Alan Fletcher quoted MFMP: We had the fortune to be in direct Skype chat contact with Mats Lewin > during the experiment and it was definitely live, we were able to ask Mats > to pose questions, challenges and do additional testing during the run and > saw near real time responses including watching him respond to our requests >
This, together with the fact that the demo was many hours long, is an interesting situation. People were able to send Mats Lewan a question, and he could take steps to look into it. At least in theory, either - he would track down the piece of information, - or he would be prevented from doing it for some reason (e.g., "intellectual property"). Since the investigation can proceed in an iterative fashion, and there is plenty of time to pursue it, skeptics have an opportunity to ask that actions be taken, like moves on a chessboard. If Defkalion are faking, they must either shift things around and change the fake, or they must prevent Lewan from looking at something, or they must devise a very sophisticated fake. With the information obtained from the last move, observers can then come up with the next query. So presumably you could get either to a checkmate (there's something obvious that is preventing critical information from being disclosed) or you could get to a situation where nothing is obviously amiss, even after looking into various details. This approach does not guarantee no funny business, but Defkalion would have to be audacious and brave to submit to those rules if they are trying to game things (watching the video right now, I see no indication that they are). It would be nice if future demonstrations were to have this interactive component, and skeptics were to come up with a kind of protocol to rule out the simple fakes up front, requiring them to focus their attention on more sophisticated ruses than cheese power. Eric
