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>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 pr

>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.
    - nemo1618 12y ago
      I would agree that the average person is too sentiment-driven. Rational thought is unquestionably beneficial in many circumstances. But I take issue with the absolutist position that reason is always the best tool for the job. When I subscribed to that way of thinking, I was more interested in winning the argument than being compassionate. I saw the world in black-and-white terms, and I was proud of it. The problem, of course, is absolutism in any form. In answer to your other question, what triggered the change for me was an interest in Buddhism/Taoism and taking a psychoactive substance (LSD) for the first time. I realized that reason is a tool, not a worldview, and it isn't always the right tool for the job. Specifically, it's often the wrong tool for interacting with other people, because it leads to this mindset where you're always judging everyone. If someone says something you don't agree with, they're no longer an equal. If they're homeless and begging for money, it's because they're lazy, or because of some societal factor. Analyzing people through that lens removes their humanity. Some people choose to live that way, but I no longer do.
    - xorcist 12y ago
      Rand's reason is reason in name only. Pretentious naming is something it has the dubious honor of sharing with something for example Scientology ("but .. we're not a religion, it's all scientifical!" was what they started out with). There are parallels in everything from geopolitics to literature: If you feel the need to be extra explicit about your name, it's should be a pretty big warning to everyone that there are issues with it.
- dhruval 12y ago
  Getting off topic. But conceptual reasoning is arbitrarily defined based on other experiences and self-refential so not inherently epistimologically valid. To privilege it over other forms of knowledge and human experience in all situations is paradoxical even within a worldview that is based on reason. Further clinging to the validity of reason over all other experiences is a rigid mental position that prevents the acceptance of the full range of diversity and beauty in the human experience It is more appropriate to see reason as tool that has uses in specific scenarios. Rather than some sort of metric for ultimate truth.
- djur 12y ago
  People frequently mistake their own prejudices and preconceptions for fact, their intellectual habits for reason, and their observations for objective reality. Combine that with a certainty that 'pure reason' leads one to the best possible decisions, and one can become quite foolish while believing oneself to be wise.
wpietri 12y ago
> It's nice to see that Randi is still able to see these people as human beings, rather than charlatans to be disproved. [...] 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. Yeah, I had that problem too. Eventually I realized that I had never changed a single belief because I had been bullied or humiliated out of it. When I have changed my mind about something important, it has generally come through sympathetic conversation or long, slow realization. Often both. As a rationalist, I had to admit that the be-a-giant-dick school of skepticism did not seem to be very productive, however satisfying I found it personally. Now I try to exercise a lot more compassion. It's hard, but but there's no way I'm going back.
- api 12y ago
  The practice of skepticism -- lower-case S -- is generally a good thing. Skepticism goes off the rails when the S gets capitalized and it tries to style itself as a Movement(tm). It can never be a movement or a belief system because... it isn't. Skepticism is a practice of question-asking and open-minded interrogation, not a specific set of beliefs. Saying you're skeptical says nothing about what you actually think. Secondly, when it tries to style itself as a Movement it starts taking on many of the characteristics of the religious ideologies is styles itself against. It becomes about converting the heathens and about demonstrating the superiority of the chosen via the in-your-face dickery you highlight. It also begins to be subject to all the same socially reinforced cognitive biases that arise in religious, political, and academic orthodoxies and hierarchies. It starts to develop its own orthodoxy, and to only apply skeptical questioning to other peoples' ideas. Take this for example: http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2010/07/periodic-table-of-irrational-nonsense.html http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2010/07/periodic-table-of-... All of those things are not the same. Many of them are ill-defined. That sort of "table" smacks of religious orthodoxy. You can find similar tables and outlines of dangerous heathen beliefs in the literature of any other fundamentalist cult.
- phatfish 12y ago
  I agree completely that if you are a rationalist it is a waste of effort to throw someones beliefs back in their face, often they don't truly believe themselves anyway if you have a proper conversation. What i have seen of Randi he seems to avoid this and look to educate rather than humiliate. The Penn and Teller show "Bullshit" ended up in a shaming of "fools" for certain episodes in the later series which was unfortunate. I will say there are definitely people that deserve attacks. These are usually the career* psychics and deceivers who make money off the layman's beliefs; they certainly don't believe themselves. *TV and large show types
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

