I’m putting this in the pit because I fear it’s going to turn into a bashing of Peter Morris, our longtime poster here.
But his posts in the Uri Geller thread in General Questions have me really stumped. I mean, people have been posting videos of Randi debunking people who are claiming to have psychic powers, plain as day. And Peter Morris is coming around saying that they are NOT claiming that, that they are really just entertaining magicians or whatnot.
I’m so confused!!! What is going on with this? Can anyone explain him to me?
Peter Morris has a grudge against James Randi, because Peter Morris claims to have a method for water-dousing(?) that works, and he feels that Randi has cheated him out of the million-dollar challenge because Randi won’t see him or won’t set up the conditions correctly or something. As such, any time Randi’s name is mentioned, Peter Morris is there to complain about him.
Ok complaining about Randi is one thing… but he’s defending charlatans who are claiming to have psychic powers but are then proven wrong and try to come up with flimsy explanations.
Well, thanks for the info. Now I know Morris is a water dousing loon.
Not anymore, a couple of years ago he was banned from mentioning Randi. He still shows up in such threads, but is very careful not to actually talk about Randi specifically.
I don’t get that whole thread. As far as I know Uri has always been of the “Check out my awesome mental powers! I can bend a spoon with my brain! Buy loads of crap like crystals and bracelets so that you too can tap into nonexistent woo-y bullshit.” school and Randi’s been doing his “There’s nothing paranormal or supernatural. Everything someone like Uri does is done via perfectly normal, if clever, means.” thing . But then ianzin comes in, pissed off about everything, it appears, and I find it all very odd. I’ve always been very appreciative of the art of prestidigitation but if respecting the field requires condoning the sort of stuff that Geller is always hawking, then I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Randi has said for years that he is not impressed with dowsers finding water since much of the Earth’s surface is covered with water. Randi has stated that he would be more impressed by dowsing of a dry spot.
Now Randi said this on the basis of dowsers saying the world under our feet is criss-crossed with secret underground rivers, which may be an outdated concept in dowsing. He assumes that since dowsers think there are underground rivers, then they should be able to find a spot that is not over an underground river. Ergo, the spot should be dry in the sense of “I am standing near a river, not in a river” dry.
Now add in some utterly, utterly bizarre interpretations by Peter Morris, wherin ‘Dry’ becomes the well digger’s definition of dry (which is below a certain gallon/minute rate). This alone is bad enough, but then Morris insists that Randi is utterly wrong about geology mostly on the basis of this statement: "the concept of underground rivers as defined by dowsers is false. Note the italic part, because Peter Morris ignores that it is there and goes on tirades about Randi’s knowledge of geology. Morris has made some whoppers in geology, even once declaring on the basis of a geology map that only showed one kind of aquifer that someone couldn’t be drinking well water when they were.
OK, is that set-up too much? Sorry, let’s get to where it gets obsessive.
Peter Morris tried to prove Randi wrong by taking his million dollar challenge. He said he would find a dry spot as Randi always commented in his speeches. There was the usual back and forth as there are in the challenge, but you have to remember that Randi and Morris had very different definitions of ‘dry’ in this matter. It became apparent to Randi that Peter Morris was not negotiating in good faith and he cut off negotiations.
So Peter made a website, with all sorts of attacks on Randi. And he ranted on Randi’s message board and here. It got the to point where Randi could not be discussed without Peter’s incredibly aggressive posturing and bullying. he kept the grudge up for years.
It gets worse: Peter has been found on other specialty boards asking questions about Randi from his non-profit filings to bizarre odds questions that are obviously about the challenge. he would invent imaginary dialogues based on his straw-man he invented about Randi and those who would defend Randi. He would bully skeptics and defend purveyors of nonsense all while claiming some kind of faux neutrality on woowoo issues.
Eventually, the mods here got tired of Peter threadshitting his attacks everytime Randi or the Randi challenge was mentioned (which happens a lot in threads about paranormal topics, go figure) and banned him from the topic. Conversely we are not allowed to bring Randi up to make Peter violate the ban. The times this has come up and Peter got a warning he claimed he was going to argue the ban, but did not to my knowledge.
All the while with his attacks and his bullying, Peter plays victim. He stays out of the pit since the mods will not defend him here. all the while makes attacks, and gets very passive agressive and whines if anyone gives 1/5 of the crap he spews out. All of this offense is subject to his very bizarre ideas on what things mean. If you want to get an idea of how sad it can get read a thread he started “Is this hate speech” wherin he demands anyone using the term “woowoo” should be modded for hate speech. Late in the thread where he is outright denying things that are presented to him and desperately clinging to an outdated & unpopluar definition from urbandictionary that defines woowoo is a vagina shows a level of pathetic rarely seen.
So keep in mind that you are dealing with a mentality that takes cognitive dissonance to a master level. you won’t convince him of anything that he has decided on.
Sorry about the length, but I really only scraped the surface.
