8 ms·
The end of the magic world’s 50-year grudge
- bookofjoe 3y agohttps://archive.ph/eSRYk https://archive.ph/eSRYk
- drewcoo 3y agoWhat a load of woo. https://groovyhistory.com/amazing-randi-uri-geller-tonight-show/8 https://groovyhistory.com/amazing-randi-uri-geller-tonight-s...
- smitty1e 3y agoMaximus: "Are You Not Entertained? Are You Not Entertained? Is This Not Why You Are Here?"
- Animats 3y agoYeah, how did the NYT fall for that? Geller was shown to be a fraud decades ago. If you want to bend spoons as a magic trick, there are at least ten YouTube videos on how to do it.
- arbitrage 3y agoMuch like a stage magician, the NYT produces content that they know their audience is desperately willing to believe.
- allenbrunson 3y agothey did not “fall for” anything. the article is very careful to never say that geller is capable of anything unexplainable. what they are doing here is a reframe: “hey, let’s just not call him a fraud anymore, okay? it’s more fun that way.”
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zuminator 3y agoI don't think the writers thought Geller wasn't a fraud. They verge close to saying so repeatedly, comparing his work to deepfakes, quoting him as admitting, “Doesn’t matter how I do it, whether it’s real or not,” holding back only due to "civility and fairness," etc. So the NYT didn't "fall for" anything. The point is that at the end of the day he successfully tapped into people's desire to be duped and turned it into wealth and renown, whereas his naysayers spent a lot of time and energy but never really landed a knockout. Speaking as an admirer of Randi (and Martin Gardner and others) back in the day, I think that it ended up a win-win. Geller the hustler got to retire off of fleecing stupid mining companies, whereas the good guys got to write book after book that helped mainstream skeptical inquiry. And lots of curious kids took up the honest craft of magic.
- xbar 3y agoWhy is the NYT so willing to be complicit to his fraudulence? Or at least, trying to sell the reader on the idea that being charmed by a fraud is acceptable? I find it galling. When one of the Davids does magic, we know what they mean. Geller's behavior is fraud. It is neither civil nor fair to the readership of a serious newspaper to hold back.
- cubefox 3y agoIt also promotes a lenient relationship to the truth. It promotes bullshitting: Who cares what's true as long as he/she is entertaining? If such a stance becomes broadly accepted, eventually bullshitters become president.
- ksaj 3y agoUri actually sold an autographed DVD set showing how he would do things if he didn't have ESP. That may or may not remind you of OJ's book... exactly the same idea. Which is to say, at least among his contemporaries, he makes it obvious it is all tongue in cheek. That's these days. Prior to then he was a complete charlatan. An entertaining one, mind you.
- MilnerRoute 3y agoJohnny Carson brought Geller onto "The Tonight Show" -- then surprised Geller by saying, "Well, we have some spoons here..." There's various clips of it on YouTube... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNKmhv9uoiQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNKmhv9uoiQ
- mrkeen 3y agoThis article sets a new benchmark for mental gymnastics. The "skeptics couldn't debunk him" (ignoring Randi and plenty of others), and by that we mean, "The real point is Mr. Geller is an entertainer" who "challenges our relationship to the truth". Weird that he "is less dogmatic about claims to otherworldly gifts now" given that the "skeptics couldn't debunk him" and the "anti-Geller brigade laid down its arms." But really, aren't deep fakes much worse? I mean, not that Geller was bad.
- gizajob 3y agoSkeptics also debunked him fairly trivially by pointing out that he was using spoons made of a special metal
- ksaj 3y agoNot special per se - they are normal spoons. But some spoons are much better than others for spoon bending tricks. You could lump-sum them into the dollar store variety, that are not as thick and sturdy as expensive ones, but look reasonably the same.
- superposeur 3y agoIndeed an “entertainer” who “challenges our relationship with the truth” would be a good description of Trump. This isn’t a glib comparison, as it gets to the heart of what is so wrong with letting public figures slide by with the excuse that they shouldn’t be taken literally. I can attest that many close relatives of mine literally believe the 2020 election was stolen b/c Trump says so. And as for Geller, he’s nothing special as a magician — his blurring of the actually true line is the very essence of his undering appeal.
