Ken-Welch and reversed speach

by **bvonahsen** » Wed May 17, 2006 11:36 pm

<a href="http://www.ken-welch.com" target="top">Ken-Welch dot com</a> I came across Ken's site last night and was wondering what others thought of it. My take so far is I put reversed speach into the same catagory as remote viewing. That is... it's outside of my world view but I'm not discounting it either... I'm just not sure but curoius. I just don't know much about all this stuff, ask me anything about computer graphics though..... <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)">

by **professorpan** » Thu May 18, 2006 12:39 am

I think it's a crock. I've yet to hear anything convincing from the reverse speech folks. Put on Pink Floyd's "Empty Spaces" from "The Wall" and listen to it backwards, though. That's real reverse speech. Or watch the dwarf in Twin Peaks.

by **bvonahsen** » Thu May 18, 2006 2:36 am

Back-masking isn't reversed speach. (neither are EVP) It is content put in intentionally by studios because it works to increase sales. Same with the subliminal visual content in many ads, they work, that's why they are there. It doesn't have to be overwhelming evidence, just enough that there is a real difference in sales. Business men don't care why, just that something does in fact work. Same with remote viewing, it ought not to work and everything I've been taught says it shouldn't, but it seems that it does. There appears to two different questions: is reversed speach a real phenomenon? And, is what Ken Welch doing good pratice in that field? If I go to <a href="http://www.reversespeech.com/home.htm" target="top">reversespeech.com</a> I see alot that fits into a coherent theory. it's just a little out there and hard to swallow. Oates admits that it can be hard to learn but I really don't think it is just the power of sugestion like a lot of "matrixing" is. I'm an artist and this is something that I'm familiar with. It's a part of my workflow. If I want I can see faces just about everywhere. The random fractal patterns in nature really lend themselves to this. I am very aware that I put into these patterns more than is really there. Things bubble up from the subconscious. In fact, I feel it's best when "I" get out of the way and allow or guide the drawing onto the paper. That's matrixing. You are sort of mining the subconscious. Reversed speach makes the claim the speakers mind places information in a backwards form in our speach and that it is objectivly present. It seems to fit with how I view things these days. But I'm still reluctent to buy into it totally so far.

by **robertdreed** » Thu May 18, 2006 2:36 am

Reversed or not, if your ears are anything like mine, you're bound to hear it in "forward play." That implicitly means that the only "sense" the brain could possibly impose on such a soundscape would be in hearing an occasional "false cognate", in much the same way one mis-hears the phonemic content of a foreign language- for instance, taking the Spanish word "sonrisa" (smile) for the English word "sunrise." Other than that, it's simply utter gibberish. Dada balladry. Found sound. If reversed phonemes were heard and recognized by the mind as equivalent to properly spoken ones, that would put the entire phenomenon of speech language in a hell of a fix, no? Now, reversal of written language- that's coherently reviewable and retrievable, and hence much more amenable to such ciphering- whether through reversal, or via other sorts of anagrams.

by **bvonahsen** » Thu May 18, 2006 2:52 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Other than that, it's simply utter gibberish. Dada balladry. Found sound. If reversed phonemes were heard and recognized by the mind as equivalent to properly spoken ones, that would put the entire phenomenon of speech language in a hell of a fix, no?<hr></blockquote> Sorry, I don't buy this either. Simply declaring something gibberish doesn't make it so. For myself, I heard the reversed speach before I heard the suggest interpretation and while I would not so far as to say that this validates the theory, I do think it is evidence in it's favor. Suppose that we are more complicated than we typically think we are? Suppose that this world is denser and richer than at first glance? And suppose further that our minds are able to percieve both a "text" and a "subtext" not only from the natural world, but from other people? I think this may be true. Especially given that this world is chaotic and fractal in it's very nature. Why is it that subliminal content in ads works? I know it's there, I've seen it. And I'm pretty sure it works or business wouldn't bother putting it there. Reversed speach is just one more form of subliminal content. If true, it is put there by our subconsious mind. Doesn't seem all that radical to me, I'm just not fully convinced that the theory is correct. It would certainly go a long way towards explaining a lot of "psi" phenomona without resorting to fanciful forces or other outlandish theories wouldn't it?

by **professorpan** » Thu May 18, 2006 4:08 pm

I've listened to examples of alleged "reverse speech" and I agree with rdr. I gave it an objective listen, read the articles by its proponents, and I think it's a crock. Subliminal techniques have nothing to do with what is called "reverse speech." There is no evidence that reversed human speech has any effect on behavior. It's speculation, and it's not supported except by those promoting it and making money off of it. You can believe it if you wish, of course.

by **bvonahsen** » Thu May 18, 2006 9:10 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Subliminal techniques have nothing to do with what is called "reverse speech."<hr></blockquote> I know, I said that because I want to show that it is at least possible. If subliminal techniques work it is because our minds are able to decode the hidden messages and therefore it isn't impossible that reversed speach could also be real, since it works in much the same way. Even if both are quite different in origin. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>There is no evidence that reversed human speech has any effect on behavior.<hr></blockquote> There is good evidence that subliminal techniques do actually work so it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that reversed speach should also work. And like I said, it would explain "psychics" in that they have learned how to access their clients reversed speach (in addition to other subvocal communication) that their subconsious mind is picking up. I hear what you all are say, that you read about it and decided it's a "crock". What I'm not really hearing is a good reason why. Let add another exhibit that shows how complicated human communication is. I am a 3D artist and am learning how to animate. In order to convincingly animate a character to display real emotion many artists use a system called <a href="http://face-and-emotion.com/dataface/general/homepage.jsp" target="top">"The Facial Action Coding System Affect Interpretation Dictionary"</a> or just FACS by Paul Ekman. Then New Yorker had an article about the system a few years ago and FACS was used to animate Gollum so he could display believable emotions. Those who are trained in the system (and I am not they, GASP!, make money off of it and it's expensive) claim they can often tell when a subject is lying because they can easily see the emotions involved flit accross a persons face as they do so. I put this forward to show that we humans communicate in complex and multilayered channels. Body language, vocal tone and pitch and facial expression. And this is all done consiously and unconsiously consciously. Is this all really that hard to believe? BTW, please don't put words in my mouth, I never said I believed it, only that I am unsure and "on the fence" about it. ok? But I do believe it's a possibility, I shouldn't have to tell anyone that those are two very different things though right?

