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~lyser
Not pulling your leg.
My inquiry was if you could rule out stooge work (I absolutely assure you nothing was pre-arranged with the judges), would that change your opinion?
Nothing you have pointed out requires the mentalist to pre-arrange anything with the judges. The AGT format is challenging though because volunteers can not be randomly selected (by say, throwing a ball(s) out into the audience), the performer must use the judges.
If YOU were the volunteer and you KNEW for a FACT that nothing was pre-arranged, I assume you would be pretty astounded? That is how the judges felt and the reason these performers moved on and why my boy Oz did so well last year (shoulda won).
Mentalism is ASTOUNDING when performed correctly.
Again, I see it as physically and logically impossible to read minds. And that's the only way to get that kind of specificity and exactitude for those tricks. It's different, if they can use clever "tells" from their subjects to piece things together and make a good guess. But that's not what they did. And it's different if the language involved allows for enough wiggle room - like "prophecies" from Nostradamus -- to make it work. There was no attempt to do that, and no time to go through that process. No series of questions was asked to get closer to the target, to gauge body language, etc. etc. It was all very quickly done.
Anyway, you may see me as being stubborn about this. But I just see it as a matter of science. They can't do what they did without pre-arranged help. And it would take a ton of first-hand proof for me to change my mind about that. Basically, a peer-reviewed, double-blind experiment to back it up . . . . and a video record of any interactions between the mentalists and the judges, staff, etc. etc.
