You hardly need a photographic expert. I have one word for that: Bug.
At close range, out of focus. What’s truly incredible is the TV news crew that made a feature out of it. Must have been the slowest news day of the year, and I imagine the TV cameraman was laughing pretty hard.
Incidentally there once was a hoax played on a surveillance camera where someone put a doll at the end of a long stick and waggled it close to a camera that was focused on a distant car lot. The blurry doll looked like a ghost. Sorry, I don’t have a link handy.
Thanks for checking out each link, Garula, but I’m afraid all your hard work won’t help. We’ve been thru this before. You can’t change the mind of a true believer.
Thank you for, again, presenting your “stick fingers in ears, scream “la la la” as loud as possible” counterargument. Be confident that its brilliance, maturity, and rhetorical complexity have had a profound effect on all the readership, more than making up for its entire lack of content. Go away proud in the knowledge that you have cemented opinions in the minds of all that have heard you. Go away proud.
If the Challenge continues, should it be run by a general committee, or should it have a public figurehead? If figurehead, who? I’m against Penn for two reasons:
He can be pretty abrasive, which is one of the complaints claimants had against Randi, and
He is a magician, which is the other complaint they had against Randi.
Who I’d like to see is someone along the lines of Bill Nye or Michael Shermer.
I’d be fine with a faceless organization; I don’t see that a figurehead is especailly necessary; I figure the only reason the Randi challenge had one was because the challenge itself was a development from Randi’s personal crusade against frauds and liars. And if a figurehead gives the frauds and liars one more excuse to avoid the test, then it’s something we can do without.
And I love the complaints about Randi being a magician; nothing proves to me that they’re frauds and liars more than complaints that the testers are trained to detect frauds and liars. (Any real psychic wouldn’t care of course, or might even be glad of the extra validity granted by a credible tester.) But, sure, if we have a figurehead he doesn’t have to have magician training. So long as the guys who work on developing the test protocols do.
I hope that someone else takes up the reins or starts a similar challenge, but it should be done a bit differently. As much as I like Randi and the work he’s done, he’s made himself a bit too easy of a target. I don’t think he particularly appeals to the people he’s trying to persuade. A challenge like this really does need a figurehead, but it should be the most likable, reasonable guy around. Someone who can go on talkshows and win over the host and audience. I think Penn is a bad choice because he gives “psychics” an easy target. I remember seeing him on The Colbert Report once, and it looked liked Colbert despised him by the end of the interview. Having a figurehead that is disliked by TV personalties could be worse than no figurehead at all. The advantage of Penn, though, is that he is a good performer and can put on an entertaining show to illustrate how various frauds are perpetutated. Bill Nye could be good because he seems pleasant enough and a lot of people probably have fond memories of learning from his TV show during their youths.
The problem, of course, is that trained scientists are not nearly as good at detecting frauds as magicians are. I may be remembering incorrectly, but I remember in one of Feynman’s books he talks about how he was generally able to fool his fellow scientists much more easily than nonscientists. I’ve heard this anecdote elsewhere, but I cannot recall off hand (sorry, no cite). Ideally, the head person of the test should be a scientist, but there should be plenty of magicians in the ranks to catch all those little tricks that make for a good show. That seems like a good compromise.
So, all things considered, I think Penn would probably do more harm than good by running the MDC. In my ideal world, though, I think it would be great if he cast himself as a “real” psychic, and went around doing shows in which he duplicates various psychic feats in an extremely over the top way. The more people see how easy it is to pull off these frauds, the more progress will be made.
Criss Angel has offered anyone a million dollars cash if they can tell him what is written in the envelope he has in his pocket. This took place after the verbal altercation he got into on that show Phenomenon with Jim Callahan. Later in an interview, he said the offer permanently stands.
Again, he is a magician, and is subject to accusations of trickery. So-called “psychics” will make a wrong guess, then claim he used sleight of hand to switch envelopes.
How can I defend the research of scientists? If you doubt them, write them, and ask questions. I am not looking to convince others to believe as I do, I try to get them to examine the research and learn for themselves. I bring information of the outside world to this board. No one can learn much of anything from those who believe like they do. If you want an education it is necessary to go into areas unknown and learn from those with opposing views,
The link you found interesting is just one of many studies being done. The more studies the more learned. I posted some quotes from the big link on page 5 #248 that answers some more questions. I was agnostic before my experience, many were atheists before theirs. The reason for a change was not that they were afraid, just the opposite, they became unafraid of death and of life. Skeptics just don’t know anything about psychics, spirituality and such because they have never listened, only belittled.
Is there a consistent enough body of psychic knowledge that could form the basis of a college-level course, i.e. a theory that all or most psychics would agree on, and some practical applications that students could learn over the course of a semester?
Right, that’s why any new program has to have clear, inarguable success and failure condition, decided in advance by agreement between the testers and the psychic, just like the current system for Randi’s challenge. (You know, the one where the psychic has the “final word”, given that they can always refuse any set of conditions. )
I wonder if having a non-magician, non-scientist figurehead backed by a cadre of scientist & magician testers would work. I mean, they seem to care about the figurehead so much in Randi’s case, that doing the ole’ bait-and-switch might lure them out long enough to be tested.
I wouldn’t go so far as a non-scientist/non-magician, just a non-magician. That’s why I would want someone like Michael Shermer or Bill Nye-solid science backgrounds with knowledge of woo trickery.
)