I use that same technique when people ask me how much I weigh, so based on my birth weight of 7 lbs and my max weight of 390. I actually weigh 52 lbs.

Suddenly I'm hungry

Jeff
You might get a better figure if you leave out your birth weight.
I somehow doubt anyone would estimate your CURRENT weight
at the bottom range as 7lbs!

Actually, you might be interested in this ox weight guessing story.

http://wilsonsalmanac.blogspot.com/2006/......-ox.html

This is the premise of The Wisdom Of Crowds,
that a lot of average people are smarter than an expert.
It's an amazing concept and I use it for Add A Number.

Cheers.
Tom

Right... I was trying to be funny, not actually figure out my weight.

That Ox thing is pretty interesting. I like your idea to use in add-a-number. I think it could have a lot of potential in many other routines... you've got my brain thinking.

that's very interesting. Can you please lead me to where you saw these data? This is the type of stuff I love to read!

-justin

The Reith lectures of Ramachandran on Radio 4 Listen again might be an interesting place to start.

If I asked you to put your hand on the table and lift a finger of your choice do you think you could?

Ramachandran will show you you cannot do so consciously.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/

Anthony

Has it occured to anyone else that the numbers being provided are merely guesses, and far from accurate? Or have I missed something?

-- Topher

Choice and Chance are all very well. But how about when the two come together and you get Coincidence?

It is all a very nice prremise for a routine.

I want to say it's a stupid question Stan, but it might be the best question ever asked. It may even be a different answer for each person. Lot's of good answers here.
Maybe it's a tongue in cheek question to reveal just how mixed up we all are and that there is no such thing as 'common' sense.
Here's another answer: In being aware that the world is hurtling through space at God knows what kind of speed (not gonna' go into the internet for the answer!)and I'm stood here clingiong on for dear life I have to wonder if I have any choices in the big stuff at all.
It's also interesting to note that I heard on the radio last week of thousands of people dying in Central Africa and how we should all be doing something about it. As I was listening to the reporter talking of their starvation my eyes fell upon a rag-nail on my left thumb. I then noticed after a few moments that I was thinking more of my rag-nail than the people dying in Africa. I don't think that was by chance but please someone tell me it wasn't by choice!
Anyway, I think that chance (that what happens to us) might be as high as 100%, but how we react to that, how we think and what we do about might claw all of that 100% back.
So Stan, it's 100% of each. Now tell me you're God and I can enter.
Oh by the way, my wife is forever reminding me that 'we're never in control'.

bobser

Ooooooh reading bananafish's post set me off.
What if these two imposters are just the same ( I'm going to call these writings: 'IF' by the way). ie:
magish says he's going to play a game of choice or chance with a pack of cards (reminded of John Archer's DVD). The spec takes a card... the magish makes a move... but then decides to change it. This would be choice for the spec and chance for the magish, forcing him to choose which out he'll use. Which of course depending on the type of spec might be a bit chancy. But hey the magish chose him in the first place didn't he? But that was only because it was raining by chance and the spec took the choice to go into this particular restuarant where the magish received a call by chance from the manager who chose to seek employment there......Guys Stop. I'm choosing to make this a BLOG which could be a bit chancy but.... HELP, it's guys dressed in white in a yellow van (nice colour by the way, I wonder who chose that?). Their taking me awaaaaaaaaaaaaaay......!

To some of you the above may seem childish. But to a Jedi..... ah to a Jedi....

Well, this has been an interesting experiment. I stayed out of it (despite wanting to respond to several comments!) to eliminate any bias.

The 'mean' of the Magic Café survey (from those who responded with usable data) was a rounded average of 70% choice / 30% chance (22 respondents - hardly scientific but interesting).

Using resources other than Magic Café, over 250 respondents (so far) with a mean response of 64% choice / 36% chance.

Given the small sample from the Café, the variance of approximately 6% is not significant (and is statistically close to the margin or error in a 100 person survey) , but it is interesting that people on here felt they had slightly more 'control' over their lives than those who took the survey elsewhere (they are a far more random sample).

There were also some very interesting arguments about the nature of the question itself, which I agree is open to interpretation and can justifiably be dismissed as incalculable. But, as I indicated off the top, this was always an opinion poll, designed specifically as part of the basis for a piece I'm working on which is a demonstration of choice VS chance, with the notion of taking more control of one's life by diminishing chance.

And here's some more food for thought.....how many actual choices do you think you make in a typical day?

