Mehran Keshe and Keshe Foundation Game Changer or Scam?

luc said:
* During the last 12 months, how much total time have you spent reading about 'free energy' topics, researching it, watching videos about it, thinking about it etc.?

I think this is an important question be cause it relates to the investment bias or the sunken cost fallacy that Daniel Kahneman writes about in Thinking Fast and Slow. What's interesting about this fallacy is that people continue to invest in things that they know aren't good for them, that they aren't necessarily enthusiastic about, etc. The influence here is that we're wired to be more adverse to a loss than a gain. So you might not even feel an attachment to this Keshe material, but you can be 'hooked' because of the time you've spent on it. So on one hand you can say to yourself I'm really not as into this stuff as people think, but on the other you continue putting energy into it because of the investment already made. We continue putting energy, money or time into things because we don't want to face the reality of a loss and the uncomfortable feelings that go with it.

Giving up on such things is difficult because as long as we're investing we can continue denying any losses. As mentioned, the areas in which we invest don't even have to be appealing (although I'm sure there are many times where there is a strong appeal). Some examples of this are continuing to watch a movie after you determined that it's really bad, continuing to eat a meal after you're full, or continuing to invest in a failing business. Casino's rely on this human tendency because they know players will continue to gamble long after they are down.

Dave McRaney wrote a post on this fallacy here, using Farmville as an example.

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/03/25/the-sunk-cost-fallacy/

Farmville is a valuable tool for understanding your weakness in the face of loss. The sunk cost fallacy is the engine which keeps Farmville running, and the developers behind Farmville know this.

Farmville is free, and the first time you log on you are transported to a netherworld patch of grass where you float above an abeyant young farmhand eager to get to work. His or her will is your will, and his or her world is empty save a patch of land ready to be plowed and a crop of vegetables ready to be picked.

Wading into the experience, you feel the game designers have made every attempt to turn your head toward the screen in a way which brings no attention to the grip on your scalp. It is all your choice, they seem to be saying, no one is forcing you to proceed. Here, harvest these beans. Hey, why not plant some seed? Oh, look, you could plow a patch of land, you know, if you want. A loading bar appears and then quickly fills as you watch your grinning Aryan-ish avatar with his messy-on-purpose haircut virtually dirty his digital overalls. The cheery music, which sounds like the cyborg interpretation of clumsily extracted memories from the brain of a reanimated Old West piano player, drones on and on. The moment the loop restarts is difficult to pinpoint.

Within a few minutes, you’ve done everything which can be done on your first garden, but there are hints all over the screen portending a fully functioning Texas-ranch-sized megafarm, should you plant your seeds well. Once you learn you must wait at least an hour or so to continue, you start clicking around and find you have coins and cash which can be spent on trees, plants, seeds, an impressive bestiary of jaunty fantastical creatures and a bevy of clothes, devices, buildings and props. You have just enough currency when the game starts to buy a caramel apple tree or some honeybees, but the nice stuff like pink tractors and magic waterfalls, will have to wait until you’ve played the game a while. If you stay vigilant, checking back throughout the day to see how close your strawberries are to being ripe or if a wandering animal has visited your feed trough, you can earn more virtual currency and advance in levels and unlock more stuff. You’ll need to plant and plow and harvest to advance, most of which is also an investment in something which must be harvested…later.

This is the powerful force behind Farmville. Playing Farmville is a commitment to a virtual life form. Your neglect has consequences. If you don’t return, your investments die and you will feel like you wasted your time, money and effort. You must return, sometimes days later, to reap the reward of the time and virtual money you are spending now. If you don’t, not only do you not get rewarded, you lose your investments.

To stave off these feelings you can pay Farmville real-world money or participate in offers from their advertisers to negate the need to tend to certain things, reverse the death of crops and expand your farm ahead of schedule. You can also ask your friends to help, since the game has tendrils reaching deep into Facebook.

