I am defeated whenever I fail to convince. I admit defeat here.
Au revoir.
Sir, you will be missed!
Ever obligant,
–Aeschines
My father, a few months ago, was astounded by a stage magician hired to entertain folks at a party. The magician asked my father’s girlfriend if she knew what time it was. She told him she hadn’t worn a watch that evening, at which point he asked her to go get a small, sealed box from a table at the host’s home. She found the box, and opened it, and lo and behold, her watch was inside!
Which explanation is likelier?
- The magician used psychoportation, not to steal the Hope Diamond, but to retrieve my dad’s girlfriend’s watch from her bedside table.
- The magician gave her a double-handed handshake earlier in the night, removing her watch at the same time, and put it in the box; when he asked her the time, she said she hadn’t worn her watch that evening only after looking at her wrist to see what time it was and realizing she didn’t have the watch on.
My dad was astounded and a little creeped out by this event: what sort of eldritch powers did this man possess? I didn’t give him my theory for how it was done.
I read an account awhile ago of three magicians sitting around in a bar frequented by magicians. A girl, obviously confused about the sort of magicians that would frequent such a bar, came in to see if any of them had the kinds of powers that Uri Gellar had.
None of the magicians had ever done Uri Gellar-style stuff before, but one of them on a lark decided to prove his powers to her. He asked to see her watch to synchronize times with his watch, and then had her cup her hands over the watch so he couldn’t touch it. While she was cupping her hands over the watch, he put his hands on top of hers and talked about how time itself was just an illusion, and by concentrating, those who had studied under the Gurus of the Himalayas could speed it up or slow it down. Sure enough, when she took her hand away after his short spiel, she discovered that thirty minutes had passed, according to her watch! And he’d never touched her watch once!
Except, of course, he had: when he looked at hers to synchronize the time, he’d stared her in the eyes for a couple seconds while giving her part of the Time is An Illusion spiel, and meanwhile turned her watch ahead by half an hour. He’d kept staring into her eyes as he gave her the watch back, so that she wouldn’t look down to check the time. And then he had her cup the watch in her hands, convincing her that he’d never touched it. She left that bar convinced she’d just met a bona-fide mystic.
People are easy to fool. People want to be fooled. How does Uri Gellar bend a ring without ever touching it? Probably a vital part of the process is telling his mark that he never touched the ring. He may well get the mark to examine the ring “before the trick begins,” bend it quickly and unobtrusively “before the trick begins,” make sure the person doesn’t examine it thereafter, make a huge show about how “during the trick” he’s not touching the ring, and remind the person, after the ring is bent, that he never touched it. Do it fast enough, convincingly enough, frenetically enough, and the mark is pretty likely to believe that he never touched the ring.
Daniel
Forgive me for not staying up all night to continue in this thread, and my workload today prohibits me from spending too much time going point-by-point for so many posts. Besides, others have replied as well or better than I could.
So just a few brief points.
Any magicians in our audience (Ianzin, you out there?) are probably chuckling at some of the assertions made here like “the spoon bent without his touching it!” They know, from doing tricks like this in their daily lives, that people are not only easy to fool, but typically repeat the trick to others leaving out or distorting critical items. Not intentionally, they just don’t have the knowledge to know what observations are significant and which ones are not.
So if someone says, “he didn’t touch it!” and uses this to “prove” something happened that is unlikely to actually have happened, a clear, undoctored video recording is a must before coming to a conclusion. Eyewitnesses, especially those untrained in magic tricks, are not reliable enough to overturn the laws of nature as we know them.
I recall a woman-in-a-box trick that is pretty impressive. Here’s how a typical viewer might describe it: “A blonde is encased in several boxes, one of which encloses just her head and you can see her face. The head-box is on a swivel, and as the magician turns it, her head is locked with it. He turns it around 180 degrees – you can see the back of her head – then 360. The girl looks a little cross-eyed, but is unharmed.”
Now what really happened? Do you really think her head turned all the way around and she lived to tell about it? No? But I was a witness!
There is a very critical assumption made here. Note the line, “you can see the back of her head.” Did the audience really see “the back of her head”? No, they saw some hair glued to the back of the box! Hair that matched the girl’s. When the box was turned far enough, the girl held her head still while the box turned around her.
What happened here? A magician knows that people see hair and assume head, but the average theater-goer does not think that way. Makes all the difference in the world, eh?
Now I can’t say for sure how this trick was done – I’m only offering a non-paranormal suggestion. Maybe it was done paranormally, or the girl can really swivel her head like that. What do you think?
This brings up another principle of magic. Whenever part of the trick is covered up, it is done so for a reason. The concealment is critical to deceiving the audience. Were it not for the coverup, it would not appear to be magic. Think about that the next time a magician draws a curtain. There is something going on behind it that he cannot allow you to see if the illusion is to be preserved.
Maybe you recall a famous test where an audience is shown a video of a street scene, then given a questionaire afterwards. One of the questions is, “What color was the barn?” And people answered red or yellow or whatever, but there was no barn anywhere in the video. Yet people swore they saw one. Such is the power of suggestion. (Please don’t ask me to find a cite for this; I hope you remember the psychological experiment – it was described in my college Psy class.)
