I Predict a Riot...

On a recent thread about birth signs on a question and answer site I use, I mentioned that I had been doing a course in doing personality readings and seemed to be reasonably good at it. I offered to do personalised readings if people would give me their birthdate and place of birth.

Three people took me up on my offer. The first said of my reading, "Bl00dy hell Baldy fekkin bang on mate", the second, "wow baldy i have to say mate i am pretty impressed , that sounds pretty much bang on , wow thanks for that" and the third, "Wow Baldy! Are you inside my head lol! [...] you are spot on with the not so obvious, deeper traits. I am very impressed that you have uncovered the deeper and less obvious stuff...but it's freaky too, lol!"

I was pretty confident with the first two. The third not so confident. How have I managed to read people's personalities so accurately with just their date and place of birth to go on? Well, astrology is based on a set of true facts that means with some hard work and some decent books about the stars, one can work out virtually everything about a person.

At least, that's what some people would have you believe.

In fact, I don't believe in astrology in the slightest. I think it's a load of pseudo-scientific horseshit. So, how did I get these incredibly acurate readings? Did I hire spies to study my victims? Nope. I used the Forer Effect.

Psychologist Bertram R. Forer discovered that people tend to accept general personality descriptions as being unique to them. In fact, he did an experiment where he gave a test to his students and gave them each a personality profile based on the results. He then asked the students to rate how accurately the profile matched their real personalities on a scale of one to five where five is the most accurate score. The students scored their profiles with an average of 4.2 out of 5, or over 84% accurate. All of them were given the exact same profile. Forer had cobbled it together from horoscopes from the paper without regard for which star signs were being described.

I used Forer's exact text for my first victim, as follows:

"You have a need for other
people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself.
While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate
for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your
advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be
worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to
whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a
certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by
restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker;
and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have
found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you
are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are
introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather
unrealistic."

This generated the reply "Bl00dy hell Baldy fekkin bang on mate" from victim number one.

For the second victim, I used the sample text found on site discussing Forer:

"You often try to leave an
impression on your surroundings that you are stern and rigid, while you are
actually an emotional and vulnerable person. Sometimes you are bright,
communicative and social, but you can turn into yourself, and in those times it
is hard for people around you to reach your thoughts. You live changes and
dynamic, and lack of freedom can make you discontent, even melancholic and
depressive. You know that you are a person that has an attitude and you don't
take random opinions without hard evidence. You have an amazing ability to
understand people who surround you and who you love. You also have a
well-developed sense for rightfulness, and it is hardest for you to accept human
greed and a lack of feeling for others.

"In your
love life you had lesser problems. Still, aside for a few weaknesses, your inner
strength provided you with means to successfully diminish them. You are often
expressing criticism about yourself, even more than it is necessary. The main
cause is that you have a strong need to be accepted and loved, and you turn too
strict when it comes to your character.

"You are
aware that you hold significant potential that you still haven't completely put
to work because of your reticence and insecurity. Soon you will learn how to put
your abilities to full use."

Result? "Wow baldy i have to say mate i am pretty impressed , that sounds pretty much bang on , wow thanks for that"...

For the third, I couldn't find any suitable example via Google, so I just made it up by copying lines from various sample personality profiles and making them vague. "You are spot on with the not so obvious, deeper traits" says victim three.

Despite being so vague they could apply to anyone, people will rate the depictions as highly accurate insights into their unique personalities. I wonder what the victims will think when they find me out? I fear they may wish to hunt me down and kill me...

Last Charge of the Right Brigade

The movie of Dan Brown's mega-selling Da Vinci Code goes out on general release today. Reviewers seem to be saying, 'It's not great, but it'll sell lots of tickets'. How much of that is a reasonable criticism, and how much of it is because it's the 'in' thing to do (there's a huge number who feel the need to make the incredibly insightful observation that an airport thriller is badly written, whilst failing to mention the fact that it's a cracking yarn) is unclear.

I previously wrote about the Muslim cartoons and how they had some right to feel agrieved about the whole thing. The Christians obviously feel similarly about agreived about the Da Vinci Code movie and have decided to jump on the let's do a bit of relgious protesting in the street bandwagon. Let's ignore the fact that it's only your wee-smelling old nan and two cooler-than-thou Nathan Barley types that haven't read it and that it's difficult to fathom who might be about to be corrupted that hasn't already.

Do the Christians have a similar right to be offended? Not really. It's actually nothing like the cartoons row. What it's actually like is the old Salman Rushdie Satanic Verses row, and like that row, they really don't have a leg to stand on. The problem as they see it is that if people start to question the essential tenets of their religious faith, they might just work out that the whole edifice is built on sand. Unfortunately, they've made so much noise about a work of fiction that now people are thinking, 'Well, what are they so concerned about? Is it because the book has stumbled on something true..?'

Of course, the Da Vinci Code is fiction. You can tell it's fiction because of a number of things:

1) It's blatantly a work of fucking fiction. For fuck's sake, are you a some sort of fucking thicky or something?

2) In case you didn't know it was a work of fiction (see 1), there's a handy hint on the inside cover where it categorises the book as fiction.
3) But really, are you just totally fucking thick?

Reasons why some people seem to think it's not fiction:

1) They're just totally thick (see 3, above).

2) There's a note which says (and I quote): "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." and then people take that to mean '...and so is the story (the one we keep saying is so badly written)'

3) See 1)

So, it seems to me you have to wonder what's going on. For my part, I wonder if this is part of some last hurrah..? Perhaps all these religions are at the point now where the evidence against them is just getting too much, but there's too much invested in them - money, time, love, livelihoods and culture - that they're going to mount the religious version of the charge of the Light Brigade. Perhaps it's one last glorious huzzah before they get mown down in a volley of enlightenment logic?

But perhaps that's me being daft. Perhaps it's not that at all. Maybe it's the two religions getting in a bit of 'Yo mamma' practice prior to leaping at each others throats.

Hmmm. Despite the violence of my Light Brigade analogy, the collapsing in the face of overwhelming logic theory seems a lot better than the gung-ho, kick-the-shit-out-of-each-other clash of civilisations theory.

Oh well. Still, that Da Vinci Code, eh? No characterisation to speak of...