Sam Harris

I found an amusing online ESP test.

http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/esp3.html

Somebody figure this out for me.

I tried the ESP test and it had me totally bewildered until ... after 6 tries, I figured it out!

See if you can solve the puzzle.  And for all you guys who like to skip right to the answers, be advised that reading through the suggested explanations won’t help.

You get the prize if you can solve it first time ‘round!

Susan

I took me less than a second to figure it out.

But I’m a former professional poker player, so I guess I’m not a fair subject for this kind of ESP…

Just like religion doesn’t like science scrutiny, card ESP doesn’t like professional poker players…

Petrucio,

I think that ESP research would benefit from professional poker players.

At least they know the meaning of statistical probability.

If you believe in ESP, you know very little about statistics.
If you don’t, you know even less.

At least they know the meaning of statistical probability

Indeed they do. Professional poker players often come from science or math backgrounds.

Due to the reasoning behind their rationalle, I think most pro poker players would make good scientists, even if they didn’t come from a related area (I did).

I also think there’s a good chance many of them are also atheists/agnostics, but that is just a wild guess. Would make a good statistical research project, tho

Or maybe it’s the other way around: agnostics make good poker players. Maybe they do, since I have come to believe that there is a correlation between a person’s QI and the probability the he/she is or isn’t ag/atheist. And there’s definatelly a correlation between high QI and playing good poker (not wanting to brag)

Actually, I believe high QI is what drove me out of church. At age 15, I decided to read the Biblie in it’s full, just to see what the fuss was all about. Most catholics would read it, don’t understand most of it, and think they done good. But I want distance from it ever since. And the damn thing should be M-rated, BTW!

See, you got me started on probability, you should never have done that!

I wanted to thank you for further destroying my faith in my fellow mans intelligence, Joad. Not being a profesional poker player (though I can see where this could help), it took me a minute or so, but the answer, like all good magic tricks, seems obvious once you get it.

The sad thing is reading the various explanations offered up by the other “rubes”, oops! I mean test subjects. Have these people never read a book of magic tricks? I mean, that’s really all it is, a simple magic trick.

These kind of things are why I think it should be manditory for everyone (especially school age children) to visit randi.org every week to read his news letter. Seriously, it would seem people need instruction on how to think critically!