And RE: Geller & Carson – Somewhere there is a video of this show, and I hope you can find it. Briefly, Geller was scheduled to appear, and Carson, an amateur magician himself, wanted to avoid fraud. Geller said he had paranormal powers, and Carson wanted him to use only those powers, not trickery. (Carson had nothing against magicians, he just didn’t want to support a fraudulent claim.) He approached Randi for advice and followed it to the letter (don’t let Geller or his staff near the props, don’t let him pick up the film cans when guessing which are water-filled, etc.). Geller was unable to do a single trick while on camera. When the controls are tightened, the effect goes away.
But did it happen that way? It is not hard to say, “Oh yeah, Uri did something to bend it and he used sleight of hand, yeah, that musta been it.” But if someone says “Uri never touched it” then there is a possiblity that Uri never touched it. I mean as in Uri is standing four feet away and not getting near it.
I think the ring example is good because I think a ring would be hard to bend… You can bend a spoon pretty easily with ordinary strength or a little leverage If I had to bend an average, decently strong ring, I don’t know how I’d do it. Unless you crush it in a vice or pound it with a hammer, I think it would be quite hard.
I don’t know. Maybe he used the powers of his mind to bend it. But I’ll require some pretty strong evidence – more than just an eyewitness account devoid of video backup–to convince me of this.
If you tell me that you’ve trained your dog to fetch your slippers, I’ll have no trouble believing you. If you tell me you’ve trained your dog to solve diferential equations, I’ll not believe you until you’ve provided me with extensive proof. Uri Gellar is telling me that his dog won the Nobel frickin’ Prize.
Sure, and that’s what Uri means as well. My doubt isn’t with what you mean, it’s with what actually happened. It’s far easier for me to believe that eyewitnesses were tricked, since I already know eyewitnesses can be tricked. If you want me to believe an alternate explanation, provide scads of proof.
Really? I’d just keep a pair of pliers in my pocket. Or maybe I’d get my assistant to make me a small, spring-loaded device that can exert a huge amount of pressure at the press of a trigger and that I could palm in my hand. Of course, I’m not a professional magician; I’m not sure how they do the “Ringu” trick previously referenced in this thread, and I’m not going to pay the thirty pounds necessary in order to find out.
Daniel
[QUOTE=Musicat]
Any magicians in our audience (Ianzin, you out there?) are probably chuckling at some of the assertions made here like “the spoon bent without his touching it!” They know, from doing tricks like this in their daily lives, that people are not only easy to fool, but typically repeat the trick to others leaving out or distorting critical items. Not intentionally, they just don’t have the knowledge to know what observations are significant and which ones are not.
[QUOTE]
Nice treatise on magic. But I have yet to see any cite that says Geller has been caught cheating.
Skepdic–I’m disappointed that it doesn’t have any concrete accusations. It says read Randi’s works but doesn’t even quote them.
It mentions Johnny Carson and says what everyone is saying here: That since magicians can do the same sort of thing, sort of, Geller must be cheating.
Surely one of the more pious skeptics here has Randi’s books and can quote a line or two? A concrete accusation, please…?
Here, I’ll do you a favor:
http://www.simon-jones.org.uk/articles/uri_geller_interview.htm
FTR, I don’t find Uri to be a very attractive character.
How about the entire book?
Here is a quote from Puthoff and Tarq. They hardly seem like credulous bumblers:
Rings, I’m not sure about. Keys, spoons – they’re easy. I have a “gaff” gadget in my personal bag of tricks that no self-respecting magician would admit to using, but I don’t put myself in that class 
– it’s a tiny, brass, square cross section tube that you can fit a key into. It makes bending the key much easier. When done, the tube retracts into my sleeve on a rubber band. You’ll never see it, and I won’t show you the finished “product” until much later, when I can reveal it and exclaim, “look – it’s bending!” Or I can leave it on the desk when no one’s looking. Some time later, someone will find it and claim that I hadn’t touched it for hours – which may be true, and of course that’s what I’ll say – and I’ll get the credit for the bend.
A better magician than I would be constantly checking the room for available leverages – a metal chair leg, a filing cabinet, etc. Given enough time, distraction, confusion and ignorance, that key is gonna get bent, and you will not be looking when it happens.
There is also the possibility that he DID touch it. Tricks are easy. We know they can be done; they have been repeatedly demonstrated. Why would a magician waste his time trying to do it the hard way with paranormal powers?
You have yet to show us an undoctored video of a spoon sitting all by its lonesome on a table, self-bending without anyone near it or touching it in any way. Until that comes forward, permit me to be just a little skeptical.
Read that report carefully. It includes such gems as
“In the laboratory we did not find him able to [bend metal from a distance].”
Textbook case. When the controls are tightened, the effect disappears.
Even P&T admit that some experiments were flawed. They were up against a magician and they had no defense. They were ignorant of simple tricks and took few precautions. They were snowed by greater knowledge than theirs, in a field they knew nothing about. Even then, they recognized some of the flaws, albeit a little too late.
