predict the Lottery? -- Topsy.com

Tweets that mention Who Want’s to Predict the Lottery? -- Topsy.com — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:30:53 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Farhan Rehman and Farhan Rehman. Farhan Rehman said: @EdgeandBarrett @heatherataylor @michaelreuter @markshaw @ste_vee @mogston @chrisorourke If u want 2 join the experiment http://bit.ly/cpiW0 [...]