Consider this when formulating your answer - Researchers at Cornell surveyed people as to how many food & beverage decisions they made each day. Average (mean) response was 15. They then 'researched' each respondent, and the average was actually more than 200 decisions, each day, only on what they would eat & drink!

To quote Bob Cassidy from the first Mindvention convention "coincidence is simply Gods way of staying anonymous". I must admit, I love that.

GH

I think you have more control over your life by increasing chances not diminishing them.

The more choice you have the more chance you have.

Interesting interpretation. The dictionary definition (which will be used when presenting the routine) of chance is:

o CHANCE “the happening of events without apparent cause.”

Which would move chance to the uncontrolled margin. Chance occurrences can certainly be positive, negative, or seemingly neutral, but by definition, they are uncontrolled events.

"Magick is the art of manipulating coincidence."

Um, they all make it by chance. They have no control over who votes for who or whether their particular "approach" to government will be popular enough to win the day. Lots of the founding fathers of any country could not get elected to save their lives today, so it is a good thing they were born in the time they were. So, from my point of view, your comments, all of them, are more arguments for chance than choice. Just my point of view but since you ignored the huge whole in your statement, figured I'd bring it up.




Most people with lots of money inherit it, look it up. Birth is, by definition, a chance event. Being a movie star has less to do with acting ability (hence the tons of out of work GOOD actors) but more to do with non-choice genetic factors. Jessica Alba for example.



Again, missing the entire point here. How do you know that the choice to get out there is not genetic and thus, chance? You talked about the BBC about how we make our own "luck" but I think you missed the point of the conclusion. How you view what happens to you (problem or opportunity) has a lot to do with your outlook. What wasn't discussed, because most people, esp. the religious, get bent out of shape, is what percentage is gene related. We look for genes in criminals, in disease treatment, but, globally, stay away from looking at genes that affect other behaviors because people don't really want to know definitively.

So there you go, no evidence that is genetic, except that they look at other things geneticly, but, certainly, no evidence that it IS NOT genetic, and thus, chance based.

But, finally, do you really think you would be the same person you are, making the same choices, if you were born in North Korea? In China? In the US? In Britain? If you do, then you are saying genetics determines everything. If you don't, then the chance occurance of when you are born determines everything. In either case, it is almost ALL chance. Have yet to see an argument that convinces me otherwise, much less one that refutes point by point.

My opinion, of course, but one that, thus far, seems inassailable by anybody here. To me, looking at the choices made, it reinforces the idea when I first saw this thread, people want an illusion of control and will rationalize anything to get their way. Yours just happened to be the perfect example, destiny, I am not picking on you but you identified those things that I think most would argue are completely chance driven (hence, no "formula" to win public office or become a movie star, it relies on chance and I would love to see you argue against it).

Finally, was it Vincent who mentioned the studies about no true choice? Well, they are basicly experiments where the subjects were conditioned to respond to stimuli in very specific ways. Everybody knew the stimuli and how they would respond (but the subjects, btw) yet, AFTER the fact, the subjects always tried to justify their responses in a way that made it seem to them that they had choices. In other words, even in situations where the outcome was forced, they used examples and logic that didn't hold so they could hold onto a feeling of control where there was none. Similar, in my opinion, to destiny's response (and many others, just quoted her above, that's all).

-Lem

I'd go for as much as 0.000001% my choice, 99.999999% other but I like to surf big waves. By other I include chance, other people's choice's and other factor's choices E.g. genetic and unconscious, automatic behaviours that may have been chosen in the past.
A feeling of control is considered psychologically healthy or useful but is largely illusory.
Any self-assessment is this regard generally only reports just that, our self-perceptions rather than much reality of the matter.

MindT

Note it says "without apparent cause". That doesn't mean in fact their was no cause.

For example take two people both have chance meetings with a possible benefactor.
One has rehearsed success and is open to opportunity. The other is negative limited and closed. The same external event but the chance only exists for one to take advantage of. Because he chose to focus on success while the other chose to focus on limitation. In most cases the negative person won't even be in the right place for the chance meetings to take place.

Just because there is no "apparant" cause doesn't mean there isn't a cause it just means its not apparant.

But everything has a cause and effect.

- only in an mechanistic and deterministic universe. Whether we are or not in such, I'll leave to another time and place though.

MindT.

Lemniscate,

I don't think you are picking on me at all - in fact your arguments are very persuasive - must think more about this - brain is a bit fuzzy this morning from work overload - but will return to this.

Thanks for your thoughts - they are illuminating.

Destiny