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.
  - nemo1618 12y ago
    I would agree that the average person is too sentiment-driven. Rational thought is unquestionably beneficial in many circumstances. But I take issue with the absolutist position that reason is always the best tool for the job. When I subscribed to that way of thinking, I was more interested in winning the argument than being compassionate. I saw the world in black-and-white terms, and I was proud of it. The problem, of course, is absolutism in any form. In answer to your other question, what triggered the change for me was an interest in Buddhism/Taoism and taking a psychoactive substance (LSD) for the first time. I realized that reason is a tool, not a worldview, and it isn't always the right tool for the job. Specifically, it's often the wrong tool for interacting with other people, because it leads to this mindset where you're always judging everyone. If someone says something you don't agree with, they're no longer an equal. If they're homeless and begging for money, it's because they're lazy, or because of some societal factor. Analyzing people through that lens removes their humanity. Some people choose to live that way, but I no longer do.
  - xorcist 12y ago
    Rand's reason is reason in name only. Pretentious naming is something it has the dubious honor of sharing with something for example Scientology ("but .. we're not a religion, it's all scientifical!" was what they started out with). There are parallels in everything from geopolitics to literature: If you feel the need to be extra explicit about your name, it's should be a pretty big warning to everyone that there are issues with it.
dhruval 12y ago
Getting off topic. But conceptual reasoning is arbitrarily defined based on other experiences and self-refential so not inherently epistimologically valid. To privilege it over other forms of knowledge and human experience in all situations is paradoxical even within a worldview that is based on reason. Further clinging to the validity of reason over all other experiences is a rigid mental position that prevents the acceptance of the full range of diversity and beauty in the human experience It is more appropriate to see reason as tool that has uses in specific scenarios. Rather than some sort of metric for ultimate truth.
djur 12y ago
People frequently mistake their own prejudices and preconceptions for fact, their intellectual habits for reason, and their observations for objective reality. Combine that with a certainty that 'pure reason' leads one to the best possible decisions, and one can become quite foolish while believing oneself to be wise.

wpietri 12y ago

> It's nice to see that Randi is still able to see these people as human beings, rather than charlatans to be disproved. [...] 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. Yeah, I had that problem too. Eventually I realized that I had never changed a single belief because I had been bullied or humiliated out of it. When I have changed my mind about something important, it has generally come through sympathetic conversation or long, slow realization. Often both. As a rationalist, I had to admit that the be-a-giant-dick school of skepticism did not seem to be very productive, however satisfying I found it personally. Now I try to exercise a lot more compassion. It's hard, but but there's no way I'm going back.

api 12y ago
The practice of skepticism -- lower-case S -- is generally a good thing. Skepticism goes off the rails when the S gets capitalized and it tries to style itself as a Movement(tm). It can never be a movement or a belief system because... it isn't. Skepticism is a practice of question-asking and open-minded interrogation, not a specific set of beliefs. Saying you're skeptical says nothing about what you actually think. Secondly, when it tries to style itself as a Movement it starts taking on many of the characteristics of the religious ideologies is styles itself against. It becomes about converting the heathens and about demonstrating the superiority of the chosen via the in-your-face dickery you highlight. It also begins to be subject to all the same socially reinforced cognitive biases that arise in religious, political, and academic orthodoxies and hierarchies. It starts to develop its own orthodoxy, and to only apply skeptical questioning to other peoples' ideas. Take this for example: http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2010/07/periodic-table-of-irrational-nonsense.html http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2010/07/periodic-table-of-... All of those things are not the same. Many of them are ill-defined. That sort of "table" smacks of religious orthodoxy. You can find similar tables and outlines of dangerous heathen beliefs in the literature of any other fundamentalist cult.
phatfish 12y ago
I agree completely that if you are a rationalist it is a waste of effort to throw someones beliefs back in their face, often they don't truly believe themselves anyway if you have a proper conversation. What i have seen of Randi he seems to avoid this and look to educate rather than humiliate. The Penn and Teller show "Bullshit" ended up in a shaming of "fools" for certain episodes in the later series which was unfortunate. I will say there are definitely people that deserve attacks. These are usually the career* psychics and deceivers who make money off the layman's beliefs; they certainly don't believe themselves. *TV and large show types

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]