atorm comments on What do professional philosophers believe, and why? - Less Wrong Discussion
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I once took a martial arts class (taught by a guy who once appeared on the "ninja episode" of Mythbusters, where they tried to figure out if a human can catch an arrow out of the air). He knew this trick called "choshi dori" (I think it roughly means 'attention/initiative grabbing'). How exactly this trick works is a long story, but it has to do with "hacking the lower brain" of the opponent in various ways. One of the things he could do was have a guy punch him in the face and have the punch instead land on empty air, completely contrary to the volition of the puncher. Note: it would work even if he told you exactly what he was doing.
He could do this because of the way punch targeting works (the largely subconscious system responsible has certain rules it follows that could be influenced in a way that causes you to miss).
There are various ways to defeat "choshi dori," although the gentleman in question could certainly get the vast majority of randomly chosen people to fall for it. Whatever "free will" is, its probably more complicated than just taking Omega at its word. Perhaps Omega achieved his accuracy by a similar defeatable hack. Omega claims to "open up the agent," and my response is to try to "open up Omega," to see what's behind his prediction %.
I would like to know more about this "choshi dori". Do you know of videos or useful write-ups of the technique?
Discussion from a ninjutsu (Bujinkan) forum
Discussion from a general martial arts forum
A fat Russian guy demonstrating the same thing, from a different system.
In general, you can't make people miss or fall over without touching them unless they know you can make them miss or fall over when touching is allowed.