I went to a Skeptic conference when James Randi was alive and was stunned by magicians who could actually read my mind! Except they couldn't. It's just that they knew better than anyone how easily our senses can be misled. Time and again magician/skeptics have caught things that "rigorous scientists" have not. Just ask Uri Geller, who co…
I went to a Skeptic conference when James Randi was alive and was stunned by magicians who could actually read my mind! Except they couldn't. It's just that they knew better than anyone how easily our senses can be misled. Time and again magician/skeptics have caught things that "rigorous scientists" have not. Just ask Uri Geller, who convinced a lot of researchers that he could bend objects with his mind--all with tricks that a talented 12-year-old magician could spot. Without firm protocols, tests like this are meaningless. Not that--as you said--all these parents and autistic children were working elaborate scams. Some just wished it were so and helped the process along.
My Dad once bought a spoon off Uri Geller for £10,000 for charity. The only upside was that we got to go backstage and see my Dad, who thinks of himself as very suave, completely shut down when trying to talk to Miss World.
Weirdly, a friend of mine who I met a decade later at university had a video of my Dad buying that spoon. Magic?!
Very good point. But it is also possible that some of these people are working elaborate scams. Katie mentions that one person set up a "foundation" to collect donations. I think Katie might be a skeptic of supernatural stuff, but she's also a credulous person who seems to take people at their word even when when they have an incentive to lie/mislead. There was the whole time she treated pitbull breeders as objective observers.
A guy said he walked into the garage and wrote down a word, then they were spelling it when he got back. It's not like there aren't ways of seeing from one room to another. Katie's reaction: "I can't think of any other explanation..." So, it's more plausible that some random kid has magic than someone just made something up? I think a lot of this might be self-delusion on the part of the parents and they are subtly telling their child how to act, but I'm also willing to believe that some of these people might just be con artists.
I have a feeling that versions of this scam have been worked since the beginning of homo sapiens but here's to trying NOT to be cynical. However. I am grateful for the alliance between the skeptic movement and magicians, and you can have a lot of fun searching on YouTube for Randi's videos about exposing various hucksters. Jesse and Katie were struggling with an age-old question: What's the HARM? People who tell grieving parents that their dead kids are in heaven and want them to know it's beautiful up here could be said from a humanitarian perspective to be of great service. But apart from extracting obscene amounts of money for those services, they're softening everyone up for a world of fuzzy superstition and a faith that everything is God's will. As if.
I went to a Skeptic conference when James Randi was alive and was stunned by magicians who could actually read my mind! Except they couldn't. It's just that they knew better than anyone how easily our senses can be misled. Time and again magician/skeptics have caught things that "rigorous scientists" have not. Just ask Uri Geller, who convinced a lot of researchers that he could bend objects with his mind--all with tricks that a talented 12-year-old magician could spot. Without firm protocols, tests like this are meaningless. Not that--as you said--all these parents and autistic children were working elaborate scams. Some just wished it were so and helped the process along.
My Dad once bought a spoon off Uri Geller for £10,000 for charity. The only upside was that we got to go backstage and see my Dad, who thinks of himself as very suave, completely shut down when trying to talk to Miss World.
Weirdly, a friend of mine who I met a decade later at university had a video of my Dad buying that spoon. Magic?!
Very good point. But it is also possible that some of these people are working elaborate scams. Katie mentions that one person set up a "foundation" to collect donations. I think Katie might be a skeptic of supernatural stuff, but she's also a credulous person who seems to take people at their word even when when they have an incentive to lie/mislead. There was the whole time she treated pitbull breeders as objective observers.
A guy said he walked into the garage and wrote down a word, then they were spelling it when he got back. It's not like there aren't ways of seeing from one room to another. Katie's reaction: "I can't think of any other explanation..." So, it's more plausible that some random kid has magic than someone just made something up? I think a lot of this might be self-delusion on the part of the parents and they are subtly telling their child how to act, but I'm also willing to believe that some of these people might just be con artists.
I have a feeling that versions of this scam have been worked since the beginning of homo sapiens but here's to trying NOT to be cynical. However. I am grateful for the alliance between the skeptic movement and magicians, and you can have a lot of fun searching on YouTube for Randi's videos about exposing various hucksters. Jesse and Katie were struggling with an age-old question: What's the HARM? People who tell grieving parents that their dead kids are in heaven and want them to know it's beautiful up here could be said from a humanitarian perspective to be of great service. But apart from extracting obscene amounts of money for those services, they're softening everyone up for a world of fuzzy superstition and a faith that everything is God's will. As if.
Cold reading is a very old skill!
I was just thinking that I wouldn't believe in telepathy until Randi had tested it, and probably not even then.
Are there any current sceptics doing similar work?