by **robertdreed** » Thu May 18, 2006 9:36 pm

You haven't added any additional evidence to support the notion that reversed speech is meaningful. Instead, you've changed the subject entirely, to the topic of the meaningful significance found in the subtleties of visual recognition cues. There's no dispute about that. Among other things, it signifies the difference between "good acting" and "bad acting", a distinction that's widely accepted as valid. You're implicitly claiming that the phenomena of "reversed speech" and facial "tells" are analogous. In what way? Hearing and seeing differ vastly, as modes of perception and cognition. Have you ever taken a course of the psychology of perception, or on cognitive psychology? I have. I learned a lot in those classes, about which I was formerly ignorant. Same with linguistics...the increased understanding of the phonemic level alone was invaluable to me, I had never even considered it...did you know that while the Phoenician alphabet used for English has only 26 letters, there are 40 phonemes in spoken English? While I don't have the time to spend on checking it out, I can posit that it's probable that when spoken English is reversed, it adds some extra "foreign" phonemes to the mix, or places at least a couple of them in inappropriate places, in terms of their relation to their appearance in forward-feed English. Hence, exhibit A for the idea that reversed speech equates to "gibberish"... Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 5/18/06 7:44 pm

by **bvonahsen** » Fri May 19, 2006 1:19 pm

I want to thank you for your reply, I liked it. Yes, I changed my approach because all I got initially was bahh humbug, "it's crap" and so on. No argument, nothing, just knee-jerk discounting. So I thought that maybe if I pointed out how complex human communication is I could at least break that biased first response and get something like an actual explaination. I had to guess at what the reason for rejecting the idea with no explaination was. Were they trying to say that we communicate only through spoken words and nothing else? Just text either written or vocalized? I can't accept that so I thought, maybe if I pointed out that it's more complex than that someone would at least admit it was possible that reversed speach might be meaningful. That would be a first step right? That is usually what I do when I get "bah humbug, that's impossible!" from someone. I fall back and try something else. I also try to guess what the problem might be and see if I can address it. "I can posit that it's probable that when spoken English is reversed, it adds some extra "foreign" phonemes to the mix, or places at least a couple of them in inappropriate places, in terms of their relation to their appearance in forward-feed English." Well, that's a theory, Oates has a different theory. The next step would be to test them and see which best explained the evidence. At least you aren't simply dismissing it out of hand. Your theory is pretty convincing though, I do have to admit that. But I can see it going the other way too. You never know ahead of actually experimenting. If we could, we wouldn't need to actually do science, we could just sit in our comfy chairs and posit the universe and always be right.

by **professorpan** » Fri May 19, 2006 4:33 pm

The evidence that reverse speech is legitimate is nothing more than someone listening to backwards audio and discovering words and phrases. For instance, how about this one with Ted Kennedy saying (allegedly), "Now should we get Mars visit." Go ahead, listen to it: <a href="http://www.hiddenspeech.com/audio/kennedy-r.MP3">www.hiddenspeech.com/audio/kennedy-r.MP3</a> And that's just one example, many of which are even sillier. The onus is on reverse speech promoters to prove it exists. Like I said, I've listened to multiple examples of alleged reverse speech, and it's no different to me than an EVP fan I once met who heard all sorts of messages coming from her TV set and from noise and interference on a tape recorder. It was kind of sad, actually; she was an old woman, and had written a book on EVP. She spoke at a Fortean conference. She'd play her poor-quality cassette tapes, and out of the noise she'd hear messages from her dead husband and Beethoven, while people in the audience struggled to keep from laughing. There's a phenomena that does explain reverse speech: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia</a>

by **thoughtographer** » Fri May 19, 2006 4:36 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>It was kind of sad, actually; she was an old woman, and had written a book on EVP.<hr></blockquote> Sarah Estep, perhaps? "A crooked stick will cast a crooked shadow."

by **professorpan** » Fri May 19, 2006 4:48 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Sarah Estep, perhaps?<hr></blockquote> Yep, the one and only. A sweet lady, to be sure, but sadly off her rocker. She played one excerpt and said it was Beethoven. No one could make out what the noise was meant to sound like, so she said, "He's saying 'This is Loodwig.'" Several people had to cover their mouths to stifle laughter. And on and on it went, for way too long, until one of the presenters thanked her and started applauding, and she had to stop.

by **thoughtographer** » Fri May 19, 2006 5:22 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Yep, the one and only. A sweet lady, to be sure, but sadly off her rocker.<hr></blockquote> Man, she does seem sweet sometimes, but she really went off on me in an exchange quite a few years ago for simply asking a question. I didn't know her age at the time, which shouldn't really matter, but when I found out it certainly changed my perspective. Mark Macy has no such excuse. For all of the hokum out there in the EVP/ITC community, I'm still not willing to make the call on the whole shebang quite yet just because of people like Sarah. It's interesting that the AA-EVP's web site is so restricted for non-member (non-paying) visitors. At least Mark Macy's site (worlditc.org) is all free, and he's put a lot of work into transcriptions and translations -- I'll give him that much. I guess he sells more books than Estep, though after reading a couple I don't see why. "A crooked stick will cast a crooked shadow."

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