Although all these strategies will keep the fallacies at bay for a few days, they also feed them. The urge to stay the course and keep your farm flourishing gets more powerful the more you invest in it, the more you ask others for help, the more time you spend thinking about it. People set alarms to wake up in the middle of the night to keep their farm alive. You continue to play Farmville not to have fun, but to avoid negative emotions. It isn’t the crop you are harvesting, but your fallacies. You return and click to patch cracks in a dam holding back something icky in your mind – the sense you wasted something you can never get back.

To say Farmville has been successful is a silly sort of understatement. It has led to the creation of a whole new genre of entertainment. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being generated by social gaming, and like so many profitable businesses, someone is hedging their bets against a predicable weakness in your behavior in order to turn a profit.

Farmville players are mired in a pit of sunk costs. They can never get back the time or the money they’ve spent, but they keep playing to avoid feeling the pain of loss and the ugly sensation waste creates.

You may not play Farmville, but there is probably something similar in your life. It could be a degree you want to change, or a career you want to escape, or a relationship you know is rotten. You don’t return to it over and over again to create good experiences and pleasant memories but to hold back the negative emotions you expect to feel if you accept the loss of time, effort, money or whatever else you have invested.

I've wondered why you keep coming back to this thread after people have told you they're not interested. It's not all that different from how people bombard their facebook friends with requests to play farmville. It keeps the illusion alive and is a way to perpetuate an investment influenced by your sunken costs (which is the time you've spent on this stuff). I think it's better to accept the loss, and look to more worthwhile things that can provide your life with actual gains.
 
I'm getting off the topic here but wanted to comment on what Divide by Zero said since I relate quite a bit:

So, now you can label me as some hate filled person, that's fine. Maybe it will help clear the air.
I hate scammers because they use people and sell dreams.

Your honesty is refreshing and shows how well you know yourself and accept that. So recognizing this emotion of hate is a positive and a indication/guide of something you must stay away from. I too, hate(?) scammers. I've something that almost flies into a frenzy (if allowed) when people are falling for a load of horse sh*t. I want to call it out and scream...which I usually don't do because its inconsiderate. It wasn't until I came to this forum that I learned, believing in lies can actually destroy the brain! I've some sort of code thats been with me since the beginning that says this is a real hazard.

A little story of me that says a lot, I think. When I was around 8 yrs. old, I went with my mother while she baby sat 3 children ages 4 to 11. It was around Easter and the house was decorated with bunnies and such. The 4 year old was talking about the Easter bunny coming and I remember being very concerned about this. It was a serious matter in my estimation that she was believing in a lie, so I told her the Easter bunny didn't exist (for her own good, of course)!

Many times, people can't tolerate this revealing and for some it would shatter the very foundation their life is built on. So, maybe they'll go through their whole life being scammed from one thing to the next.
 
Richard, you've been around long enough to know the basic ideas of the work, the individual and the group.

If you saw someone keeping a thread going on something that you thought was BS, a psyop, cointelpro, new age word salad, etc., and not only you thought that, but dozens and dozens of other members thought the same thing and were pointing it out to the original poster, then:

1) Who's perspective would you think was the more objective? The individual's or the groups?

2) Why would you come to that conclusion?
 
Richard S said:
Laura said:
Richard, could you quote me exactly where I supposedly said "even Ark couldn't make sense of it." I'm pretty sure I said that Ark determined it to be a scam.

Now, consider a possible collusion between some corrupt agent in Ghana and others who want to make money. Or even a faked "release" from Ghana. Remember the rule of thumb about these things: it's verification is always far away, remote, and impossible to confirm.

Also recall the same types of "certification" that accompanied Jim Humble's MMS - he was curing malaria in Africa right and left, according to him, and produce photos to prove it. Nothing but a scam.

I really don't know what else to say to you about this: there are none so blind as those who WILL not see.
Ok, the subject is dead in the water for me.

Francesco Fucilla and his new age "healing" devices also comes to mind.
 
I would have thought that, by now Richard, you would have at least bought one of Keshe's "pain pens" for $25 and taken it apart and looked at what was inside. Have you done such a thing?
 
