See Sentient’s agreement with me above. There is not just one level of statistical significance. You do know what “p” means, right? The lower the better. And any level of statistical significance can be expressed as a probability that the result was not due to chance.
The Randi Challenge isn’t a bet. The applicant puts up no money. That means that, no matter how poor the odds are for the applicant, unless they are zero Randi is expected to lose money. Of course, it is usually a miniscule fraction of a cent. But unless the odds are really damn low, Randi would be a fool to accept the terms.
Still a canard: the money is in escrow, which means the foundation can’t use it for anything else. Once one person has won the challenge, the challenge will be over, and the foundation won’t need to spend a single dime on administering the challenge any longer. If they’ve got any financial interest whatsoever in the challenge, it’d be in someone winning it.
I agree that there are different levels of significance, and I agree that Randi is looking for significant results. My disagreement is with your tying Randi’s search for significance to the amount of the prize, since he and his foundation gain no benefit from the prize money.
I agree that there are different levels of significance, and I agree that Randi is looking for significant results. My disagreement is with your tying Randi’s search for significance to the amount of the prize, since he and his foundation gain no benefit from the prize money.
Daniel
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He obviously has some standards and some motivation, otherwise he could just, as a goof, say to someone,“Yeah, you proved that you can guess two flips of a coin in a row–you’re a millionaire!”
The only test for which I’ve seen details by which to calculate odds was the one dowswer. IIRC, he was required to do a 1/10 chance task 10 times and succeed each time. The odds for that are pretty easy to calculate:
10[sup]-10[/sup] = 1/10,000,000,000, which is 1 in 10 billion.
Yes, of course he does. Once again, though, that motivation is not financial. Therefore, any suggestion that he’s trying to set up a “good deal” for him in which he “loses” less than a thousand dollars on average is simply incoherent. It’s not his money; his foundation has zero chance of gaining any benefit from the money; therefore no challenge can constitute a good or bad financial deal for him.
What motivations he has are not related to the amount of prize money. That’s my point.
I agree with the point–unless he does somehow earn interest from the money, directly or indirectly (e.g., his salary is paid from that income). I have no reason to believe that’s the case, just saying.
Those are the correct odds if someone like myself with no proclaimed talent like myself were to take the challenge.
However, for someone who claims to be able to dowse, finding 1 target in 10 repeatedly shouldn’t be a problem, which is the point of the test. The person making the claim proves that it’s an actual skill and not just blind luck by being able to repeat the process under defined conditions.
If I had any kind of talent that could earn me a million bucks for a few hours work, I’d call Randi in a heartbeat. And if for some reason I thought his test was slanted and refused to take it, you can be darn sure I’d be calling up Letterman or Leno to demonstrate my powers.
But then, they might want me to prove my abilities, too. Which begs the question, at what point do I accept a test as “fair?” Am I only going to agree to tests which prove my abilities? That doesn’t seem like a very good way to prove anything…
But a good portion of them are incorrigible idiots, and they richly deserve not only having their faces rubbed in it, but eating a heaping helping of the shit along with a few steaming slabs of crow. Randi ain’t perfect by any stretch, but if schaedenfreude is his stock-and-trade, you can’t blame a few folks for being glad that somebody, anybody is willing to wade into the offal where the snake-oilers slither, grab them with two fists, and wring the life out of them. You do have your high-minded and articulate skeptics; Carl Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World” was a noble example of the futile exercise honest people engage in when they try to appeal to the faithful with reasoned debate backed by good history and empiricism. But nothing quite does the trick like humiliation when it comes time call the spade the bloody fucking spade he or she is. It is a cultural and intellectual battle, as far as I can see it, and maybe it’s time the skeptics allied with a few bruisers now and then, those how fight hard but fair, and don’t much mind if the pathetic frauds they target walk away broken, crippled, and unable to practice their swindle for lack of the erstwhile faithful dupes they live to exploit (Uri Geller, for once and fucking all, is next, we can only hope). If Randi smells like shit, it’s because he’s rolling in it, and it’s a wonder you don’t smell it all the time, because the world is rotten with it. Wake up and smell the dung-heap; it’s in our churches, our courts, our legislature, and it’s oozing out of the Oval Office. It’s a plague, an epidemic of ignorance that refuses to be cured. If the running sores must be cauterized and sterilzed by jabbing a white-hot poker in the stinking flesh, so be it. Randi’s a blunt instrument, but a damn effective one when he hits the mark.
Jumping in here to make a couple of points, first thanks to LHoD (I hope you don’t mind that abbreviation) for making the ‘Not his money’ point. I do believe that the JREF could withdraw the challenge if they wanted and take the money, I also believe that interested earned on the money may go towards the costs of maintaing the challenge and the money itself.
The point is solid if the JREF or Randi has any goal at all it’s in seeing the challenge won. Why ? One, Randi becomes more famous. Two, it lends weight to his argument that previous attempted claims have been frauds rather than failing as he didn’t want them to pass.
I get what you’re saying here, and there’s a reason the odds are so low. They don’t want to lose the money to a ‘fluke’. If I’m a geniue dowser then I don’t care, I can do that again and again and again because I have the paranomal power that allows me to pass the task.
My power only works one out of X times, fine increase the odds in the single task to 1 in X*10 and I’ll be able to establish a better than chance result.
Ah but my power only works one out of X times for tasks that have a 1/X chance. Then I’m guessing. Or I have a paranormal power that’s as good as normal guessing but involves more stick or crystal waving – in which case I’d be better off guessing, selling the crystal and using the time and money to get a pint.
I’ve probably stuffed up some probablity maths in there but the main thrust is, if I claim a better than chance power then we’ll construct a test that I (with my power) can pass easily every time. If my power exists than there is a 100% chance the money is mine, the minimisation of the odds is simply so that if I’m wrong, mistaken, lying, etc I don’t get the money on a fluke.
