Thread: Crown and Anchor: Money where your mouth is challenge

Originally Posted by moonshine

Tell you what though.
If Cusp wins the lottery jackpot in the next....lets say six months....I'll take that as proof.

As much as I support the theory that was put forward by the OP, moonshine does raise an interesting point. If psychics can predict events before they happen; why aren't they all millionaires, having predicted the lottery numbers?

I've never had a vision giving me numbers and a game.

Originally Posted by nzguy

As much as I support the theory that was put forward by the OP, moonshine does raise an interesting point. If psychics can predict events before they happen; why aren't they all millionaires, having predicted the lottery numbers?

Numbers are notoriously difficult to predict with psychics.

The problem is numbers aren't real things, just concepts. Try to picture the the number 6 in your head. Not the character that represents 6 on your keyboard, but the concept of six. There's not much to describe, is there?

There are ways to overcome this. In remote viewing you could number 10 random images in sealed envelopes and mark them 1-10. You then remote view the image associated with the number you are trying to find, and compare the results against the sealed images hoping to find a match, which would be your desired number.

That works fine for small pick 3 type lotteries where the numbers available only range from 1-9. But with larger lotteries with 49 or more numbers, that makes for a lot more work, a lot more steps, and a lot more room for error.

To do my local 6/49 lottery, I would need 6 sets of random sealed images labeled 1-49, do a remote viewing session for each of the 6 numbers, and sort through almost 300 images. Not easy, especially trying to set up random images and keeping them hidden from yourself.

Well the numbers thing, does seem like a remarkably convinient excuse, not wanting to come across rude. It's just numbers are a nice easily quantifiable thing to use in tests.

BUT,

I myself will take on board what you have said Cusp.

I'll be setting up another thread for my shared dreaming on the Moon experiment soon.

First can I run it by those who are believers...

The premise will be to meet in a specific area of the moon in a dream.
At which point I myself will attempt to describe, or show (well it'll be a dream so if i can conjour up a photo that'd be easier) whoever I meet a place that is familiar to me (i'll try and choose somewhere with some aspects that could not be easily guessed.)

Once the experiment is over, i'll ask people who have had dreams that they consider MAY be shared, to describe the place i've explained to them and the dreams they had.
I'll then upload a video to youtube of the place i was trying to describe.

It'll be up to the readers of the thread to draw their own conclusions as to if any information was transmitted between us.

Is this a fair experiment?
Is there anything the believers feel is going to cause problems here?

This is all just for fun by the way, it'll not reflect badly on you if you attempt to share a dream, and it's completely off the mark, we'll just put it down to a bit of fun shared by friends.

As an attempt to even things out, I may also ask some of the skeptics of the forum, at the end of the experiment, to "make up" some dreams, and attempt to guess the dream and the place i shall describe.

This way we'll be able to see if the genuine "shared dreams" and the "made up shared dreams" have any noticable different qualities or if either group is any more accurate.

If nothing else, it'll be a fun dream challenge for myself.
Plus I love visiting the moon in dreams anyway.

I'll post a link to the thread when i've got more time to make it all clear.

spaceexplorer, nothing has started in the old dreamsharing thread yet, and you're already ripping people apart making a new one. Please wait till we see what happens to the old one, maybe it won't die. Your proposed experiment isn't even about dreamsharing, it's remote viewing of a certain place, if you want to do it now then maybe organize a proper remote viewing experiment instead of ripping people apart?

Originally Posted by Arutad

spaceexplorer, nothing has started in the old dreamsharing thread yet, and you're already ripping people apart making a new one. Please wait till we see what happens to the old one, maybe it won't die. Your proposed experiment isn't even about dreamsharing, it's remote viewing of a certain place, if you want to do it now then maybe organize a proper remote viewing experiment instead of ripping people apart?

My mistake had a few windows open and thought i was posting in that thread.

Hi Cusp..

