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The Unbelievable Skepticism of the Amazing Randi

87 points by elemeno 12y ago

whiddershins 12y ago
I think Randi has probably done incredible good in the world. Getting rid of ignorance is thankless work.
- louwrentius 12y ago
  True, for example, he exposed Uri Geller for the fraud he is. And many others. Maybe a good moment to point towards his one million dollar challenge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_C...
  - xorcist 12y ago
    He also, as the article is careful to point out, made Geller more famous than ever. It's complicated.
- mtdewcmu 12y ago
  I like Randi and I went to see his presentation when he came to my college campus years ago. I've never felt in much danger from the types of spoon-benders and various charlatans he targets, though. Maybe I'm just naive, but somehow I can't imagine those types of folks gaining an appreciable number of followers, even if never formally debunked. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of successful charlatans and frauds out there. But those ones aren't fools. It's those that worry me.
  - dhimes 12y ago
    It would be nice to believe that, but from time to time they have had the ear of Congress. There were, apparently, believers among them who thought we could build 'thought shields' against missiles. Also, they apparently funded "remote viewers" for intelligence operations.
    - pyronite 12y ago
      The Reagan White House was advised by an astrologer. Pseudoscience is something many people are susceptible to regardless of their position.
      - rmason 12y ago
        Actually it was Nancy Reagan who employed the astrologer. Supposedly he approved travel dates for Reagan. I've always believed, though I can't prove it, that his assassination attempt so rattled his wife that the President went along with the whole astrologer recommendations to humor her.
    - dwc 12y ago
      Dowsing for bombs. Yeah, it really happened.
      - rumcajz 12y ago
        Interesting. Are these people so confident that they are willing to risk they lives searching for mines or did they somehow done it from a safe distance?
        jdietrich 12y ago
        The Iraqi government spent $85m on bogus bomb detectors that were just dowsing rods in a fancy box. Nobody at the interior ministry bothered to do any testing, or even to take the devices apart - they contained no electronics that could possibly have detected anything. Several other governments have purchased similar devices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
        moreati 12y ago
        I believe 'dowsing for bombs' is a reference to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22380368 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22380368. In which case the perpetrators sold the kits to governments/agencies i.e. third parties were being exposed to the bombs.
    - 12y ago
  - sampo 12y ago
    GMO food is effectively forbidden in Europe, even though the scientific consensus is that GMO crops are no more dangerous than non-GMO crops. The politicians just don't listen to the scientists.
    - jokoon 12y ago
      I think it's more complex than that. Europe don't want to be a victim of lobbies and predatory companies, and doesn't want to try to regulate something that's complex enough already. I think it's just politics as usual, it's a way to not be dependent on US techs, just another way to do things differently. Europe doesn't have the same kind of free speech and democracy too that relies on government image. Europe has more strict and more authoritative rulings, EU doesn't take risks like the US does. In US it's much more loose. > The politicians just don't listen to the scientists There's the same problem anywhere you go.
    - consideranon 12y ago
      While I agree that GMO crops are no more dangerous from a human health perspective, there is a very real concern that the rapid introduction of entirely new varieties of crop, that under cultivation would take hundreds or thousands of years to develop and introduce, can have negative and unforeseen ecological effects. This more reasonable side of the anti-GMO argument tends to get drowned out and dismissed when people see the pseudoscience 'natural' health arguments brought out front and center. It's pretty evident that arguments for restraint for reasons of long-term sustainability take a lot of effort to get any traction, especially when fighting profitability. All this to say, the GMO debate, like everything in life, is not as simple as most people tend believe. It is something that should be proceeded with caution, but certainly continued. This I think is where I think the almost religious anti-GMO fervor really causes harm, in the same way anti embryonic stem cell research causes harm. Move fast and break things is a great slogan when the systems you're moving are relatively simple and the consequences of breaking them are relatively minor. Global ecology is an extraordinarily complex system that we don't fully understand, and breaking it can cause real and life threatening damage to the people of the world. Not to mention the fact that reverting negative changes operates on the same time scale as the original negative change. If it happens that GMO breaks shit, you can't just submit a patch and have things working again in a couple hours.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    Part of the reason these folks aren't popular these days is because of Randi. There was a giant wave of paranormal enthusiasm in the 1970s. Skepticism and debunking are the vaccine that helps keep the disease from becoming an epidemic.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    > but somehow I can't imagine those types of folks gaining an appreciable number of followers Uri Geller for example did. There are still people today that refuse to accept that he's a fraud.
  - RogerL 12y ago