Joe, Richard made a pain pen and he showed us how it works. I didn't say it didn't work, I just said that the best way to test it without placebo would be a blind test. He tried it over my arm and hand randomly while I wasn't looking and I didn't sense anything.

I have felt Reiki from Ingrid years ago and that I could feel the warmth radiating- and IIRC a child came up with a double blind test for Reiki that showed it was something!


Laura said:
Richard, could you quote me exactly where I supposedly said "even Ark couldn't make sense of it." I'm pretty sure I said that Ark determined it to be a scam.

I apologized, I mixed it up a little paraphrasing it wrong. My impression was that after looking at the videos- yes mostly videos which I can not stand if it can be easier said on "paper" for some of us that prefer reading, I found it scientific gibberish.

So in person when Richard and I were discussing it, I brought up how even Ark found it to be confusing, because I was told I didn't have the background for it.
No problem, I don't pretend to be that- but I'm ok with finding obvious behavioral issues in tech. A lot of times you can tell what's a sales pitch vs an actual specification and/or testing data.

But then, I was told that Ark looked at the old stuff. Now, I don't think you did it on purpose Richard, but that's a passive aggressive way to just keep winning a debate by always finding fault with any data or impressions to the opposite. You called me a skeptic, using it as they call conspiracists, someone who doubts blindly. No sir, I don't doubt blindly, I just don't believe blindly. A modern day "skeptic" would say something that is working and has been shown working to be false, because their belief says it shouldn't work. No, I don't need to know if it runs on 33 clockwise spins or crystals or special nano coated wires. It just had to work, and he couldn't even do that. No, he was already going 200 steps ahead, saying it will work for levitation, healing, and so on. Don't promise more when you haven't given the basics!

With Keshe, the final straw was after promises and promises, nothing in the last presentation- someone forgot a part?!?!, sheesh, for geniuses they are really absent minded then!
 
The problem is that we sometimes 'read too much' into one thing, i.e. pattern recognition run amok, caused by the neurochemical reward that goes along with it. It seems to be related to dopamine:

https://www.sott.net/article/222397-Dopamine-Makes-You-Addicted-To-Seeking-Information said:
Dopamine Makes You Addicted To Seeking Information

The latest research, though is changing this view. Instead of dopamine causing us to experience pleasure, the latest research shows that dopamine causes seeking behavior. Dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases our general level of arousal and our goal-directed behavior. (From an evolutionary stand-point this is critical. The dopamine seeking system keeps us motivated to move through our world, learn, and survive). It's not just about physical needs such as food, or sex, but also about abstract concepts.

Dopamine makes us curious about ideas and fuels our searching for information. The latest research shows that it is the opoid system (separate from dopamine) that makes us feel pleasure. Wanting vs. liking - According to Kent Berridge, these two systems, the "wanting" (dopamine) and the "liking" (opoid) are complementary. The wanting system propels us to action and the liking system makes us feel satisfied and therefore pause our seeking. If our seeking isn't turned off at least for a little while, then we start to run in an endless loop. The latest research shows that the dopamine system is stronger than the opoid system. We seek more than we are satisfied (back to evolution... seeking is more likely to keep us alive than sitting around in a satisfied stupor).

Anticipation is better than getting - Brain scan research shows that our brains show more stimulation and activity when we ANTICIPATE a reward than when we get one.

More, more, more - Although wanting and liking are related, research also shows that the dopamine system doesn't have satiety built in. It is possible for the dopamine system to keep saying "more more more", seeking even when we have found the information. During that google exploration we know that we have the answer to the question we originally asked, and yet we find ourselves looking for more information and more and more.

Unpredictable is the key - Dopamine is also stimulated by unpredictability. When something happens that is not exactly predictable, that stimulates the dopamine system.


https://textureoftime.wordpress.com/2016/03/17/dopamine-adhd-and-signal-to-noise-ratio/ said:
Dopamine, ADHD, and Signal to Noise Ratio

Dopamine bumps the signal to noise ratio in the brain, increasing pattern recognition, even for things that may not be there, as in paranoid schizophrenia. ...

