James Randi on Magic, Skepticism, and the Future

[Music] [Music] so our next speaker today it's always a pleasure to have a speaker who can talk equally eloquently on the subjects of science and of magic and has also escaped from a straightjacket while hanging upside down from a crane over Niagara Falls that's also pretty cool James Randi started his career in this world as a magician and Escape Artist under the name the amazing Randi he is second as an escape artist only to Houdini he also broke all of Houdini's records after the fact after he was done being a magician he founded the James Randi Educational Foundation which does science and critical thinking education they also have the popular million-dollar challenge in which James Randi will give a million dollars to anyone who can prove paranormal or supernatural claims under proper testing conditions to this very day the plur eyes remains unclaimed you might remember him as the guy who busted the psychic spoon bender from Israel uri geller during the 70's there we go I can get a shout-out he also busted the charismatic Christian faith healer who was robbing people of their money and their well-being it being peter Popoff during the eighties and he's also my former employer a mentor and dear friend of mine will you please alright welcome James Randi [Applause] okay good evening oh what a crowd look at that some of them may actually believe me when I tell them the stuff I'm allowed to relate but before I begin must tell you that I arrived on this scene of this particular summit with only the most rudimentary knowledge of what was all what it was all about Barbara keep your seat I've been sitting in this room taking on a massive data that's quite astonished me ladies and gentlemen delivered by a stellar selection of dedicated experts from your President Michael Vassar to gregory stock and et al dumbest casabas reycarts while remotely you may remember all the way to the one and only living cyborg Steve man hey well no greater spectrum of talents I must say has ever paraded before me and I now stand before you very much better informed now you're faced with a tirade from an unlettered magician I admit that who just may have a few angles to offer you in your pursuit of the singularity I find this a very very interesting concept as I say I was totally ignorant about it until I arrived here boy did I get an education in the spirit of full disclosure and transparency according currently being sought from so many so called experts in politics and science all over the world I must read to you the entry that I'd planned to include in my forthcoming book my tenth a magician in the laboratory and it reads and I quote this is what I was going to put in there there exists an interesting group of very specialized folks who philosophized on the idea of the singularity that with the passing of time and with advantage and our technology it may happen that an entirely mechanical / electronic entity capable of self reproduction will be created hmm shades of Asimov's I Robot stories from circa 1940 arrives of course though hopefully not any glimmer of the 2004 movie of that name which had totally lost Isaac's theme in favor of grinding out of parody boo for the movie not for Isaac and not for the story I have little problem with the to me as an uninformed layman somewhat remote possibility of the singularity that has been postulated but considering the complexity the notion I look upon discussing it now as the equivalent of Aristotle planning and theorizing on interstellar travel based upon the science of his time hmm however since automation and artificial intelligence will are already upon us and are not now reversible I believe that we should deal with both these elements and consider how we might construct and implement imperative to protect us from becoming obsolete that's us the human species survival of the fittest is the most evident and powerful law we've ever discovered so we can learn to escape extinction by using it but from an ethical point of view we should also ask what would the future be better off without our survival we have to wonder another obvious possibility should haunt the singularity concept however we are cautioned by such savants as Stephen Hawking that perhaps Frank direct SETI project is an attempt at mass suicide that should we succeed in contacting another radically different form of life out there it might react by simply vaporizing us our own ethics concerning various relatively minor life-forms variola or smallpox occur to me might need to be considered as well well I can tell you this this text in light of what I've learned in the last 48 hours I you will be revised appropriately you're glad to hear that I'm sure now okay I'm here to talk about how we know things that's a basic question you know more specifically to discuss the presumption we all have a believing that we know things as a professional magician I have a unique understanding of the many ways that human beings can be tricked fooled scammed and bamboozled and of the ways that they often trick fool scam and bamboozle themselves given our mission oops pardon me wrong line sorry you have no idea of how often I've had descriptions from the wide-eyed witnesses that they saw some miracle or other with their own eyes that's the way they always described I saw it with my own eyes my question them to they'll always says with who else's eyes might you have seen it pray tell these folks are unaware that they make assumptions and don't think please ladies and gentlemen don't think that you can't make assumptions for example