Fragments of Dragon*Con: James Randi

One of the hilights of this weekend for me was meeting a personal hero of mine. His name is James Randi, and he’s a stage magician, founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation, and the adversary of quacks, fakers, charlatans, and frauds of all kinds.

I first got hooked when I read his book Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions, first published in 1982. It’s a scorching indictment of all sorts of phonies, fakes, and frauds, from so-called “psychic” and sometimes petty thief Uri “spoon-bender” Geller to “psychic surgeons” who pick the pockets of the desperate and gullible with a handful of chicken guts.

For many years now, Randi has offered a Million Dollar Challenge–a cool one million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate any psychic, paranormal, or otherwise outside the realm of conventional science under controlled conditions. The person making the claim, be it telepathy or dowsing or homeopathic “medicine” or precognition.

A lot of folks who claim to believe in these things don’t much cotton to the notion of actually testing them, and as a result there’s all kinds of objections to the challenge, ranging from “it’s impossibly biased” (in reality, it is the person who claims the ability or phenomenon, not the James Randi Educational Foundation, who designs the test and describes what constitutes a success) to the idea that Randi is somehow “anti-psychic” and his mere presence interferes with “psychic” abilities (Randi is never present at any of the tests, and he is not even informed when the tests are scheduled or where they take place) to the claim that the Foundation will always cheat to skew the results (the Foundation does not run or administer the tests; all tests are administered by a third party, often a university, that both the claimant and the Foundation trust).

In short, this guy has spent a tremendous amount of time and energy over the last couple decades in the thankless task of opposing fraud, gullibility, anti-intellectualism, ignorance, and credulity that poison and corrode reason and attack the foundation of post-industrial society. It is hard to overstate my admiration of this man; people of reason everywhere owe him a debt of gratitude.

Wen I first met him at Dragon, I had a sewing machine under my arm. That’s a whole different story, and one I shan’t go into in this post.

74 thoughts on “Fragments of Dragon*Con: James Randi

    • The world needs, I think, more people like him. It’s constantly surprising, and depressing, to me how often folks will fall for the most obvious chicanery, and how rare the cognitive tools of critical and analytical thinking are.

      Another of my heroes, Michael Shermer, was also at Dragon this year, but I didn’t meet him.

  1. Re: please?

    I have a catapult. Give me all your money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.

    In the interests of honesty, I looked it up. I got as far as “I have a catapult.” and saw that money was mentioned.

  2. Re: please?

    I’m so horribly rusty… I recognized catapult and habeum but now that I can see the translation I can nodsagely & go “Oh yes, that makes sense!” 😉

  3. Awww. Little old man who will crush you with the power of SCIENCE! That’s totally awesome. Randi is one of my favorite people.

    And please, do tell about this sewing machine. Knowing how skilled you are in the domestic arts, I do have to wonder…

  4. Awww. Little old man who will crush you with the power of SCIENCE! That’s totally awesome. Randi is one of my favorite people.

    And please, do tell about this sewing machine. Knowing how skilled you are in the domestic arts, I do have to wonder…

  5. I met Randi about ten years ago when my organization hired him to talk to us about the difference between belief and science, something which became almost immediately important after the current administration came into office. Wish they had been able to hear Randi speak, too.

    • His is a voice that definitely needs to be heard more, given the current culture of anti-intellectualism. The popularity of anti-intellectual political candidates suggests, though, that those who speak pleasant lies are always going to be more popular than those who speak uncomfortable truths. And that’s depressing.

  6. I met Randi about ten years ago when my organization hired him to talk to us about the difference between belief and science, something which became almost immediately important after the current administration came into office. Wish they had been able to hear Randi speak, too.

  7. I’ve gotten to hear James Randi speak twice, the first time was about 15 years ago when he was still fit enough to combine extensive physical demos of how many of the fraudsters work with his lecture. That was impressive as hell.

  8. I’ve gotten to hear James Randi speak twice, the first time was about 15 years ago when he was still fit enough to combine extensive physical demos of how many of the fraudsters work with his lecture. That was impressive as hell.

  9. Randi

    Randi is indeed an interesting man, but the Million Dollar Prize is pretty much bogus. It’s in bonds and Randi refuses to say what sort of bonds they are. Suspect.

    Still, a cool experience.

    • Re: Randi

      Actually, that’s not true. The “it’s in bonds and Randi won’t say where” claim is batted around on various Web sites belonging to psychics and faith healers, but it is not true at all, and can be proven to be untrue quite simply.

      The money is in an interest-bearing deposit account at Goldman Sachs. If you send a self-addressed, stamped envelope with a request for verification of the funds behind the Million Dollar Challenge to

      James Randi Educational Foundation
      Challenge Administrator
      201 S.E. 12th Street
      Ft Lauderdale, Florida
      33316

      the Foundation will send you a notarized account statement, which includes the account number and balance for the funds in question, signed by representatives of Goldman Sachs.

      Strangely (or perhaps not so strangely), the people who claim that the funds don’t exist, who claim that the funds are in bonds, and who make other claims relating to the challenge never actually seem to request that verification. 🙂 However, that doesn’t mean you can’t.

  10. Randi

    Randi is indeed an interesting man, but the Million Dollar Prize is pretty much bogus. It’s in bonds and Randi refuses to say what sort of bonds they are. Suspect.

    Still, a cool experience.

  11. Re: Randi

    Actually, that’s not true. The “it’s in bonds and Randi won’t say where” claim is batted around on various Web sites belonging to psychics and faith healers, but it is not true at all, and can be proven to be untrue quite simply.

    The money is in an interest-bearing deposit account at Goldman Sachs. If you send a self-addressed, stamped envelope with a request for verification of the funds behind the Million Dollar Challenge to

    James Randi Educational Foundation
    Challenge Administrator
    201 S.E. 12th Street
    Ft Lauderdale, Florida
    33316

    the Foundation will send you a notarized account statement, which includes the account number and balance for the funds in question, signed by representatives of Goldman Sachs.

    Strangely (or perhaps not so strangely), the people who claim that the funds don’t exist, who claim that the funds are in bonds, and who make other claims relating to the challenge never actually seem to request that verification. 🙂 However, that doesn’t mean you can’t.

  12. The world needs, I think, more people like him. It’s constantly surprising, and depressing, to me how often folks will fall for the most obvious chicanery, and how rare the cognitive tools of critical and analytical thinking are.

    Another of my heroes, Michael Shermer, was also at Dragon this year, but I didn’t meet him.

  13. His is a voice that definitely needs to be heard more, given the current culture of anti-intellectualism. The popularity of anti-intellectual political candidates suggests, though, that those who speak pleasant lies are always going to be more popular than those who speak uncomfortable truths. And that’s depressing.

  14. Randi is The Man. There’s a handful of folks I really admire–Michael Shermer, Carl Sagan, Norman Borlaug, a few others–and Randi’s name is rigt at the top.

  15. I dunno, I don’t own leather pants.

    I prefer twirly skirts myself lol. the kind that flutter up when you spin? Yeah I’m still a 5 yr old at heart lol. At least when it comes to twirly skirts lol.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.