Dong-Ding! Time for our periodic “Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge is fraud” thread.
Again.
I am starting it here to avoid hijacking the “John of God” thread that was going along so swimingly until Devilsknew and EvanS chimed in with some objections.
My claim that upset my esteemed colleagues was that any psychic that hadn’t won the million dollars wasn’t worth much respect. Win the prize and I’ll sit at your feet. Ignore it and I suspect you are a charlatan.
To kick this off,
Which condition do you find impossible to meet?
Which detail(s) do you find impossible to meet? Please note that “the master conjurer” does not set the conditions of a specific test, they are mutually agreed upon.
If both sides agree in advance to all conditions, where is the speculation or deception?
Mighty strong ethics to turn away an easy, cool million. I could be persuaded to compromise for a lot less. Is this really all that’s keeping you from pocketing the loot? Isn’t it awfully selfish of you to deprive the poor widows and orphans of your winnings? Think of all the joy you could bring to the world!
Ditto that. People eat bugs on reality shows for a lot less cash. You got psychic powers {which I strongly doubt, given that casinos stay in business}, put up or shut up. C’mon, psychics - wouldn’t you really like to show this guy up?
Here is a test that any psychic or spiritualist with real powers should surely be able to manage.
They are given 10 long descriptions of different people’s entire life, including detailed descriptions of all their immediate family members and loved ones, right down to careers, home layouts, pets, all the things which psychics come out with on a regular basis. The only thing that’s left out is a physical description of the person themselves.
Someone comes in, sits down, clears their mind and tries to concentrate on the people in their own description, one of the ten which the psychic has read. The psychic can’t ask questions (they might as well just ask “What is your name?”!), and can only guess which of the ten descriptions is correct by observing and interrogating the spirits.
Surely the psychic could guess the correct description better than 10% of the time?
To be fair I don’t think that devilsknew was actually claiming psychic powers in that thread, just in case people get that impression from these posts. I could be wrong about that.
Now, the thing with Randi is that he doesn’t do himself many favours. I can understand his frustration and annoyance with the number of cooks, cranks and crooks (ha!) he probably deals with day-to-day but it does lend some support to the anti-challenge people, or gives them some ammo at the very least.
I’m going to pre-emptively make a couple of points because of how these threads have gone in the past.
[ul]
[li]It’s not Randi’s money.[/li][li]Randi himself wouldn’t be administering the test and may not even be involved. [/li][li]Randi and the foundation have no vested interest in the money not being won. [/li][li]Believe it or not, they’d rather it was won. The hype, hooplah, and press coverage would be immense and it would prove that it was winnable, negating the previous arguments.[/li][/ul]
Having said that I predict that this thread will still come down to the inevitable “Supernatural powers exist” “Prove it” “Nope, test’s rigged” “No it isn’t” Prove it" “No, you prove it”. With no end in sight.
I’ve asked those believe in paranormal psychic abilities if there are people out there who fake and deceive others that they have these abilities.
Inevitably, the answer is, “Yes, there are deceivers.”
Then I ask, “How can a fake psychic be distinguished from a real psychic?”
The only answers I’ve ever received were variations on. “I just know.”
If the JREF set up is faulty, it would be nice if someone would design a more appropriate one that would let us all be able to distuinguish the dishonest and deluded from the genuine.
Fact: the $mil prize has not yet been won. Let me suggest some possible reasons:[ol][li]The test is rigged and cannot be won[]Those who have “genuine” powers do not apply[]Paranormal phenomena does not exist, so those who do apply, fail[/ol]To expound on #1, I would like to know just how it is rigged, when both parties must agree to the terms and conditions beforehand. Conditions are set so chance and fraud is ruled out. They are also set so the challenger can, by his own admission, perform as claimed without resorting to fraud. Only then can the test begin.[/li]
As far as #2, ridiculous. If those powers are so genuine, let’s put their mouth where the money is, and do some good for the world, not to mention science. All the excuses like “I don’t need the money,” “my powers don’t work under such conditions,” “I don’t have the time” are so much baloney.
Which leaves us with #3. This just might be the most rational explanation of all, and the longer this challenge exists without a winner, the more likely that this is the best one. Q.E.D.
The standard argument here is the fact that both parties have to agree allows the testing side to prevent any test they think an applicant would pass. Because the test must be fair many applicant argue that the changes made to make the test fair were if fact made to ensure their failure.
Either that or Randi has a big anti-paranormal ray generator hidden in the back of a truck and he points it at applicants taking the test so that they fail and he can continue with his evil plans. Or not.
Really ? Let’s suppose you, or I, have suprenatural powers. Depending what those powers are we might not take the test. If I had something fairly minor but still supernatural I might take the test.