They may be puzzled, but there is very little doubt in my mind. I’ve done it.
Why is that, when I “reply” to your posts, there is always an italic code before each chunk in your post? Just curious.
At any rate, your interpretation above doesn’t jibe with the link I posted. The experiments sound OK, and they talk about how they took measures to prevent cheating. Etc. etc. And they weren’t all spoon-bending experiments, either.
This is a dishonest argument, one where the illogical thrust is implied to boot.
In case you actually did want an answer to the moon landing question (I can’t tell):
It generally wasn’t sceptics who trumpeted that the moon landings were faked; it was nutjobs (of multiple falvours – religious nuts as well as conspiracy freaks) or greedy folk without any scruples or respect for the facts. Scepticism is a method that simply requires a provisional approach to all claims. A real sceptic would have questioned the Moon landings (all of them!), but rather than leave it at that and make any claims on the subject he would have got to the bottom of the matter by understanding some of the science involved, examining the arguments for and against, and above all scrutinizing the available evidence before reaching a conclusion.
The available evidence is overwhlemingly in favour of the claim that we did land on the Moon; the people who thought otherwise otherwise were chiefly the uninformed, those who have a burning ideological need to “believe”, or the hapless folk who get their information from FOX documentaries and similar poor quality sources.
The proponents of the Moon landing hoax weren’t sceptics by any definition. They presented incredibly sloppy evidence in support of their claim, ignored vastly superior evidence against it, and manipulated the argument to try to prove their claim in a manner that is, intellectually, as low as you can go. SentientMeat (along with I) thought that you knew as much, which is why he left the discussion in dismay when you tried to tar the name of scepticism with your totally inconclusive (and inappropriate) allusions to the Moon landing hoax and Nixon.
Sceptics do not support wacky conspiracy theories (or anything else) unless there is good evidence and reason to do so; they may hold beliefs that are undemonstrable or even wrong, but they couldn’t honestly use the sceptical method to pronounce the false as fact, and still be called sceptics. Since anyone with a reasonably good science education could see right through the foolish Moon landing hoax claims presented by, for example, FOX TV, the proponents of this hoax were clearly not sceptics, they were pathetic impostors at best or simply not sufficiently informed to make a judgement on the matter. Here’s The Bad Astronomer’s page on the Moon landing hoax.
It would appear you are confusing the words cynic and sceptic here.
I would suggest meeting the challenges posed by the cites that you dismissed with the comment “Your set of cites, though not good as an argument, was good art.” That’s not a fair response in a debate.
It reminds me of the time I systematically addressed an entire set of your arguments on the paranormal and you told me I was a skilled debater, but still no sale. Thank you, but (like your structurally identical response to SentientMeat) that’s not a rebuttal, it’s an evasion!
Thought experiment: You wake up one morning and realize that you have very real, if slightly undependable, psychic powers. You can read minds and bend metal with your thoughts. How do you proceed:
(1) Submit yourself to rigorous public testing, clearly videotaped, overseen by impartial and fair people, realizing that studying your gift could lead to the most important advancements in human knowledge, well, ever, and the attendent fame and celebrity should make you plenty rich and famous
(2) Use your psychic powers and metal-bending abilities to become fabulously wealthy through a variety of underhanded criminal enterprises
(3) Become a publicity whore who spends a lot of time bending keys and spoons, but who somehow never quite manages to produce the “silver bullet” videotape that clearly and indisputably shows you doing something paranormal
On the other hand, suppose you’re a middling sleight of hand artist with a huge amount of charisma, lust for power and fame, and ability to confuse the hell out of dumb people, and no shame whatsoever. Then it seems that your only choice is to:
(1) Become a publicity whore who spends a lot of time bending keys and spoons
I’m just saying, is all…
Doh! I apologize for confusing Aeschines and Snakespirit in my previous post. It wasn’t Snake who provided that evasion in the linked thread, it was Aeschines. But I must say, you guys do seem to work like a tag team, and you do make rather similar points, so please excuse my confusion.
Quite obviously you misunderstood my answer, Meat, of course light is a force! We don’t know if it’s a particle or a wave or something else we don’t understand yet, but what else would it be, if not a force?
And on top of it, I misunderstood you, too, and me. Let’s skip the double negatives:
The effect of light diminishes (disperses) over distance; call it what you will; I’m not a physicist and don’t claim to be one.
If this is somehow relevent to “What is ‘paranormal’?” Please clue me in on that, too.
And maybe he used trickery. If he had been discovered using trickery I think the point would be moot.
Daniel, I think you and I have no argument!
[QUOTE]
Right. “A force of more than 6 kilonewtons”
Aeschines, if you truly believe that Geller is capable of exerting such a force using only psi power please answer this. Why do you suppose he would ever have to touch a key or spoon in order to bend it? With such power he could rip keys in half. He could deform rings and spoons willy nilly. Is it not just the least bit suspicious to you that a man who can bend a spanner from across a room using only his mind would need to caress a dinner spoon for several minutes before it begins to bend?