    * Psychics that tell parents their missing child is in heaven and happy. Do I have to enumerate the problems this has? * Breatharians that recommend not eating. * People that stare into the sun for energy. * People that recommend 'natural' cures or other inanities rather than science based treatments. * dowsers that take your money to wave around a stick. Sure, spoon bending is silly. Going to Mexico to 'cure' your cancer against the advice of your doctor? It happens every day, and it is anything but silly. These are the people he targets, not just the Uri Geller's of the world.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ivanca 12y ago
In case some of you don't know it his foundation YouTube channel is really good: http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesRandiFoundation http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesRandiFoundation
Animats 12y ago
That NYT article is a put-down. "Unbelievable Skepticism"? No. Believable checking. Calling bullshit on phonies. Somebody has to do it.
- arjie 12y ago
  It's just a reference to the style in which roadside attractions, circus show performers, and fortune tellers are billed. The Amazing Randi was the man's stage name so it comes together for a clever title.
  - kremlin 12y ago
    I see the cleverness in the title; I also see that it's most obvious, and literal, interpretation is one of putting down his skepticism. Before reading the article, I thought it was going to be about how James Randi is too skeptical.
- leoc 12y ago
  > That NYT article is a put-down. Au contraire, it's the fluffiest of friendly journalism. "Alvarez told the agent he was deeply sorry for the trouble he had caused the real Alvarez — who he believed was dead but turned out to be a teacher’s aide living in the Bronx." but no reaction from the real Alvarez or any description of that trouble, which was considerable.
pyronite 12y ago
To anyone interested in reading more about skepticism, Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World is one of the most impactful books I've read on the subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nemo1618 12y ago
>he hates to see them lose, he said. “They’re always rationalizing,” Randi told me as we walked to dinner at the casino steakhouse. “There are always reasons prevailing why they can’t do it. They call it the resilience of the duped. It’s with intense regret that you watch them go down the tubes.” It's nice to see that Randi is still able to see these people as human beings, rather than charlatans to be disproved. I was a big fan of his back when I was reading a lot of Ayn Rand and preaching Reason as the only god, and I took a sort of smug pleasure in watching him debunk psychics and mystics. But I realize now that that was just another form of dehumanization. On an unrelated note, I recall an interview where Randi said he never took drugs because he sought to experience "the realest reality." That strikes me as very odd. Surely hallucinations are a part of reality, albeit a highly subjective part. I'm surprised that someone so involved with the paranormal would have no interest in studying the psychedelic experience.
- wozniacki 12y ago
  I was a big fan of his back when I was reading a lot of Ayn Rand and preaching Reason as the only god Could you share how you've come to see things differently than through the lens of reason, since then? What triggered that change? At the risk of sounding critical, I want to know how individuals consciously depart from their reason-driven worldviews to something driven by another agent. Emotion perhaps? Please elaborate.
  - anonymfus 12y ago
    He started "Reason" with uppercase R and used verb "preaching", this means that he probably tried to express some sort of irony and he doesn't really consider Ayn Rand's worldview "reason-driven".
    - wozniacki 12y ago
      I am neither a detractor of Ayn Rand's worldview nor do I think her views are exclusively molded by reason. In fact, if anything, I think Reason ( or reason ) - as in the opposite of emotion and sentiment-driven - is a very good instrument to deal with the problems of the world. It imbues a dose of balance to our thoughts and actions, both of which are sadly lacking in the highly emotion-driven decision-making of the modern world. We are as much creatures of emotion now, as we have ever been. Reason does not inform our decision making, as much as it should.
wpietri 12y ago
It makes me so happy to see him getting this deserved attention while he's still around to enjoy it. 20-odd years ago I was lucky enough to see him perform and speak and he was indeed amazing. For those who want to know more about him, there's a recent documentary out: http://anhonestliar.com/wp/ http://anhonestliar.com/wp/ It's a great example to me of how Kickstarter can really work. I was happy to help fund it. They raised circa $100k over the goal, and I'm sure that's because there were a lot of Randi fans like me who were happy to chip in. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/220588101/an-honest-liar-the-amazing-randi-story https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/220588101/an-honest-lia...
jaredandrews 12y ago
I'm surprised they didn't mention it in the article but BBC just released a great doc about Randi. It covers all the same stuff in this article but goes into a lot more detail, showing many of his confrontations with Geller, Popoff, etc. Stream here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04ndsb3/storyville-20142015-8-exposed-magicians-psychics-and-frauds http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04ndsb3/storyville-201... (UK only but the tech savvy reader may be able to find it elsewhere)
jensen123 12y ago
I wonder if most people (both sceptics and believers alike) are more eager to confirm their existing beliefs, than finding the truth?
- cbd1984 12y ago
  That's a known failure mode of the human mind. It's common to everyone. The asymmetry comes from the fact only skeptics have the tools to demolish beliefs. Believers, by definition, can only cling to them; once they try to test them and are willing to relinquish them, they become skeptics.