An abundance of dopamine however, reveals copious connections, too many things to pay attention to, too much meaning in mundane events, maybe some that don’t exist.
 
Divide By Zero said:
Joe, Richard made a pain pen and he showed us how it works. I didn't say it didn't work, I just said that the best way to test it without placebo would be a blind test. He tried it over my arm and hand randomly while I wasn't looking and I didn't sense anything.

Did he take it apart and see what was inside to ascertain if there was even anything in there that could remotely be connected with something that might 'heal' or reduce pain?
 
Joe said:
Divide By Zero said:
Joe, Richard made a pain pen and he showed us how it works. I didn't say it didn't work, I just said that the best way to test it without placebo would be a blind test. He tried it over my arm and hand randomly while I wasn't looking and I didn't sense anything.

Did he take it apart and see what was inside to ascertain if there was even anything in there that could remotely be connected with something that might 'heal' or reduce pain?

It works based on some nano coated wire that can gather this energy from the universe, or so was what I was told. Richard showed us the wire before that he was making which was nano coated. I don't doubt his efforts on it, but I still don't see anything conclusive.
Keshe's other technology is based on the same nano coated wire to tap into and convert energy. But Keshe's run around is what got on my nerves.

The problem with technology like this is that if it worked on some special force that science doesn't know about yet, like crystals, etc- then it does no good for Keshe to do videos on how it works. Instead, common sense should be used and the pain pen, etc tested double blind.

But again, I got labeled a skeptic and told that I don't know this technology. I never claimed to be all knowing. I just don't accept this run around that somehow I'm supposed to prove it for myself. An inventor proves his own invention for US, not the other way around.

Data thanks for that information!
Anticipation seems to be the addiction that makes people not see the obvious. Obama's "hope" comes to mind. And now I am feeling the same with Trump and his 180 flips. I know deep down I so much want things to change too and maybe that's another aspect of my anger and dissapointment with Keshe and others, it used up my hope on free energy! For all I know Keshe could be unaware of his scamming, but in that case, I see him as schizoidal- self referential and ignoring the simple things he should DO, which is to stop making shows and just SHOW US!
 
Joe said:
I would have thought that, by now Richard, you would have at least bought one of Keshe's "pain pens" for $25 and taken it apart and looked at what was inside. Have you done such a thing?

I was not going to post anything else here but since you are asking a question I will answer it.

I didn't purchase one, I made a few myself as it is very simple and inexpensive to do. People have experimented with all sorts of different designs, but a simple basic design is made of bare copper wire. I used 18 gauge for mine. there are 3 pieces used: a straight wire in the center, a small diameter coil of wire around that and then a larger diameter coil on the outside. On the top end the wires are formed into a loop at the end to redirect the fields created toward the bottom end.

Next, the assembly is 'nano-coated'. The easiest and best for this purpose is the heat method using something like a propane torch. The finished device should be protected, both for preventing contact with nano material and to prevent damage to it.

I'm not sure how exactly the commercial version is made, but is is similar in most respects.
 
Richard S said:
Joe said:
I would have thought that, by now Richard, you would have at least bought one of Keshe's "pain pens" for $25 and taken it apart and looked at what was inside. Have you done such a thing?

I was not going to post anything else here but since you are asking a question I will answer it.

I didn't purchase one, I made a few myself as it is very simple and inexpensive to do. People have experimented with all sorts of different designs, but a simple basic design is made of bare copper wire. I used 18 gauge for mine. there are 3 pieces used: a straight wire in the center, a small diameter coil of wire around that and then a larger diameter coil on the outside. On the top end the wires are formed into a loop at the end to redirect the fields created toward the bottom end.

Next, the assembly is 'nano-coated'. The easiest and best for this purpose is the heat method using something like a propane torch. The finished device should be protected, both for preventing contact with nano material and to prevent damage to it.

I'm not sure how exactly the commercial version is made, but is is similar in most respects.