SD
A fire drill at work means that ElectricZ beat me to some of my point but I’ll make the post anyway, dammit.
Am I missing something here? The odds only apply if you are finding water by pure chance alone. If you are not, as a dowser claims, then the odds don’t apply.
Lay out 9 white balls and 1 black balls on clear display on a table. What are the odds that someone with normal sight can select the black one from the ten, ten times? It isn’t 1 in 10 billion, it’s as near 1 in 1 as you can get. The same odds should apply to someone who claims to have a special sense of dowsing. If you don’t have this special sense, or if you’re lying that you do, or if you’re deluded; only then do the odds of pure chance kick in. You have the paranormal skill of dowsing; task is simple. You don’t; task is near impossible. Which is the whole point.
(Which, on preview, is kind of what ElectricZ is saying. And SpaceDog, dammit.)
This is why it is the claimant that designs the test. It is in their interests that these sort of odds are applicable, because it means that when they pass the test there is virtually no question that it could be down to chance alone. They will have proven beyond doubt their powers.
But, amazingly, no-one’s ever managed this. I wonder why??
Nyark, I meant to also say that I personally don’t care much for some of Randis attitude. He can be dismissive, particularly with outlandish claims that he’s heard many times. I can understand this but it feeds the flames of his critics when he dismisses somethings casually in his commentries. However I doubt it’d stop a geniue applicant, if I could do something that qualified – no matter how loopy or out there – I’d be damn sure I get tested somehow. A million bucks isn’t to be sniffed at.
In fact that attitude is probably going to let someone win the challenge one day, as Randi will send one of his letters to the latest webfad saying “If you can prove this is such-and-such a test you’re elligable for the JREF million” and then they’ll turn up and do it. Not because of any real paranormal phenomenon but because of some previously undiscovered scientific effect.
Of course we could argue that the paranormal is only paranormal until it is understood and explained. I’ve always wondered what would happen if a scientist discovered some new effect and could exploit this to appear to be paranormal, then instead of just announcing the discover he first claims the JREF prize with the effect. Pockets the cash, then announces how science works. With Randi mentioning audio-enhancing and other electronic hoaxes/junk as candidates it may be a closer thing than we imagine.
Ooo! Futile Gesture, the fact that you, Spacedog and myself had the same ideas at the same time means we ought to give Randi a call… If this ain’t telepathy, I don’t know what is! We may have already won $1 Million!
Peter Morris’ argument seems to be based entirely on deliberate misreading of a few sentences in various speeches. It’s almsot like he’s a parody of himself. I may disagree with many of the statements of Aeschines and SnakeSpirit but, they have both shown that they are capable of using logic, understanding mathematics, and willing to listen to what their oponents have to say.
Re Sylvia
That would almost certainly be Sylvia Browne. Her shtick is playing against type. Rather than appearing as a member of a mysterious culture (Rom seer with kerchief and crystral ball, Chinese Geomancer with compass and I Ching, shaman with medicine staff, etc) or new age disciple, she presents the image of average American woman who just happens to have psychic powers. She has appeared farily often on the Montel Williams show. IIRC She claims that she beat the challenge and Randi refuses to pay. He counters that she refused to be tested.
Browne has always struck me as a conscious fraud. As long as no one is harmed or endangered, I have no problem with people who genuinely believe themselves to have psychic abilities charging for services. EG If Shlomo Halfmoon charges a woman five bucks because he thinks he can purify her aura and help the chemotherapy fight the tumor, I don’t really care. But, a if somebody is lying to people to get their money it’s fraud.
I understand that if you wish you can go to the JREF building and perview the records. They are available, you just need to make the trip. The fact that that Randi hasn’t put them online as much as some would like is mostly a matter of resources.
THis whole thing, however, is just a smokescreen for innuendo about the challenge. Critics of Randi don’t actually want a solution, they want to be able to complain about it. Several tests have been written up in Randi’s books, and the only viable claim is to suggest that Randi has refused legitimate challengers. I find no evidence of this. So again I think the purpose is to complain.
Of course, we all have a strong reaction to someone telling us we’re wrong in our beliefs. More so if we are afraid on some level that they might be right. We all tend to lash out in those situations. Some of us more shrilly than others.
“Woo woo” came into use in the USENET trifecta of sci.skeptic, alt.paranormal, and alt.fan.art-bell. Believers for the better part of USENET’s heyday had use of many insults for skeptics: Septics, Skeptirats, Skepticult, skeptinazis, and a host of other words that basicly cried ‘unbeliever’. One beleiver happily listed all these insults and encouraged their usage against those dastardly unbeleivers. Skeptics really didn’t have any word to toss insults back. “Beleiver” was not an insult and “Creduloid” hadn’t been developed.
It is beleived that “woo woo” evolved over those pathetic UFO watchers who stand near an airport and point at every light in sky, declaring it to be an alien spacecraft and gasping in awe with a “woooooooooo!”. Tenuous, but that’s the best origin I am aware of.
If the present rate of getting information online is too slow for your satisfaction, I suggest you make a trip to Florida and see the records for yourself. Randi has stated it is available for viewing. I suspect, however, that you merely wish to complain.
Placebo effect? Exactly what are the scientifically proven causes that this should work?
Why should someone with a life-threatening illness suddenly get better simply because they believe something that happened to them will make them better?
Where is the science?
It’s not an explanation, it’s a place holder.
"Oh, well, so that bit of paranormal does work, so we’ll just name it something scientific sounding, even though we don’t have a clue how it works, and be done with it.
If this is a scientific explanation, then why aren’t doctors using the uncovered principles in hospitals?
Or maybe it is a slice of the unexplained, still unexplained, that has been shown to work.
