The
IIG Preliminary demonstration gave me the opportunity to have more experience with my claim. My claim is that when I look at people, I feel something that translates into health information. And I am investigating that experience. My goal is not to verify some psychic ability, or to win a cash prize in a paranormal challenge. My objectives are to learn more about this experience, and having a paranormal challenge is one good way of doing that. More experience with the claim guides me toward understanding it better, for what it is and what it is not, and I take all accuracy and inaccuracy with me to reach that goal. I do not hold a personal relationship to the claim, and I do not mind it when it fails to perform. It fascinates me, how when I look at a person's back I can somehow feel a density that corresponds to kidneys being there. And whether the final conclusion will be that this is a purely subjective and personal experience, or that it would somehow relate to real health information in persons, it is unheard of and I enjoy learning more about it.
When I know I'm right, I'm right, and when I know I'm wrong, I'm wrong
I knew that my answers for trial 1 and 3 were incorrect and that my answer in trial 2 was correct, at all times, and well before the results were in. I shared this with IIG members and stated it very clearly and unambiguously. I do not recall a single experience where I would have been certain of a health perception and it would have been incorrect. The way the IIG Preliminary went, further confirms that when I am confident in a perception, it has high if not perfect accuracy, and when I am about to be incorrect, I already knew that beforehand. This means that I still have something to investigate. If I had a single experience of a highly compelling health perception, that I "know" to be accurate, only to find out that it is inaccurate, that would put the claim to rest once and for all. If you listen to what I was saying immediately after trial 2, I was kind of hoping that one of the ten kidneys that I "knew" I had seen, would in fact not be there. I say that if that were to happen, the claim would clearly just be nonsense, and that the claim isn't anything, and that I can't do it. So if I had made a mistake in trial 2, I would have been convinced that the claim is falsified, ie. that there is nothing more for me to learn. And that the claim would definitely have been over, and I even thought that that would have been nice. Because the claim is now not falsified and I have more work to do.
Larger persons take longer time to see through
It takes me a lot longer to feel into larger persons. I spent a lot of time feeling into subject 12 in the first trial, because for the longest time I could not feel either of his kidneys. It was difficult to penetrate the feeling in through his back. I knew that everyone has at least one kidney, so I wanted to find his so that I could eliminate him as a target and focus on the other subjects. I ended up having to find his bladder first through the pelvic region which is closer to the surface and work my way up along the ureters to the kidneys. But even at that, it was difficult. I found the right side kidney first, and as soon as I had found the left one, I could move on to the other subjects. But it did take me a lot of time. I have not had this experience before, so I was not able to know in advance. So for a future test, there may be no larger persons as subjects, unless I am given a significant amount of more time. If I still produce inaccurate results in a test that has no larger subjects, then I will hold those results as being more significant. Am I making excuses? Of course I am. For any ability to perform, there are always circumstances that need to be worked out that may affect the performance of that ability. I now know one more condition that needs to be considered, and I could not have known until I had experienced it.
Why would it take me longer to feel into a larger person? I was certainly not expecting to run into that experience. I was trying to hurry with this subject so that I could move on to the others. I think this experience says a lot about the perceptions. If I was more in control of the perceptions, ie. if they were voluntary or involving a conscious process or a choice, I would be able to choose to form them faster especially at a pressing time like during a test. Many different kinds of experiences with the perceptions indicate to me about what the process behind the perceptions of feeling health information is and what it isn't. I do know that logical thinking and ordinary cold reading is not involved, because those tend to lead me to a different conclusion. If all I were doing was using visual information that is on the surface of a person's body and that is only processed in terms of visual information, then I don't know why that would make it take longer with someone who is larger, especially when I am feeling worried about the time it is taking and want to finish with that person so that I can continue with the other subjects in that trial?
There were also other subjects that it took me longer to feel their kidneys, and in some subjects - generally the ones that were the smallest persons - did not take more than a moment. I have previously said that it only takes me a moment to feel the kidneys. That statement came from past experience, which mostly does involve smaller persons. Dr. Carlson is slenderly built and so if my perception of his kidneys does not take long, I could only assume the same amount of time with other subjects, not having the experience to teach me otherwise. I now know, and this matter will not be an issue - or an excuse - on the next test.
Three 27-minute trials in one day is too much
I have known that it takes a considerable amount of effort from me to do repeated trials where I make perceptions and that there always exists a limit to how long I can do this in a sequence. Eventually I get fatigue, headache and nausea and can need to stop. I was fine through trials 1 and 2, and at the beginning of trial 3 I was exhausted. I wrote down clearly on my draft papers for trial 3 that I was exhausted, and those draft papers are signed by James Underdown and stapled to the answer sheet and will be made available later on. I very nearly raised my hand at the beginning of trial 3 to cancel that trial. I was not feeling ok. So for a future test, there will only be two trials, not three, in one day. Possibly two days of two trials each, but never three trials in a sequence. I have learned more about my limit. If I still produce inaccurate results when I have no fatigue to blame on, then I will hold those results more significant against the claim.
