You've heard of Uri Gellar, re: bending spoons....

[Monstrous Mike]

I ran across an interesting take on Uri Gellar's ability to bend spoons with his mind. It is actually quite funny.

Source from randi.org but original source unknown:

"Mr. Geller's claim to fame is that he can bend spoons with his mind. Oh sure, he claims a lot of other kookery, but it's the spoon-bending that most people know him for. He purports to be able to bend a spoon just by concentrating on it. Let's assume for the moment that he really can do this feat. Some observations about it:

1) His method is inefficient. It's not like before Uri came along, we were wondering how on earth we'd get a spoon bent. If the need for a bent spoon arose, we'd grab it in our two hands and bend it, simple as that. We didn't have to concentrate very hard on the task.

2) His method is slow. The "grab it with both hands and bend" method of bending spoons is demonstrably faster than the "concentrate and rub" method.

3) His method is unreliable. Believers in psychic ability call this the "sheep and goats effect." For some reason, when a skeptic is in the room or scientific controls are in place that would eliminate cheating, the spoon will fail to bend through mind power alone. Sometimes the "vibes" aren't right. However, the no-rubbing grab-and-bend method works independently of vibes, regardless of how many people in the room doubt it will work.

4) Most importantly, people don't need spoons bent. In fact, the optimal configuration for a spoon is un-bent. The only purpose for bending a spoon I can think of, is demonstrating one's psychic abilities. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I can't think of a single time I've needed a bent spoon. Fortunately, although I'm not psychic, should the occasion arise, I'm pretty sure I could bend one with just my hands.

So in conclusion — this man enjoys fame and, I presume, wealth, because he has a slow, inefficient, and unreliable method for accomplishing a task that no one needs done..."

[pctower]

I ran across an interesting take on Uri Gellar's ability to bend spoons with his mind. It is actually quite funny.

Source from randi.org but original source unknown:

"Mr. Geller's claim to fame is that he can bend spoons with his mind. Oh sure, he claims a lot of other kookery, but it's the spoon-bending that most people know him for. He purports to be able to bend a spoon just by concentrating on it. Let's assume for the moment that he really can do this feat. Some observations about it:

1) His method is inefficient. It's not like before Uri came along, we were wondering how on earth we'd get a spoon bent. If the need for a bent spoon arose, we'd grab it in our two hands and bend it, simple as that. We didn't have to concentrate very hard on the task.

2) His method is slow. The "grab it with both hands and bend" method of bending spoons is demonstrably faster than the "concentrate and rub" method.

3) His method is unreliable. Believers in psychic ability call this the "sheep and goats effect." For some reason, when a skeptic is in the room or scientific controls are in place that would eliminate cheating, the spoon will fail to bend through mind power alone. Sometimes the "vibes" aren't right. However, the no-rubbing grab-and-bend method works independently of vibes, regardless of how many people in the room doubt it will work.

4) Most importantly, people don't need spoons bent. In fact, the optimal configuration for a spoon is un-bent. The only purpose for bending a spoon I can think of, is demonstrating one's psychic abilities. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I can't think of a single time I've needed a bent spoon. Fortunately, although I'm not psychic, should the occasion arise, I'm pretty sure I could bend one with just my hands.

So in conclusion — this man enjoys fame and, I presume, wealth, because he has a slow, inefficient, and unreliable method for accomplishing a task that no one needs done..."

