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#2.
Palm Reading
The Scam: Chiromancy, or "palm reading" is the supposed ability to discern a person's dominant personality traits or even divine their future by interpreting the lines on their palm. It's basically just a hand-fetish version of the cold reading we discussed earlier: close inspection of the hands can say a lot. The placement and amount of calluses, how well the nails are kept, indents from rings--they're all general clues to a person's life.
How it's Becoming Real: Your hand really is a gold-mine of information about your genetics and overall health. We have previously explained how researchers have figured out that finger length can determine sexual behavior, a.k.a. the Digit Ratio Theory.
But your fingerprints also contain a load of information about certain genetic disorders. For example, if you have something called Ulnar Swirls (pictured below) it's likely you have Down's syndrome. The same creases in the palms the fortune tellers claim to read are actually indicators of certain genetic disorders and even fetal alcohol syndrome. Of course, old-fashioned palm readers have seized on this to claim they were right all along. See! If scientists can find genetic clues in your Life Line, surely our experts will be able to predict when you'll meet your soulmate! For a small fee! #1.
Fortune Telling a.k.a. Predicting the Future
The Scam: This is the big one. Whether it's a lady with a crystal ball, a cult leader predicting apocalypse or Sylvia Freaking Browne, there has always been a thriving industry in making (often vague) predictions about the future. You can be wrong 99 times out of a hundred, but as long as you get one guess right (usually something like, "I predict a major disaster somewhere in Asia this year") your followers will forget all the misses.
Just ask Ms. Browne, who has turned a career of never successfully predicting anything into a business that charges $850 dollars for a telephone reading. How it's Becoming Real: It looks like the only thing between us and having the computer equivalent of a crystal ball is getting the software right--and trust us, they're working around the clock. Two ongoing crises are driving the research right now: Global Warming, with the corresponding need to develop more accurate models to predict warming trends, and the recent financial collapse that managed to blindside every expert whose job it is to see shit like that coming. Strangely, in the future the same techniques may be used to predict both.
It's not easy; it takes a shitload of computing power, and massive amounts of past and current data for a piece of software to predict what's going to happen. But, for instance, one model already predicted a crash of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The programmers aren't claiming magic, the software just recognized that buyers tend to behave a certain way before a steep drop. Meanwhile the U.S. Department of Defense is using computer models right now to predict geopolitical outcomes, anticipating events like regime changes using number-crunching techniques probably not all that different from what statistician, Nate Silver, uses to nail down his creepily accurate election forecasts. And if you can get rough-yet-fairly accurate predictions with just some dudes and their desktop PC's, you can only imagine what could happen if we had, say, a gigantic supercomputer on the task. Or instead of imagining it, we could just go to Los Alamos National Laboratories where they have this fucker:
That's the Roadrunner system, it operates at 1.6 PetaFLOPS (that is, one point six quadrillion or 1,600,000,000,000,000 calculations a second) and they're busily teaching it to predict things. They're running mathematical models that will let it map everything from the chaotic spread of a wildfire to the expansion of the universe. Of course, even then, the models are simply predicting broad trends. They could maybe predict what the crime rate in Baltimore will be next year, but can't predict that the guy in the next cubicle over is about to stab some dudes. No, for that you'd need the FAST (Future Attribute Screening Technologies) program, a system developed by the Department of Homeland Security that can measure your vital signs and fleeting facial expressions and accurately predict that you're going to commit a crime in the near future. All of which leaves us with one question: What happens when personal computers get powerful enough to run the prediction software on their own, and everyone has access to it? How will people's behavior change when they know what the computer is predicting they'll do? And how will the computers adjust their predictions based on the subjects of their predictions knowing the predictions? Or will it have predicted the subjects' awareness of the predictions as part of its original predictions? Wait, this is why they started burning witches, isn't it? You can read more of Wang's articles at Gunaxin. Do you have something funny to say about a random topic? You could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow. Go here and find out how to create a Topic Page. For things the technology (read: the Internet) has given hope to, check out 5 Ridiculous Ancient Beliefs (That Thrive on the Internet). Or find out about how the Internet is destroying you, in 6 New Personality Disorders Caused by the Internet. And stop by our Top Picks to see Swaim microwaving gallons of Pepto Bismol. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get dick jokes sent straight to your news feed. |
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(I mean, just go upstairs, for reals. She does anal and everything.)