I am comfortable in a test environment
The IIG Preliminary taught me that I am able to perform just as well in a test setting as anywhere else, and that being in the presence of Skeptics, video cameras, and an audience, and following a test procedure, does not inhibit my claim or performance in any way. I do not become nervous, and the claim is fully capable of expressing itself in a test setting.
What visual clues does it use?
I know that I need to see the person in order to feel medical perceptions. Past studies of my claim have concluded that I can not form medical perceptions with my eyes closed, in a dark room, or with the person behind a screen that I can not see through. I need to be able to look at the person, although, if I look at a person and then turn away or then close my eyes it does work, but I need to see the person initially. My own experience of the process is that I need to see the person in order to know where they are and have a clear sense of distance and location to the person, but of course the real reason for that could be something else that I am unaware of. The IIG Preliminary has taught me a lot more about what visual information I may be using to form the perceptions, and I am thrilled about learning more about that. You see, I am not investigating my claim in order to verify some psychic ability, but because I am curious about learning more about this experience. I look at people and I feel something that turns into health information. My updated theory is that I am using some good and automatic cold reading skill that translates synesthetically into corresponding shapes and images of health. If I encounter having perceptions that I am confident in (as in trial 2 of the Preliminary) and those turn out to be inaccurate, that would of course steer me in a different direction in the learning process.
During the Preliminary demonstration, I saw the subjects only from behind. I was not able to see their front, or their face. Their head and faces were covered with a hat and fabric. I was able to see the backs of the subjects, and also their legs/pants, and arms. Although the subjects did a good job at sitting still for the duration of the trials, there are always microscopic movements that people make, the way we breathe, the way we lean against a chair, and small adjustments that we have to make to our posture. As human beings we communicate with body language, and are all excellent at visually reading minute details of a person's outer appearance and movement. Does the number of kidneys in a person reflect on body language? I would think that this is health information that just can not be discerned from the outside. But if a subject knows that he or she is missing a kidney, and knows that they might be the target in a test, that might translate into their voluntary or involuntary signs of that fact. But that does not explain my medical perceptions, because I detected that Dr. Carlson was missing a kidney. You see, with Dr. Carlson I had absolutely no prior way of suspecting that a kidney might be missing, so even if Dr. Carlson knew, how would he have communicated that to me? How would I have known to translate his body language into that particular health information?
But in this Preliminary, could my choices have been affected by minute body language of the subjects? If they knew who was a target, and who wasn't? Joe who sat on the other side of the row of subjects said that based on his observations of the fidgeting of subjects he would have chosen the correct person in trials 1 and 2, although not been able to know which side the kidney would be missing. This is valuable information. Am I subconsciously reading up on visual information, such as the movement of subjects, to make my choices? But I also keep in mind that Joe was actually sitting on the other side of the subjects. He was also much closer to the subjects than my five feet, and he was able to see their faces, so he had more visual information available.
Would having one fewer kidneys translate into moving more? I don't know if it does. But knowing that you are a target person in a test might. Did the subjects in our test know who was the target? I do not know that. So in a future test, we would need to try to better ensure that subjects do not know the objective of the test beforehand. We could even make non-target subjects think that they are the target, just to improve on the procedure. If my answers were based on subconscious observations on movement of subjects, that could be involved in my answers in the Preliminary demonstration, however it does not provide an explanation to the medical perceptions process as a whole. It would not explain how I knew that Dr. Carlson is missing a kidney.
I learned in this Preliminary demonstration that I experience myself being distracted by visual information. If you watch Part 2 of the IIG Preliminary demonstration, and begin watching exactly 1 hour into the video, you hear an audience member asking me whether I was influenced by visual information, and my first response is to call those things "distractions". Each of the subjects had their own unique visual characteristics that were still visually available to me. Some had long hair hanging down their back, one had tattoos on his arms, their clothing other than the shirts was different, and plenty other clues. To me those things were distractions. So in a next test, there will be less visual information available.
In a next test, there would be larger screens and only the kidney area of the subjects would be cut out and individually made to fit with the height of each subject. No head, arms, or legs would be visible, and long hair would not be visible. This would eliminate a lot of the visual information, such as indicating to age, gender, or other information. There was also some discussion after the test whether I chose subject 24 in trial 2 because he had tattoos on his arms. That was certainly not why I chose this person, but having more elaborate screens on the next test would also eliminat some of those discussions after the test.
There will be another test
It is bad to make excuses, unless there actually are real excuses. Luckily, my excuses are clearly documented and verified on the demonstration video and the draft papers that I submitted with the answer sheet. The IIG Preliminary was intended as being formed based on already clearly defined testing conditions, and I thought I was ready and that I had already learned what I need to know in order to design a test. But I now learned two new restrictions that affect the performance of the claim. If I have a trial in a future test in which I have full confidence in my answer, in the way that I was confident in trial 2, and in which these two new concerns are no longer an issue, and those results are inaccurate, then I can finally put my claim to rest and conclude it as falsified.
