Does "George" Exist?

Great Debates
1

For those of you who just blundered onto this thread, this is kind of a splinter off of “Does Magic Exist,” elsewhere in the GD section. I proposed a non-scientific experiment, offering to teach people a simple magical technique which they could then play around with. Let’s have some fun, shall we?

The subconscious mind, which processes information at a speed much greater than the conscious mind, has been shown to be able to dramatically affect the body it is attached to. Some people who exhibit signs of a dissociative disorder (multiple-personality disorder) exhibit major physical changes when they switch “personalities”. One personality may be blue-eyed, another brown-eyed. One may be allergic to orange juice and exhibit the accompanying symptoms (rashes, hives, difficulty breathing, etc.) while the other personality can drink orange juice without reaction. Hypnotized people can raise blisters on their skin with only the suggestion that they’ve been burned. The big questions here, then, are:

  1. How do we instruct the subconscious mind when we wish it to perform a task for us, and
  2. Can the subconscious mind affect things beyond (outside) the body?

I would say, though I don’t have any objective proof, that the history of mankind’s religious use of ritual, drugs, fasting, flagellation, etc. has been a history of largely trying to make the subconscious (or the gods, whatever) do what what the practitioner was asking, whether giving information, bringing rain, finding buffalo, or what have you. The George technique is a modern version of that.

The George Technique was developed by a fellow named Don Schuster (hope I spelled his name right) who taught psychology at the University of Iowa. Schuster has his Bachelors in physics and his Ph.D. in psychology, BTW. He’s also interested in Hawaiian Huna magic, for what that’s worth.

I’ll describe the George Technique in the next post so I don’t run out of space.

2

Pardon me while I seek out my hipwaders while I wait for your second post.

3

Imagine, for the sake of argument, that you have a little man (or woman) inside your head. His name could be anything you want it to be (Jesus, Fred, Martha, etc.) but for convenience sake, let’s call him George.
George exists for no other purpose than to serve you, but he can’t do it if you don’t let him know what you want. Thus, when you have a need or desire, say to him:
“Okay, George (or Glenda or whatever), THIS is what I want.” At the same time, you need to visualize yourself opening an envelope with money in it, or finding the perfect parking space, or going on a date, or whatever. It’s absolutely vital to put your own image in the visualization. If you have the skill, it’s very helpful to incorporate other senses into the visualization, too. Hear yourself shout with joy as you open the big, unexpected check you received, etc.
Then say to yourself, “Okay, George, go do it,” and forget about him while he does his work. When he accomplishes the task, don’t forget to give him heartfelt (but under-the-breath, if you’re with others) thanks.
That’s almost all there is to it. But if you’re like me or 80 percent of the other people on the face of the earth, you’ll think to yourself, “This is crazy–this can’t possibly work!” At that time, you need to gently but firmly tell George, “No, George, I don’t want doubts. THIS is what I want,” and repeat your visualization. Sooner or later, the doubts will fade. You may need to repeat your visualization twice, or five times, but eventually George will stop giving you guff.
One caveat: If you’re looking for something, like lost car keys, it’s not enough to say, “Okay, George, go find my car keys.” You need to say something like, “Okay, George, go find my car keys and SHOW ME WHERE THEY ARE.”

So there it is, a magical technique that any third-grader can learn. That’s what all the fuss is about. If you’re interested in being part of the experiment, I’d like you to help out in the following ways:

  1. Try the technique on five different occasions, for five different problems/requests. These requests should be in cases where you judge the odds to be mildly improbable. George works great for finding empty parking spaces in congested downtown areas, for example. OTOH, George probably couldn’t bring the price of gas down to 75 cents (at least not tomorrow). You can ask for relief of physical ailments, money in the mail, a decent boy/girlfriend, whatever you decide you think you’d like to have.

  2. Keep track of how many successes you had and how many failures. Successes are counted if your request is satisfied, no matter how coincidental. Failures are where your original request is not satisfied. For easy requests, you should see results in 2-3 days; tougher ones may take up to two weeks. Granted, you’d expect some problems to work out on their own due to dumb luck, but we’re trying to see how many coincidences you can get in a row, here.

  3. Post your results here, along with any feelings about the experiment that you care to share.

  4. I’d like to request that people try to keep this thread dedicated to the experiment and their questions/thoughts about same. Another thread already exists (“Is magic real?”) for debating magic in general, practitioners thereof, etc.

  5. George-related questions are welcome, as are self-avowed skeptics (as long as they do their part in the experiment). George really doesn’t care what you call him, or whether you believe in him or not, but you do seem to have to address him in the above manner to get results.

Thanx,
Usurer

4

Usurer wrote:

Are you saying there are documented cases of people with multiple-personality disorder whose eye color changes? Without the use of tinted contact lenses?

This I gotta see…

5

There’s only one thing I can possibly say about the “George” experiment: :rolleyes:.

Okay, I guess I can say something else about it. You really ask me to be impressed if I ask myself where my car keys are and I figure it out? Dude, that is the stupidest, lamest, most weak-ass “magic” I have ever heard of in my life.

6

I suppose we could really test out this George Hypothesis by asking the little man in our heads for really really big things.