@n1ghtmare: Christ, how long did you work on that comeback? You need to get laid, dude. Seriously.
@BobDobolina: Ooops, did I hit a nerve ? Just keep hope alive man, even a nerd like you could (probably) find love ... EVEN - if your dick is orange from the amounts of cheetos that you eat while masturbating, EVEN if the only thing you could call "A GIRLFRIEND" is a really old (kinda yellowish) poster of Krystal Steal (she knows you best though), EVEN if the only thing close to a blow job was when your dog gave you a peanut-butter-dick-lick, EVEN if the only real communication with a girl was with this one Nigerian "lady" (which apparently lost her parents along with all of her family fortune and was "living in a refugee camp with a priest" or something), that found comfort in your words ... You probably still think she loved you but didn't had the chance to tell you because of her overwhelming circ*mstances, and your pillow probably smells like tears by now .... BUT HEY !!!! - One DAY ... One Day you'll find love, mate... Just hang in there - go out more, maybe lose a couple of (hundreds of?) pounds, lose the "I
@n1ghtmare_: Oddly enough, all of my posts to this thread were composed while I was banging your Mom. You didn't hear us from your little nook in the basement?
@ BobDobolina: Dude, you need to get laid - seriously... Have you ever touched a woman ? I'm sure good CRACKED readers/commenters over here will be more than happy to chip in couple of dollars to get you a hooker ...
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I dunno, I kinda look forward to the days when people can just go from frail, vulnerable human bodies to strong, invincible cyberized bodies. Anyone read Ghost in the Shell?
Wow. I'd love to just get into some amazing repartee with you intelcm, but there's no way you could reply, as it seems your mouth is full of CavalierX's balls. Read your bio, and as it seems you've made so many friends already, I'll just let closeted dogs lie. Oh, and if I wanted to spend hours researching counter points to Cavalier's op-ed paste-and-cut info (that's opinion, in case you couldn't figure it out, bright eyes), I'd go back to college for my Master's.
(Oh, but helpful hint: just po-facedly repeating the words "science," "reason," "logic" and "facts" isn't going to convince a soul that you actually know what any of them mean. To do that, you have to demonstrate the ability to engage honestly with evidence and competing hypotheses. Hell, even just the ability to read the links you're madly Googling before you post them would be a start in the right direction... but that would make you a less entertaining crank, so hey. Your call.)
You are rubber, I am glue, hey? Play it any way you need to, pal.
"Yes, an unheard-of level of subtlety for a sockpuppet, never before witnessed by human eyes! You outdo yourself once again, sir. Well played. " Why on earth would I need a "sockpuppet?" The only people using such lame methods that I've ever encountered are those whose so-called "arguments" depend on others agreeing with him... in other words, concensus. Since I only use science, logic, reason and facts to back my arguments, pretending to be other people saying "Yeah! I agree with him!" would do me no good whatsoever. I don't really give a rat's ass how many people agree with me.
A profanity filter that doesn't work on caps. Seriously.
You go, garbagewingnut! It was totally like cold out today take that you stupid f**king liberal f**king f**ks f**king f**king f**ks like you f**king f**ks, FUCK! Get a brain, morans! http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/n/U/moran.jpg (Oh, the irony...)
can the global warming programs predict how much colder it will get seeing as the global temperature is dropping right now? or maybe it will predict how much more ice the arctic ice caps will gain... f**king global warming bulls**t douchebaggery. you'll notice they're calling it 'global climate change' now because the earth is cooling but its still definitely because of CO2 and definitely caused by man. sunspots and natural climate cycles are completely absurd and far too logical for everyone to believe. just keep on thinking we're all special and so important that we impact something as expansive as global climate and please pray that cows and sheep stop farting so much because it will kill our ozone. dumb f**king liberals
Yes, an unheard-of level of subtlety for a sockpuppet, never before witnessed by human eyes! You outdo yourself once again, sir. Well played.
You might have noticed that the person was actually quoting me. Idiot.
(Kinda funny how "intelcm" suddenly shows up with diction exactly like CavX's to defend the latter, innit?)
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