I stepped up here and I I presented myself before you and you you accepted me you know what I look like more like Charles Darwin now then then any time I'm not camera shy you know just more like Charles Darwin now than some other fellow that might have starved his way into oblivion but I think the Charles Darwin look is good for me don't you agree there you go remember he's dead so I thought Kerry get carried away with this thing now I walked out here and I tested the microphone I always do that misty but that's a really crude way of testing it because it's not really a microphone you see the microphone is embedded in my chest right here and you're hearing me through that no this is actually my beard trimmer and it's very important to have something like that in my trade so there's an assumption that you made automatically and and understandably I would be surprised to you didn't make that assumption why would a growing man come out in front of you holding a beard trimmer no good reason except to show you that you too can be fooled and that you make assumptions we all do we make assumptions you another assumption for example that that I can see you I'm looking towards you but I can't see you at all because normally I wear glasses although no no these are not glasses these are empty frames [Laughter] empty frames again why would a grown man come out here and wear empty frames in front of you and where the hell in my real glasses they're better than my chest year something where did I put those Cuba things well in any case I can probably read this here we go they're embedded in my hip right here all right now folks you made a couple of simple assumptions about me like that and you say to yourself okay there's no harm in that but look at this consider this basic fact we all have to make assumptions if we don't make assumptions we become catatonic now suppose you're crossing the street in a city that you've never been to before I can tell you because of my experience of world traveling that green lights on the the traffic box there they they mean go the red ones mean stop and the everyone means go right he'll at least in New York City they do I don't know about here but those are Universal signals and you can trust them you can believe that they probably mean the same thing in every country but when you go to step off the curb you look up and you see the light turn green now you step onto the street with a certain amount of confidence now I watched some of you people coming in here earlier today I didn't see one of you people test the chair that you're about to sit in it might have collapsed underneath you but you make the assumption that it won't do that because other people have been sitting in it before you and that's a pretty safe assumption to make but if you don't make these assumptions you can get catatonic you will seize up altogether now we don't know we don't always know when we're making those assumptions but I must say that in this regard we must be a gala terian ignorant educated it doesn't matter we live by assumptions and hopefully we will not die by them that's part of my talk today I run a nonprofit called the James Randi Educational Foundation a charlatan I don't tell you and well thank you thank you very much this is an organization devoted to critical thinking to teaching people to think critically about the world as it's presented to them that's the important part as it's presented to them we look into every sort of woowoo that's my chosen designation of such matters as ESP prophecies speaking to the dead and homeopathy and other nonsense like that and we investigate all claims of the paranormal occult and supernatural well some of these people say that we debunk these claims that no we never accept that terminology because the word debunk would imply strongly that we approach the thing as saying this is not true and I'm going to prove it not to be true no we try to get a scientific attitude going here the scientific attitude is I don't know let's find out and that's exactly what we do because we can't prove negatives you can't prove most negatives for example now I can prove that I'm not a giraffe because I don't match the description of the giraffe giraffes have longer necks and they aren't as cute so that that's pretty well that can be proven but much of other negatives there are no unicorns for example I can't prove that there may be one in South Africa someplace that I hadn't found it that no one is found I can't prove negatives of that nature now we do test people's claims and we've actually had people making claims like that they can fly by flapping their arms that's an easy test step over to the window helps you lose now it so happens that not a single claim of paranormal event or ability has ever stood up to careful scrutiny that's not our fault we're just reporting the facts given our mission and our public profiles we receive a fair number of calls from people claiming to have witnessed extraordinary things a few years ago I was sitting at my desk in our offices in Fort Lauderdale when the phone rang and my assistant came to me and said oh oh it's a fellow from Lawrence Livermore laboratories and he says we've lost the million dollars hmm well I was shocked and terrified all the tremble yeah sure had the fella got me on the phone he said I'm dr. so-and-so and I'm a physicist and I straightened up when I heard that because physics is you know the Queen of Sciences and he was calling from California and learn through rumor labs and he said we have discovered a man here and he comes from Israel no it wasn't a regular