- jl6 3y ago> “challenging our relationship to the truth“ I’ve seen a lot of great illusionists who never claimed to be doing real magic, and they were no less entertaining or mystifying. We don’t need to give up on respecting truth to enjoy a bit of fantasy.
- superposeur 3y agoThe message of the article seems to be that everyone should just chill out about whether Geller is really performing magical feats or not — he himself persists in saying that he is and lots of people persist in believing him. I strenuously disagree with this attitude and agree with James Randi that chilling out about what is actually, literally true is a dangerous step. When this mushy mentality sets in, bad people will find a way to use this to their advantage. This is especially true in our era of competing narratives, misinformation, and deepfakes.
- unsupp0rted 3y agoAgreed. > If Mr. Geller can’t actually bend metal with his brain — and civility and fairness demands this “if” — he is the author of a benign charade This isn’t a benign charade.
- arp242 3y ago> This is especially true in our era of competing narratives, misinformation, and deepfakes. That's especially why Gellar doesn't really seem all that important. All he really does is claim some magic tricks are "real", and on the harmful-bullshit-scale it probably rates pretty low.
- NikkiA 3y agoISTR Copperfield does the same with most of his tricks, although everyone is aware he didn't actually make the statue of liberty disappear, or step through a wall. I think it's because Geller's claims are small enough to not be obvious BS to everyone, yet they are obvious BS to most people.
- cubefox 3y agoAs far as I'm aware Copperfield never claimed to have psychic powers.
- stuart78 3y agoThis article was so bad. The comparisons to AI were forced, and the idea that tricking mining companies out of millions is somehow morally superior to tricking individuals is ridiculous. Both involve the exact same deceit and poor character.
- mellosouls 3y agoThere's already at this early point a curious amount of hostility in the comments - the height of Geller's fame was in perhaps a more woo-oriented time (post hippydom) and now he just seems like a clever showman who capitalised on his exoticness and niche ("its not magic, you see, its psychokinesis") to charm his western audience like some classic guru. He kept a straight face, and maybe even believed it a bit himself. His efforts now to stay newsworthy doing things like moving the Ever Given are obviously tongue-in-cheek and funny. There has never been any "debunking" needed because he's subject to the same physics as the rest of us. Of course he's not really bending stuff with his mind! People were just more ready to believe he had some special exception, and he ran with it. Randi's obsession and anger (reflected here a little?) seems as old-fashioned and silly as Geller's spoon-bending antics.
- dTal 3y agoI see no evidence of woo-orientation slowing down - Deepak Chopra has seemingly never been more popular - and angry backlash is a perfectly understandable response to swathes of people being taken in by lies with spiritual overtones. We should be thankful that Uri Geller never attempted to become a true cult leader.
- TillE 3y agoYeah there's been an enormous resurgence in astrology in recent years, some semi-ironic but most of it absolutely sincere. You can say "oh but isn't this harmless", but it's not really. Critical thinking isn't just a thing you can turn off and on. Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World" deals with this really well.
- Gordonjcp 3y agoYes, but nobody ever believed that Uri Geller could really bend spoons.
- RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 3y agoJust like nobody actually believes that the Earth is flat. Oh wait...
- dogline 3y agoI've been looking for a new source of news, now that Reddit, et.al. have been going weird. I've subscribed to the Washington Post for a bit now, even though I'm on the West Coast. This is the sort of thing the NY Times has been pushing lately, which seems to be obviously some sort of weird re-writing of history for several topics. It's not the mainstream topics, but it is enough to raise up alarm bells and wonder what's pushing this. All of the articles on Netflix "The Bear" falls on the same thing, and they're pushed as front page news/promotions. I do like a top word-game, and NYTimes is the pinnical. But, it seems like they're obviously pushing something, not sure what. I don't think all major news sites are like that, but maybe they are.
- CommieBobDole 3y agoI think there's two things going on here. First, there's a phenomenon wherein people, many of them journalists, don't know or care about anything that happened more than about five years ago. They live in the moment, unmoored from any historical perspective and immune to books, encyclopedias, archives, and anything that contains information about things Before. I don't know if this is something that's increasing; it seems that way to me, but it may be that I'm starting to get old enough that I remember a bunch of things first-hand that younger people don't know or care about. The second is that the core audience for the New York Times is rich Manhattan assholes, and there's sort of a bread-and-butter Times article that's basically "Hey, this rich asshole who makes the world a worse place every second he continues to draw breath is actually a complex nuanced person for reasons we will not adequately explain, so maybe you, Rich Manhattan Asshole, also have redeeming qualities and you should feel better about yourself and keep buying our newspaper".