I'm not sure that a winning streak at C&A would prove anything, even if said winning streak never ended.. and I'll tell you why:

In 1990, Gordon Cromwell published "Win at Roulette" (ISBN 0-948353-78-3) in which (he claimed) was contained a package of betting systems which one could use to consistently win at Roulette. (NB We're talking european roulette here, which has only one zero).

Anyway.. I decided to test it out, and bought my own roulette wheel, learnt the systems, and over the next 3 months, span that wheel nearly 37,000 times.

Following Cromwell's instructions, I was some £2300 "up" using the smallest combination of stakes allowed (£1), over the 37,000 spins. It worked. I was amazed.

So... armed with my new expertise and system knowledge (and not a little excitement) I joined three local casinos, and just like you, when I started to win, I would be silently surrounded by 3-4 casino employees trying to "put me off". The croupiers also started to intimidate me into making mistakes by speeding up the game and cutting short the time allowed between spins, so that the rather complicated calculations that I needed to make would get rushed, and I would make a mistake or miss a winning bet. After a few weeks of this, I'd had enough, and I haven't been back to a casino since.

I forgot all about it, until the advent of online gambling and Random Number Generators, when I went back into the insanity that is systems roulette, but...

Now the systems didn't win over some 20,000 online spins, and I came to have strong suspicions about RNGs. I cut my online losses and packed up. I would strongly suggest that anyone thinking of gambling online using a RNG should think again. There is "something wrong" with them, according to my experience.

So.. rather longwindedly, my point is that any winning streak can be attributed to a "system" used by the player, in whatever game. Take O.Selznick (sp?), the man who evolved card counting in Blackjack. He started a winning streak in 1963, and although now banned worldwide from casinos, his streak lasted until he was banned, not until he lost, because he never did lose.

You'll always have people attributing a "winning streak" to a betting system, just as you will have those who will think that there may be something psychic in such a winning streak. So.. how to prove "psychic ability" using a gambling game? You'll never prove anything that way IMO.

BTW Does the following mean anything to you?

1-2-4-5-6-7 etc.

Originally Posted by Oneiro

I forgot all about it, until the advent of online gambling and Random Number Generators, when I went back into the insanity that is systems roulette, but...

Now the systems didn't win over some 20,000 online spins, and I came to have strong suspicions about RNGs. I cut my online losses and packed up. I would strongly suggest that anyone thinking of gambling online using a RNG should think again. There is "something wrong" with them, according to my experience.

Yep, I think there is something fishy about online casino roulette as well. What I think they are doing is instead of giving random payouts, they are following some kind of psychological algorithm whereby paying out X amount every so often causes the player to spend more money.

I actually do use a system in roulette, had to come up with it in high school statistics class. But with crown and anchor my picks are just random intuition.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

... with crown and anchor my picks are just random intuition.

Now, I accept your word for that.. but you do see surely that such a statement has to be taken on trust..

...and there are some righteous sceptics sniffing around. Can you sense the moonlight, and do you smell Datura?

BTW No comment about 1-2-4-5-6-7 etc.?

If you have no idea what I'm on about, just let me know and I'll PM you. No way will I explain what that is on a public forum.. but if you don't recognise it, I'll clue you in via a PM.

All the best.

Sounds like an interesting challenge, but is it reasonable to expect someone to program some sort of online, interactive gambling game and find a site on which to host it in order to take you up on it? I, for one, would hardly know where to begin in setting up something like that--and even if I could do this, it seems like that would take an awful lot of work.

Is there not another similar challenge which would be just as effective but easier to implement?

Originally Posted by DuB

Sounds like an interesting challenge, but is it reasonable to expect someone to program some sort of online, interactive gambling game and find a site on which to host it in order to take you up on it? I, for one, would hardly know where to begin in setting up something like that--and even if I could do this, it seems like that would take an awful lot of work.

Is there not another similar challenge which would be just as effective but easier to implement?

It doesn't have to be difficult. There are only so many outcomes on the wheel. All it would take is a random rumber generator between 1 and X, and you assign each numerical value an outcome from the wheel.

Hell, it could be done with dice.