it was another gentleman from this Riojas who could do miracles and he described one of the miracles and I got my assistant to listen in on the phone and he did he nodded at me gave me the thumbs-up and I said okay what does this gentleman do and he said well he can take a box of matches and he got one in here someplace earlier little boxes of matches little wooden matches like this and he said he can play it on the back of his hand and he just gestures at it and it will stand up on the back of his hand and when I heard this I smiled because I recognized a standard kids trick you see I fiddled at my assistant it went okay and he headed off for the library came back with a copy of Martin Gardner's book impromptu magic tricks and he started to look through it and as soon as he found it I'm not doing a can count up to this you're wondering um he found it and he went off to the Xerox machine I heard him making a copy of that particular page he anticipated that I want to do and I've said to the gentleman at Lawrence Livermore I said do you have a sir I've put me a fax machine there and he said oh yes I said what is the number please and he gave it to me a live signal it to my assistant and he went over and he took the page from art and gardener's book set it into the fax machine dialed up the number pressed goal and the fellow in Lorax of Merced well I see something coming through and the facts right now I said would you read that please he said yes of course yeah I hit Send he's buzzing and then I heard a hug in Sony Mobile mobile mumble I said are you there yes I'm here I'm here I'm here I said okay what do you think of that click that was the editor let me show you the trick the man was referring to now I have to take out some of these magnets here this box just just a little bit heavy for me here and there see the matchbox a perfectly ordinary little cardboard metric that's made by a diamond match I use diamonds matches all the time when I'm setting fires yes I do I'm serious what I lied to you yeah sure now they said that he just laid it on the back of his hand like this and I said yes okay what does he do and he said he just gestures at it and it stands up in the back of his hand I thought that was pretty miraculous and he said oh boy he had told me that they went to the grocery store and they bought 24 boxes of matches this science you see and they brought it back sealed to the laboratory and they tore it open and then they took a one box at random and they marked it specially with an axe I guess or whatever or are for random who knows and they threw the rest of them away yes and they gave it to this fellow whose name was Ronnie markers by the way you'll never hear that name again but they gave it to him and he put on the back of his hand and then as they say he he just gestures at it and it stood up in the back of his hand like that and then he he were ejected out again and it laid down the back with ham and he could repeat this as many times you want you open-air winner and then it would lay down again I don't know how we've done Oh but they had examined it for threads and magnets and all sorts of things like that and these were physicists mind you PhDs in physics ladies and gentlemen not to be trifled with not at all and the trick is so simple impromptu magic trick for kids you leave the box open it's a little bit like that as you close it on the back of your hand you pinch some of the skin on the back of your hand in it like that and then you just can't touch and it goes up and then it goes back down again and then it goes back up again and you can repeat this as many times you want until people are really bored around here and go home that's all there is to it but it pulls from PhD physicist at Lawrence Livermore labs who had spent a lot of money investigating mr. Ronnie Marcus they sent him back to Israel and that's why I say to you with a certain amount of confidence you'll never hear from Ronnie Marcus again and thank you thank you thank you much but folks what is the real lesson here now let's get down to nitty-gritty here the people at Lawrence Livermore labs were looking for a phenomenon and anomaly but there was no anomaly to be had those of the laboratory had educated themselves into blindness they didn't use their brains because they were to visit using their educations let me give you an example of nearsightedness on the part of a science scientist partly who all declined to name though I must say his name has been mentioned by previous speakers at this summit I was in Boston the letters M I and T immediately suggest themselves and I saw that David Copperfield and my magician colleague was opening at a local theater and I didn't know that he was going to be in Boston at all so I called David's office and I asked if I could get some comps that is complimentary free that is passes to the theater that night and I invited all I almost said his name but not to watch out for that I invited this gentleman the physicist I invited him to come along to the theater with me and as always David had seated me in the second row and I traded seats back a few rows because if I watch David when he comes out on stage I'm in the second row I'm looking straight up his nostrils like this you see and I'd rather be back a little bit so I didn't look out of that least like this so we had very good seats and we we sat there and he did his famous flying illusion now I'm sure some of you have seen this on television it's really wonderful it's a merits illusion David Copperfield simply stands on the stage like this and he rises into the air and he