- petesergeant 3y agoI dropped my NY Times subscription about 3 years back, also in preference to WashPo. Haven't looked back, still pay for the NYT Crossword app.
- LordShredda 3y agoThe Atlantic sometimes has amazing historical articles
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- PavleMiha 3y agoFeels obvious to say this, but very odd that the article didn't mention, lying is bad, especially when done for profit.
- redeux 3y agoNearly all magicians and performers lie. It’s why we like them. It’s what makes them interesting.
- enneff 3y agoIs that so? Most magicians do not pretend their illusions are actual magic. How do other performers lie? Do you think an actor is lying while they act?
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> Do you think an actor is lying while they act? If they're acting in an ad, I assume so.
- enneff 3y agoThis is an interesting tangent. I agree that advertisers lie, and that some actors that appear in advertisements speak lies. But I don’t think Matt Damon was lying when he portrayed Jason Bourne; nobody was under the impression that Bourne is a real person. They even put “Matt Damon” on the screen at the beginning so nobody is confused.
- redeux 3y agoFramed differently, they put Matt Damon on the screen first because he is lying and they don’t want anyone to be confused about it.
- enneff 3y ago“They” in this case includes Damon himself. It’s not some separate group of people protecting the audience from Damon’s deceit. If I say to you “I am acting as a character” and then proceed to do so, where is the lie? Similarly, if I say to you “This is nonsense: Water does not exist” was I lying as I spoke the last four words? Context is kinda important I think.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoThe article is just ignoring his foray into aliens and truther nonsense? https://www.urigeller.com/11_11/ https://www.urigeller.com/11_11/ https://www.indy100.com/viral/uri-geller-aliens-us-military-b1927653 https://www.indy100.com/viral/uri-geller-aliens-us-military-... He wasn't a faith healer and only scammed businesses out of millions of pounds, so why should we consider him a bad guy? edit I forgot about his history scamming the CIA into thinking he could be a super spy, as told in "The Men Who Stare at Goats."
- ksaj 3y agoIt is worth knowing that Uri released a very expensive limited autographed DVD set that showed how he would do it "if" he was using various tricks. Needless to say, the effects he teaches are exactly what he performs on stage and television. It's no stretch to understand that they are his genuine methods, and he didn't go out of his way to learn how to fake his own real ESP. His claims are his act. Magicians and mentalists all know his act is being in character all the time. Quite a few of them don't like that, and regularly speak out against it. But there is nobody in that circle thinking "well, maybe he actually does have ESP!" like there was during Randi's day. There is a reason Uri hangs around with magicians and mentalists, and not psychics. He doesn't have psychic powers and doesn't actually lump himself into that category, except as the character we all know of him. In other news, Teller can actually speak! Consider the similarities, as even though we all know he can speak, he still doesn't go out of character when he is with Penn. We suspend our disbelief knowing that he actually can speak (and many of us have heard him) yet doesn't in that character. Similarly, [don't read this paragraph if you don't like spoilers] Derren Brown always pretends to explain his mentalism effects. Although his explanations are plausible, and sometimes true for effects where he leaves huge parts unexplained, his explanations are nearly never exactly what he actually did. For example, the Red BMX Bicycle episode - it was straight forward billet work. All the encoding of words was for the TV audience. In "the biz" it is called Dual Reality - the participant and the audience are reacting to slightly different observations.
- naruhodo 3y agoAfter I don't know how many years, I only just got the irony of a mute named Teller.
- travisjungroth 3y agoTeller is not meaningfully similar to Uri Geller. 1. Teller openly and unequivocally breaks character. He will describe (out loud) how and why he does mime for his stage persona. Uri Geller is never this candid. 2. Teller’s stage lie does not meaningfully change people’s understanding of the world. There are definitely people who don’t talk. If someone mistakes Teller to be in this category, not really a huge deal. No one has proven to be able to do the things Uri Geller claims.