87 points by elemeno 12y ago

whiddershins 12y ago

I think Randi has probably done incredible good in the world. Getting rid of ignorance is thankless work.

louwrentius 12y ago
True, for example, he exposed Uri Geller for the fraud he is. And many others. Maybe a good moment to point towards his one million dollar challenge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_C...
- xorcist 12y ago
  He also, as the article is careful to point out, made Geller more famous than ever. It's complicated.
mtdewcmu 12y ago
I like Randi and I went to see his presentation when he came to my college campus years ago. I've never felt in much danger from the types of spoon-benders and various charlatans he targets, though. Maybe I'm just naive, but somehow I can't imagine those types of folks gaining an appreciable number of followers, even if never formally debunked. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of successful charlatans and frauds out there. But those ones aren't fools. It's those that worry me.
- dhimes 12y ago
  It would be nice to believe that, but from time to time they have had the ear of Congress. There were, apparently, believers among them who thought we could build 'thought shields' against missiles. Also, they apparently funded "remote viewers" for intelligence operations.
  - pyronite 12y ago
    The Reagan White House was advised by an astrologer. Pseudoscience is something many people are susceptible to regardless of their position.
    - rmason 12y ago
      Actually it was Nancy Reagan who employed the astrologer. Supposedly he approved travel dates for Reagan. I've always believed, though I can't prove it, that his assassination attempt so rattled his wife that the President went along with the whole astrologer recommendations to humor her.
  - dwc 12y ago
    Dowsing for bombs. Yeah, it really happened.
    - rumcajz 12y ago
      Interesting. Are these people so confident that they are willing to risk they lives searching for mines or did they somehow done it from a safe distance?
      - jdietrich 12y ago
        The Iraqi government spent $85m on bogus bomb detectors that were just dowsing rods in a fancy box. Nobody at the interior ministry bothered to do any testing, or even to take the devices apart - they contained no electronics that could possibly have detected anything. Several other governments have purchased similar devices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
      - moreati 12y ago
        I believe 'dowsing for bombs' is a reference to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22380368 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22380368. In which case the perpetrators sold the kits to governments/agencies i.e. third parties were being exposed to the bombs.
  - 12y ago
- sampo 12y ago
  GMO food is effectively forbidden in Europe, even though the scientific consensus is that GMO crops are no more dangerous than non-GMO crops. The politicians just don't listen to the scientists.
  - jokoon 12y ago
    I think it's more complex than that. Europe don't want to be a victim of lobbies and predatory companies, and doesn't want to try to regulate something that's complex enough already. I think it's just politics as usual, it's a way to not be dependent on US techs, just another way to do things differently. Europe doesn't have the same kind of free speech and democracy too that relies on government image. Europe has more strict and more authoritative rulings, EU doesn't take risks like the US does. In US it's much more loose. > The politicians just don't listen to the scientists There's the same problem anywhere you go.
  - consideranon 12y ago
    While I agree that GMO crops are no more dangerous from a human health perspective, there is a very real concern that the rapid introduction of entirely new varieties of crop, that under cultivation would take hundreds or thousands of years to develop and introduce, can have negative and unforeseen ecological effects. This more reasonable side of the anti-GMO argument tends to get drowned out and dismissed when people see the pseudoscience 'natural' health arguments brought out front and center. It's pretty evident that arguments for restraint for reasons of long-term sustainability take a lot of effort to get any traction, especially when fighting profitability. All this to say, the GMO debate, like everything in life, is not as simple as most people tend believe. It is something that should be proceeded with caution, but certainly continued. This I think is where I think the almost religious anti-GMO fervor really causes harm, in the same way anti embryonic stem cell research causes harm. Move fast and break things is a great slogan when the systems you're moving are relatively simple and the consequences of breaking them are relatively minor. Global ecology is an extraordinarily complex system that we don't fully understand, and breaking it can cause real and life threatening damage to the people of the world. Not to mention the fact that reverting negative changes operates on the same time scale as the original negative change. If it happens that GMO breaks shit, you can't just submit a patch and have things working again in a couple hours.
- wpietri 12y ago
  Part of the reason these folks aren't popular these days is because of Randi. There was a giant wave of paranormal enthusiasm in the 1970s. Skepticism and debunking are the vaccine that helps keep the disease from becoming an epidemic.
- vidarh 12y ago
  > but somehow I can't imagine those types of folks gaining an appreciable number of followers Uri Geller for example did. There are still people today that refuse to accept that he's a fraud.
- RogerL 12y ago
  * Psychics that tell parents their missing child is in heaven and happy. Do I have to enumerate the problems this has? * Breatharians that recommend not eating. * People that stare into the sun for energy. * People that recommend 'natural' cures or other inanities rather than science based treatments. * dowsers that take your money to wave around a stick. Sure, spoon bending is silly. Going to Mexico to 'cure' your cancer against the advice of your doctor? It happens every day, and it is anything but silly. These are the people he targets, not just the Uri Geller's of the world.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ivanca 12y ago

