That was quite interesting stuff, apart from the sneering attitude of Dawkins. He seems utterly without understanding of how even the cheapest and most tawdry 'psychic' can help people. When he mentioned 'Charlatan' his eyes lit up with fantastic pleasure, suggesting that he's not in this for the sake of enlightenment, but for stroking his own preset ego.
That's not to say I don't agree with him on some other subjects though.
That was quite interesting stuff, apart from the sneering attitude of Dawkins. He seems utterly without understanding of how even the cheapest and most tawdry 'psychic' can help people. When he mentioned 'Charlatan' his eyes lit up with fantastic pleasure, suggesting that he's not in this for the sake of enlightenment, but for stroking his own preset ego.
That's not to say I don't agree with him on some other subjects though.
I agree with that, Face. Dawkins really is far too into loving his own opinion rather than just having it. Derren was great, though - just expertly laying down the facts behind a lot of mediumship from a very educated point of view.
The following might be interesting to some people.
Watch this video - an excerpt from one of Derren's TV shows where he uses cold reading on groups of students in Britain, Spain and America. The content of the personal letter he wrote to them is provided underneath the spoiler button, as I happen to have a copy of it
Hidden:
You are a person prone to bouts of self-examination. This is in sharp contrast to a striking ability you have developed to appear socially very engaged, even the life and soul of the party; but in a way that only convinces others. You are all too aware of it being a facade.
This means that you will often be at a gathering and find yourself playing a part. While on the one hand you'll be talkative and funny, you'll be detaching yourself to the point where you will find yourself watching everything going on around you and feeling utterly unable to engage. You'll play conversations back to yourself in your head and wonder what that person really meant when he said such-and-such - conversations other people wouldn't give a second thought to.
How have you learned to deal with this conflict? Through exercising control. You like to show a calm, self-assured, fluid kind of stability (but because this is self-consciously created it will create bouts of frustrated silliness and a delight in extremes, or at least a delight in being seen to be extreme). You most easily recognise this control in how you are with people around you. You have learned to protect yourself by keeping people at bay. Because in the past you have learned to be disappointed by people (and because there were issues with you adjusting to your sexuality), you instinctively keep people at arms' length, until you decide they are to be allowed over that magic line into your group of close friends. However, once across that line, the problem is that an emotional dependency kicks in which leaves you feeling very hurt or rejected if it appears that they have betrayed that status.
Because you are prone to self-examination, you will be aware of these traits. However, you are unusually able to examine even that self-examination, which means that you have become concerned about what the real you is. You have become all too aware of facades, of sides of yourself which you present to the world, and you wonder if you have lost touch with the real and spontaneous you.
You are very creative, and have tried different avenues to utilise that ability. It may not be that you specifically, say, paint; it may be that your creativity shows itself in more subtle ways, but you will certainly find yourself having vivid and well formed ideas which others will find hard to grasp. You set high standards for yourself, though, and in many ways are a bit of a perfectionist. The problem is, though, that it means you often don't get stuff done, because you are frustrated by the idea of mediocrity and are wearied by the idea of starting something afresh. However, once your brain is engaged you will find yourself sailing. Very likely this will lead you to have considered writing a novel or some such, but a fear you won't be able to achieve quite what you want stops you from getting on with it. But you have a real vision for things, which others fall short of. Particularly in your academic/college situation, you are currently fighting against restraints upon your desire to express yourself freely.
Your relationship with your parents (there is a suggestion that one is no longer around, or at least emotionally very absent) is under some strain. You wish to remain fond of them but recent issues are causing frustration - from your side far more than theirs. In fact they seem unaware of your thoughts on the matter.
Partly this is because there are ways in which you have been made to feel isolated from certain groups in the past - something of an outsider. Now what is happening is that you are taking that outsider role and defending it to the point of consciously avoiding being part of a group. This will serve you enormously well in your creative and career pursuits. You have an enormous cynicism towards those who choose to be part of a group or who exhibit any cliquey behaviour, and you always feel a pang of disappointment when you see your 'close' friends seeming to follow that route. Deep down it feels like rejection.
However, for all that introspection, you have developed a sensational, dry sense of humour that makes connections quickly and wittily and will leave you making jokes that go right over the heads of others. You delight in it so much that you'll often rehearse jokes or amusing voices to yourself in order to 'spontaneously' impress others with them. But this is a healthy desire to impress, and although you hate catching yourself at it, it's nothing to be worried about.
There's an odd feeling also that you should have been born in a different century. You might be able to make more sense of that than I can.
There are some strong monetary shifts taking place at the moment. Both the recent past and what's in store over the next few months represent quite a change.
