The Mind Lamp

[Robin]

Both PEAR and Psyleron have featured in these pages before, but a search fails to turn up their new product - the Mind Lamp.

According to their web site this is a colour changing lamp connected to a random number generator (which I gather is a white noise generator with clipped output).

Here is the amazing thing it can do - you think of a colour and it turns that colour.

That is totally amazing! Of course the web site explains it may turn other colours in between.

I have a similar device in my kids' room, a plastic egg that changes colour, $20 from my local supermarket.

I tried to see if it would do a similar thing and ... it worked!

I thought of red and it turned red. Of course it turned other colours in between, like the mind lamp.

The Mind Lamp costs USD 250, so maybe I should try and get the distribution rights for that plastic egg. With a mark up like that I could clean up.

http://www.psyleron.com/lamp.aspx

[Sideroxylon]

I think you should try to get their copywriter on board. I wonder if it takes a specialist to come up that kind of crap?

I like the testimonial too:
The lamp is so much fun. The colors are amazing to stare into. What I've noticed about how it works (for me, anyway) is that it will hover around one color, slowly changing into another, until I spin around in my chair and engage it consciously. When I do, often its rate of change speeds up, and cycles through a number of colors. Then the color changing goes back to normal after a short while. I love it.

Skinners’ pigeon box experiments come to mind.

[Aepervius]

Both PEAR and Psyleron have featured in these pages before, but a search fails to turn up their new product - the Mind Lamp.

According to their web site this is a colour changing lamp connected to a random number generator (which I gather is a white noise generator with clipped output).

Here is the amazing thing it can do - you think of a colour and it turns that colour.

That is totally amazing! Of course the web site explains it may turn other colours in between.

I have a similar device in my kids' room, a plastic egg that changes colour, $20 from my local supermarket.

I tried to see if it would do a similar thing and ... it worked!

I thought of red and it turned red. Of course it turned other colours in between, like the mind lamp.

The Mind Lamp costs USD 250, so maybe I should try and get the distribution rights for that plastic egg. With a mark up like that I could clean up.

http://www.psyleron.com/lamp.aspx


"That is totally amazing! Of course the web site explains it may turn other colours in between."

Yeah. But I bet with you that if you measured in average how often the color comes, you would find out that the average time until your own wish of color come true will be identical over many trials... In other word , nothing at work except confirmation bias or something similar.

I bet I can do the same WITHOUT random generator. Just cycle the color one after the other, and at any moment wish a color. Wish a color and after a while (in average identical to the cycle time/2) you will get teh color you wished. Magic isn't it ?


Not.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I just heard an interview on CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks with Irene Pepperberg who has "co-"authored a book about her 30 years of communicating with Alex the parrot.

I get the feeling that Alex would be too smart to be taken in by this. He would at least would have known to ask a few succinct questions.
;)

[Robin]

I think you should try to get their copywriter on board. I wonder if it takes a specialist to come up that kind of crap?

I like the testimonial too:


Skinners’ pigeon box experiments come to mind.
You are right about the copywriter. Here is a part on their other wonderful device, the Alerter:
Self-Monitoring: In self-exploration, you may wish to get a deeper sense of what your mind is thinking about on a daily basis. Are you really being positive? What ideas emerge most in your mind? By tracking what you think when the alerter alerts you, you can gain deeper insight into yourself and your thoughts, changing or enhancing them as necessary.
Perhaps the idea that would emerge most in your mind would be that you had just spent $85 on a keychain that beeps randomly at you.

The Princeton staff must feel very proud.

[Robin]

And I notice that they are claiming that another device - the REG keychain will allow people to do 'true quantum cryptography'

I don't know how the rules work in the USA - in Australia it would probably be illegal to make a claim like that.

[Earthborn]

I say the OP is obviously ;) a lie. There is no way anyone in his right mind would pay $20 dollars for a plastic colour changing egg. If Robin had said $2 I might have believed it.

[I Ratant]

To test:
Watch the color sequence.
When your color comes, think of the last color before that.
That should be next, right?

[Darat]

I don't know let me check with my magic eight ball!

[Robin]

I say the OP is obviously ;) a lie. There is no way anyone in his right mind would pay $20 dollars for a plastic colour changing egg. If Robin had said $2 I might have believed it.
Really? I can't even imagine you could get the AC adaptor alone for $2.

[Earthborn]

So, it has an AC adaptor which means it isn't one of those dinky battery operated ones (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2041). Okay, $5 then. I'll bet you could get an AC adaptor alone for $2.

$20 isn't particularly cheap, which makes the $250 ridiculously expensive. It makes you wonder just how random its random generator is. Many of the cheap ones that randomly change colour as opposed to just cycling through the colours, run the same pseudo-random pattern every time you switch them on. If the Psyleron Mind Lamp does the same, we know their advertising is false. It would allow you to amaze your friends by predicting which colour comes next every time, simply by memorising the first 100 colours or so.

[Robin]

So, it has an AC adaptor which means it isn't one of those dinky battery operated ones (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2041). Okay, $5 then. I'll bet you could get an AC adaptor alone for $2.

$20 isn't particularly cheap, which makes the $250 ridiculously expensive. It makes you wonder just how random its random generator is. Many of the cheap ones that randomly change colour as opposed to just cycling through the colours, run the same pseudo-random pattern every time you switch them on. If the Psyleron Mind Lamp does the same, we know their advertising is false. It would allow you to amaze your friends by predicting which colour comes next every time, simply by memorising the first 100 colours or so.
Of course the CEO of Psyleron has been quoted in these pages saying that the precise nature of the device makes no difference because people interact at a more fundamental level or reality or some such rubbish.


More and more I am thinking that I should go into competition. I could undercut them by a good $50 and still make a handsome profit.

I might even make it pyramid shaped so that people can sharpen their razors at the same time.

[Drudgewire]

More and more I am thinking that I should go into competition. I could undercut them by a good $50 and still make a handsome profit.

I might even make it pyramid shaped so that people can sharpen their razors at the same time.


Make it out of Himalayan salt and you'll REALLY corner the hippie market (not that I'm making fun, I love my salt ionizer.)

[arthwollipot]

Salt ionizer? What does that do?

ETA: Ionizes salt, of course. Of what benefit is ionized salt?

[Drudgewire]

Salt ionizer? What does that do?

ETA: Ionizes salt, of course. Of what benefit is ionized salt?


http://www.naturalsaltcrystallamps.com/ionizer.html

I don't buy all the new-agey aspects of them, but it really does improve the smell of a room. And they look awesome (and can be found cheap on eBay or consignment stores).

[arthwollipot]

Gotcha.