telepathy
gregladen | March 13, 2017I had a bunch of quarters in my pocket. About six dollars worth, along with a couple of one dollar coins.
I pulled all the change out of my pocket and placed it on a desktop. I walked away.
A few minutes later, I went to grab the coins so I could bring them to my office and toss them in the coin jar.
One of the coins, quarter or dollar I can not say, was standing on its edge.
My hand was faster than my brain, so I grabbed all the quarters up, thus knocking down the standing coin. I was therefore unable to test the hypothesis that if you drop some coins somewhere and one stands on edge,…
edyong | January 4, 2010We spend a lot of time wondering about what other people think of us. Do they find us attractive, intelligent, capable or trustworthy? Considering how often we mull over such questions and how confidently we arrive at conclusions, we are remarkably bad at answering them. We have a nasty tendency to use our own minds as a starting point when reasoning about other people's and we rely too heavily on stereotypes and other expectations. In short, we are rubbish telepaths.
Mind-reading is still the stuff of science-fiction (or quackery) but Nicholas Epley is more interested in the everyday…