Sounds good to me. Maybe I can find a charmer and convince him to let me profit from the work.
And maybe you should come back when you have something of a factual nature to post.
ooops…let me see if I can find it again.
Crap. I’ll have to search some more. I seem to have lost it. It was an old book of poertry. Information on wart charmers is pretty hard to find. I thnk they shy from the internet.
So he’d have to remain anonymous. That makes it harder, but not necessarily impossible.
Already dealt with, let them donate the money, or even simply not take it.
For our purposes, I don’t think this matters. The method may not work for someone else, but we don’t want it to work for the “non-believing” healer. They will just mimic the real healer closely enough to fool the patient. This should make the difference between the real healer and fake easier to detect.
Oh ye of little faith.
Well, I know it from experience as a kid, like I said. I don’t at all claim to have any facts of the matter. I actually came asking if anyone did know what the phenomenon was. I wasn’t aware that this was a fact only forum. Kinda blows the whole idea of talking about paranormal at all.
Exactly. That’s why I asked the whole question in the first place. I never had any faith in the charmer.
Me either, but that’s what the test is for. If we do it right, our belief shouldn’t matter one way or the other.
Agreed.
It’s from a book of poems published in 1990 by John Leonard. What in the world makes you think he knows anything at all about warts? If I self-published a poem about heart surgery, would you let me operate on you?
I don’t know a thing about him.
It’s just from a random search on the internet. A poem even. I like it myself.
What makes me think that he knows anything about warts is that he wrote a poem about them. He at least knows they exist and at least knows that wart charmers exist. Other than that, it’s just a poem written about wart charmers who knows something about warts and wart charmers.
Oh yeah, and I would at least want a good referal from a satisfied patient before letting you operate on me. The same thing I would want before visiting a wart charmer.
Is that a necessary condition of the process, you figure? If so, a failure (i.e. warts persist after 5 weeks) can be explained by saying the subject kept thinking about the warts - a worrywart, as it were. We need test subjects who have warts but are psychologically indifferent to them so weeks can pass and their own stress levels will neither enhance or aggravate the warts, leaving only the effect of the charm.
Well, and the body’s own immune system, of course. Frankly, unless we can find a charmer who can cure warts in a matter of hours (i.e. without letting the subjects go home in the meantime and be exposed, knowingly or not, to other factors), I don’t see how an effective test could work that would be worth anything, let along a million dollars. The charmer is either going to have to work faster, or charm away a less transitory affliction. If someone could charm/cure cancer or AIDS in six weeks, that’d be far more testable.
If this were true, there wouldn’t be a long list of applicants who made it past the first hurdle of having their claims acknowledged as paranormal by the JREF team - and there is a long list of such applicants - they didn’t fail because their claimed phenomenon was hastily redefined as explainable - generally, they failed because they just couldn’t manifest it.
Your posts, and insistence that it’s bogus to simply accept that cause and effect always has a natural-law (scientific) explanation demonstrate nicely that charlatans will stay in business. Apparently there will always be group of people unpersuaded by a history of science explaining away magic to the gullible.
“Sure; you explained away those (few thousand) things, but what about this??!!”
What Randi is trying to do is to force the wart charmers to demonstrate something paranormal. His odds of not having to pay up are pretty good, in my opinion–not because he is being tricky with definitions or sneaky with his rules–but because THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MAGIC AND ONLY THE GULLIBLE THINK SO.
His odds of ridding the world of paranormal-believing twits are negligible.
It really seems to me that you are responding to someone else’s posts. I have never asserted that *anything *is unexplainable.
But, for the record, I assert that certain phenomena are unexplained. It is my *belief *that all unexplained phenomena are ultimately explainable. I do not *assert *it, however, and am under no compulsion to *prove *it.
As far as the Challenge goes, you appear to be deliberately missing the point. It seems obvious to most folks that Randi does not believe that any paranormal phenomena exist. He believes that everything is explainable via investigation into the natural world. It doesn’t matter what definition of “paranormal” anyone uses. All anyone has to do is claim an ability that violates the laws of physics as we understand them, and is testable under the rules of the Challenge. The claimant and the JREF then work out a protocol together, such that it will be indisputable that the ability has been demonstrated or not.
And here is a key point that you have missed – *He cares not one whit what the explanation is. * It does not matter whether the phenomenon is explainable or not. For all he knows, some secret society of Iknewit Physicists have worked out all the details for telekinesis. They have done exhaustive studies, and can replicate results till the cows come home. It has been explained six ways from Sunday. They still win the prize, because the protocol has been established beforehand. There is no last minute reneging. It isn’t possible.
I don’t know. I would only pointout that five weeks is a matter of hours.
Which is exactly why anyone who can see the horizon should qualify for the challenge. (See the horizon problem) It is unexplainable. It does not take a psychic to present evidence of the paranormal.
I have never said there was any such thing as magic. Are you equating magic with paranormal ?
Sure you explained those few thousand things but what about tetraneutrons ? They should not exist according to the laws of physics. But they do. If you can explain them, have at it.
My only claim is that there is a misuse of the word “paranormal”. Paranormal phenomenon exist. I have given example after example. If you show why any one of them is not paranormal besides saying " I believe with all my heart that somebody will someday explain that someday", I invite you to do so. We’ll call it “The IKNEWYOUCOULDN"T” Challenge.
OK. Again, I am simply saying the challenge is bogus because of exactly what you say. They believe that paranrmal things do not exist. Your assertion of “he cares not one whit what the explanation is” is BS. The statement in itself presupposes an explanation. Paranormal things have no explanation for anyone to care, or not care, about. And isn’t it funny that you believe all unexplained phenomenon to be ultimately explainable but you believe it impossible for the occurance of last minute reneging, a common, real and expainable event .
Again you use a special definition. The Challenge is not bogus, because it is winnable. For example, I could believe that unicorns do not exist. I issue a challenge to produce a unicorn. If someone does so, they win. It does not matter what I believe. All that matters is that there is a unicorn in my garden, to coin a phrase.
You must have to try real hard to misunderstand on such a basic level. The JREF cares not one whit how the challenger explains the phenomena.
You do not get to impose your definition of “paranormal” on the Challenge anymore than someone gets to impose his definition of the word “challenge.” The JREF and the challenger, together, agree what the parameters of the tests are. Whether some outside observer with no standing in the test agrees is irrelevant.
This is just a semantic exercise for you, isn’t it? I mean, you have no real point to make, do you?
Of course it’s possible. Anything is possible. Sheesh, that’s freshman metaphysics 101, right?
Giant thunderbolts might shoot from Randi’s eyes and kill everyone. Maybe it’s all a dream. Or, alien puppeteers could be manipulating everyone. The point is, my tedious, pedantic, nitpicker, that under the terms of the agreement it is not possible.
Randi is not even involved in the judging. He has no say. The Challenge does not go forward until both parties agree on “what will constitute both a positive and a negative result.” There is no provision for either party to change the rules once the testing has begun.