If I could see the future or read minds, however, I’d probably be much more temtped to head down to the casino and quietly win a million for myself. No publicity, no press, etc, etc. I might be tempted to try and do some good for the world, but I may choose to do it in other ways. If you can see the future, and you’re the only one in existance who can as far as you know, do you really want the world to know ?
Of course in that scenario we not be bilking people out of the hard-earned while running phone-in predicition services etc, etc. The challenge serves very well as a, well, challenge to those people making money out of their powers.
True. Of course not every one has heard about the challenge, so if some culture somewhere has supernatural powers we’re unlikely to find out through Randi.
Similarly some people may believe they have a devine gift and it may be against their religion to ‘test’ their god in that way.
Some gifts may exist that simply don’t lend themselves to being tested this way.
Of course that doesn’t mean the #3 isn’t the most rational explanation, and you’re probably right that supernatural powers don’t exist, which is a shame for many reasons. It’s just not quite the lock that it may otherwise appears.
Randi does his best work when he’s sticking to pointing out the crooks harvesting cash off the gulible and vunerable, the challenge serves as a useful tool for this.
If I had true paranormal abilities I would be worried that if my talents became widely known I would be subjected to persecution. The human race does not have a good track record of tolerating differences. Especially if these differences could be threatening. Almost anything of note can be threatening.
Randi has outlined in many cases what his side of the bargain would be, and it’s always seemed reasonable. I think it’s the burden of the skeptics to prove that he has some hidden “unwinnable” conditions. I haven’t seen that he has proposed any.
If some gifts don’t lend themselves to being tested, then they aren’t meaningful gifts at all. If they can actually DO anything, then we should be able to isolate this in a fair controlled test, which is all the challenge is designed to do.
Well, no, you wouldn’t be persecuted. Not in the Western world, anyway. It’s basically a proven fact, because there ARE people who claim to be psychics, like John Edward, Sylvia Browne and James van Praagh, and they aren’t persecuted. Sure, sure, they’re big phonies… but millions and millions and millions of people really, honestly believe they’re the genuine article. You can find droves of folks who are absolutely, 100% convinced John Edward really is a psychic. No persecution. Hell, he’s rolling in dough.
Belief in this sort of garbage is so widespread that “psychics” are essentially a common phenomenon from the perspective of most of the population. Someone winning the Randi challenge would make very little difference.
But I’m already raiding the futures markets daily, so I don’t need the money. Besides I don’t want to expose my secret identity and jeopardize those I love.
Perhaps, but I think you are being to trusting. If there were real evidence of special powers I am sure that people would be fearful and demand that something be done to protect them.
I’m not so sure, I’d expect it’d make a lot of headlines and make someone fairly famous. That alone may put people off.
As for persecution I’d think the level of fame would probably bring a lot more haters out of the woodwork. If the power was in anyway religious, or even if the gifted simply claimed it was ‘from God’, then you’re in for an almighty boatload of trouble.
Then you’ve got a raft of scientists wanting to experiment on you, or at least try to reproduce the Randi test. Then it’s “Can it do it in a box, can he do it with a fox ?” or something like that.
Then you will get someone who decides that the superpowered one is eeeevil and must be stopped. You’ll also get the uber-skeptics who will simply not believe and will claim it’s all a stunt and that you’re still a faker.
It may not all be persecution but you’d better be prepared to pretty much sign away your life as you knew it, and probably that of your family too.
I’m honestly a little confused as to why anyone is claiming this.
You’ve heard of John Edward, haven’t you? The guy has a TELEVISION SHOW where he exhibits the power to speak to dead people. Now, it’s phony, but that doesn’t matter. People believe it; they really, honestly, truly, no-shitting-you think John Edward can talk to their dead relatives. Insofar as the majority of the population is concerned, John Edward’s psychic powers are absolute fact. There’s nothing more to be proven. “Fairly famous”? He’s EXTREMELY famous right now.
There are thousands if not millions of people running around saying they have psychic powers. Randi himself has said he’s convinced that a lot of the people who apply for the test really do believe it themselves. Being worried about fame does not appear to be a problem for a lot of folks.
Why would Edward passing the Randi test change anything? The simple truth is that the people who believed him before would still believe him, and those who don’t would probably say the test must have gone awry.
One big difference that comes to mind… taking John Edward and ‘crossing over’ for instance… generally it’s people who want to believe who believe in him. Anyone who would tend to be threatened by real psychic powers can fairly easily come across a comforting conventional wisdom, that the guy is just a very good cold-reader (or whatever the term is.)
Someone passing this challenge would probably show up on the radar of a lot of people who don’t want to believe or are interested in using genuine psychic powers to their own advantage. shrugs.