flies around the state he flies by just spreading his arms like this and he flies around the stage and then he comes down to the stage and he picked up a young lady who comes up out of the audience in his arms flies up again and then flies right off stage and the curtain closes wonderful wonderful illusion but it is an illusion of course and the gentleman who was with me a physicist remember he has to think in his specialty he doesn't know the kind of things that I know about the world of illusion and he turned to me and he whispered he said that's extremely dangerous I said no almost at his name again I said no not at all and he said oh it must be you know the only way they can do this is with superconductivity and I look at him and I said how and he said well they would have a pool of liquid nitrogen underneath the stage it would be circulating and I looked at him in astonishment and he came up with this wild theory and he said that would induce a powerful electromagnetic field and he would have things on his body though and I said no no no I just turned to when I whispered a word in his ear didn't look he said really I said yeah really he said I don't see anything I said yes that's why they call it an illusion well now I'm not going to tell you the secret no don't don't you think that I am NOT for a moment well if you've seen me afterwards and you have lots of money maybe I'll talk to you now that that is too interesting because this scientist was thinking only within his own highly specialized field of expertise it was the only way he saw him doing this sort of thing he was worried about pacemakers and other devices and cell phones and various other things that would be in the audience you see and if these were affected by a superconductivity magnetic field my goodness everybody clocks and things and their watches would be getting red-hot perhaps we we don't want that no that's that's not to not to be countenanced but I tried to bring them down to earth so to speak and I certainly did with that comment I don't think to this day he still believes my explanation another example of this limited spectrum kind of thinking many years ago I was hired to do a show in New York City this has many many years back at the York Coliseum this is an industrial show and I worked for the International resistance corporation IRC at that time and it was a very very good illusion it looked like a big phone booth I'll ask you to use your imagination a big phone booth for a thing with a glass front and with a blind that came down on the inside of the glass and it was on a string at the back there that we could operate him but when the show would commence the recording would start up with the music and not the thing would go you see yeah and you would see a hand there was a pillar sitting up there and you would see a hand sticking out of the side of the pillar with a glove on it I metallic glove and it would reach around I just and pick things off the shelf and I saw two fellows now I was in behind I was the hand you see it's an optical illusion I was and there were two mirrors two diagonal mirrors and they're reflecting the walls as if that was the back of the box and I won't get into all the details it was a simple optical illusion with two diagonal mirrors that's all but it looked as if the hand was disconnected and what I would do with my hand was reach out and pick up these things that I was looking at the two gentlemen they were standing there making notes turned out they were mechanical engineers and one was saying I could hear them clean it framed it through the glass one was saying oh there must be at least 50 or 80 of servomechanisms in there and the cables must be really very very fine and they'd have to be my goodness and they went through all this technical nonsense and at one point there while they were doing the discussion the hand reached the other went like that on the glass and wave got done like that and they looked they said oh the programming on this must be very sophisticated I was the programming on it so you see ladies and gentlemen this was an optical illusion a very simple optical illusion but they they were thinking in their expertise of course now we have WC now yes we have a means of convincing people to think critically Lorde extraordinary claims the billion dollar challenge I'm sure you you have heard of this the million dollars challenge is offered to anybody who computes any paranormal occult or supernatural event of any kind under proper observing conditions it's that simple do it win the million dollars most of the applicants are dowsers over the years they've all been not all of them but many many of them didn't doubt it these are people who with a fork stick or with coat hanger wires or with a pendulum can find oil gold coal lost children they even have one bottle that's called the CDF I hate to tell you what that stands for that's Coon dog finder and they have a little container on the side where you can put a picture they're called Polaroid picture of your coon dog and that Tunes the rod so they can find that particular Coon dog yeah sure but these people do believe in this devoutly they're absolutely attached to the notion now what does it mean that most of the applicants for our million-dollar prize are dowsers what does it mean that even accredited accomplished scientists believe that fork sticks when held by sufficiently sensitive people can detect what lies beneath the soil well I'll tell you for all of our marvelous accomplishments as a species it means that our brilliance is very narrow it means that none of us are