After Justhink’s analysis, I’ll need a psychic to communicate with my now-dead brain cells.
As for Geller; come and get me, you person who is either a fraud or possessor of useless psychic ability.
Let’s not get hung up on one poster’s example of water/wine transformation, the Randi Challenge is NOT about proving divinity. It is about proof of “paranormal ability” on the part of otherwise common humans; and not necessarily miracle-working, clear-channel communication with the dead, or spy-satellite-quality remote sensing. Things like telekinesis of small objects within your line-of-sight, dowsing, short-range-telepathy with your siblings, would be fair game. The material need for income does not “collapse” by possessing these.
Now, OTOH, “in the unlikely event of” the test proves that you do have that power but reveals that in fact you have stumbled upon a new way to tap the “holographic matrix” (or whatever you call it) and thus you really discovered a NEW Natural Law, then JREF may have something of a conundrum: the phenomenon was demonstrated, was demonstrated to be nothing of what science knew up to that moment, and was demonstrated to be an ability unique to that person, but at the same time is shown to not be “supernatural”, so do they still pay off? Someone should, IMO.
(I see a certain someone still thinks suicide is the standard solution if the way you have to deal with real-world life doesn’t meet up to some sort of “standard”. Jeez…)
Except when he doesn’t. As in most cases,such as with the Russian girl, etc.
Probably becuase they do not have the powers they
Randi has done it with cameras rolling plenty of times.
Zammit is a complete fool. He has a “clock” on his site counting the days since Randi was challenged to show up in England and test a fool who already failed the preliminary tests. Zammit seemt to think that not being at the beck and call of every 2 bit psychic that gets on the English version of “Regis & Cathy Lee”. The rest of his complaints are equally unsupportable.
“”“Things like telekinesis of small objects within your line-of-sight, dowsing, short-range-telepathy with your siblings, would be fair game. The material need for income does not “collapse” by possessing these.”""
Severely closing in the perimeter of what is evidence for these abilities certainly increases the probability that this may happen.
You have to assume that the people with said ability are pretty ‘dumb’; as even an average person can benefit more financially keeping any of these abilities a secret. Maybe there is a ‘just right’ spot; where you factor perimeter to the possibility, but not the probability that someone will actually bring this to Randi! himself for the purpose of a 1,000,000 bucks and some fame that they somehow would not have otherwise achieved.
I can’t see how this would be designed personally, but haven’t thought about it that much!
When you get into ‘lottery’ type odds, where you’re just as likely to have someone give you the money as winning it from a ticket; you should also consider tangible elements such as Randi’s outfit being a recruiting station for ‘psy-ops’, which really negates any of the publicly percieved persona of Randi’s ‘gig’.
The guy’s being a showman IMO, not straightforward - probably because straightforward is too boring for the type of attention he’s garnering for.
“”"(I see a certain someone still thinks suicide is the standard solution if the way you have to deal with real-world life doesn’t meet up to some sort of “standard”. Jeez…)""""
Last time someone checked; it was a variable; and sometimes it ends up on the other side of the equal symbol all by itself. Go figure!
-Justhink
Hmmm…
I’m afraid I’m gonna have to call “bullshit” on this statement made by ianzin (hi ian):
I don’t know where you got this from. If it was a threat made to you by one of Geller’s lawyers, then it was an empty threat (lawyers do this all the time).
Defamation is a statement made that tends to lower a person in the eyes of right-thinking people (the “man on the Clapham omnibus”) and causes them to shun or avoid him. There are three defences to defamation - Justification, Fair Comment and Privilege.
Justification (that the statement made is true) is a complete defence. If a statement is true then it cannot be defamatory no matter how much damage may have been done to the victims trade.
Sometimes Geller can’t even afford an attorney, so he gets his buddies to make fake legal threats.