Video How to Get Conjurer James Randi to Give You $1 Million (Video) 219
Rob Rozeboom : So of all the people you have investigated over the years, do you have a favorite, do you have one that you thought, wow that was very clever?
Randi: No unfortunately I have always sort of hankered have some “psychic” and I use that word in quotation marks, come down the road, that something that would really ____12:55 where I’d say, hey that is something else. I’ve been around for all these years. Let’s face it. I know how these things are done. And to any experienced conjuror, a term I prefer rather than magician, to any experienced conjuror with a certain amount of maturity in the field, it is so immediately evident what is happening. And any magicians that includes myself, of course, walking along the street, and coming upon a street performer doing card tricks or doing whatever sort of tricks he or she is doing, well we literally do, you saw it in The Sting, did you see that motion picture?
Rozeboom Yeah.
Randi: Okay, well you know the motion which is like this, and if you catch the magician’s eye, and you simply do that, and the magician acknowledges your gesture and he or she knows that you are going to keep quiet and just watch the performance, not disturb it, and if required to name a playing card or a number, you would be most cooperative in that respect. Because it is entertainment. These people are not taking your money under false pretences.
Rozeboom Right. If you’ve ever had one that took you a while to figure out what was happening, any close calls?
Randi: No, not now. No. In the early days, Chan Canasta. When I was I guess 14 years of age or so, Chan Canasta took me for a ride for one day. I had to go back and see the show the second time until it dawned on me what he was doing. But, no, it might be with some of the professionals some of my close friends, who are really very experienced magicians, they sometimes will go through all kinds of shenanigans to fool me and they will set me up in some way or another, and they will try; as a matter of fact, Richard Feynman, do you know that name at all?
Rozeboom No.
Randi: He is a physicist, a Nobel Prize winner of course in physics, and he lives in California. Dick and I were great friends. And we had a bit of an arrangement after he contacted me and we met and found we were on the same wavelength. Dick Feynman and I had this arrangement, that I would spring a surprise on him in such a way that he would probably be astonished by something that I had just done unexpectedly. And then he had to ask me the question was that one of them? If I said yes, that meant that he had the privilege of asking me any question he wanted as to the modus operandi that I might have employed as long as the answer was yes, no, or doesn’t apply, and so I wouldn’t answer but then get the fact, but he would say something like if we had not been in this room with the ceiling and side chair, would that still have worked? And if I’d said no, then he’d say aha and he’d give me some possibilities. But he did all the thinking.
He never failed. This was no dummy. I actually had some pretty smart friends over the years I must say. Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, just a few name droppers that I can throw at you. But Feynman was something else. He always solved it. Sometimes it took him several days. One interesting, what few may find interesting, I hope you do. The little episode occurred one day when I had done a stunt with him with a spoon that he had at the side of his coffee up just given to him by the restaurant. I said, okay, took it and manipulated it slightly and it melted away and broke. He said was that one of them. I said yes. He started to ask his questions. And that was in California. And I was living in New Jersey at that time.
So I actually went back to New Jersey, and he would call me occasionally and ask me one of the questions that he asked for a yes, no, or doesn’t apply. One day, at 2 o’clock in the morning I got a call: He says Hi Dick Feynman, and said if the waiter had come in. I say Dick, Dick, Dick it is 2 o’clock in the morning. And he paused for a second, he said I know, oh you are in New Jersey. I said yes, you see the earth rotates as seen from the North Pole in a counter clockwise direction in a period of once every 24 hours. This is time zones. He said yeah I know that. But obviously you don’t know that because it is 2 o’clock in the morning. Will you just answer the question yes or no. And I said yes. He said fine, I will call you back quick. And I sat there for the rest of the night of course waiting for him to call me back at any moment but he’d probably forgotten about that. He didn’t connect with the real world, in many cases but when it came to physics, oh yes. And Dick eventually solved that one too.
Rozeboom So this isn’t really related to that, but I read that you were on tour with Alice Cooper.
Randi: Who?
Rozeboom Alice Cooper.
Randi: Vincent Furnier. He used to use that nameOh yes, I just saw Coop not too long ago, where was it? Was it in California? Or was it at Atlanta I believe? That was for Dragon Con. I guess that was Atlanta. I am not sure. We had a little conference, it is on YouTube some place I believe, as a matter of fact. When we walked away from that conference, he and me and his wife, we walked down the ramp, we went back stage and I said Coop we could’ve told them about so and so, and he said oh yeah, and what about the such and such; we thought of all the things that we could have talked about in front of the cameras. So we will do another one. Maybe at another Dragon Con one of these days. But Coop and I are good friends. He is a Born Again character, and his father used to be I guess still is, I don’t know if his father is still with him, but he was a Mormon minister. So he was raised in a religious family, but he has now turned into a Born Again, and he has appeared on many other smaller rock channels giving his message. We don’t argue about that. Coop would never argue with me. He’d know that we’d be fist fighting in no time at all. But we got along famously well. We had a good time on the Billion Dollar Babies Tour. I toured with him for 90 days. And he made a whole load of money and he paid me very handsomely too, thank you.
Rozeboom Excellent. I also saw that how do you feel about I’ve seen people accuse you of actually being a fraudster, not the kind of fraudster that you are proud of, but actually having psychic abilities and that is how you actually do some of these things. What do you say to that?
Randi: It is a little sad, because what they are doing is they are saying I am so smart I can figure it out, how the mentalists, that is not mentalism, that is the real thing, that James Randi, I am smart enough to know, no they are not. They can be fooled as well as anybody else. They don’t special training or instruction in this field. And that is the purpose of the James Randi Educational Foundation. Not to reveal magic tricks, because the magicians are legitimate entertainers. They work hard at it. And we are honest about it. We say I am going to fool you, here you go, and we fool them. So we are very honest about it, we don’t tell them we have any ethics at all, we don’t tell them that we really do have magical powers.
Rozeboom Good. Do you miss it sometimes? What did you like better, performing or doing this?
Randi: Oh no, no. What I am doing now is what I guess I was training all those years to be able to do. As I say I am 84, going on 100, because I am an optimist you see; and I have got a few years left I am sure. I want to continue on doing this. And I want to go when I go not yet, not yet, okay, I want to make sure that I have done as much as I possibly can I want to go in the saddle so to speak. I want to go hot on the trail of some scallywag who needs a comeuppance. I want to be working at the moment I go. Cut.
Rozeboom Well interviews work kind of so here we go, dream come true. How many people do you have working on debunking these things?
Randi: Well it is not a case of a number of people debunking. My whole organization is well we have our headquarters in Los Angeles. DJ Grothe is our president, as I am sure you know. And I am really the founder. I am supposed to sit and look noble and smile at people, and pose for pictures. We have a larger network of people, literally all over the world, because the million dollar prize that we offer is available to anyone in the world. All they have to do is write an application and they have to explain what they believe they can do and under what circumstances and with what accuracy. It is a very simple thing. But most people don’t seem to be able to manage that. We get many applications that are never followed up on. They just ask for the form, we send them the form, or they can obtain it from our site, of course it is very easily available, and they fill it in there, they have to get it notarized and send it in to prove their identity. That is all.
And then we design tests mutually with them, so we don’t exceed what their claim is for their ability, and we design the tests in such a way that is amenable to all parties concerned, and if the opportunity arises, we then conduct a test. Now at the coming Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas, and you can go to our site, and look up TAM The Amazing Meeting, TAM 2013, get all the details of it, we have got a great bevy of speakers this year, as we always do, very satisfactory, we will be actually testing some people for what’s known as therapeutic touch. Now the North American Nursing Society, is very much on this. They believe that their nurses have the power to sense the human aura and they can balance the human aura and they can smooth it out, and what not. That my friends, Penn and Teller came up with a term, oh yes Bullshit, that is the term they came up and I adopted it very readily. But the North American Nursing Association though they are supposed to be dedicated to truth and to medical science and such, they have adopted this, they say their nurses can do it. Well we have challenged them for years now to do it.
And we are going to have a very satisfactory, double blind but very, very simple test as to whether or not they can sense the human aura, because they all say oh I can tell from my hand, oh you have a very strong aura, yes sir, okay, we do this with a simple fiber glass sleeve which is opaque, and we have a person sitting behind the screen, and either that person puts their arm into the fiber glass sleeve or doesn’t it depending on the tossing of a coin. It is very simple. And then we ask the person sitting on the other side of it, to sense the human aura that their marvelously sensitive facilities, sure, and if they can do, they can do it to beat the laws of chance, so you never getting enough and we agree in advance what that’s going to be of course. We have statisticians who work on that sort of a problem, and if they can do that, they can win the million dollars. I always say it is a million dollars, it is held by an investment company in New York City and we have proof of that.
Well, that’s an interesting perhaps angle too. We have for a long time now, we have advertised that all one has to do is come to our site, which is www.randi.org and all they have to do, get in there, look up the million dollar challenge, fill up the form, mail it in, after having it notarized, get tested they can win the million dollars. But where are the applicants? These people say they can do it, and they advertise it, and they make money doing it, by selling their services to other people. If it is that easy, why don’t they simply do it, and collect the million dollars? That is the basic question right there. But you are not required to do it. Some of them are so wealthy like Sylvia Browne for example she doesn’t need my million dollars, she has got lots of her own, but there are other people out there who claim that they have got these abilities let’s find out. I am amazed at how few applicants we have for this prize money.
Rozeboom Well, as you say, with Sylvia, John Edward, they are on TV, they have how many bestsellers, how many people buy their books.
Randi: John Edward by the way with an ‘S’ on the end of it, it becomes a politician and you wouldn’t want to buy that one by John Edward.
Rozeboom So I read that Penn was working on a movie about your life. Is that the same as An Honest Liar the Kickstarter.
Randi: An Honest Liar that Penn is not connected with at all. Penn is working on a biography of me, but An Honest Liar people, we get along just fine because I have always told them don’t pull your punches, any questions, or anything, I have nothing to hide, I am upfront with it, it is coming along very, very well. I am in fact, I don’t have my schedule in front of me there but I believe next week I am going to Tallahassee to work. I travel far and wide as you can see. But I think this coming week they are coming here to do some filming, we call it filming still even though it is video. And they are doing it high definition. Wow! That is pretty scary stuff you know. The first shot they shot with me, they showed me some blowups, and you can see every pore.
Rozeboom It is. The makeup they have to do for high definition is completely different. It is unusual.
Randi: Oh yeah, yeah, because pancake makeup just doesn’t work that well anymore. They may be going back to grease makeup because the pancake makeup shows us flakes on the face, it is astonishing the definition.
Rozeboom Yeah. So besides the challenge what do you do most of the time nowadays?
Randi: Well I am writing my tenth book A Magician In The Laboratory and I have a lady who has volunteered to do the proofing of the manuscript. That is coming along well. We are more than half way through that. And it is going to be published first of all on Kindle, that is quite an attractive situation. You can get published on an electronic media first so if you have any real howlers, real mistakes, really dreadful boo boos in your manuscript, people write you right away, and they correct you on it, a misspelling or a misuse of a term, whatever, so that kind of a mistake which would go into the printed job in the form of books permanently is correctable if you don’t go to print and start to fell trees to make paper for your book for a few months, then you get a chance to make all those corrections before the poor trees have to sacrifice their lives and be turned into wood pulp.
Rozeboom Right. The internet is great at instant feedback like that.
Randi: Yes it is. And on programs like this.
Rozeboom Right. Really that is what I got for you this afternoon. I really appreciate your time. I’ve been really looking forward to this. We are all pretty big fans. So thanks a lot for your time, and thanks for your work and good luck.
Randi: It is good luck, when you have to hold on.
Rozeboom Perfect. I got it.
Randi: It has nothing to do with luck. Well, though it’d be years falling on me and things like that, yes that is a luck factor we can’t do much about it, but most of it
Rozeboom How about may chance be with you? How about that? Is that better?
Randi: That will be good. Okay. Alright. I’ve got to adopt that, I got to write that on the wall. Your wise words.
Rozeboom All right.
One of us? (Score:5, Insightful)
So samzenpus has never seen The Sting, nor heard of Richard Feynman?
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Rozeboom doesn't make a good showing at all I have to say, Randi is talking about how he wants to go while working and oprah drops the "well an interview is kind of work, so there you go, dream come true" clanger. I mean what?
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Not an impossible situation (even on slashdot), just very improbable.
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"So samzenpus has never seen The Sting, nor heard of Richard Feynman?"
Apparently no video camera nor microphone worth their name either.
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Yeah, I caught that too. Given finite life hours and the huge number of entertainments I can overlook not seeing the movie but to moderate a geek/nerd site and not know of Feynman, one of the finer physicists of last century, known for working on the atom bomb, cracking safes, playing drums, painting, serving with distinction on the Challenger commission, his highly-regarding filmed lectures series, his Nobel prize, his pithy sayings which have spread, his series of very successful books, comments on educa
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An Element of the Divine (Score:4, Interesting)
In the early 80's, I recall seeing "An Element of the Divine" on Arthur C. Clarke's Strange World I think it was called. Randi and Clarke were testing dowsers. Randi predictably declared all the dowsers bogus after a small experiment. Clarke disagreed, saying that there were two experiments, one to find water and the other to find metals. The water dowsers apparently had a much higher rate of success than the metal dowsers. Randi didn't even raise his eyebrows. Not saying he is a fraud or doesn't believe in what he is doing, but his objectivity seems highly suspect to me. His convictions seem to get in the way of his thinking, and I am pretty sure that the money will never be awarded no matter how well the subject matter may be demonstrated.
Re:An Element of the Divine (Score:5, Insightful)
I am also pretty sure the money will never be awarded. But that's because MAGIC ISN'T REAL.
I haven't seen that program you mention, but it is very hard to do Good Science on a television show. It's too boring. That is probably why Randi didn't play along.
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I cannot prove this to you. Only your own direct experience with non-ordinary reality will make you believe in it.
Saying you don't believe in magic makes sense when you have never seen it. When you have seen it it makes sense to believe in it. I really do hope you get to experience magic some d
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Why are you so sure you weren't fooled or simply mistaken? That's far far more likely than magic actually existing. But if it were genuine magic, the consequences are so enormous that relegating it to a mere anecdote is almost criminal.
If it's something you merely can't explain, making the leap to "magic" is no better than invoking a god to explain it.
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It overlooks the fact that the universe is a very strange place, not least inside our own heads. Nobody can experience all of reality in its entirety. You can't directly apprehend quantum events. And Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says you can never measure the base of reality precisely.
I don't think even the most hardened realist would deny that there are events that are fundamentally incomprehensible to a poor human brain. That doesn't mean ther
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I once felt as you do: That my brain had some kind of privileged direct access to reality. Now I realise that my mind is full of cognitive biases and that different brain regions can produce very strange and surreal effects. I also realise that my senses are an on-the-fly hodgepodge of what the brain cobbles together at any given second, subject to illusions.
But yeah, I'm glad you believe in magic. My personal view is that if it were real it would be absolutely trivial to demonstrate its reality to just abo
Re:An Element of the Divine (Score:5, Informative)
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Believers and disbelievers are all in the same boat.
False equivalence I'm afraid. Randi was advising scientists to devise tests which preclude the possibility of cheating so the results reflected what the test was intended to measure.
Put another way, I suggest you read the Cargo Cult Science [lhup.edu] essay by Richard Feynman. In it he refers to an experimenter attempting to test learning in rats and ending up with useless results because the rats could achieve the results with smell, light, vibration etc. Only when he eliminated ways that rats could "cheat" his tes
Re:An Element of the Divine (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right about that, but the show in question was hosted by Arthur Clarke, someone who, unlike Randi, actually had genuine scientific credentials.
Randi's credentials are in fooling other people. To me that seems more relevant than "science" for detecting fraudsters.
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had genuine scientific credentials
Why the emphasis on credentials? How does that make someone better at detecting fraud? And why discount Randi's life experience at detecting the sort of fraud that they were looking for? You need to keep in mind that as the AC described it, Randi could observe the dowsers in action. That seems plenty of evidence right there on which to base a determination. The behavior of people is quite revealing.
Then there's matter that the statistics backed up Randi's judgment. So it might look like to the naive and
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Then there's matter that the statistics backed up Randi's judgment.
Clarke's point was that the statistics did not back-up Randi's judgment.
Don't take Clake's word, or my own, for it -- do the analysis yourself.
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While most paranormal stuff is probably false, digging one's heels in and refusing to look at evidence is hardly what I would call a scientific attitude.
This is one big ad-hom. Randi isn't a scientist, Randi's got a bad attitude, bla bla bla. His attitude doesn't matter, all that matters is "is the test fair". Criticise the test, the methodology, if you can. Criticising the man isn't (or shouldn't be) persuasive. You'd have to show us this 'discrepancy' and show how it shouldn't happen randomly with that sample size.
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A Scientist does not pre-judge the outcome, either in favor or opposed to the claim being valid.
So every time you open a door, you believe there is a 50% chance the door conceals a pagacorn (the rare horned-winged horse). After all, to expect that there isn't is pre-judging the outcome.
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Moving the goalpost mark?
"Looking behind a door", and 'looking behind a closet door are not the same thing!
Eg, the GP's analysis would hold if said door was to the "don't go in here! Top secret and unethical genetic experiments room! NO admittance!" Room, and the mad scientist inside had indeed injected somatic cells from a goose embryo and a norwhal embryo into a miniature pony embryo, causing it to develop goose wings and a spiral horn on its head, and gestating the animal to term.
It *IS* possible to do
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Moving the goalpost mark?
"Looking behind a door", and 'looking behind a closet door are not the same thing!
Oh, so your closet doesn't have a door? I mentioned "a door" and then later picked one for an example. Does your closet have a door or not?
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"Black swan events" are both non-linear and hard to quantify in real terms,
Black swan events are unrelated to the question of whether a "scientist" pre-judges the result. Sounds like someone doesn't know what a hypothesis is. It's a pre-judgement (or at least a "guess" or "educated guess"). By definition, a person has already pre-judged against the black swan event (otherwise, it wouldn't be a black swan event).
So I understand everything you are saying, better than you think I do (maybe even better than you do) but I don't see where you are going with it or how you are bringin
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Scientists are very easily fooled. This is an old problem where figures of authority are often implicitly trusted by others, enough so that figures of authority often convince themselves that they are more reliable than they really are. The classic one I like is Arthur Conan Doyle, who was often praised for his logical stories of Sherlock Holmes (which when read carefully are amazingly full of plot holes and faulty logic); Doyle later believed the two girls who said that they had taken pictures of fairies
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Wrong. The money won't be awarded because it's a rigged challenge, anything which can be proven as real is by definition no longer magic and thus excluded from the award.
People who take the challenge agree to the protocol in advance. They sign off that they agree it's a fair test of their abilities. Most of them don't realise that under controlled conditions, their 'ability' will vanish because it isn't real. You're a bit annoyed about that, I understand. But it patently is not a rigged challenge.
Re:An Element of the Divine (Score:5, Insightful)
More water is likely available.
It will never be awarded because magic is fake. No one has even come close, because magic is fake. If dowsing was real a trained dowser would do better than an untrained one.
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Thank you. The more abundant something is, the more likely someone is to "discover it." Let's say that I got a large cage. On the bottom of the cage I put a piece of paper that was 60% white, 30% blue, and 10% black. I then found two blind lab rats and said that one could find black and the other could find blue. I noted that the rats would stop moving when they were on the color they were "able" to find. Ruling out external factors such as the black squares being warmer (and, as such, attracting the
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I would assume practice makes you perfect at conning people.
How do you know what should have occurred? You would have to also check to ensure they did not use other methods to increase their odds. Were they blinded while dowsing?
Science is not a religion, not matter how many times you say that.
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Personally, I think the issue (weather or not the money will be awarded) depends on how one defines "paranormal".
If you mean "paranormal" as in "cannot possibly happen/pure suspension of the real/magic." Then no, it will never be awarded, because nothing unreal exists.
If you mean "paranormal" as in "falls outside the scope of what is considered humanly possible" then it is theoretically awardable.
Example experiment:
Humans can't normally see UV light or UV dyes. So, I paint a sheet of purple paper with UV re
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Except you just explained it and there is no mystery. Mutant photoreceptors.
That doesn't meet the 'paranormal' criteria since that is perfectly normal (well not common or in the least bit likely, but it has a normal explanation).
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Again, if you kneejerk stamp "MAGIC!" On those terms, then science is not and cannot ever deal with them.
Except you just explained it and there is no mystery. Mutant photoreceptors. That doesn't meet the 'paranormal' criteria since that is perfectly normal (well not common or in the least bit likely, but it has a normal explanation).
Yet again, if you kneejerk stamp "MAGIC!" On those terms, then science is not and cannot ever deal with them. If Randi takes time to study someone exhibiting telekinesis and determines that their brain is producing some quantum effect, plucking at the stuff of spacetime itself and creating gravitons, then he just explained it and there is no mystery. No $1M.
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Not quite.
The example above involves no new concepts. UV sensitive photoreceptors sensing photons.
No physics paper could be written about it. Its mild biological curiosity at best.
Now naturally occurring quantum entanglement in brain cells allowing thoughts to be conveyed from one person to another?
You could certainly write a physics paper on that. And you'd also collect your million bucks.
The difference being that telepathy cannot occur using any laws of physics that we know about.
Seeing UV light? That is
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Incorrect, determining the mechanism behind the "paranormal" telepathy makes it cease being "paranormal" under the definition you are employing, because it then DOES fall inside the realm of scientific knowledge. In order for it to satisfy that definition, the following would have to be true:
1) there is a multiverse
2) the phenomenon makes use of the physics inside another different universe
3) because of 1 and 2, the full scope of possible interaction and mechanism can never be fully known by the science an
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Yes it does cease being paranormal once you explain it, however you are missing two points:
1. You don't need to explain any of these things. You only need to show them in controlled conditions.
You don't need to know how it works - most of these people give nonsensical answers anyway.
2. You'd still get the million if you opened up a new field of physics out of what has been called paranormal (psychics, telekinesis, etc...).
Randi doesn't keep moving the goal posts. Its just that no one goes to him and does an
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That's now how his challenge works. It doesn't fail just because he can explain it, it fails because it can't be done under the test conditions that both sides agree too. If they do have extra photoreceptors then it's not cheating, and if the test passes according to the conditions then they'll get the money. I don't know how it's done now, but in the past a check was held by a lawyer ready to hand it to either party based on the results.
Currently though, to weed out lots of nuisance challenges and the m
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Big name psychics who swear up and down that they're the real deal don't take his tests, despite being an easy one million dollars to keep or give to charity.
I hate to defend them, but have you considered that Randi just isn't important enough for them to be bothered? He's really only a celebrity in a few niche circles. He isn't exactly a household name.
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Bigger name than most of these psychics though. Big enough that if they win the challenge their fame will be pretty large.
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Big name psychics who swear up and down that they're the real deal don't take his tests, despite being an easy one million dollars to keep or give to charity.
I hate to defend them, but have you considered that Randi just isn't important enough for them to be bothered? He's really only a celebrity in a few niche circles. He isn't exactly a household name.
If I had a skill that I could demonstrate to someone and get a $1m cheque for, I'd be there like a rat up a fucking drainpipe.
I seriously doubt most psychics are multi-billionaires who use million dollar notes (figuratively) to wipe their arses with.
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Explanations are not involved. You make a specific claim. They devise a test of that claim. If you pass the test you get the money. You don't have to offer any explanation of how you did it, you don't have to categorize it or give it a name, you just have to
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If Randi takes time to study someone exhibiting telekinesis and determines that their brain is producing some quantum effect, plucking at the stuff of spacetime itself and creating gravitons, then he just explained it and there is no mystery. No $1M.
No, you're wrong. If someone can perform telekinesis, they pass the test. Randi is not suddenly going to invent a new way of measuring spacetime and observing gravitons just because someone has done something apparently impossible. As long as the person hasn't cheated by using wires (or anything else that Randi can prove) he'll win the prize.
As expected, most people on slashdot are taking the over-literal viewpoint, namely that, because there is nothing that can't finally be explained by science, that
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Personally, I don't think that being able to identify UV light images would strike most people as "paranormal" to start with, at least in the sense that ghosts or fortune telling are.
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Actually I read somewhere that quite a lot of women can see outside what is considered "normal" vision range. It's nothing special though since they just have more types of cones in their eyes. Not even mutant since it's common enough.
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Humans with mutant photoreceptor protiens may well be able to meet the qualifications of the test,
No, UV is blocked before reaching the retina. What you need is someone who has had cataract surgery, and no replacement UV filter.
http://www.komar.org/faq/colorado-cataract-surgery-crystalens/ultra-violet-color-glow/ [komar.org]
Not quite ESP - maybe super-sensory perception?
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That's the scientific way to do it, not just say "dowsing is magic and therefore false and therefore not even worth investigating".
As with all science, you may find out
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How come nobody can demonstrate dowsing under controlled conditions?
All you need is two underground pipes and a valve. Pick the pipe with water in it with better than random results, claim your million bucks.
Why has nobody done it?
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I was about to post something similar. Dowsing is always done on random land and chances are you can find water on random land.
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A dowser would probably reply that it has something to do with water naturally forming along ley lines or collecting in places with unique magnetic fields, or some other hokus pokus nonsense.
People relying on "supernatural" powers can always make "supernatural" excuses. Can't "medium" in controlled conditions? It's because the ghosts don't like working in lab conditions. Healing crystals don't work on lab animals? It's because animals lack a chackra.
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A dowser would probably reply that it has something to do with water naturally forming along ley lines or collecting in places with unique magnetic fields, or some other hokus pokus nonsense.
Dowsing is one of the few "paranormal" activities that I actually have some time for. The simple fact is that if you spend a lot of time outdoors, you WILL get to have a better idea of where water is most likely to be found compared with someone born and bred in a city. It's not magic, it's just an increase in sensitivity to things like dips in fields, curves in hedges, paths made by animals through grass, where mist forms on cold mornings or whatever.
All the bollocks with moving twigs is just showmansh
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Statistically relevant? Able to be repeated? A statistical difference is nothing, it happens all the time, and it can happen due to chance. Crunch the numbers and what you get is a likelihood that the differences are significant enough to warrent further investigation.
Dowsing is easy and easy for the dowser to get fooled by it. Especially when finding a place to dig a well, as my grandfather did: but you also know when dowsing where water is most likely to be based on the terrrain, and no one ever goes
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Now if dowsing were real, would you get exactly the same force from a tiny bucket of water versus enough water worth digging a well for?
What, a large amount of water deep underground versus a smaller amount right under your nose? Why couldn't they be about the same? The sun and a flashlight shining in your eyes are equally as bright.
Without getting too defensive about dowsing, that is not a compelling argument against it.
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His convictions seem to get in the way of his thinking, and I am pretty sure that the money will never be awarded no matter how well the subject matter may be demonstrated.
You're flat out wrong. The challenge is very straightforward to understand - someone claims they can do something paranormal, they fill out a form to apply, they agree to a protocol that demonstrates this power in a self evident fashion and they do it (or not). If they succeed and they get a cheque for 10,000 dollars on the spot and the remainder within a period of time. The protocol would obviously be designed to prevent cheating or arriving at the result by chance alone but aside from that the important p
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Besides we may as well apply that lame excuse to explain the non existence of other things. e.g. maybe sentient teapots don't announce their presence for fear of getting dissected in government laboratories.
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Plus the people Randi is interested in here are those who are already out and about in the public claiming to be the real deal. These are not people hiding in the shadows afraid of government spooks ready to dissect them.
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No way in hell is anyone with paranormal ability going to let others know about it.
The level of stupid in that statement is profound. Go learn something about humans.
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I'm pretty sure JREF is well used t
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Utter horseshit. The protocol is agreed upon by both parties. i.e. you propose a test, I make a counter proposal and we negotiate on points until it is agreed upon what you claim, how it should be demonstrated and in what conditions to our mutual satisfaction. It's actually in JREF's interests to accommodate any reasonable demand so that the applicant is entirely satisfied with the test protocol and can't trot out some bullshit excuse afterwards to explain their failure.
I'm pretty sure JREF is well used to applicants pretending that skeptical mindbeams or the position of furniture or the sun through the window somehow interfered their amazing powerz which worked in other, less controlled circumstances.
Most of the test that I have been aware of start out with performing the demonstration unblinded so the claimant can be assured that none of test conditions are interfering with their "powerz". So the dowser can walk through the course and with their magic rods and watch them work 100% for each bucket of water or bucket of non-water (or whatever) they claim to be able to detect. Then the test starts by mixing up the buckets and covering them each with a cloth (or whatever double-blinding system that the cla
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And what is your special power, for the record?
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Wrong. They fill out the form, the foundation decides if they consider the activity to be paranormal enough, as in nothing that they know already can be done or explained. Then they decide whether or not to accept the demonstration, and proceed to set a lot of very un-scientific restrictions on testing....
[snip]
Absolute crap. Simply not the way it works.
(but typical of Randi-haters...)
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The water dowsers apparently had a much higher rate of success than the metal dowsers.
Did the water dowsers pass their test? If not, what difference does it make if they did "better" than the metal dowsers?
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well.. if there was a solid proof, there is no way the award could not be successfully claimed. if you say "I am pretty sure that the money will never be awarded", you are on the track of thinking that all claimants are either insane, or frauds :)
if something is real and provable, you can convince all skeptics - you might have to work on it and spent some time in repeatable experiments, but those people love facts, and they can change their views - if there are, in fact, facts.
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Dowsing is crap.
You know why the "water dowsers" had higher success? Because in most places on Earth, if you dig a few feet, you will find water.
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Dowsing is crap.
Too true. The only real statistical proof would come from getting a dowser to flag an equal number of places that DO have water and DO NOT have water below them. If the statistical anomaly is larger than random for both sets of identified locations, then maybe we would have to start believing in something.
Re:An Element of the Divine (Score:5, Informative)
In the early 80's, I recall seeing "An Element of the Divine" on Arthur C. Clarke's Strange World I think it was called. Randi and Clarke were testing dowsers.
This?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqoYrSd94kA [youtube.com]
t his objectivity seems highly suspect to me. His convictions seem to get in the way of his thinking, and I am pretty sure that the money will never be awarded no matter how well the subject matter may be demonstrated.
Rubbish.
The experiments he does are always designed so that the result is obvious to anybody watching. Results are black/white, yes/no. No interpretation or judgment is needed from him.
The participants are asked at every stage if they're happy (mainly so they can't claim afterwards that they weren't...). They get trial runs, things are altered as needed so they're sure they can perform.
Randi couldn't possibly be more fair in what he does, yet the million goes unclaimed...
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Randi is a Fundamentalist Materialist. Just about as annoying as the other Fundamentalists, in his own way, though he certainly has a charming side as well. But you are right, objectivity? He has none, he has faith in materialism just as unquestioning as the faith others hold in supernaturalism.
He's been putting out this 'reward' offer for something demonstrably 'paranormal' many years. A counter-offer was also made, many years ago, for something demonstrably 'normal.' Neither reward has been claimed and li
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He believes what he sees, and since there isn't so much as a shred of convincing evidence that any supernatural phenomenon exist, I really can't say I blame him. that doesn't make him a fundamentalist anything; it makes him a realist.
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He's been putting out this 'reward' offer for something demonstrably 'paranormal' many years. A counter-offer was also made, many years ago, for something demonstrably 'normal.' Neither reward has been claimed and likely neither ever will be.
Wait a minute. I can demonstrate something normal and I'll get a million dollars? I could've retired before lunch today! Dare I ask what the other website is?
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He's been putting out this 'reward' offer for something demonstrably 'paranormal' many years. A counter-offer was also made, many years ago, for something demonstrably 'normal.' Neither reward has been claimed and likely neither ever will be.
Wait a minute. I can demonstrate something normal and I'll get a million dollars? I could've retired before lunch today! Dare I ask what the other website is?
Anything you think is "normal" can be alternatively explained. For instance, I woke up, had a shower, drove to work today and had a cheese sandwich for lunch. A religious person could say that God has simply placed these ideas in my head. A mystic could say I dreamed the whole lot while my soul was on a higher astral plane. A Matrix fan could point out that the whole thing might be a virtual reality environment. And so on.
You can't disprove any of them, even though they're simply untrue.
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Randi is a Fundamentalist Materialist. Just about as annoying as the other Fundamentalists, in his own way, though he certainly has a charming side as well. But you are right, objectivity? He has none, he has faith in materialism just as unquestioning as the faith others hold in supernaturalism.
He's been putting out this 'reward' offer for something demonstrably 'paranormal' many years. A counter-offer was also made, many years ago, for something demonstrably 'normal.' Neither reward has been claimed and likely neither ever will be.
Do you have a link to this "normal" award terms? I have a whole bunch of things that I am confident I can demonstrate under all sorts of controlled conditions. For a $10,000 or larger prize I would even be willing to travel to try to collect it.
I can't conceive of a way of creating a test of "normal" that would be thought of as such by the "general public", that would not be trivially easy to have happen. Almost by definition, "normal" is the expected behaviour, and while there are a lot of things in the un
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Do you have a link to this "normal" award terms?
Digging around a bit, all I could find what that the challenge was offered by a fellow named Robert Anton Wilson.
I couldn't find any info about the normal challenge on his website http://www.rawilson.com/ [rawilson.com]
The challenge may be long gone. You could try the wayback machine, my eyes can't handle the blue text on a blue background any longer.
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This is what I was thinking of: http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/tag/pataphysics/ [wordpress.com]
âoeThe normal consists of a null set which nobody and nothing really fits.â The committee claims that there is no such thing as âoenormalâ, and there are no existing âoenormalâ people (i.e., people existing in the average). For example, no one has 2.3 children.
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The water dowsers apparently had a much higher rate of success than the metal dowsers. Randi didn't even raise his eyebrows.
I'm not surprised. If you did a hole anywhere, you'll find water. It's called groundwater.
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The fact that they have not awarded anything yet only suggests that either they have avery small number of challengers or a very strict statistical significance level or both. However, at the fixed level if they continue testing indefinitely the probability of "success" will approach one.
If the success of the test is down to statistics/probability, it's done twice.
You could get lucky both times, sure, but...
Discrimination! (Score:2)
I am discriminated against. I do not have paranormal abilities.
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I think you are discriminated against in this case (and in politics as well) because you are honest.
Richard Feynman (Score:4, Insightful)
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Shame. I highly recommend his book, "Surely You're Joking, Mister Feynman." It's interesting and funny, great tales of crazy ideas and safecracking adventures, and good science, too. It convinced me to major in physics, I liked it so much.
Startgate Project (Score:2)
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Sounds like a ringer to me.
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More merit than evolution????
Uhmmm, you realize that's basically just Intelligent Design, don't you?
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Evolution? An entropic universe just magically tends towards order by random chance? Flowering plants evolved from non-flowering plants? Why would a plant that can reproduce just fine evolve advanced sex organs? That provided no benefit rather than consume energy for all those years they evolved? There's not just one "missing link," there are hundreds.
Entropy isn't the magic bullet that you think it is. The universe has many instances of things becoming other things, whether through natural phenomena or the intervention of various actors. Entropy only holds while there is no stronger force at work. We don't fully understand how life originated or progressed, but it certainly did somehow. Evolution isn't "random", it occurs through various selection pressures [wikipedia.org]. There are actually more like millions of "missing links", though the concept of a "missing link" [wikipedia.org]
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"created in a lab and seeded onto earth" has absolutely no evidence to back it up. Ignoring the fact that you don't understand the second law of thermodynamics, flowering plants have the advantage of promoting genetic diversity, which has allowed them to evolve faster and be more adaptable to the conditions in which they're trying to live.
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"created in a lab and seeded onto earth" has a lot more merit than either evolution or creationism
Then who made the beings that made the life on earth? Then who made the beings that made the beings... ad nausem...
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Oh yeah...he's super reliable. After all, he said he made accurate predictions so it must be true that he did. Why would we need independant confirmation when he said he did it. Good enough for me.
Here are some of his recent predictions from the Wiki article about him...
"McMoneagle's future predictions include the passing of a teenager's "Right to Work" Bill,[16] a new religion without the emphasis of Christianity, a science of the soul,[17] a vaccine for AIDS,[18] a movement to eliminate television,[17]
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Long running bet (Score:3)
I met James Randi when he came to my high school in '83 as guest lecturer in our physics course, then met him again as an undergrad in '87 in a paranormal physics course (basically describing the physics, quantum or otherwise, required for certain paranormal activities to be possible).
Both were fascinating visits, in the first he performed a psychic surgery demonstration. Even standing beside him, knowing it was fake, it sure looked real.
The bet was 20+ years old then. The only thing that's changed in 50 years is the value of the bet. Still no takers.
He's a man that will be sorely missed in the much too soon future.
Pro tip (Score:5, Insightful)
When a professional magician offers you a chance to win $1 million, you have absolutely no chance to win $1 million.
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I don't. The point is that a professional magician is specifically trained in deception and trickery. When a magician offers you a chance to win some of their money, it is safe to assume that the game is hopelessly rigged in their favour. That is what magicians do.
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I don't. The point is that a professional magician is specifically trained in deception and trickery. When a magician offers you a chance to win some of their money, it is safe to assume that the game is hopelessly rigged in their favour. That is what magicians do.
I don't disagree, but in this case the question is whether it is Randi rigging things in his favour or the universe (or dare I say "God" :-) rigging things? Does Randi run around messing up all the tests of the true dowsers who try to win the challenge (even those tests conducted by other people on the other side of the world?) or is it the universe that messes things up by the simple physical mechanism of dowsing not actually working to find things?
Personally I figure the reason nobody has manage to claim
thanks for the raconteur link (Score:2)
thanks to the article author for conveniently providing a link to a definition of 'raconteur'.
that was super helpful.
ditto the link to the wikipedia page for Canasta.
both links are totally cogent and i never would have found that info myself.
Re:Jealous of samzenpus? (Score:5, Funny)
Damnit, stop anthropomorphizing Slashdot. It hates that.
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I'd just win the lotto once and invest in real estate.
They found what? Again? Well I'll be damned. So many monies. What will I do with them all?
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Psychic ability diminishes when used for greedy purposes. Everyone knows this.
Of course, you could just give the award money to charity, but then you'd just be greedy for being so charitable.
Or something.
Anyways it doesn't work when you're being tested.
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If you have paranormal abilities, you can probably get the $1 million without revealing it to the world. If you reveal it to the world though, "they" will be coming after you.
The point of the prize is to ensure that the people who claim they are revealing themselves to the public as having paranormal abilities can prove their claim. If the supernatural exists, and you have abilities which you keep secret, Randi doesn't care about you. He cares about the frauds taking money from the gullible by pretending to be capable of healing them, or talking to their dead loved ones, or whatever else.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, that's what this is all about.