You love humor. What about this:

Secrets of the Skeptics

How to Become a Media Skeptic

by Guy Lyon Playfair

Need a second income? Then why not become a Media Skeptic, one of those who pop up on our screens almost daily to assure us that "the paranormal" (or psi, as it is known in the trade) doesn't exist? You don't need any qualifications, though it helps if you have a degree in psychology, Just stick to these guidelines:

Make it clear that psi (which includes telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis and precognition) doesn't exist, because it is impossible. It is "bad science" to claim that it does. You can quote such respectable authorities as the following:
Professor Peter Atkins. "Serious scientists have got real things to think about - we don't have time to waste on claims which we know both in our hearts and heads must be nonsense." ( Counterblast, BBC2, 23 April 1998).
Dr Susan Blackmore. "I think we have strange experiences we can't explain and jump to the conclusion they're paranormal." ( Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, 3 May 1998).
Professor Richard Dawkins. "The paranormal is bunk. Those who try to sell it to us are fakes and charlatans." ( Sunday Mirror, 8 February 1998).
Professor David Deutsch. " The evidence for the existence of telepathy is appalling...Telepathy simply does not exist." ( The Observer, 30 September 2001).
Professor Nicholas Humphrey. "The idea that quantum physics explains the paranormal is an unnecessary idea, because there's nothing to explain... We haven't got any evidence." ( Today, BBC Radio 4, 2 October 2001).
James Randi (a conjuror). "There is no firm evidence for the existence of telepathy, ESP or whatever we want to call it." ( ibid. )

* * *

Explain, as patronisingly as you can, that although there is a lot of what might be mistaken for evidence for telepathy and other psi phenomena, it isn't "real" evidence. Point out that "more careful researchers" have challenged it. Never mind who, where, on what grounds, or how convincingly. In skeptic-speak, challenging or questioning the evidence equals disproving it conclusively.

(In fact, as has been shown on numerous occasions, "more careful" psi researchers have questioned the sayings or writings of skeptical debunkers and torn them to pieces. Examples will be given on this website in due course)

Avoid any actual discussion of the evidence for psi if you possibly can, but if you can't avoid it,, concentrate on the weakest or the craziest you can find, such as the latest alien abduction, crop circle, Californian channeller, pop astrologer or Bigfoot sighting.


* * *

There are some researchers, such as J.B.Rhine, whose work is not so easy to dismiss. Neither Rhine's personal integrity nor the reliability of his statistical methods have ever been seriously challenged, So what should you do? Simple. Explain that he "might have been hoodwinked" by all those clever magicians who were disguised as his laboratory subjects. There's no evidence that he was, but it sounds good to suggest that he might have been, and of course nobody can disprove this. Read the classic of skeptical revisionist non-explanation, C.E.M.Hansel's error-riddled book ESP and Parapsychology: A critical reevaluation (New York: Prometheus, 1980) to see just how bizarre criticisms can be - Hansel even has one of Rhine's card-guessers clambering up to the attic and peering through a non-existent trap door at the card! You can learn a lot from Hansel, a master of the mud-slinging school. Never mind if there is no evidence at all that such-and-such an individual misbehaved in any way. If you need some damning evidence and there isn't any, just make some up.

* * *

If you're a magician, as many hard-line skeptics are, state that psi experiments are worthless unless they are supervised by a magician. You should give the impression that magicians are too smart to be fooled, which of course is not true. If it was, why would they pay each other such large sums of money for the secrets of their tricks?

If somebody mentions Uri Geller, claim that magicians can duplicate his entire repertoire. This is not true, but it sounds good. At least twenty professional magicians have stated that they cannot explain what they saw Uri do. One has even issued a public challenge (BBC Radio 5, 14 December 1993) to any of his colleagues who can repeat what he witnessed. No takers as yet.

Keep your fingers crossed and hope that nobody points out that Geller has pulled off one feat that few magicians, if any, have ever duplicated. He has become a millionaire.


* * *

If somebody mentions all those distinguished scientists and academics from Crookes, Lodge, Richet, the Curies, Bergson, Jung, McDougall, William James and Lord Rayleigh to contemporaries like Brian Josephson, Bernard Carr and Donald West, point out as patronisingly as you can that an expert in one field is not necessarily an expert in another field, such as psi research.


Skeptics, on the other hand are by implication experts on everything


* * *

Don't forget that old "desperate will to believe" argument, which applies to anybody who has ever reported positive results of a psi experiment. The implication should be that they have fiddled the data to make the results look positive, whereas "more careful" skeptics (more often than not Dr Susan Blackmore or Dr Richard Wiseman) have shown that in fact they are negative.