- abetusk 3y agoThe appearance on Johnny Carson where Uri Geller failed to perform his magical ability is available online [0]. Johnny Carson used Paul Randi as an advisor to set up the experiment so as to counteract what tricks Uri Geller was using to deduce where the water was in the containers [1]. It's hard to overstate how poisonous Uri Geller and other charlatans were. I won't be able to find it but when I was younger I had a collection of essays from prominent physicists discussing different aspects of mathematics, quantum theory, etc. and one of the articles mentioned Uri Geller by name, talking about how the human brain could access quantum physics directly, using Uri Geller as an example. Apparently James Randi had to defend from a libel suit from Uri Geller for debunking the "magic" acts. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD7OgAdCObs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD7OgAdCObs [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXv3TvB4LNI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXv3TvB4LNI
- lisper 3y ago> Paul Randi James. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi > It's hard to overstate how poisonous Uri Geller and other charlatans were. Still are.
- jacquesm 3y agoDefinitely, but not worse than those other large groups of (mostly guys) claiming to have a connection to god, the ones that peddle reiki, essential oils, crystals and a ton of other nonsense to the gullible for a lot of profit. I have some 'true believers' in my surroundings and it always gets me how they are able to delude themselves, but it gets me even more how much energy they put into convincing other, even more gullible people. It's like an MLM for bullshit.
- bena 3y agoThe issue Randi had with Geller is that Geller claimed to be performing these feats in reality. That he had genuine powers. Randi had no issues with magicians, had no issues with lying on stage. That's literally the job of a magician or illusionist. He had issues with people claiming these things were anything but tricks. And as to Randi trying to ride on Geller's coattails. Fuck. That. Noise. Randi began performing the year Geller was born and was known and respected by the time Geller started doing his bit. The man toured with Alice Cooper. He was touring with Cooper the year Geller went on Johnny Carson. Carson, who was an amateur magician himself, reached out to Randi to set up tests Geller couldn't pass. Because Geller was claiming supernatural powers. The entire article reads like a puff piece. The only reason Randi's grudge with Geller has ended is because Randi is dead.
- gcanyon 3y ago> If Mr. Geller can’t actually bend metal with his brain — and civility and fairness demands this “if” <sigh> Logic and rationality demand the removal of that "if", and Uri Geller's bullshit deserves no civility. Fairness demands he present actual evidence or shut the hell up.
- AndyMcConachie 3y ago"The newspaper of record". And we wonder why so many people don't believe in scientific explanations of phenomena.
- gcanyon 3y agoI'm ashamed that I didn't even check if this is an opinion piece -- I did just now, and it's not!?
- cubefox 3y agoThe goal of this piece is nothing but to portray Geller in the best possible light. The way they try to smear Randi removes all doubt.
- jzl 3y agoThe depiction of Randi in the piece was frustrating.
- Donckele 3y agoUri, with all the powers you have you shall be famously remembered for bending f****** spoons. What a legacy to leave behind. Maybe in the future there is no spoon. You got anything better?
- yreg 3y agoPenn Jillette says that Randi inspired him in his ethical beliefs. > There's no such thing as magic, there's no such thing as a supernatural. And I don't care if it's a sick kid or a healthy adult, you do not lie. I never ever want to leave someone believing that magic is real. That would be morally wrong.
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoThis might be a bit pedantic, but I've never liked the term "supernatural", it's tautologically meaningless. If there were aliens or magical beasts roaming around, they would be natural. As for magic, I despise people that claim magic isn't real. The world is made of magic and it's all around us. When you lose the ability to recognize the magic of reality you die a little inside and the world becomes a little bit less bright. The fact that the term magic gets hijacked to mean something negative and harmful is bullshit, and it should be reclaimed.
- pyinstallwoes 3y agoI have found truth in your take recently in my life when previously (majority) I was against such a notion. Out of curiosity, could you expand on what you might be able to describe as magic from your perspective? I understand it is a slippery _thing_ or _suchness_ to describe but I appreciate any attempt. Thanks!
- peteradio 3y agoI realize you are asking OP so pardon me, but Physics appears to be completely arbitrary at its root. That arbitrariness to me kind of looks like magic.
- pyinstallwoes 3y agoEssentially since it all stems from a dimensionless one OF zero :P
- beowulfey 3y ago
- tomaytotomato 3y agohttps://youtu.be/TNKmhv9uoiQ https://youtu.be/TNKmhv9uoiQ This seems pretty conclusive to me
- GrumpyNl 3y agoThere is no magic, they are illusions, good ones, but not magic.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]