In case some of you don't know it his foundation YouTube channel is really good: http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesRandiFoundation http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesRandiFoundation

Animats 12y ago

That NYT article is a put-down. "Unbelievable Skepticism"? No. Believable checking. Calling bullshit on phonies. Somebody has to do it.

arjie 12y ago
It's just a reference to the style in which roadside attractions, circus show performers, and fortune tellers are billed. The Amazing Randi was the man's stage name so it comes together for a clever title.
- kremlin 12y ago
  I see the cleverness in the title; I also see that it's most obvious, and literal, interpretation is one of putting down his skepticism. Before reading the article, I thought it was going to be about how James Randi is too skeptical.
leoc 12y ago
> That NYT article is a put-down. Au contraire, it's the fluffiest of friendly journalism. "Alvarez told the agent he was deeply sorry for the trouble he had caused the real Alvarez — who he believed was dead but turned out to be a teacher’s aide living in the Bronx." but no reaction from the real Alvarez or any description of that trouble, which was considerable.

pyronite 12y ago

To anyone interested in reading more about skepticism, Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World is one of the most impactful books I've read on the subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

nemo1618 12y ago

>he hates to see them lose, he said. “They’re always rationalizing,” Randi told me as we walked to dinner at the casino steakhouse. “There are always reasons prevailing why they can’t do it. They call it the resilience of the duped. It’s with intense regret that you watch them go down the tubes.” It's nice to see that Randi is still able to see these people as human beings, rather than charlatans to be disproved. I was a big fan of his back when I was reading a lot of Ayn Rand and preaching Reason as the only god, and I took a sort of smug pleasure in watching him debunk psychics and mystics. But I realize now that that was just another form of dehumanization. On an unrelated note, I recall an interview where Randi said he never took drugs because he sought to experience "the realest reality." That strikes me as very odd. Surely hallucinations are a part of reality, albeit a highly subjective part. I'm surprised that someone so involved with the paranormal would have no interest in studying the psychedelic experience.

wozniacki 12y ago
I was a big fan of his back when I was reading a lot of Ayn Rand and preaching Reason as the only god Could you share how you've come to see things differently than through the lens of reason, since then? What triggered that change? At the risk of sounding critical, I want to know how individuals consciously depart from their reason-driven worldviews to something driven by another agent. Emotion perhaps? Please elaborate.
- anonymfus 12y ago
  He started "Reason" with uppercase R and used verb "preaching", this means that he probably tried to express some sort of irony and he doesn't really consider Ayn Rand's worldview "reason-driven".
  - wozniacki 12y ago
    I am neither a detractor of Ayn Rand's worldview nor do I think her views are exclusively molded by reason. In fact, if anything, I think Reason ( or reason ) - as in the opposite of emotion and sentiment-driven - is a very good instrument to deal with the problems of the world. It imbues a dose of balance to our thoughts and actions, both of which are sadly lacking in the highly emotion-driven decision-making of the modern world. We are as much creatures of emotion now, as we have ever been. Reason does not inform our decision making, as much as it should.

wpietri 12y ago

It makes me so happy to see him getting this deserved attention while he's still around to enjoy it. 20-odd years ago I was lucky enough to see him perform and speak and he was indeed amazing. For those who want to know more about him, there's a recent documentary out: http://anhonestliar.com/wp/ http://anhonestliar.com/wp/ It's a great example to me of how Kickstarter can really work. I was happy to help fund it. They raised circa $100k over the goal, and I'm sure that's because there were a lot of Randi fans like me who were happy to chip in. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/220588101/an-honest-liar-the-amazing-randi-story https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/220588101/an-honest-lia...

jaredandrews 12y ago

I'm surprised they didn't mention it in the article but BBC just released a great doc about Randi. It covers all the same stuff in this article but goes into a lot more detail, showing many of his confrontations with Geller, Popoff, etc. Stream here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04ndsb3/storyville-20142015-8-exposed-magicians-psychics-and-frauds http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04ndsb3/storyville-201... (UK only but the tech savvy reader may be able to find it elsewhere)

jensen123 12y ago

I wonder if most people (both sceptics and believers alike) are more eager to confirm their existing beliefs, than finding the truth?

cbd1984 12y ago
That's a known failure mode of the human mind. It's common to everyone. The asymmetry comes from the fact only skeptics have the tools to demolish beliefs. Believers, by definition, can only cling to them; once they try to test them and are willing to relinquish them, they become skeptics.