Avoid any suggestion that skeptics have a desperate will not to believe, as is clearly the case with some. In an exchange of letters with Henry Bauer, editor of the excellent Journal of Scientific Exploration, Kendrick Frazier, editor of the Skeptical Inquirer has candidly admitted that (in Bauer's words) "the magazine's purpose is not to consider what the best evidence for anmalous claims might be but to argue against them". ( JSE, vol. 3 no. 1, 1989).


* * *

Adopt the combine-harvester approach to reports of any kind of psi phenomenon, or indeed to any kind of inexplicable or anomalous one, and keep it simple, as in this pronouncement by authors Simon Hoggart and Mike Hutchinson, from their book Bizarre Beliefs


"The terrible truth is that there are no ghosts, no poltergeists, and no hauntings. They are all mistaken, imaginary, or fakes."

* * *

You can get away with the most massive whoppers, especially on TV, if you manage to sound as if you know what you're talking about when you don't. A perfect example was provided by the narrator of Channel 4's Secrets of the Psychics (24 August 1997), which included examples of all the guidelines listed here:


"With one exception, all practising mediums were exposed as frauds or confessed."

The narrator forgot to mention who the one exception was. Among mediums who never confessed to anything and were not exposed as frauds were D.D.Home, Lenora Piper, Mrs Willett, Eileen Garrett, Rudi Schneider, Franek Kluski, the half-dozen members of the Cross Correspondence team, Stefan Ossowiecki, Pamela Curran and Chico Xavier.


* * *

It is a good idea to pretend that you are an honest, open-minded seeker after the truth but be careful not to go too far, as Professor Richard Dawkins did in his Richard Dimbleby Lecture (BBC1, 12 November 1996):


"The popularity of the paranormal, oddly enough, might even be grounds for encouragement. I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we don't understand, are healthy and to be fostered. It's the same appetite which drives the best of true science."

There could not be a clearer summary of what drives the great majority of parapsychologists.


* * *

Finally, you can always win some popular sympathy with the good old "dangers of dabbling in the occult" ploy. Suggest that actually doing any research into psi phenomena or other anomalies can only lead to another Jonestown massacre, Heaven's Gate mass suicide, or Third Reich.

Put all this sound advice into practice, and you'll be media superstars, my son and daughter.

Seems like he's describing the typical naysayer on AR.

The great Randi doesn't seem to certain as to the details of his test:

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0106/05/lkl.00.html

Of interest also:

http://www.rense.com/general32/telep.htm

http://www.marius.net/challenge.html

You love sites such as randi.org

I'm sure as the "objective" engineer that you are, you have fully investigated the other side:

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org

[Monstrous Mike]

Maybe Mtrycrafts is James Randi?

I'm more and more beginning to take the stance of "so what?". Just like the guy in my post. Even if the Uri can bend a spoon with his mind, so what? If Aunt Edna can talk with her dead relatives, so what? Two guys can talk telepathically, so what? Somebody can turn a rock over with his mind, so what?

You know what would be useful? If a guy like Uri Gellar could free a guy from a car wreck before the firemen got there with the jaws of life. Or if John Edwards could talk with Jonas Salk to see if he has any ideas for an AIDs vaccine. That would be useful. Teach me how to communicate with my wife telepathically so I can get rid of my goddamn cellphone. That would be useful. Get a guy who can read minds to work in airport security. That would be useful.

So there you have my warped view of the world. Either it's useful or it's entertainment. Spend your time and money accordingly.

Although, it would be nice if somebody published a guide which distinguishes reality from fantasy entertainment but who could really trust a guy like that?

[pctower]

Maybe Mtrycrafts is James Randi?

