Jackalgirl
Graduate Poster
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2004
- Messages
- 1,801
Hi, Highflyertoo, and welcome to the Forum.
I saw your post in the Ganzfield thread and thought I'd start a thread for your challenge as a means of welcoming you. I thought also that I would give you some advice, which I hope you don't mind. Please remember that no one here (except for RemieV or Jeff Wagg) works for the JREF in the capacity of administering the Challenge, so we can only offer just that -- advice:
1) Read the rules. Read them again. Then a third time. Print out a copy, read each rule, and when you're done, initial at the end of each rule to indicate that you're pretty sure you understand it and also understand that you have to follow it. Feel free to ask questions about specific rules, but understand that the chances of any of them being bent or modified for you in any way are vanishingly small.
2) Make sure that you come up with a simple, coherent statement of your ability (the claim) and a short proposal regarding how you think it should be tested. Remember that the results have to be self-evident; you can't ask that someone judge whether or not the test was successful.
3) Try to think of all of the alternate, normal explanations for what you are doing and figure out a way to control for them (that is, that your test is designed in such a way that those things can't be happening).
You are facing an especial difficulty because you seem to be talking about prophetic dreams. Understand that you can't post-dict (that is, point out how accurate your dream was for some event that has already happened). Also, your predictions are going to have to be specific and not something that is obvious or easy to find out or likely to happen anyway. For example:
"There will be unrest in the Middle East." Duh, so it's not a good prediction.
"James Randi will suffer heart-related health issues." This has already happened, and Mr. Randi is not a young man, so it's not unlikely that something like this will happen again.
"A hurricane will hit the Gulf Coast during storm season this year" Again, not at all unlikely given past information.
"A large earthquake will strike the West Coast" Pretty likely.
Specific predictions would be something like "an earthquake of magnitude 6.5 on the Richter Scale will strike California, with its epicenter 2.6 miles south of the center of the San Andreas fault, at a depth of 5 miles, on Febuary 20, 2009." That might be a bit too accurate (but very impressive if you could do it!) but you get the idea.
No open-ended predictions. "There will be a riot in Chicago" <-- not good. "There will be a riot in Chicago on May 14th" <-- better
If you are capable of doing things beyond simple prediction, please let us know. For example, if you can see -- via your dream -- the contents of a locked box, that would be a very simple test to do.
Lastly, remember that you're going to need to establish media presence and secure academic affidavits before you apply. All that stuff is in the rules.
Again, welcome to the Forum! I look forward to a more specific description of what you can do!
I saw your post in the Ganzfield thread and thought I'd start a thread for your challenge as a means of welcoming you. I thought also that I would give you some advice, which I hope you don't mind. Please remember that no one here (except for RemieV or Jeff Wagg) works for the JREF in the capacity of administering the Challenge, so we can only offer just that -- advice:
1) Read the rules. Read them again. Then a third time. Print out a copy, read each rule, and when you're done, initial at the end of each rule to indicate that you're pretty sure you understand it and also understand that you have to follow it. Feel free to ask questions about specific rules, but understand that the chances of any of them being bent or modified for you in any way are vanishingly small.
2) Make sure that you come up with a simple, coherent statement of your ability (the claim) and a short proposal regarding how you think it should be tested. Remember that the results have to be self-evident; you can't ask that someone judge whether or not the test was successful.
3) Try to think of all of the alternate, normal explanations for what you are doing and figure out a way to control for them (that is, that your test is designed in such a way that those things can't be happening).
You are facing an especial difficulty because you seem to be talking about prophetic dreams. Understand that you can't post-dict (that is, point out how accurate your dream was for some event that has already happened). Also, your predictions are going to have to be specific and not something that is obvious or easy to find out or likely to happen anyway. For example:
"There will be unrest in the Middle East." Duh, so it's not a good prediction.
"James Randi will suffer heart-related health issues." This has already happened, and Mr. Randi is not a young man, so it's not unlikely that something like this will happen again.
"A hurricane will hit the Gulf Coast during storm season this year" Again, not at all unlikely given past information.
"A large earthquake will strike the West Coast" Pretty likely.
Specific predictions would be something like "an earthquake of magnitude 6.5 on the Richter Scale will strike California, with its epicenter 2.6 miles south of the center of the San Andreas fault, at a depth of 5 miles, on Febuary 20, 2009." That might be a bit too accurate (but very impressive if you could do it!) but you get the idea.
No open-ended predictions. "There will be a riot in Chicago" <-- not good. "There will be a riot in Chicago on May 14th" <-- better
If you are capable of doing things beyond simple prediction, please let us know. For example, if you can see -- via your dream -- the contents of a locked box, that would be a very simple test to do.
Lastly, remember that you're going to need to establish media presence and secure academic affidavits before you apply. All that stuff is in the rules.
Again, welcome to the Forum! I look forward to a more specific description of what you can do!
. I have been future seeing for the last 30 years .