infallible it means finally they were often not as bright as we think we are my talk thus far has been building to a question and it is one that I hope we all continue to ask ourselves as our technology advances as we come closer to their arrival moment when there are applied dollars matches and surpasses the achievements of evolution and when we begin constructing intelligence equal to or surpassing our own my question is simply this if we still believe in magic if we are unable to tell the basic difference between reality and fantasy how much less equipped are we to handle far murkier questions of ethics and if we cannot handle the mercy mercy question to the ethic pardon me why should we expect humanity's sent to sensibly and ethically deal with the creation of human-like minds within a computer the people in this room may react to such a development with aplomb that those on the outside world will not ours is a culture which in the last administration at least has been science bashing one that has not given any great value to reason in the world beyond this room reason is ranked somewhere between mere emotionalism and all right hysteria yet emotionalism and the hosteria could kill us all if we're not careful and reason is what we'll say this it's anything can I'm going to show you a short video this video was made on the Carson show many years ago I think it's quite self-explanatory let's see that video if you please now you've got a small piece of tape here we're gonna look at would you tell us what we're going to see here and how you did this and what is supposed to show well we've researched peter Popoff very very well and mr. Popoff pregnant Reverend Popoff it's not going to be very happy with this I don't think they're going to see first of all a short segment of tape as you would see it if you're watching it at home this is what Popoff featured on his own program you will apparently see a healing now we went to Houston Texas and we discovered that the man was wearing of all things a hearing aid in his left ear and a manual to death Popoff themselves oh I say and a man who heals the Deaf and the blind isn't going to have much use for a hearing aid one would think if God is speaking to him maybe someone else is speaking to him so when we got to San Francisco we put this fella alakay Jason as an expert in electronics and a surveillance man and he put a scanner electronic scanner on it and we picked up something interesting but first let's look at the first cut of tape alright this is the tape as you would see it if you were watching the show okay watch the monitors who is Harold I just believe that God is going to burn those cataracts off of your eyes right now three four seven eight eight Foothill Drive I'll tell you the Angels have God around about your home just take those glasses off and put your eyes if you've got cataracts if you've got glaucoma I want you just to put your hand over your eyes as I pray for these precious well sister you've got our problems to take your glasses off lay your hands on your eyes here it comes - God is going to give these precious ones divine surgery Jesus that's it that's the anointing of the Holy Ghost praise God praise but I'll tell you the anointing is flowing through this place thank you Jesus okay now let's recap what we've seen here right these two people who were there had not met papa that's right were there so and yet he calls out his name and then he call out a number or something he called out their address their address and they're astonished to hear this because they didn't tell him but what you don't know is that his wife has been touring around the audience getting into conversation is Jesus gonna heal you today I see where do you live this kind of thing and they've filled out healing cards and advanced the program and handed them in there now backstage and someone is sitting at a transmitter backstage let's see that same segment again but now you will have the advantage of knowing what peter Popoff is hearing in his left ear through a hearing aid with the woman he's praying for her husband Harold you've got cataract I just believe is going to burn those cataracts off of your eyes right now 3 4 7 8 8 foot Hill Drive 3 4 7 8 8 foot Hill Drive I'll tell you the Angels have got around about your home just take those glasses off and put your eyes if you've got cataracts you've got glaucoma I want you just to put your hand over your eyes as I pray for these precious well sister you've got our problems to take your glasses off lay your hands on your eyes here it comes - God is going to give these this was divine search you know that is that's disturbing when you see it it isn't it you tend to laugh at it and yet these people obviously are so impressed with what's going all their absent impressed you see people collapsed when the Florrick tears running down their faces believing that their kids with drug addiction are gonna be healed now because he knew their name he says he's talking to God that God speaks directly to him because he's an anointed minister and one three things amazed me about that first of all it turns out that God's frequency I didn't know he used radio yeah his thirty nine point one seven zero megahertz and God is a woman obviously and sounds exactly like Popoff's wife Elizabeth has he seen this tape though no he does not know about this until this very moment interesting okay we'll take a break thank you now the fact is I don't think that peter Popoff represents the greatest ongoing threat to civilization but the kind of thinking that makes people believe in such thing can