Don’t just tell George you want a date, tell George you want to have sex with Claudia Schiffer. (Or with that gorgeous blonde woman down the hall from me at work, who, unfortunately, is already married to someone else. Not that I’m implying anything.) Don’t just tell George you want an envelope full of money, tell George you want to win the State Lottery jackpot and not have to split it with anybody. In fact, have several people in the same State all tell George at the same time that they want to win the same State Lottery jackpot and not have to split it with each other. If George can pull that one off, I’ll try him in a heartbeat!

7

tracer while I’m emphatically not agreeing with Usurer’s premise, I do recall something from my psychology classes about head injuries having some effect on eye color and personality changes were connected with all this. It’s ringing a bell, in any case. (Yeah, I know he’s talking about strobing eyeballs from multiple personalities and I’m talking personality change via brain damage, but I’m wondering if there’s some nugget of rationality in here.)

Lemme look through my old notes and see if I can find anything.

Fenris

8

Friend Fenris- I have read this thread through twice. While I may not be as grounded in reality as I could be, I have searched in vain for a nugget of rationality. The one clue is that this guy teaches, or once taught, Psych. at the U of I. Even 40 years ago those people were a couple of deviled eggs shy of a picnic.

9

<snicker>

I’ve skimmed what’s left of my old psych notes (not much) and didn’t find anything. I’ve looked on the web, and found much, MUCH crap (Iridology :rolleyes:, a magic(k) spell for changing eye color (that only changes your eye color from the POV of people who don’t know you real well. But it’s for level 6 magic(k) users. I thought level 6 magic(k) users could cast a Phantasmal Force m’self. This looks like a pretty wimpy 1st level illusionist spell.) and I’ve found a posting that shows up in every search from one poor woman who’s kid has “autistic with schizophrenia, ADHD, depression” and his eye color’s changed.

Only thing even remotely close is a vet who says eye color change in an older dog is a warning sign.

Oh well.

Fenris

10

You lost me right here:

How is this technique magical? Nothing about it violates any laws of science. All it could offer is evidence that our brains carry out thinking which we are not consciously aware of. You might, with a more tightly controlled experiment, prove that the thought processes we are not conscious of are more efficient in some respects than some conscious processes. It might be interesting, but it’s not very magical.

11

And I do this all for free ? Bugger off…

12

[singsong]

Someone needs to update his prescriiiiiip-tion…

[/singsong]

13

What an amazing technique! It can make “mildly improbable” things happen! I have another technique that is also useful in these cases, in case you have trouble with this one. It’s called “doing nothing”.

14

I believe the proper term for this George technique is a “placebo” and it is, of course, a thinly-veiled metaphor for prayer, which naturally implies that religion itself is a placebo. If you ask the little man in your head/sky/rock/ocean for something, and it happens, then of course the little man must have caused it.

Seems to me that this psychologist was just trying to make the inherent logical fallacy painfully obvious. It’s not very subtle.

15

The most basic question is “can the mind affect matter”? And, so far, the evidence says “no”.

I guess George is out of a job.

16

Actually, the mind can affect matter in a limited sense. Many studies show a correlation between the mind and healing, for example. But I realize that isn’t what you meant.

17

I believe the more precise name for this phenomenon is “superstition”. The behaviourist Skinner found that even pigeons became superstitious when they incorrectly associated an action (such as turning around 360 degrees) with a random event that happened to follow it (receiving some food).

It’s perfectly ordinary and is caused by a subject’s ignorance of a situation. The pigeon did not know that food distribution was random, and incorrectly associated an unrelated action–turning around–with the appearance of food. The pigeon then proceeded to turn around repeatedly in the hope of making more food appear. The few times that its ritual movements were followed by coincidental random food distribution, the pigeon’s superstition was actually reinforced.

At this point the various bogus experiments in the paranormal come to mind: many of us still take note of the ‘hits’ and dismiss the ‘misses’ when it comes to what we believe or want to believe. Well it looks like pigeon and human intelligence are not so different after all. This superstition mechanism has been suggested as the origin of our beliefs in the supernatural, such as magic and religion.

18

Where’s the proof of this? What’s the rate of information processing of the conscious mind? What kind of information can it process?

The latest issue of Skeptic analyzes the claim that people unconsciously embed backward messages expressing their true feelings in their speech, and that listeners pick up on this speech unconsciously. The guy who promulgated this theory gives as an example Bill Clinton, whose grad jury testiomy, played backwards, eventually declares “Kiss the lying ass.”

Sounds cool, but doesn’t appear to be true. Research citd in the article shows that the unconscious cannot:

(1) process more than a single word, much less a whole sentence, in a single trial;
(2) react emotionally to a recording (e.g., a graphic description of ebola’s effects on the human body) when that recording is played backwards.

I’d buy that the unconscious assimilates certain perceptual data that we miss consciously. I don’t know how quickly it does this, however. At any rate, its ability to assimilate conceptual and emotional data over a short period of time appears very low indeed.

And, of course, the evidence that it can effect external reality at all is non-existent. Your experiment proves zip - especially as it asks us to count practically anything as a “hit”.

-J-

19

JayAndrewAllen wrote:

Indeed, it reminds me of the grand stuffed penguin experiment.

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OK, Userer,

Tell George you want him to identify, make a mark on, and then obtain the three objects on my desk. Simple, isn’t it?

Tris