Thanks everyone for all the input and ideas, but here's the point you are all missing. Do you know that no one has ever been accepted for the JREF Million Dollar Challenge? No one has ever passed their "preliminary" testing. Strange, isn't it? Why aren't the people who are so happy to point out supposed "design flaws" in my challenge, attacking James Randi's challenge?
My i2i challenge is a
PR opportunity just as the JREF challenge is. Its purpose is to draw media attention to consciousness survival research (not to me). In the last Skeptiko podcast, the hot topic was "evidence" and the skeptical community's claim that there wasn't any "real evidence" for consciousness survival. So, my i2i challenge, though not perfectly designed, is a way for the Psi community (in a non adversarial tone) to draw attention to itself and open up dialog on other experiments that do suggest that mind and brain might not be one in the same. In other words, I'm not trying to please everyone who hates Psi by eliminating anything public, fun or interesting in my challenge. I just want the Psi community to get a little smarter in how they present their case to the public.
If you really look at the parameters I set up, you will see that an illusionist like Darren Brown could not possibly score as well simply using cold reading techniques. In my challenge, there is no room for error in the first "identification" part. One mistake, and the reading is considered invalid.
However, I have a solution to the concern of an intuitive possibly getting their information by reading facial cues or body language.
We will take Polaroids of the people's shoes.
I will read their shoes. That will make the challenge even more exciting and fun. Maybe now I will have to rename the i2i challenge "Marcel Cairo's Soul of the Shoe" Challenge.
I challenge any skeptic out there to score better than me in this challenge. There's no money at stake here, just the bragging rights and the chance to bring this debate to the public in a fun and friendly way.