be the greatest threat and we all engage in it now some of their observations that I've jotted down at this summit these are personal observations and I hope you take them with a grain of salt as they say some will ooze out there that I battle with our fond of invoking entities of which they understand nothing buzz words that other woo-woos will embrace as meaningful two favorites are vibrations and quantum oh they love those words and the latest favorite term that they've come up with is quantum vibrations I see in the singularity idea many possibilities for the woowoo to seize upon to promote their notions and we may expect their imminent use of your work to dress up their delusions thank you for adding so much to my workload it seems to me that the singularity may not require all the capacity of the human brain though I hope that art love and hope among other capabilities of that human brain will not be written off the schedule but then I'm an old softie and I count puppy dogs and sunrises as essential oh do note I do not include sunsets as Elly Esther did earlier at my age sunrises are much more welcome regarding life extension which I've heard discussed here and another gatherings of you folks my personal take on that is that I'm content to be eliminated by attrition and make room for others on this crowded planet I believe that when I breathe my last as they say I'll be able to summer smirk and say gee I guess I did okay my most excellent friend Martin Gardner passed away just a few weeks ago at the age of 95 and his son reported to me that he was telling jokes 20 minutes before he died full of owners loved respected accomplished and of course now missed Martin would have appreciated this that's the way oh ha ha ha I like it he'd be highly embarrassed to know that we'd be mourning his passing so I celebrate his existence Martin thank you now I also believe that if our species manages to survive long enough the singularity is inevitable and in a sense it's already here certainly from what I've learned here at the summit the elements are already in place we only have to put them together and we can become the Creator gods that it seems our ancestors may have anticipated by developing mythology or could it be that we ourselves are the product of an intelligent design brought about in an earlier set of critters my mind boggles at that notion and it's not easily bundled I assure you so much for my observations I would like to demonstrate something I am a magician after all and I should show you a miracle of assembly religious nature I would say now I approached a gentleman I approached one young lady but I'm going to use the gentleman because he's a yes there is standing up over there hello you're looking for what okay so you can stay right we are it's okay this this young man I approached outside and I asked him with your dealer small experiment Fermi and I will recite it for you I've got the microphone so all you have to do is nod and if you disagree sit down but you won't disagree I'm sure now what I asked this young man to do was simply to go to a side table where I could not see him am I correct I was turned well away from you at quite a distance and we had found a a guidebook to New York was it yes I'm sorry I don't know it had 130 something pages in it and I asked you to simply choose one of those pages at random and you did am I correct now I wasn't anywhere near you I I stood well away from you and I said that I wanted you to just run your finger around on that page and I could not see what your there was nobody no cameras or anything like that and I asked you to run your finger around at random and stop and any word I think I might have said don't choose a word like and or thee or something very common like that funny and you chose a word I really did you okay and I asked you then oh by the way I hope you remember the word because I really hate when I say and the word is magnificent or something like that and you say I don't know I forgot I really hate that but you do remember the word don't you all right and then I asked you to tear the the entire page out of the book fold it up and put it in your pocket correct and you have it in your pocket now oh very good all right okay don't you didn't show anybody you didn't tell anybody right okay I'm gonna step over to the board here I've got a big black magic marker here someplace there we are and I'm going to start to write but I'm not gonna look at you you see that would be a psychological trick and would i trick you oh yeah because I'm looking at you and I've hit circle right here and if you see that I'm correct you'll be going be astonished you see but if I'm wrong you'll be going like this you see and that would be reading body language I wouldn't want to do that okay all right I'm going to uncap my pen here and I'm gonna stick to the board I won't look at you but I'm gonna start writing and let me see now oh boy you're know it was an English word was it oh good that helped me a great deal wait a minute all right we'll do a little broader here I think doesn't look right somehow ah if this doesn't make any sense at all ha Oh well that doesn't make any sense at all there's something awfully wrong here all right would you tell me what was the word that you that you thought of there then you selected at random yes please I'm sorry I can't hear you yes please yes the word oh oh oh this happens every now and then ladies and gentlemen he says the word that's reserved and sometimes I get them upside down [Applause] now thank you thank you sir thank you very much I and they'll all be after