I'm sorry if you feel that I was "attacking" your protocol. I was discussing what I would consider would make it a serious attempt to demonstrate that something paranormal was going on. Note that I'm not saying that without the changes you would not be doing something paranormal -- just that someone who was not starting from the assumption that you were doing something paranormal would be likely to be convinced. That pseudo-skeptics use these conventional capabilities to inappropriately dismiss the serious work of both people like you and people like me does not mean that the human mind is not capable of such things.
Obviously, if you were to look at someone and you instantly knew that there father's name was Edward, but before you could say anything they said "By the way my father's name was Edward" then you wouldn't expect -- or particularly want -- anyone to see your knowledge after that point of their father's name as a proof of anything paranormal (notice, I said take it as proof of something paranormal -- that they might personally accept your word for it is something quite different). For them to do so would mean that their acceptance pretty meaningless -- when something so meaningless is accepted as proof means that their acceptance of that proof is meaningless.
So, if you only want to arrange a challenge that Randi's crowd can dismiss (assuming the rather unlikely event that anyone actually involved would bother participating -- from their viewpoint, this is all about publicity and playing where anyone else has control is not the publicity they want) as you being more skillful at cold reading than them, your design will do as well as any other. If you want a design that reasonable doubters can look at and say "wait a moment -- there seems to be something going on here" than you can't allow the possibility of conventional information transfer (your shoe design sounds fine for that).
As for why I haven't criticised Randi's design -- I have any time anyone has asked about it. I have not offered suggestions because I don't believe for a moment that Randi et. al. are interested in producing a fair, reasonable test. They are uninterested in the truth -- only in promoting their viewpoint. I take you as interested in accomplishing something other than self-promotion.  |