I'm more and more beginning to take the stance of "so what?". Just like the guy in my post. Even if the Uri can bend a spoon with his mind, so what? If Aunt Edna can talk with her dead relatives, so what? Two guys can talk telepathically, so what? Somebody can turn a rock over with his mind, so what?

You know what would be useful? If a guy like Uri Gellar could free a guy from a car wreck before the firemen got there with the jaws of life. Or if John Edwards could talk with Jonas Salk to see if he has any ideas for an AIDs vaccine. That would be useful. Teach me how to communicate with my wife telepathically so I can get rid of my goddamn cellphone. That would be useful. Get a guy who can read minds to work in airport security. That would be useful.

So there you have my warped view of the world. Either it's useful or it's entertainment. Spend your time and money accordingly.

Although, it would be nice if somebody published a guide which distinguishes reality from fantasy entertainment but who could really trust a guy like that?

Here's your guide:

NOTHING ON TV IS REAL - ESPECIALLY THE "REALITY" SHOWS.

BTW, I fell in love with B.C. I'm ready to move to Salt Spring Island. Seems that they don't have a single lawyer living on the island.

[Pat D]

You love humor. What about this:

Secrets of the Skeptics

How to Become a Media Skeptic

by Guy Lyon Playfair

Need a second income? Then why not become a Media Skeptic, one of those who pop up on our screens almost daily to assure us that "the paranormal" (or psi, as it is known in the trade) doesn't exist? You don't need any qualifications, though it helps if you have a degree in psychology, Just stick to these guidelines:

Make it clear that psi (which includes telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis and precognition) doesn't exist, because it is impossible. It is "bad science" to claim that it does. You can quote such respectable authorities as the following:
Professor Peter Atkins. "Serious scientists have got real things to think about - we don't have time to waste on claims which we know both in our hearts and heads must be nonsense." ( Counterblast, BBC2, 23 April 1998).
Dr Susan Blackmore. "I think we have strange experiences we can't explain and jump to the conclusion they're paranormal." ( Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, 3 May 1998).
Professor Richard Dawkins. "The paranormal is bunk. Those who try to sell it to us are fakes and charlatans." ( Sunday Mirror, 8 February 1998).
Professor David Deutsch. " The evidence for the existence of telepathy is appalling...Telepathy simply does not exist." ( The Observer, 30 September 2001).
Professor Nicholas Humphrey. "The idea that quantum physics explains the paranormal is an unnecessary idea, because there's nothing to explain... We haven't got any evidence." ( Today, BBC Radio 4, 2 October 2001).
James Randi (a conjuror). "There is no firm evidence for the existence of telepathy, ESP or whatever we want to call it." ( ibid. )

* * *

Explain, as patronisingly as you can, that although there is a lot of what might be mistaken for evidence for telepathy and other psi phenomena, it isn't "real" evidence. Point out that "more careful researchers" have challenged it. Never mind who, where, on what grounds, or how convincingly. In skeptic-speak, challenging or questioning the evidence equals disproving it conclusively.

(In fact, as has been shown on numerous occasions, "more careful" psi researchers have questioned the sayings or writings of skeptical debunkers and torn them to pieces. Examples will be given on this website in due course)

Avoid any actual discussion of the evidence for psi if you possibly can, but if you can't avoid it,, concentrate on the weakest or the craziest you can find, such as the latest alien abduction, crop circle, Californian channeller, pop astrologer or Bigfoot sighting.


* * *

There are some researchers, such as J.B.Rhine, whose work is not so easy to dismiss. Neither Rhine's personal integrity nor the reliability of his statistical methods have ever been seriously challenged, So what should you do? Simple. Explain that he "might have been hoodwinked" by all those clever magicians who were disguised as his laboratory subjects. There's no evidence that he was, but it sounds good to suggest that he might have been, and of course nobody can disprove this. Read the classic of skeptical revisionist non-explanation, C.E.M.Hansel's error-riddled book ESP and Parapsychology: A critical reevaluation (New York: Prometheus, 1980) to see just how bizarre criticisms can be - Hansel even has one of Rhine's card-guessers clambering up to the attic and peering through a non-existent trap door at the card! You can learn a lot from Hansel, a master of the mud-slinging school. Never mind if there is no evidence at all that such-and-such an individual misbehaved in any way. If you need some damning evidence and there isn't any, just make some up.

