From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!karn Newsgroups: net.misc Title: ESP & Elementary Probability Article-I.D.: eagle.802 Posted: Sun Feb 27 23:37:59 1983 Received: Mon Feb 28 08:54:53 1983 Hasn't anyone taken even an elementary probability course?! When I took one as a sophomore, our professor (who incidentally was a gambling hobbyist and a successful blackjack card counter) related one way to use "ESP" for fun and profit: Take 64 [football fans | horse racing fans | whatever] who are gullible enough to believe in ESP. (This shouldn't be too hard.) It is desirable that none of the 64 know each other. Take an upcoming event (game, race, etc) in which there is a 50-50 binary outcome of some sort on which they can bet, and offer "free" advice to each of your 64 "clients": to the first 32, you tell them that you "sense" outcome "A", and to the other 32, you tell them to bet on outcome "B". After the event, you drop the half for which you were wrong. Now you take your remaining 32 and split them up into two groups of 16, repeating the above process. After you have done this 6 times, you will have one person remaining for which you've been right six times in a row. This person is your victim. You tell him that you have "shared your power" with him, FOR FREE, six times already out of the goodness of your heart. You ask him to be fair to you and "share the profits" (before the event, of course), and naturally you soak him for all he's worth. He's quite likely to go along, since the chances of your having given him the six outcomes strictly by luck, of course, was only 1/64. If you try this, don't tell anybody where you heard it. Phil Karn