One evening, a week or two back, I’m surfing the craps message boards. I’m sitting in the living room with my sons, who have just popped the movie Shrek into the VCR. Just as I stumble across a thread from a dice influencing “skeptic,” the opening scene of the movie begins to play. If you’re not familiar with the movie, the opening scene has the title character getting ready for his day. In the background, a song was playing by a band called Smash Mouth. I smiled an evil smile to myself and was VERY tempted to write a friggin’ SMASH MOUTH reply to this so-called skeptic on the message board. But, I heeded my own advice from a previous article, It’s Not Up For Debate and refrained. For those of you who did engage this skeptic with discussion (as I was sorely tempted to do), I urge you to read or reread the debate article.
ANYWAY….. In my opinion, someone who publicly announces, especially on a message board, that they’re skeptical about something, generally really isn’t, they’re just looking to stir things up. A skeptic to me is someone who is unconvinced on a theoretical matter and is willing to do they’re OWN legwork to prove or disprove the theory in their own mind. I was once skeptical about dice setting and that’s what I did. When I first observed someone setting the dice, it intrigued me so I did my own research, did my own experiments. I didn’t get on-line and say,
“SOMEBODY PROVE TO ME THAT DICE SETTING IS REAL!”
Over the course of several weeks, I searched newsgroups and message boards for threads on the topic. I performed an experiment in my garage where I slid one, then two dice, down a ramp and onto the floor to see if they would roll on axis. When that appeared to have some validity, I took the next step and began throwing the dice on my living room floor, again taking copious notes on whether they were remaining on axis. In short, I proved TO MYSELF that dice influencing had some promise. The rest is history…..
So, to those of you who are tempted to debate with these skeptics, I urge you to refrain. It’s human nature for us to try to sway others to believe in what we believe, but you’ll find it quite frustrating, because most skeptics are passive by nature, waiting for you to “prove it” to them…. and in the end, no amount of proof will satisfy most of them. What we do with the dice IS exciting, but we’re not missionaries, and there’s no unwritten directive to “Spread the Word” to the unbelievers.
Save your energy. Refrain from the SMASH MOUTH message board exchanges. Your time would be used more wisely at the practice table anyway, and will ultimately be much more satisfying.
You WILL indeed run across those who ARE willing to meet you half way, and are earnestly interested in the concept of dice influencing. I don’t consider them to be skeptics, I look at them as just being open-minded. For THEM, give them ideas on how they can prove it to themselves.
Anyway, back to Shrek. I’m pretty sure the band Smash Mouth might know a thing or two about dice influencing. Why? Here’s an excerpt of the lyrics from that opening song from Shrek.
“All that glitters is gold, only shooting stars break the mold”
Cheers to all of you “shooting stars” out there!
~woof~