* * *

If you're a magician, as many hard-line skeptics are, state that psi experiments are worthless unless they are supervised by a magician. You should give the impression that magicians are too smart to be fooled, which of course is not true. If it was, why would they pay each other such large sums of money for the secrets of their tricks?

If somebody mentions Uri Geller, claim that magicians can duplicate his entire repertoire. This is not true, but it sounds good. At least twenty professional magicians have stated that they cannot explain what they saw Uri do. One has even issued a public challenge (BBC Radio 5, 14 December 1993) to any of his colleagues who can repeat what he witnessed. No takers as yet.

Keep your fingers crossed and hope that nobody points out that Geller has pulled off one feat that few magicians, if any, have ever duplicated. He has become a millionaire.


* * *

If somebody mentions all those distinguished scientists and academics from Crookes, Lodge, Richet, the Curies, Bergson, Jung, McDougall, William James and Lord Rayleigh to contemporaries like Brian Josephson, Bernard Carr and Donald West, point out as patronisingly as you can that an expert in one field is not necessarily an expert in another field, such as psi research.


Skeptics, on the other hand are by implication experts on everything


* * *

Don't forget that old "desperate will to believe" argument, which applies to anybody who has ever reported positive results of a psi experiment. The implication should be that they have fiddled the data to make the results look positive, whereas "more careful" skeptics (more often than not Dr Susan Blackmore or Dr Richard Wiseman) have shown that in fact they are negative.

Avoid any suggestion that skeptics have a desperate will not to believe, as is clearly the case with some. In an exchange of letters with Henry Bauer, editor of the excellent Journal of Scientific Exploration, Kendrick Frazier, editor of the Skeptical Inquirer has candidly admitted that (in Bauer's words) "the magazine's purpose is not to consider what the best evidence for anmalous claims might be but to argue against them". ( JSE, vol. 3 no. 1, 1989).


* * *

Adopt the combine-harvester approach to reports of any kind of psi phenomenon, or indeed to any kind of inexplicable or anomalous one, and keep it simple, as in this pronouncement by authors Simon Hoggart and Mike Hutchinson, from their book Bizarre Beliefs


"The terrible truth is that there are no ghosts, no poltergeists, and no hauntings. They are all mistaken, imaginary, or fakes."

* * *

You can get away with the most massive whoppers, especially on TV, if you manage to sound as if you know what you're talking about when you don't. A perfect example was provided by the narrator of Channel 4's Secrets of the Psychics (24 August 1997), which included examples of all the guidelines listed here:


"With one exception, all practising mediums were exposed as frauds or confessed."

The narrator forgot to mention who the one exception was. Among mediums who never confessed to anything and were not exposed as frauds were D.D.Home, Lenora Piper, Mrs Willett, Eileen Garrett, Rudi Schneider, Franek Kluski, the half-dozen members of the Cross Correspondence team, Stefan Ossowiecki, Pamela Curran and Chico Xavier.


* * *

It is a good idea to pretend that you are an honest, open-minded seeker after the truth but be careful not to go too far, as Professor Richard Dawkins did in his Richard Dimbleby Lecture (BBC1, 12 November 1996):


"The popularity of the paranormal, oddly enough, might even be grounds for encouragement. I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we don't understand, are healthy and to be fostered. It's the same appetite which drives the best of true science."

There could not be a clearer summary of what drives the great majority of parapsychologists.


* * *

Finally, you can always win some popular sympathy with the good old "dangers of dabbling in the occult" ploy. Suggest that actually doing any research into psi phenomena or other anomalies can only lead to another Jonestown massacre, Heaven's Gate mass suicide, or Third Reich.

