
The Unbelievable Skepticism of the Amazing Randi - elemeno
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/magazine/the-unbelievable-skepticism-of-the-amazing-randi.html
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nemo1618
>he hates to see them lose, he said. “They’re always rationalizing,” Randi
told me as we walked to dinner at the casino steakhouse. “There are always
reasons prevailing why they can’t do it. They call it the resilience of the
duped. It’s with intense regret that you watch them go down the tubes.”

It's nice to see that Randi is still able to see these people as human beings,
rather than charlatans to be disproved. I was a big fan of his back when I was
reading a lot of Ayn Rand and preaching Reason as the only god, and I took a
sort of smug pleasure in watching him debunk psychics and mystics. But I
realize now that that was just another form of dehumanization.

On an unrelated note, I recall an interview where Randi said he never took
drugs because he sought to experience "the realest reality." That strikes me
as very odd. Surely hallucinations are a part of reality, albeit a highly
subjective part. I'm surprised that someone so involved with the paranormal
would have no interest in studying the psychedelic experience.

~~~
wozniacki

      I was a big fan of his back when I was reading a lot of Ayn
      Rand and preaching Reason as the only god
    

Could you share how you've come to see things differently than through the
lens of reason, since then?

What triggered that change?

At the risk of sounding critical, I want to know how individuals consciously
depart from their reason-driven worldviews to something driven by another
agent. Emotion perhaps?

Please elaborate.

~~~
anonymfus
He started "Reason" with uppercase R and used verb "preaching", this means
that he probably tried to express some sort of irony and he doesn't really
consider Ayn Rand's worldview "reason-driven".

~~~
wozniacki
I am neither a detractor of Ayn Rand's worldview nor do I think her views are
exclusively molded by reason.

In fact, if anything, I think Reason ( or reason ) - as in the opposite of
emotion and sentiment-driven - is a very good instrument to deal with the
problems of the world.

It imbues a dose of balance to our thoughts and actions, both of which are
sadly lacking in the highly emotion-driven decision-making of the modern
world.

We are as much creatures of emotion now, as we have ever been.

Reason does not inform our decision making, as much as it should.

~~~
xorcist
Rand's reason is reason in name only.

Pretentious naming is something it has the dubious honor of sharing with
something for example Scientology ("but .. we're not a religion, it's all
scientifical!" was what they started out with).

There are parallels in everything from geopolitics to literature: If you feel
the need to be extra explicit about your name, it's should be a pretty big
warning to everyone that there are issues with it.

------
pyronite
To anyone interested in reading more about skepticism, Carl Sagan's _Demon-
Haunted World_ is one of the most impactful books I've read on the subject.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-
Haunted_World](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World)

------
whiddershins
I think Randi has probably done incredible good in the world. Getting rid of
ignorance is thankless work.

~~~
mtdewcmu
I like Randi and I went to see his presentation when he came to my college
campus years ago. I've never felt in much danger from the types of spoon-
benders and various charlatans he targets, though. Maybe I'm just naive, but
somehow I can't imagine those types of folks gaining an appreciable number of
followers, even if never formally debunked.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of successful charlatans and frauds out
there. But those ones aren't fools. It's those that worry me.

~~~
sampo
GMO food is effectively forbidden in Europe, even though the scientific
consensus is that GMO crops are no more dangerous than non-GMO crops. The
politicians just don't listen to the scientists.

~~~
consideranon
While I agree that GMO crops are no more dangerous from a human health
perspective, there is a very real concern that the rapid introduction of
entirely new varieties of crop, that under cultivation would take hundreds or
thousands of years to develop and introduce, can have negative and unforeseen
ecological effects.

This more reasonable side of the anti-GMO argument tends to get drowned out
and dismissed when people see the pseudoscience 'natural' health arguments
brought out front and center. It's pretty evident that arguments for restraint
for reasons of long-term sustainability take a lot of effort to get any
traction, especially when fighting profitability.

All this to say, the GMO debate, like everything in life, is not as simple as
most people tend believe. It is something that should be proceeded with
caution, but certainly continued. This I think is where I think the almost
religious anti-GMO fervor really causes harm, in the same way anti embryonic
stem cell research causes harm.

Move fast and break things is a great slogan when the systems you're moving
are relatively simple and the consequences of breaking them are relatively
minor. Global ecology is an extraordinarily complex system that we don't fully
understand, and breaking it can cause real and life threatening damage to the
people of the world. Not to mention the fact that reverting negative changes
operates on the same time scale as the original negative change. If it happens
that GMO breaks shit, you can't just submit a patch and have things working
again in a couple hours.

