Quote:
Originally Posted by mind-energy  Yes, cold reading can be a problem in the challenge design, that's why other participants of that forum suggest eliminating this possibility in the experiment's design. |
Looks like you may have overlooked the years of extensive effort to design a challenge that eliminates the possibility of cold-reading or other natural world phenomena, that both sides would agree is fair.
Randi's challenge has reached the point in a few cases where the psychic agrees, in writing, that the challenge is fair and acceptable, and then when (s)he fails, declares that it wasn't fair and acceptable after all.
The test suggested here is far less stringent in its protocol than what's been negotiated in the Randy challenge.
But it would be fun to watch Derren Brown do it -- I'm quite sure he would far outstrip anyone's results!
As Brutha suggested, the results should be better than even odds, so why not just go out and do the test sans skeptics? Just go out and see how many you get right, have as impartial a witness as you can find present, and document the results? If you get better results than would be expected by chance, and your protocols can stand up to scrutiny, then why would you need it to be a competition?