The Amazing Randi | James Randi | Talks at Google

very good speaker James Randi world-renowned edition psychic debunker MacArthur Fellow and he can talk about himself better than I can ladies and gentleman James Randi I got your late did you bring a note well it's okay good morning and I'm I am suitably and similarly edified to see so many people with their eyes actually open astonishing and their hearts presumably going at the same time I am I'm on some sort of a jetlag I don't know I used to I used to be much easier for me on jetlag I could go to any distance lot in the world and wake you up in the morning I doused to myself this is a breakfast and I'd hear a little sit inside it would reset you know at at my advanced age at 78 shortly to be all and a couple of days to be 79 as a matter of fact I don't find this happens quite as fast so I I congratulate you all for rising so early as the gentleman told you my name is James Randi I was no unprofessionally as the amazing Randi of all things and it was better than being the great Rabi I am great too but I didn't want to advertise that you know so I consider myself to be mildly astonishing at this point or perhaps surprising I'm not too sure I thought I just walked up these stairs here I must tell you that I'm just recovering from a double bypass with complications and I don't recommend it so I would try to avoid it if you possibly can but I lost 26 pounds in doing that and a bit of fallout from that by the way is in the pants that are now had four and a half inches taken in but I go for my pockets I do this oh I have to move back that's a little fallout from that that I hadn't anticipated so having been covered being in the state of recovery that I am walking up the stairs has certain amount of importance to me because I've able to manage it very well thank you and I've been going to the gym three days a week and just recently I got a call from a gentleman who will be joining you people at Google Edie Lou the astronaut who is now coming to be a Google person and you will enjoy Edie Lou first of all his name is very easy to write Edie Lu you know it doesn't take a long time or anything like that when you're writing invitations for him to come to parties he had and his beautiful wife and adorable little child will be here before too long I'm sure and make his acquaintance he is a most remarkable gentleman he called me a few months ago and just wanted to inquire about the state of my recovery from this operating procedure and I laid a bit of a joke on him you see I had been in contact in one way or the other we did the first card trick in space literally the first card trick in space he would I met him in Houston Texas some years ago at the Houston Space Flight Center he came up with an idea where you're sitting there imbibing coffee and he said why don't we do a trick from the ISS to the earth and I said it's not a bad idea at all let's do it and I said all you have to do is just take along a deck of cards a sealed deck of cards up into space and I will have one back on earth and NASA will connect us and the whole business and he was instructed to take his deck courage and shuffle it up as I did back at home base in Fort Lauderdale Florida and put it behind his back and take one card out and turn it over in the pack and reinsert it into the back and he did that of course he didn't know what the card was and I said I'm doing the same thing here now okay I said now I want you to look through your your card deck until you you'll find the one that's turned over it right on camera there he course he's floating around like this while he's doing it and manage that I tried but fell off the table and one card he turned around stuck at the back and he said is seven new drivers yes so that I said live wallah and I found out my deck and there was a card turned over that pulled it up and it was a seven of diamonds a miracle of a summary religious nature obviously and well thank you no you didn't see it so you shouldn't be applauding but the the point was of course the dead had no idea how it was done and NASA was bothering him for weeks afterwards calling him yet mister at lujah so this is someone saw some high as they showed Ernie that by the way how did you do that card trick and he had no idea how we've done of course he was quite an innocent bystander my victim I you refer to them as my victims and he had called me anybody to see how well I was doing and I said that I'm doing very well I'm doing three days a week at the gym now as I was saying what we got I was keeping track of what he was doing and I saw him on the exercycle all the time whatever I I was able to pick up the the NASA broadcast and transmission I should say and so I set him up for a bit of a joke I said I'm off to the gym and I'm doing the same thing that I see you doing on the ISS and that is I'm on an exercycle and I figure at the gym I have already boiled all the way to Mexico City and back without leaving the gym and I've rode my way halfway across the Atlantic and I'm on my way back and he said well he said I got that all over you and I said why I said he said to me so I was traveling at 18,000 miles an hour when I did it and I said and I this is the question I knew the answer to it you see so I set him up for it I said well think now are you sure you were facing the right direction and I knew he wasn't Jessie yet his backs of the way that the the ISS was traveling and he thought for a moment that I heard no I guess not I said do you owe me all that mileage so that's a that I I asked you to look forward to the advent of Idi Liu on your horizon here you're going to enjoy this man he's a smart cookie matter of the great sense of humor obviously cuz he managed to survive me and I think you're going to enjoy his his presence among you now I was referred to in the introduction erroneously I must say as a debunkers I don't accept that terminology debunker to me would be someone who goes into an investigation announcing an advance this is not so and I'm going to prove it to be not so I can't afford that now I'm not a scientist but I try to at least follow scientific protocols whenever I can manage to know I go into something as an investigator not a debunk er if you announce your your attitude what you want to fight or what you expect to find in advance that's not really the way a scientist should go about it now I know that in science yes that's usually the case you you have a conclusion that's in mind and you want to examine it to see if that conclusion is correct technically speaking perfectly speaking I would say ideally speaking you should go into it say I just don't know but I'll find out now I investigated Tooth Fairy the Easter Bunny and a few things like that along the way and Santa Claus as well now I'm 78 as I said and seventy seven Christmas Eves I've sat by the chimney and waited so a hundred percent of my evidence indicates to me that he's not going to be coming down the chimney next time so this next December