~~~
sampo
> there is a very real concern

Also e.g. anti-vaccine people have very real concerns. They just are not
scientifically founded.

Here is a summary report on 10 years, 200 million euros of research in Europe:

 _" The main conclusion to be drawn from the efforts of more than 130 research
projects, covering a period of more than 25 years of research, and involving
more than 500 independent research groups, is that biotechnology, and in
particular GMOs, are not per se more risky than e.g. conventional plant
breeding technologies."_

ref.: A decade of EU-funded GMO research (2001 - 2010)
[http://ec.europa.eu/research/biosociety/pdf/a_decade_of_eu-f...](http://ec.europa.eu/research/biosociety/pdf/a_decade_of_eu-
funded_gmo_research.pdf)

Can you give any scientific references to support your "very real" concern?

~~~
xorcist
> Also e.g. anti-vaccine people have very real concerns. They just are not
> scientifically founded.

They also have some very real concerns. It makes it all very complex to weed
out who what to listen for and from who. The answer is probably that you
should listen to arguments, not persons, and that you should begin with the
arguments you find strongest.

(See for example Ben Goldacre's Bad Pharma about medicine research.)

------
wpietri
It makes me so happy to see him getting this deserved attention while he's
still around to enjoy it. 20-odd years ago I was lucky enough to see him
perform and speak and he was indeed amazing.

For those who want to know more about him, there's a recent documentary out:
[http://anhonestliar.com/wp/](http://anhonestliar.com/wp/)

It's a great example to me of how Kickstarter can really work. I was happy to
help fund it. They raised circa $100k over the goal, and I'm sure that's
because there were a lot of Randi fans like me who were happy to chip in.
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/220588101/an-honest-
lia...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/220588101/an-honest-liar-the-
amazing-randi-story)

------
ivanca
In case some of you don't know it his foundation YouTube channel is really
good:
[http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesRandiFoundation](http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesRandiFoundation)

------
jaredandrews
I'm surprised they didn't mention it in the article but BBC just released a
great doc about Randi. It covers all the same stuff in this article but goes
into a lot more detail, showing many of his confrontations with Geller,
Popoff, etc.

Stream here:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04ndsb3/storyville-201...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04ndsb3/storyville-20142015-8-exposed-
magicians-psychics-and-frauds) (UK only but the tech savvy reader may be able
to find it elsewhere)

------
Animats
That NYT article is a put-down. "Unbelievable Skepticism"? No. Believable
checking. Calling bullshit on phonies. Somebody has to do it.

~~~
arjie
It's just a reference to the style in which roadside attractions, circus show
performers, and fortune tellers are billed. The Amazing Randi was the man's
stage name so it comes together for a clever title.

~~~
kremlin
I see the cleverness in the title; I also see that it's most obvious, and
literal, interpretation is one of putting down his skepticism. Before reading
the article, I thought it was going to be about how James Randi is too
skeptical.

------
jensen123
I wonder if most people (both sceptics and believers alike) are more eager to
confirm their existing beliefs, than finding the truth?

~~~
cbd1984
That's a known failure mode of the human mind. It's common to everyone.

The asymmetry comes from the fact only skeptics have the tools to demolish
beliefs. Believers, by definition, can only cling to them; once they try to
test them and are willing to relinquish them, they become skeptics.