I was working under the assumption that using actual dice wouldn't be acceptable to you, as we'd presumably have to use some sort of honor code system when communicating the results of each roll .

As for the program, I have no doubt that it would be a simple matter for a more-or-less experienced programmer -- however, I don't know about the other members following this thread, but it's been years since I've even looked at code.

Wait... now that I think about it, the Mortal Mist chat room has a dice roll function . We could conduct the challenge in there for anyone to see, but there are two (related) conditions:

• We play for a large number of trials that is determined in advance. As you know, larger samples are more representative of the population from which they came, and thus allow for more fair statistical testing (see the law of large numbers).
• Since you're not going to be able to call it quits (given the above condition) to prevent further loss of money when/if you're already down, it would be best to simply use hypothetical money. As for using real money for "incentive," I'd say that backing up your claim should be sufficient incentive for anybody -- certainly it's at least comparable to the meager amount you'd have at stake by betting nickels and dimes. Anyway, this will eliminate the need to use Paypal or some similar service.

Also, you'll have to enlighten me on the specifics of the rules, as I've never heard of Crown and Anchor before today .

Originally Posted by spaceexplorer

Are you not skeptical of anything then?

then they go on youtube and claim that glitches in video compression techniques are evidence of people "morphing" into being lizards.

They use the same arguments you use for your cause.

When people post those videos as "Reptillian Alien PROOF!!!!" it makes me want to LMFAO. It's so obviously not alien shapeshifting that I can't even believe they're serious.

Oh, and this is a really interesting idea. I'd love to watch it happen if that's at all possible.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

Numbers are notoriously difficult to predict with psychics.

The problem is numbers aren't real things, just concepts. Try to picture the the number 6 in your head. Not the character that represents 6 on your keyboard, but the concept of six. There's not much to describe, is there?

There are ways to overcome this. In remote viewing you could number 10 random images in sealed envelopes and mark them 1-10. You then remote view the image associated with the number you are trying to find, and compare the results against the sealed images hoping to find a match, which would be your desired number.

That works fine for small pick 3 type lotteries where the numbers available only range from 1-9. But with larger lotteries with 49 or more numbers, that makes for a lot more work, a lot more steps, and a lot more room for error.

To do my local 6/49 lottery, I would need 6 sets of random sealed images labeled 1-49, do a remote viewing session for each of the 6 numbers, and sort through almost 300 images. Not easy, especially trying to set up random images and keeping them hidden from yourself.

That's some really good food for thought... I'd never thought about it like that before.

What about if we eliminated numbers altogether and we just used a black-and-white, yes-or-no, positive-or-negative test? Something along the lines of:

The Decision Maker

I ran it a few times myself, and it seems to be very random and very equal. That is, it seems to produce roughly the same number of 'yes' or 'no' answers.

After all, this test is not for the purpose of proving that psychics can predict numbers, but simply if there is any substance to the claims of predicting events at all.

Of course, there will be protests from people saying that the chance of The Cusp fluking a 'lucky streak' are much higher with this coin toss method than with a 1/6 dice method, so a lot more rounds would need to be played to verify this... perhaps 50ish?

My suggestion for how it should work would be for The Cusp to download a screen capture software program of some sort, then run the decision maker software. Perhaps he could move the mouse in 3 complete circles around the option he thinks will be reached and then press the 'start' button, and then upload the video.

Just an idea

Heres an easier proposal.

Someone can Email an unbiased mod a number (from 1 to 100 say - I know this is more than the roulette wheel, but if you're psychic it shouldn't matter, right? ) every day.
Cusp can Email his prediction on the same day.
Lets see if the two tally up.

I don't do numbers, I only do crown and anchor. The average wheel has 28-48 possibilities, so someone number each outcome of the wheel, generate a random number and post an image of the corresponding wheel output here. But I don't want to know anything about numbers.

As for a black/white binary output guessing game, I have a theory that if you used strong image archetypes for the possible outcomes, like heaven and hell, Fire and Ice, then the % of correct answers for the archetype models will be significantly higher than with a model that uses something with less personality. No one's ever tested for that before.

