
Two illusions that tricked Arthur Conan Doyle - hhs
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190828-the-two-bizarre-hoaxes-that-tricked-arthur-conan-doyle
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bryanrasmussen
Anyone familiar with Arthur Conan Doyle's spiritualism phase should not be
surprised, he was incredibly easy to fool.

In short - he was no Houdini
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini#Debunking_spirit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini#Debunking_spiritualists)

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robk
Today he'd be antivax

~~~
bryanrasmussen
that is a very astute observation of the man's character and tendencies

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tkdc926
The article states "In a later TV interview, Conan Doyle tried to explain his
views..." Doyle died in 1930. Pretty sure he never did a TV interview.

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dchest
Yup, probably not TV, but a filmed interview
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWjgt9PzYEM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWjgt9PzYEM)

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TazeTSchnitzel
Ah, the “when you have eliminated everything else, whatever remains must be
true” line. I remember it from Christian youth sermons and proselytising,
where they would set up a strawman against God and then blow it down. One of
the Holmes series' worse legacies.

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Aeolun
That’s a weird baatardization of the maxim though.

I guess they didn’t want to use ‘however improbable’ in connection to god?

 _“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth.”_

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
It may have been a perfect quote of the original maxim, my memory is imperfect
and you shouldn't ascribe any meaning to my unintended paraphrasing.

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dmix
The wiki for the Cottingly Fairy pictures showed Doyle played a big role in
his own deception:

> In a 1985 interview on Yorkshire Television's Arthur C. Clarke's World of
> Strange Powers, Elsie said that she and Frances were too embarrassed to
> admit the truth after fooling Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes: "Two
> village kids and a brilliant man like Conan Doyle – well, we could only keep
> quiet." In the same interview Frances said: "I never even thought of it as
> being a fraud – it was just Elsie and I having a bit of fun and I can't
> understand to this day why they were taken in – they wanted to be taken in."

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies?wprov=sft...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies?wprov=sfti1)

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darkerside
If he was working as a paranormal investigator, and getting paid, I can see
why it would pay off to find at least a few of these illusions to be real.
It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on
his not understanding it.

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dbtx
> According to our current theoretical frameworks, human memory is best
> understood as processes of reconstruction, rather than one of reproduction.
> That is to say that remembering an event is less like replaying a mental
> recording and more like composing a story.

I appreciate the appearance of that oft-omitted qualifier, 'according to
current theories'. Also, this reminds me of one of those ideas that came in a
package with giant robots...

"In the words of Schwarzwald, who is closest to the truth: Imagination and
memory are but one thing, which for diverse considerations hath diverse
names."

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Apocryphon
> An acrobat, dressed entirely in black tights, scaled the building and
> entered through a window after the committee had completed their search of
> the room. According to the magicians, "the ghost" was a bit of gauze coated
> with phosphorescent paint that the acrobat removed from their pocket and
> waved around the room.

If they made a movie that just reenacted Tibbles and Wynter's illusions and
other ingenious acts from the period, it'd be even more fantastical and
thrilling than those in The Prestige and The Illusionist.

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GoofballJones
This is interesting. From the article:

"Wynter’s veil had concealed not only her face but a wireless radio."

Isn't that pretty advanced for 1919? A wireless radio that fed her information
through an earpiece?

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paol
All radio is wireless :)

Radio was invented in the second half of the 19th century, so pretty mature by
then. I guess a sufficiently miniaturized earpiece does sound impressive for
the time, but it seems likely the radio itself would be too bulky and was
likely hidden somewhere in her clothes.

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FreeFull
By wireless it was probably meant that it was powered by battery, rather than
by mains power.

~~~
em-bee
a simple radio receiver works without a battery. we built those in school. the
electricity induced by the radio signal is enough to drive a small speaker.

~~~
Sharlin
Such a device is commonly called a crystal radio[1] and they truly are
ridiculously simple. If you don’t need a tuner or an amplifier, which in this
case was likely, the only components required to build an AM receiver are an
antenna, a diode, and an earphone. The name derives from an early type of
diode based on a piece of crystalline mineral, discovered by Braun in 1874[2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_detector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_detector)

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amelius
Speaking of the paranormal, has anyone ever made a serious attempt at
replicating Rupert Sheldrake's [1, 2] experiments?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnA8GUtXpXY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnA8GUtXpXY)

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Giorgi
Really enjoyable read. Makes you think how people still stick to their
believes even when those are proved fake and useless.

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nannal
Not on topic but the BBC allows unencrypted HTTP requests?

Then 302s a https request to http? It wasn't browser cache as I tried in a
private session too

Request URL:[https://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190828-the-two-bizarre-
ho...](https://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190828-the-two-bizarre-hoaxes-that-
tricked-arthur-conan-doyle)

Status code:302

location: [http://www.bbc.com/future/stor…hat-tricked-arthur-conan-
doyl...](http://www.bbc.com/future/stor…hat-tricked-arthur-conan-doyle)