I see. And do you have an solid scientific evidence that would lead you to theorize that heated coiled copper wires can be used to heal or stop pain?
 
Joe said:
I see. And do you have an solid scientific evidence that would lead you to theorize that heated coiled copper wires can be used to heal or stop pain?

If you want to see for yourself if it works the best thing is to make one as described in the numerous utube videos online and try it. In that case, 'scientific orthodoxy' would be irrelevant. I have used it several times with pain relief. So, I personally know it works.
 
Richard S said:
Joe said:
I see. And do you have an solid scientific evidence that would lead you to theorize that heated coiled copper wires can be used to heal or stop pain?

If you want to see for yourself if it works the best thing is to make one as described in the numerous utube videos online and try it. In that case, 'scientific orthodoxy' would be irrelevant. I have used it several times with pain relief. So, I personally know it works.

I'm glad it helps you, but it's a grey area: science can be wrong and right here.

It can be wrong about technology that has not been discovered. We can not assume this.

But we do have the placebo effect that needs to be tested for. Just because it works for you and some people, but not others, would you say that those others are the ones that are not seeing objectively- or the ones who might have a placebo effect?

I hear terms like scientific orthodoxy and skeptic when it came to this debate.
It seems you use them as meaning closed minded in general, but not all are... like not all free energy machines are automatically scams. I don't believe Carl Sagan's unfair remark that extraordinary things require extraordinary proof. That's worse than orthodoxy, it's a set up. I just want to see his technology tested in the ways he CLAIMS it to work, which he hasn't even done! Frustrating!

By the way, not all skeptics are close minded, the original meaning: a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual.

Who is purpoting something as factual, the scientist that tests the invention to make sure it work, or Keshe,etc who makes big claims and expects everyone to believe it by his word and dismissal of "orthodoxy"? In this case, is it not fair to say let's do a simple, scientific test (unlike Sagan's expectation for evidence)?

Some things are not testable, UFOs, ghosts, and so on - which science wrongly dismisses outright.
But this is an invention that has a defined activity, so it can be put to a simple measurable test.

Am I wrong here in this logic? Because the way the labels have been used (skeptic, scientific orthodoxy) is like you on some level look down on someone who wants to double check claims.
 
Richard S said:
If you want to see for yourself if it works the best thing is to make one as described in the numerous utube videos online and try it. In that case, 'scientific orthodoxy' would be irrelevant. I have used it several times with pain relief. So, I personally know it works.

So, what you are saying is that YOU are the only person this has worked on, after your experiment, and that makes you convinced that it works? You, who are obviously invested in the idea? The other person you tested it on was Divide by Zero, and he was not impressed at all, unless I misunderstood. So, a 50/50 chance. Great...

Richard S, you have been around here for a long time, and must already know that we never "KNOW" something works, until many of us have tried something, as scientifically as possible. And even then, we keep experimenting and gathering more data, adapting our view when something disproves the previous hypothesis. If it only took one of us doing something to decide, just like that, that something works, well, this forum wouldn't be what it is, I think.
 
Chu said:
Richard S said:
If you want to see for yourself if it works the best thing is to make one as described in the numerous utube videos online and try it. In that case, 'scientific orthodoxy' would be irrelevant. I have used it several times with pain relief. So, I personally know it works.

So, what you are saying is that YOU are the only person this has worked on, after your experiment, and that makes you convinced that it works? You, who are obviously invested in the idea? The other person you tested it on was Divide by Zero, and he was not impressed at all, unless I misunderstood. So, a 50/50 chance. Great...

Richard S, you have been around here for a long time, and must already know that we never "KNOW" something works, until many of us have tried something, as scientifically as possible. And even then, we keep experimenting and gathering more data, adapting our view when something disproves the previous hypothesis. If it only took one of us doing something to decide, just like that, that something works, well, this forum wouldn't be what it is, I think.

For the same reason I would not trust channeling done alone - not even by me. I KNOW the mind's ability to fool itself and to produce phenomena to back up belief. That sounds like what is happening with you.
 
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