But I'm trying to model my understanding of psychic phenomena on the notion that life is a dream, where archetypes play a strong role. My claimed psychic ability in this thread is only going to work within the confines of that Crown and Anchor archetype because it's one I've developed over the year and am intimately familiar with, I know how to use it. If you guys force me out of that archetype by changing the rules too much, I won't be able to demonstrate what I can do.

Originally Posted by The Cusp

I don't do numbers, I only do crown and anchor.

Fairly limited set of psychic power you got there.
Clearly, the force isn't string in this one.

I know exactly what you are talking about with numbers vs symbols, Cusp. The human brain does not work well with abstract symbols such as numbers and letters. They simultaneously represent too many things, and nothing at all. The ordering also causes problems. We have ingrained in our mind, relationships between numbers and letters. that 6 comes after 5. We see 2 and 2, and we think 4. This screws everything up. We need things that are familiar and rich in symbolism, but have little connnection.

As a related example, take the memorization technique of the Method of Loci. It is very difficult for people to memorize long lists, even if they make sense, have an order, or tell a story. To make it easier, the Method of Loci uses the instinctual human understanding of space and place. You memorize the data by visualizing placing each thing you are trying to remember into a room in a house. Then, you simply walk through each room in your mind, and recall what you placed in that space. Doing this, you can memorize almost any amount of data, in any order. Normally it would be almost impossible to memorize the order of the cards in a randomized deck. Using a memory system such as Method Loci, it is incredibly easy. You just need a well established memory mansion with 52 rooms.

This concept has been understood for centuries. It is one of the main reasons we developed languages of symbols such as those used in astrology, alchemy, ect. It is also one of the reasons procession was given such importance in ancient architecture.

Originally Posted by moonshine

Fairly limited set of psychic power you got there.
Clearly, the force isn't string in this one.

People think being able to foretell means your all powerful and all knowing....

Why?

Originally Posted by The Cusp

I don't do numbers, I only do crown and anchor.

This is a little confusing, since your challenge called for an "online crown and anchor game," which would necessarily have to deal in numbers rather than symbols (you can't write a program using card symbols). We can code the rolls of the dice to have a corresponding symbol (1 = crown, 2 = anchor, etc.) and it will be exactly the same as in your original proposal. Is this proposal no longer satisfactory to you?

Originally Posted by DuB

This is a little confusing, since your challenge called for an "online crown and anchor game," which would necessarily have to deal in numbers rather than symbols (you can't write a program using card symbols). We can code the rolls of the dice to have a corresponding symbol (1 = crown, 2 = anchor, etc.) and it will be exactly the same as in your original proposal. Is this proposal no longer satisfactory to you?

That's what I meant all along.

Which part -- the part about coding the dice rolls to corresponding symbols? Hey, sounds good to me. Is it a deal then?

We can do, let's say, 100 trials. A greater number of trials is advantageous for you, as I'm going to be submitting the observed results to a chi-square test against the null hypothesis that the hit rate is not significantly greater than chance, and it's extremely hard to reach statistical significance with a limited sample size. For simplicity's sake we can each start with $0.00 hypothetical money, unless you'd rather start with some other amount (which is fine).

When are you free?

Originally Posted by DuB

Which part -- the part about coding the dice rolls to corresponding symbols? Hey, sounds good to me. Is it a deal then?

We can do, let's say, 100 trials. A greater number of trials is advantageous for you, as I'm going to be submitting the observed results to a chi-square test against the null hypothesis that the hit rate is not significantly greater than chance, and it's extremely hard to reach statistical significance with a limited sample size. For simplicity's sake we can each start with $0.00 hypothetical money, unless you'd rather start with some other amount (which is fine).

When are you free?

Works for me. I'm a little busy this weekend, but should have plenty of free time after that since I think I lost my job. Maybe Sunday.

Although one thing I think just examining the % of right or wrong answers will overlook is the matter of confidence calls, which is kind of built into a gambling system when you can bet more if you're confident in your prediction.