No, that's how an honest person fools themselves. The encouragement gets stronger as you get closer, so finding the solution goes from a brute force search to a simple hill climbing exercise. The answers should all be "No" without any variation. No hints, no "I think you have some of the right ideas", no "that's not even close!", just "No" "No" "No" "No" "No".
I see what you're saying, but you have to understand the context. This was not a formal scientific experiment, this was part of a puzzle game that was meant to be fun. In every other level of Notpron, except some of the final ones, it was suggested that people ask those farther ahead of them for hints and pushes in the right direction if they got hopelessly stuck. It would have been weirdly incongruous and callous for DavidM to have done as you suggest and not offer even words of encouragement to those who he knew were close.
One more thing to consider: one of the reasons I stopped was because I had already begun to feel embarrassed by how long the conversation was going. One would expect that if the method of figuring it out was brute force -> hill climbing, DavidM would say things to imply that it takes time and that more guesses are better. In fact, he maintains that most people solve it their first time, he says "don't brute force, or you'll be banned from this level", and at some points he explicitly told me to stop guessing and go clear my mind.
Also it's important to notice how many guesses you're making. For example, when you said "I'm imagining palm trees by a lake at sunset." in the conversation you posted, that was a guess. Actually, more like three guesses...
I don't understand what you're implying here.
By the way, I hope it doesn't sound like I'm some sort of shill for parapsychologists by continuing to defend what I'm saying. The fact is that I remain unconvinced. While I can see many possible explanations, I can't find any that are actually believable. I feel like when I have investigated most paranormal or strange phenomena, I always end up coming across that one explanation that makes me say "Okay, that's what happened, I can go home now." This whole scenario, on the other hand, just seems like one big confusing mystery.
I see what you're saying, but you have to understand the context. This was not a formal scientific experiment, this was part of a puzzle game that was meant to be fun.
The answer you're giving to the criticism that answers should be "No. No. No." to eliminate leading, is that leading is OK because it's a game.
While that is true, it doesn't change the fact that it was leading.
I was recently reminded of something I have encountered that seems to me to be good evidence for paranormal phenomena. Can anyone help me figure out what might be going on?
When I was a little younger, I used to play the online riddle game Notpron. In this game, the player (essentially) has to analyze a webpage for clues towards the URL to the next webpage, and then repeat for 140 stages. The creator of this game, DavidM, at some point became a huge new age conspiracy theory loony type. Three years after the original ending of the riddle went online, he revised it to include an additional final level: Level Nu. This level is very different than the ones preceding it. I can't link to the page for obvious reasons, but I will transcribe it here: