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How to Get Conjurer James Randi to Give You $1 Million (Video)
This is the second of our two-part interview (part one ran yesterday) with Conjurer and Investigator (his words) James Randi, whose organization, the James Randi Education Foundation, has a long-standing offer: prove you have paranormal abilities and they'll give you $1 Million. They say they've recently made this award easier than ever to win. Note that, lower bar or no, Randi claims the last time a conjurer's illusion fooled him was many years ago, when he was very young. It was one done by the famous Chan Canasta -- and Randi claims that in the end he figured it out, anyway. So forget the $1 Million, relax, and enjoy James Randi. He's a great raconteur, so we can all be jealous of interviewer Rob Rozeboom (samzenpus) for having made this great video even as we enjoy watching it.
"...so we can all be jealous of interviewer Rob Rozeboom (samzenpus) for having made this great video even as we enjoy watching it."
If Slashdot were anthropomorphized to have arms, I would imagine that they'd all be broken by now from patting itself on the back so violently.
So samzenpus has never seen The Sting, nor heard of Richard Feynman?
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.
I am discriminated against. I do not have paranormal abilities.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Interviewer didn't know who Richard Feynman was? Missing out on that one.... please renew your geek card.
They should talk to Joe McMoneagle, the remote viewer who worked for the US government's psychic spying program. I believe it was he who revealed the Soviet's new Typhoon-class submarine (hello Red October!) before anyone else knew it existed. I think Joe would take his money.
How did Chan Canasta fool him? I am having trouble finding those details on Google
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.
If we get a million people to take the test and give random answers one of us would be bound to get an abnormally high score by pure chance. Bang! one dollar each. We just need to figure out a schedule for the lot of us.
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.
When they can rake in the real dough using their psychic powers in the stock market, insurance fraud(? is it fraud if you happen to know the future and don't cause the accident?), gambling, et al. And they wouldn't want people knowing they're psychic either.
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.
When a professional magician offers you a chance to win $1 million, you have absolutely no chance to win $1 million.
When you pretend to have psychic powers, and take people's money in exchange for psychic powers, you are a liar, a cheat, and a thief. The good news is that if you really do have psychic powers, there's a million dollars just waiting for you! All you have to do is demonstrate those powers in a controlled environment.
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.
Any time I run short, I just hit the racetrack or go to the casino. Too easy!
They should be awarding money with the frequency equal to the type I error rate of their statistical tests.
(Randi explicitly mentions employing statisticians to design tests for beating the averages.)
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.
for someone with my paranormal abilities, a million dollars is chicken feed.
So? How science works is that even though scientists publish false reports, all that would result is in the long run is it shows anyone can be fooled and corrections would follow.
Everyone have their biases. It's better to be aware of them, than to decide before evidence in hand, to believe- or not believe something.
Science, sustainable progress, inventions and discoveries works best with an open mind, and is killed off prematurely in the pseudoskeptical mind.
A biased mind will find what it seeks. Not because of objective search, but because of seeing everything through the same filter of blue, and finding the whole world to be blue. Exactly the trap true believers fall into!
Believers and disbelievers are all in the same boat.
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 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 test was he sure the results reflected what he was attempting to measure in the first place.
Replace rats with paranormal subjects and the same principle applies.
Randi has wter pipe buried under a foot of sand making a maze of pipe which could have water circulated or not. It was also blinded, to avoid giving up where the water and pipe was , the one making the water circulating went away each time the tested persons were dowsing. The results were that none of the dowser followed the pipes maze, not even the one the water circulated in. Which is why randi could tell that in is experience water dowsing did not work, whereas clark just used the "common sense" and historical use of dowsing , no experience.
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.
This argument shows the exact complaint I have about skepticism and Randi in particular. What is magic if not simply something that we can't currently explain? You and most other skeptics define magic in such a way that it logically cannot exist. Clearly anyone using the word to refer to something they experienced isn't using that definition. If we are not using a uniform definition for magic we are not even having a scientific debate, merely a word fight. Let me go into more detail about the nuances of the two definitions. In each of these examples the skeptics are using the definition that is included in most dictionaries, which is understandable. But I am disagreeing with the dictionaries on the basis of logical inconsistency. The skeptics definition of magic is generally one that simply substitutes the word magic for the word supernatural. Supernatural is in turn defined as that which is outside nature or cannot be explained by natural laws. Nature and natural laws are defined as the matter and energy of the universe, and the way in which they interact in reality, ie. all that exists and is possible. So magic is therefore defined as that which does not exist and is not possible. This is fine if you want a word for that but I don't encounter things that don't exist and aren't possible in my daily life so I don't see a pressing need for a word so defined. If someone is talking about something they experienced in the real world and refer to it as magic, clearly they aren't using this definition, as it would be a logical contradiction and they would be saying something happened which didn't and can't happen. The real definition, ie. what people mean when they say magic, is that which is outside our current understanding of the natural laws. This is something that all scientists believe in, otherwise they wouldn't bother doing science. This is a definition of the word that actually has a use and isn't a complete waste of breath, and also that which is meant by the majority of people that use it. If it is something you merely can't explain, then it is magic. Even if it were found that something resembling Tolkein fantasy magic exists, and wizards were throwing fireballs at trolls, scientists would still be able and willing to test it, and develop theories as to how it works. Eventually a fuller understanding of the phenomena would be reached. It would therefore not be outside the laws of nature, and not supernatural. I would still prefer to call it magic however.
The basic problem is the false equivalence of 'all that we understand' and 'all that is'. The former is an infinitesimal subset of the latter, and many skeptics forget or ignore that.
I see no criticism in your post of the testing process. The test is fair, and the claimants agree to the protocol beforehand. Your opinions on Randi being cynical are irrelevant.
People are given the chance to demonstrate their claim under controlled conditions. So far none of them have. You don't need to prove the opposite, it's the null hypothesis.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.