There is no better example of the strange beauty that can be found in the desire to believe than in cruise speaker Dannion Brinkley. I met Brinkley for the first time over a ping-pong game on a highly saturated cruise deck while others clamored off the boat at our first port in Mexico. Brinkley was the "Big Dog" of the cruise, known for hugging everyone as soon as he met them and again when he said goodbye. His signature move is cuddling his face close enough to the hug-ees so that they can feel his breath escape his mammoth body, his heart beating hard against theirs (and also harder than theirs). When I asked him what he thinks about while hugging, his reply was simply, "I become them." Then, once he eventually releases them from his comfortable grip, he looks at them through his transitional indoor-outdoor optical sunglasses and gives a broad-strokes reading of what's going on in their lives, sidewalk-fortune-teller style.Brinkley claims to have been struck by lightning, twice, to have been declared "dead" for 28 minutes, and to have survived open-heart and open-brain surgery as a result. He purports that all of this serves as proof of the greatest conspiracy ever: that "death” is actually a myth and that, in reality, "no one ever dies — it just doesn't happen."Instead, according to Brinkley, what we will experience when we meet our maker, so to speak, is what he calls a "360-degree panoramic of [our] lives" where we will "become everyone [we've] ever met" and decide "what difference [we] and God made" at the end of it. By this, I'm pretty sure he meant: What good did we do, and how did we help those we sat next to on the bus? His excessive hugs, then, serve to spread joy and love to those he meets, and then later those feelings will return back to him when he relives every moment of this life at its end. (Still with me?) In essence, "I'm hugging myself!" he exclaimed in one workshop, met by hysterical laughter from his enthusiastic crowd.When he's not riling up audience members or selling books ("Buy it on Amazon! It'll be cheaper!" he said after this particular talk — a rare suggestion for those theorists looking to profit from their followers), Brinkley works as a hospice volunteer with The Twilight Brigade , a group that he helped organize and that extends end-of-life care to veterans. Whether or not I believe in the afterlife, the "360-degree panoramic view," or his obtuse fortune-telling abilities is no matter. I believe in his effort to comfort those afraid of dying and those who are close to it. To me, there's very little harm being done here.Joshua Warren offers a seemingly more sinister example of what it means to be a thought leader in the conspiracy world. I accompanied self-proclaimed "educator," salesman, screenwriter, producer, and all-around-guru Warren to the cruise-ship's cigar lounge so that he could drink white wine and enjoy a smoke, which he said was a rarity, despite his eagerness to do so on camera. It was there that I heard about Warren's magical wishing machine. Not only was the machine mystical in its powers but, I was told, it couldn't be opened without it breaking. What it was, exactly, I really didn't know. It looked (almost ironically, perhaps) like a cigar box with knobs and plastic on it. It did not need to be plugged in.Now, Warren didn't invent this "technology" himself, nor does he even claim to know how it works. Somehow, though, it — or the money from its sale, rather — has brought him the life he's always dreamed of (or rather, wished for): a house in North Carolina and a condo in Puerto Rico that he did, in fact, wish for on this very machine. I had to try it out for myself.I decided to wish to win money at the blackjack table. Under Warren's watch, I placed some symbols of that vision (a strand of my hair, a dime, and a representation of a playing card) on a copper disk, affixed to the box. Then I rubbed a plastic plate next to the copper plate while I systematically turned every knob in a small grid of knobs. There was no rhyme or reason to the turning; I was just told to stop when I "felt it." Once I was done, I was meant to put the box in the corner and wait. But I couldn't wait. I'm impatient. And, after all, we only had so much time onboard. I played five hands of blackjack with Warren hovering Oz-like behind me and — drumroll please — I had no luck. No loss, but no luck. I, unlike the hundreds of followers posting successful testimonies on Josh's website, broke even that night.My feelings on Joshua Warren? Well, also undecided. I enjoyed talking to him, and he was game, fielding everything from questions like, "Do you feel like you're peddling fiction?" to my request to gamble on the spot. Still, as I digested the week's events, I couldn't shake the thought that somewhere, Warren, with his exotic houses and gold diamond bracelets, was gaining off of his entranced followers who regularly send in money in exchange for these boxes. In hopes of what? Fame? Success? Love? More money? If the cruise was an extreme testament to our ability to believe (and what that belief can do for an individual and for a group), it was clear that Joshua Warren took advantage of that ability, capitalizing on blind faith partially by keeping that faith blind through lack of clear answers about his tactics. It's worth noting that, as I type this, there is a link to buy a " Money Magick Kit " promising to make you more money ("or your money back guaranteed") on Warren's website for $99.95 (plus $9.95 shipping and handling).To his credit (or against it, depending on how you see it), Warren advises against using the wishing machine when it comes to health concerns, which separates him from some other conspiracy salesmen that he might otherwise get lumped in with. He's not about to bet someone's life on this contraption. And, he claims, most people find solace or strength in their experiences with the boxes. It's used to "allow people to seek and find coincidences in their own lives." When I asked for statistics, Mr. Warren said he could only go by what he hears from testimony. He said that of 3,000 wishing box users across the world, only eight had ever complained of it not working. That's a supposed 99.7% success rate, y'all.Still, Warren admits there could be a positive "placebo effect" when it comes to this device. Meaning, someone could use it, wish for money, find a $100 bill on the subway, and credit this win to the box instead of, say, a hole in someone else's pocket. There's a twisting of logic here that seems to buoy up the box as miraculous in cases where it works and shrug it off in cases where it doesn't. The placebo effect is all fine and good if it brings someone joy and happiness, but, when all reason and money are at stake, I just couldn't bring myself to swallow the pill.