masters how did you do that no I didn't have anything to do with it now the point is this ladies and gentlemen I do a thing like this for you to make you be a little surprised perhaps in a book that they'd had 138 or something hundred and forty pages in it gentlemen chose any word on any page at random and I'm somehow able to tell him what it was and I never came anywhere near him I was well away from now the point is I've done a trick in mentalism mentalism is simply doing magic tricks but making it appear as if it's all done with the the encephalon up here it's an important part you should keep it if you can that is a demonstration of how easily an audience can be deceived it's the kind of thing that Mentalist and magicians like myself do all the time and we deceive you the fact that you're fooled by it doesn't mean that you're stupid because I often get scientists and academics after I do a a university show for example well come to me and say old people who believe in this sort of thing must be really stupid and then I do something like this to show them take them into the library and have them choose a book at random or something and they go dalla and I say wait a minute are you stupid and they get the message you see it's not that people are stupid it's just they're not informed I can't do brain surgery or even Bowl those aren't my specialties but I can sure as hell do a good magic trick somewhere along the line now I'm going to show you another one of my Carson show appearances this equally brief and Johnny used to call me about this particular one after he retired he would call me and discuss it sometimes because he was pretty spooked out by it as well and you may be disturbed by some of the things you see in here and I make a joke pretty well halfway into it that will probably get a titter of laughter from this audience these are very hard audience but it may get a titter of laughter from you I hope you do but I did that to her take the edge of it the blood that you'll see on the screen doesn't belong to the man on the table that should relieve you a great deal to let us see that videotape if you please okay I want to point out again for the people who just might have joined it the people who might just have to and in a little word of warning here if you have a queasy stomach the sight of blood bothers you we suggest you don't watch this this is James Randi who's gonna give you an idea of what the psychic surgeons in the Philippines actually do on people who go down there and pay good money you all set nd all right we have our patient it's all yours okay now this is the time to look away if you if you need to because it's trying to get a little Dory from now on the thank you surgeons the Philippines are they think sandy okay everything's fine they're pretty heartless folks they just don't much care for the feelings of people they don't certainly care for their health at all and of course they're not in any way trained to do this sort of thing they just put on an act as if they are trained now what you're about to see is a barehanded operation which appears to take place by actually penetrating the body believe me what you're seeing is strictly special effects it's sleight of hand and nothing more and this is the way it looks catch anything that gets down they don't get it on your trousers if they didn't help it ah this is terrible it's getting worse and worse second now wow that doesn't come out [Applause] a bonus that's a bit better just a second just one second man may be better for you it'll feel any better [Music] [Applause] and the strange thing is after this operation is all over now mind you folks I want you to bear in mind please that people are showing this as if it were really serious as if it actually did take place and as if surgery be performed people do this they go to the Philippines they spend their money and they frankly return home in most cases to die it's a little bit funny to watch it perhaps and you say gee I know it's play-acting it's not play-acting when they go by the tens of thousands every year Sanford I want to thank you for being a wonderful volunteer I think you deserve a round of applause so guys mr. Randy is out of time but what do you think should I let him keep gone well I'm very flattered by that now I've got to thank some important people here little Sean who just left I call him little Sean because I heard him as a personal assistant some years ago when he walked into my office in Fort Lauderdale looking for the position and I saw that he was actually shorter than I I seized upon him immediately he happened to also have a great deal of talent I was lucky in that but I had never really had anyone to deal with that I could look down a little bit and I let him have more time for this but Sean did a wonderful job for us and I'm very beholden to him and he left us after a year of internship and we're very grateful to have had him there so I thanked him and for associating me with the singularity summit and Michael Vassar and all the other kind folks who have been the Solow so so generous with their their attention and their care of me during my stay so there you have it folks a tirade from the resident curmudgeon from a newcomer who has been hugely entertained and informed by the singularity summit and I thank you for your kind attention thank you mr. James Randi [Applause]

Channel: singularitysummit

Views: 143,696

Rating: 4.8765254 out of 5

Keywords: singularity, singularity_summit, James Randi

Id: zLN8jzdl-6s

Length: 48min 18sec (2898 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 21 2012