Put all this sound advice into practice, and you'll be media superstars, my son and daughter.

Seems like he's describing the typical naysayer on AR.

The great Randi doesn't seem to certain as to the details of his test:

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0106/05/lkl.00.html

Of interest also:

http://www.rense.com/general32/telep.htm

http://www.marius.net/challenge.html

You love sites such as randi.org

I'm sure as the "objective" engineer that you are, you have fully investigated the other side:

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org

Ho hum. If you want to investigate the "other side," we have to ask "The other side of what?" I presume the question is whether there is any good evidence for various things listed as paranorma phenomena. James Randi says there doesn't seem to be. Guy Lyon Playfair doesn't present any in that article.

As for Randi, he comes across as the perfect sceptic and nothing in the quotes Mr. Playfair provides from Blackmore and Humphrey does either. He does not attempt to prove the negative, nor does he attempt label people like Altea on Larry King as frauds. Altea proposes that herself, with a singular lack of logic, the particular fallacy being incomplete enumeration of the possibilites.

Actually, I can bend a spoon with my mind, too. Nothing in that formulation implies I can't use my own muscles or use tools to do so.

[pctower]

Ho hum. If you want to investigate the "other side," we have to ask "The other side of what?" I presume the question is whether there is any good evidence for various things listed as paranorma phenomena. James Randi says there doesn't seem to be. Guy Lyon Playfair doesn't present any in that article.

As for Randi, he comes across as the perfect sceptic and nothing in the quotes Mr. Playfair provides from Blackmore and Humphrey does either. He does not attempt to prove the negative, nor does he attempt label people like Altea on Larry King as frauds. Altea proposes that herself, with a singular lack of logic, the particular fallacy being incomplete enumeration of the possibilites.

Actually, I can bend a spoon with my mind, too. Nothing in that formulation implies I can't use my own muscles or use tools to do so.

Ho Hum is right. I'm not the one that started the thread, nor am I the one that loves to talk about that great man of science, Dr. Randi. I have no interest in investigating any of this.

But MM seems to have more than a passing interest and I just wondered if he swallowed everything on Randi's site, including the fairness and validity of his "challenge", hook, line and sinker - I suspect he has as it all comports with the way he has already made up his mind on the subject.

I don't recall claiming that Mr. Playfair cited any evidence, so you must be confused and responding to a different post, in a different thread, on a different board.

[Pat D]

Ho Hum is right. I'm not the one that started the thread, nor am I the one that loves to talk about that great man of science, Dr. Randi. I have no interest in investigating any of this.

But MM seems to have more than a passing interest and I just wondered if he swallowed everything on Randi's site, including the fairness and validity of his "challenge", hook, line and sinker - I suspect he has as it all comports with the way he has already made up his mind on the subject.

I don't recall claiming that Mr. Playfair cited any evidence, so you must be confused and responding to a different post, in a different thread, on a different board.

You definitely implied there was another side to something or other. What is it?

You know very well that MM is more sceptical than you imply and that your "hook, line and sinker" has no basis.

[pctower]

You definitely implied there was another side to something or other. What is it?

You know very well that MM is more sceptical than you imply and that your "hook, line and sinker" has no basis.

You definitely implied there was another side to something or other. What is it?

I didn't imply - I was pretty express about it. There's always the "other side" to anything - that doesn't NECESSARILY mean the "other side" has any particular validity.

But in the real world where human's live, there's disagreement about almost everything. If one is interested in a particular subject and there are conflicting views on that particular subject, my education taught me to explore all views and evidence and not reject out of hand BEFORE INVESTIGATION information coming from a source that I just happen to "know" can't have any validity.

You want to know what the "other side" has to say. Peruse the entire site. I did. Come to your own conclusions. I've got my own views on the subject, which I have not shared or even hinted at in this thread.

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is contempt prior to investigation.

Herbert Spencer