You have links at the moment with America, which are quite interesting, and will look to yield worthwhile results. You're naturally a little disorganised. A look around your living space would show a box of photos, unorganised into albums, out-of-date medicines, broken items not thrown out, and notes to yourself which are significantly out of date. Something related to this is that you tend to lack motivation. Because you're resourceful and talented enough to be pretty successful when you put your mind to things, this encourages you to procrastinate and put them off. Equally, you've given up dreams a little easily when your mind flitted elsewhere. There are in your home signs of an excursion into playing a musical instrument, which you have since abandoned, or are finding yourself less interested in. (This may alternatively relate to poetry and creative writing you've briefly tried your hand at and left behind you.) You have a real capacity for deciding that such-and-such a thing (or so-and-so a person) will be the be all and end all of everything and be with you for ever. But you'd rather try and fail, and swing from an extreme to the other, than settle for the little you see others content with.
Conclusion: It's very interesting doing your reading, as you do present something of a conundrum, which won't surprise you. You are certainly bright, but unusually open to life's possibilities - something not normally found among achieving people. I'd say you would do well to be less self-absorbed, as it tends to distance you a little, and to relinquish some of the control you exercise when you present that stylised version of yourself to others. You could let people in a little more, but I'm aware there is a darkness you feel you should hide (most of this is in the personal/relationship/sexual area, and is related to a neediness which you don't like).
You really have an appealing personality - genuinely. Many thanks for doing this, and for offering something far more meaty than most.
I have to say, i have seen dawkins taking outbursts of joy which could be perceived as stronger arrogance than in this occation. I dont see anything wrong with the way he conducted this interview and it was clear from the begining that these two gentlemen were on the same page pritty much though out. Thank you very much for this interview.
face, do you know you're opening the doors to hell with a broadcast like this? how sad we've become. please don't let common sense rule as you believe, trust the will of voodoo it will set you on a righteous path. just ignore the blatant trampling of your common sense, good over text book evil will prevail. let's sing a song
This exchange between Dawkins & Brown was really good viewing. I have a friend who claims to be a spirit medium and I am still quite sceptical about what he claims to be able to do. After watching this I feel even more sceptical. I believe he is one of those people who really believes he can do it cos he has a group of friends & development circle mentors telling him he is fantastic. He has also had stage/acting training. Mmmmm.......
Thanks for simplifying the playback, Face - I can never work out how to do that.
Twirley, what you also need to bear in mind is that both Dawkins and Derren Brown are deeply opinionated on the subject (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) so they are approaching this from a very partisan viewpoint.
Dawkins used to be a Christian and Derren became a "born again" happy-clappy Christian when he was in his late teens/early 20s, so because both men have now changed their minds dramatically due to in-depth scientific research and in-depth magic/psychology/mentalism research I wouldn't take their words to be gospel (pun intended).
I find it extremely thought-provoking, and I agree with 90% of what Derren has to say, but I don't think it follows that all mediums or spiritualists are fakes. Maybe your friend really can do what he thinks he can.
I think Derren's views on spiritualists as charlatans has a lot to do with the fact that he has spent his entire professional adult life faking the exact same things for entertainment.
Derren Brown is in no sense psychic, and can in no way tell what word you're thinking of by miniscule muscular twitches at the corners of your eyes, nor does he use NLP in his performances, or any kind of direct mind-reading - he just says he does all that because it's an effing brilliant persona to create. In some ways, I get the feeling that his depth of opinion on the subject is almost an outlet for what's known as "magician's guilt", where an illusionist wrestles with the fact that, in order to perform a magic trick, you essentially have to lie to your spectator (eg. "I'll put the coin under the beaker" when really you're palming it or ditching it into your lap)
That was a good bit of video there, Face. I think it's a mixture of extremely intuitive cold reading and quite a lot of hot reading, too (knowing seemingly un-knowable information in advance) - what magicians might call "pre-show".
She's a famous comedien so it wouldn't be hard to do a bit of a background check and find out that she was adopted, and the fact she's a lesbian makes it an obvious hook to make the "two mums" comment since she could parlez that into a reference to her current relationships if it turned out to be a "miss". If she was adopted she had two mums and two dads, obviously.
When she talks about the nationality of the adopters she does so in a very cleverly vague way, too, because she simply says "I want to go abroad", which could mean Italy but could also in a round-about way mean Scotland, assuming the show was filmed in London - "oh, not technically abroad, but far away" etc.
The "Where's his watch?" question was just a very lucky bullseye - I have my grandfather's watch and 40% of people have jewellery that belongs to deceased relatives - with it being her father it was unlikely to be his ear-rings.
I was a little amused when she describes the road with the sea at the end of it - saying "It goes down a little towards the end?" and making it seem like she was seeing it in her mind. I've yet to see a road that leads to the sea that goes up at the end...
This is exactly the sort of stuff that I can understand Derren's objection to - making her cry and putting words in her dead father's mouth.
I missed it, but they did say at the beginning of the clip that the woman (Sally Morgan) had no idea who she was meeting until she met her. I did wonder about the two mums part, but she'd already mentioned the abandonment before that. Is it common enough for lesbian women to have been brought up by two women that she tried her luck with that?
Naming the two specific types of dog was also quite a bullseye. I have my dad's watch too though, so it's obviously quite a common angle.
There are quite a few other clips of her on youtube doing other people.
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