Try this influencing, by good or bad thoughts

[Alan McDougall]

Greetings,

 

Try this with a few friends next time you are in a group.

 

Ask one of the groups to put their one arm firmly horizontal with fist lightly clenched.

 

(The one with the arm outstretched, must not know what the group is trying to achieve)

 

The whole group must think beautiful happy peaceful loving glorious thought at the person selected secretly to outstretch their arm in the correct manner.

 

What the arm carefully for a brief moment and then try your uttermost to project hateful evil depraved nasty horrible hurtful ugly thought at your poor victim, look carefully at the outstretched arm.

 

What you will see when beautiful thoughts are projected the arm stays firm and horizontal to the floor.

 

When you project bad thoughts, the arm will wilt our sink a little. Try it.

 

You can reverse the order negative thoughts first and it should still work.

 

Try it sometime and report back.

 

Regards.

 

Oh!! while we are about it try to think of two shapes one inside the other

 

"Please dont think about it simply draw what comes into your mind "immediately" after reading this"

 

 

Alan

Edited July 8, 2008 by Alan McDougall
ADD SIMPLY DRAW

[swansont]

What would happen if a bunch of people concentrated on hoping that posters wouldn't post trashy pseudoscience?

[Phi for All]

What would happen if a bunch of people concentrated on hoping that posters wouldn't post trashy pseudoscience?

The loss of such fluffy fodder for the average Enquiring mind would create a vacuum filled nicely by my new black-gold magnetic pyramid bracelets, which are perpetually powered by HHO gas and magic.

[mooeypoo]

Instead of being unhelpful by trusting science and everything we already know, or just by rudely making conclusions over the falaciousness of this experiment just because a lot of scientists happened to disprove it before, I decided to follow my own principle: When in doubt, Try it out!

 

I gathered about 4 of us in the office (who were not too busy to try this experiment on the fifth) and explained the experiment to them. The test subject had no idea, was in the other side of the building, and therefore could be declared a blind experiment.

 

It began by her putting her arm up and closing her eyes, with ipod music on. She was intructed to keep her hand stable, until we tell her to.

 

Then, the experiment began. But we encountered our first problem: We couldn't decide what, exactly, constitutes "parallel to the floor" when an arm is concerned - is it 90 degrees from the body, or perfectly-parallel to the floor, even if the body tilts a bit.

 

That required some show of talent, since it's not as simple as you would have thought to see both the arm and the floor at the same time without moving your eyes back and forth (and hence have a frame of reference) while thinking happy, merry, glorious thoughts.

 

Then, we argued about what a glorious thought is or should be, after a particularly funny (but horribly cynical) fella in the office declared that he personally finds a scene from a horror movie much more glorious than a field of sunflowers. We just decided he would be the test subject next time we have an idiotic experiment.

 

All in all, it was fun.

 

Oh, and we actually did think good, happy thoughts eventually (we did that a few times, too, with attempt to imagine something beautiful, then ugly, then horribly bloody and gory and hellish, then quiet, solemn and peaceful).

 

The arm's rate of fall was pretty consistent (it didn't even slow down with our happy thoughts. we tried!).

 

Our test subject is quite angry at us right now, by the way. Even though she was supposed to be thinking NICE thoughts (we promised her icecream for her trouble), she only had bad ones after the end of the experiment after we explained what the purpose was. And she has a sore arm.

 

Also, the majority (4 out of 5, the test subject being the fifth) decided that just in case there is merit to this experiment, there is no use buying her icecream. By the rate her arm was losing parallel'ism with the floor, we might aswell get her a psychiatrist instead.

 

 

 

Great experiment, guys, thanks for 30 minutes of great fun at the office!

 

 

 

~moo

[Mr Skeptic]

The trick is that neither the person holding their arm up, nor the person judging whether they are holding the arm up, must know whether the others are thinking happy thoughts or evil ones. Otherwise, they will bias the results by trying harder and more lenient judgement as to when the arm dropped.

[swansont]

I still think my proposal is topologically equivalent to the original.

[mooeypoo]

The trick is that neither the person holding their arm up, nor the person judging whether they are holding the arm up, must know whether the others are thinking happy thoughts or evil ones. Otherwise, they will bias the results by trying harder and more lenient judgement as to when the arm dropped.

 

That's why I said it was a blind experiment, and not a double-blind experiment.

 

But still, in my case the arm was lowered quite considerably -- we were TRYING to think happy thoughts to get it to go back "up" again (the OP specifically stated that should be done!) and it failed miserably.

 

It wasn't an issue of judging the level of the arm - it was DEFINITELY going down. I think our test subject should get some gym time on her arms judging from that experiment

 

~moo

[Kyrisch]

This is trodding on the boundaries of some very inappropriate ground...

 

Screw Enzyte, just think happy thoughts at it!

[YT2095]

talking of "double blind" experiments, it might be an idea to block the view of of the subject so that facial expressions cannot be read, it`s been proven that there are Micro signals given facially that are thought dependent, these can be picked up on subconsciously.

 

for me, I`ll stick to the old tried and tested Jedi mind trick, it Never fails (except on Borg cubes).

[Motor Daddy]

Who determines what "good" and "bad" are?