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Originally Posted by moonrambler  Another thing -- I have a possibility for Randi's million dollar experiment, but it would take some work to figure out how to design this experiment, and I don't have much motivation since apparently Randi rejects a lot of applications. He's got a big FAQ set up to explain why various experiments will not be considered. They've got a foundation, and you'd think if this was truly a scientific exploration, he should run one of these investigations on every single application he gets (except for ones that are dangerous), no matter how looney tunes he thinks it sounds, or even if, according to Randi, science has already "proven" that the subject at hand is impossible and/or the people who believe in it are delusional. And since he can just reject applications out of hand, that doesn't tell us much.
He has rejected, for example, applications involving crop circles, UFOs, cloud-busting, Ouija Boards, psychic healing, remote viewing, telepathy, and persons subscribing to Breatharian lifestyle. (I imagine there is a danger component regarding the Breatharian to take the challenge -- Randi might get sued if the person didn't make it.) |
It's just possible that this is a sound argument, but I very much doubt it. Randi could be dishonestly rejecting tests that ought to be accepted. He often seems a rather angry and insulting man, which doesn't help us all to trust that he is also a fair-minded sceptic. I can understand you feeling demotivated from the start.
On the other hand, having read in detail quite a number of the reports of progress of applications, which are all public, I feel pretty confident that his reasons for rejecting applications are sound scientific ones. The offer was that the experiments had to be conducted under conditions that the Foundation consider scientifically sound, and that's not just to make it harder than it should be. If it wasn't scientific, we'd not learn anything very significant. If it can be sloppy at all, I could just go into a room with a friend and come out saying I'd levitated, my friend would nod, and that's that.
It seemed to me that time after time people who claimed they could do something psychic got impatient and frustrated by being advised how and why their proposals weren't scientific, and, rather than meet the challenge of developing proper experiments, they realised that they increasingly looked like failing the rational test and quit, giving Randi a ticking off for being closed minded and mean. But James Randi didn't invent the structures of scientific experimentation, double-blind, randomised trials and so forth, he just required people to use them, and spent a good amount of time and energy helping them work towards that.
Some of these failed applications actually looked unbelievably like the con artist being told,
no, you must do your magic trick without the audience being blindfolded half the time. Many others, I'm sure, were absolutely convinced of their abilities, but the process of applying logical testing to their belief gradually made them give up, either realising their mistake or, more usually just swearing a lot and going off to preach to the converted (including themselves) again.
The Foundation did not reject applications because the phenomenon in question was already thought to be disproved by science, as you suggest. It was understood that the onus is on someone who claims to have supernatural powers to demonstrate that it is no more than fluke results they are getting. You might say that's the same thing: false until proven true, but if it weren't that way we'd all accept that the moon is made of green cheese, or any old nonsense we feel like (pardon me while I cough). I don't think they ever turned applications down on the grounds that the person was delusional.
Of course, there is another line of argument altogether that LoAers keep saying, about Randi only getting what Randi's looking for, which is precisely what the LoA says he
would get. I find that rather weak when the theory says its adherents could manifest all sorts of things, yet they're trying endlessly to work out why they're not succeeding (cylon:
If you could manifest a million dollars why would you bother going the Randi Route? That's not how I would do it. - the thing is, cylon, you can't do it!), or why it is that they only get their significant results and synchronicities when they're not trying (UM - Unintention Manifestation
- they get things they
didn't intend - and
still count it as a positive result - wow! hat's off to the universe for its weird trickery).
Funny how sceptics are getting the rational universe we are told we're unconsciously projecting outwards, but believers in LoA can't reliably toss a few more heads than tails if someone's watching. Could it just possibly be because the world
isn't as spooky as you'd like it to be? What about considering the idea that sceptics
aren't projecting their beliefs, but are actually bothering to discover things about the real world?
(with apologies for ranting as if at you personally, moonrambler, when you are agnostic)