Place of Stuff

I have been doing a little light reading recently, mostly online.  I don’t want to discuss the content of what I have been reading, though.  Instead I would like to discuss the reactions to the reading I have been doing.  The nature of true scepticism is to have an open mind: to say that I do not believe the claim made but if sufficient proof can be found I will change my view on the matter.  True scepticism applies to everything: crime reports, whether your partner is/isn’t having an affair, the daily news, whether the fish caught really was “that big” and so on.  It is healthy to be sceptical, otherwise we would all walk around looking like idiots as we believed without question absolutely everything we were told.
Continue reading ‘On Scepticism’ »

The Full Facts book of Cold Reading

This is the post I had planned to make before I messed up.  As someone with an interest in the various tricks that psychics, mediums, tarot readers and similar use, Ian Brodie’s suggestion that I read this book was welcome.  Ian Rowland is a very clear and concise writer and clearly has a love for his subject.

This book cannot make you into a cold reader any more than a Haynes manual can turn you into a mechanic.  What it does do is to take the reader through the steps that any cold reader takes, consciously or otherwise, in a way designed to make the client believe that the reader has more knowledge than they really do.  This is the essence of cold reading – as the reader you need to convince your client that you somehow know things that you shouldn’t be able to.  Whether you are posing as an intuitive person, a psychic, an astrologer or a tarot card reader or whatever, cold reading gives you a way to draw information out of your client without their knowledge.

Firstly, the one thing that jumped out at me was that Ian Rowland really does not want a discussion on whether psychics are real or not within the book.  He discusses the methodology and mentions that this is one way that a psychic could operate.  He also makes it clear that he does not know whether their are real psychics out there or not.  This is in line with skeptical thinking – just because he has never met one does not mean that one is not out there.  I was annoyed about this at first and felt that he should express an opinion.  However, I then realised that this book (despite the content) is not the forum for that debate and he has neatly sidestepped it.

The book is broken down into 6 sections: the first section is about the book itself, the section is a long section on the theory of cold reading and the elements of it, the third section is transcripts of real readings that Ian Rowland has carried out, the fourth (importantly) explains how to block a cold reader, the fifth is “additional notes” and the sixth section gives details on real life non-psychic uses for the techniques and uses a police interrogation as an example.   It is difficult to express the wealth of ideas that the author has put into a seemingly short book.  Cold reading is easy to learn but tricky to master – look at a John Edwards reading as an example of poor cold reading!

At no time does Ian Rowland talk down to you, he is an able teacher with an obviously high regard for his subject.  According to the transcripts provided he has an extremely high success rate (higher than that of professional psychics!) but at no time does he use his knowledge to make money dishonestly.  Some of Derren Brown’s early work was taken from the techniques laid out in the book.  Something else which is very important: this book does not hold back.  I have read books that promise to give you knowledge and discovered that they do the opposite.  Ian Rowland’s book does exactly what it says on the tin.  He explains the techniques and methods.  The book alone can only give you the methods, to properly make this work you need experience, some acting ability and a lot of seemingly trivial knowledge.

If you are interested in cold reading, whether academically, to learn to spot and block it or because you are an unscrupulous sort who wants to fake psychic ability you should definitely add this book to your library.

Links

• Ian Rowland’s website
• Expert Cold Reading website (currently hacked and defaced)
• Purchase “The Full Facts book of Cold Reading” – using this method results in a very fast turnaround for delivery, mine arrived within a couple of days
• Derren Brown’s website
• Derren Brown’s Blog

Back in February, I discussed a book called Flat Earth News.  If you still haven’t read this book, please do so.  You will find yourself nodding your head and agreeing with so much of it; the book is all the more powerful because it is written by a journalist about journalism.  The snowball started by Nick Davies has now grown, The Churner Prize is the latest result of the book.  On the FAQ page, there is a video of an interview/discussion with Davies.

So what is The Churner Prize (apart from being a pun on “The Turner Prize”)? Well, the Why? Page has a go at answering the question.  Basically, a huge chunk of news out there isn’t news, it’s simply press releases from companies or rehashes of older stories put out simply because the story is relevant to a new program or documentary.  Sadly, few people recognise these rehashes because we are all used to the news being packaged and delivered to us and we accept that it is both news and new without question.

In Flat Earth News, Davies highlights a news story which appears in UK papers every time the World Cup is nearing.  It tells us that an average member of the public is planning to take out an insurance policy to cover the emotional trauma he will feel if England loses.  (For anyone reading along, in the hard back copy this is on page 49).  The book says:

A few weeks before the start of the 2006 football World Cup, the Press Association in London put out a story about an England fan named Paul Hucker, from Ipswich, who was so worried about the risk of England failing in the tournament that he had paid £100, plus £5 tax, to insure himself against emotional trauma.

The PA story explained that, if England went down badly and he could provide medical evidence that he had suffered severe medical trauma, Mr Hucker would receive a payout of £1 million from a web-based insurance company, called britishinsurance.com. ‘I find when it comes to penalty shoot-outs it gets very difficult and I wanted to insure myself against psychological trauma,’ Mr Hucker was said to have said.

This is a relatively harmless story, it’s clearly a bit of an ad but the sad thing is that every time a story like this arises (usually via the wire service), journalists and editors run it, untouched, every single time.  For the price of a £100 (plus £5 tax) policy, the insurance company has an huge ad series run in every newspaper.  How much would a genuine ad campaign of that size cost?  A quick Google (or similar search engine) for “Paul Hucker Insurance” will show that this is something that he is known for.  Journalists, not readers, should do this sort of sanity checking.

So how can you help?  If you see stories that are clearly nonsense or rehashes or press releases, let them know at their contact mail address (churner prize AT gmail DOT com – in case of harvesters, I don’t want them spammed).  Start something similar in your own country – the problem is endemic throughout the world as the major companies take over more and more news outlets and cut back on staff.  The fewer journalists and fact checkers there are, the more chance there is of this continuing.  Read the Private Eye (or similar local investigative/satirical magazines) – basically, educate yourself and others.  It’s not enough to privately scoff at crap news, we should hold the publishers’ feet to the fire and force them to print real news impartially.