the 25th I'm going to go to bed early now I hate to admit that because I've given up the scientific pursuit of whether or not fat guys in red suits can get down chimneys but I think the answer is probably no so there's some things that are pretty evident to us that we don't have to really look into and I what I look into claims of telepathy and such I have to say probably not very very probably not because I don't know of any motifs that could be used to transfer thoughts from one mind to the other you know they the amount of energy generated and the signal generated is not great enough I'm pretty sure of that but I don't know I better find out when it comes to things like homeopathy oh boy homeopathy let me give me my quick rundown on homeopathy now the kind of thing that my foundation the James Randi Educational Foundation investigation that offers a million dollars for evidence of by the way deposited with goldman sachs and you can check it out it's there and use usable only for the primary for that purpose we offer this prize to anyone who can prove any paranormal occult or supernatural event of any kind under proper observing conditions it's that last phrase that gets them they apparently can't do it under proper observing conditions they'd like Mugu conditions so that's a general term that i use to cover this this field we offer this prize and we have offered this prize now for I guess we're in our 12th year of offering the actual million dollars now the fact that no one is collected it doesn't mean that these powers don't exist it just means that nobody yet has collected it so we're willing to be shown now I certainly won't live long enough to see any serious challenge omitted but one of these things there is such thing as homeopathy for example would not seem to come but under our venue there's not paranormal supernatural but if it worked after I describe it to you I think you'll agree with me it certainly would be supernatural how many by show of hands how many people might have an idea that they know something about homeopathy they generally know what it is let's see hands oh I see well well informed audience I like that I wasn't warned of that in advanced chief of homeopathy originated with a man named Hanuman Samuel Hahnemann who lived in Switzerland where I must add most of the quackery today comes from literary it does oh yes and all kinds of magnets to put into your shoes and mysterious vibrations in the wafers and whatnot it's incredible how much comes out of Switzerland Hahnemann came up with the idea with for homeopathy and was very very popular immediately because in his day they were barely out of the the age of Paracelsus and Paracelsus was very fond of giving people all kinds of esoteric things like Cala bell which is a derivative mercury and the patient's symptoms one of I immediately would so did the patient unfortunately but there were very very good-looking corpses in the in the funeral parlor I'm sure because a calomel has a way of clearing the complexion so you died looking really good now Paracelsus you know that that was not really medicine as we know it today not at all but Hahnemann came up with the idea of very small doses of medicine would be just as effective and more effective than large doses now this is what they do and these are a few of the simple rules I can't go into the whole thing or we'd be here for many weeks the first rule of homeopathy is that you take one part of medication X whatever it is okay and you dissolve it we're assuming that it's soluble in water that for the for the case that I'm going to suggest here one part of it ten parts are nine parts of water bribe me okay that's so that's a one solution they call that in other words 10 to the power one okay you take oh pardon me you have to sucess it I forgot to tell you about that you have to shake it in three dimensions 10 times 10 is the magic word in homeopathy sounds woohoo doesn't it any it is but it sold all over the world for fortunes at ten times this way ten times this way at ten times this way that's success now that's a once of the then you take one part of that solution to put it in nine parts of water that becomes after your success in the current context for the whole thing it now becomes a two solution one part in 100 you'll see they keep on going doing this shaking shaking shake and they have the machines to do it they actually have in the factory they have the machines that do this in Tung Tung ten times the thread pen and it sometimes this way and it's official then and they continue it on for at least 20 of these procedures at least 20 of these procedures and they prefer 30 because that's what it really gets actives you'll see now wait a minute what about this guy who's his name Avogadro very very inconvenient gentlemen who decided that he's old laugh at science at 10 to the 23rd or might 10 to the minus 23 I should say you reach avocados lumbered which says in case you've forgotten from high school that you have a probability of there being one molecule or atom of the original substance president the solution by the time you get to 10 to the 24th which is still well under the tent of the 30th if they really love you have one chance in ten of their being one molecule or atom of the substance still in place okay they go all the way up are you all seated no you you folks at the back hold on okay they go up to the power of 10 to the minus 1500 that's dilute you can't get diluted here than that if that's a good word now my good friend Martin Gardner I'm sure you know of Martin Gardner he's 94 going on 95 and his his smart today as he was when he was a teenager and that's pretty damn smart I called Martin and I said I need some sort of a little metaphor for lay audiences not that you're a lay audience of course I to try to explain the sort of thing and he he worked something out for me and he said yes if you I went to the dilution of 1500 you would have enough well first of all as I talked to about the duck liver compound there's a very popular is sold in all drug stores here all over the country and all over the world as a matter of fact a cure for flu symptoms and it's made from duck liver well it's easy on the Ducks because the medicine prepared from one duck liver would be enough to fill a sphere the size of the solar system with the Sun at the center and the orbit of Pluto at the outside on all sides now that's an awful lot of water where you going to get it and where you're going to stir it or how you're going to shake it I don't know but I'll leave the problems to them there the homeopathy and they should be able to handle this sort of thing homeopathy is the silliest damn idea it's just ridiculous it's incredible that anyone a could come up with the idea and more seriously how anybody could believe it but it is sold all over the world and the third rule of homeopathy the more dilute the medicine is the stronger it is da that's a word I use frequently da Thank You Homer Simpson the stronger it is reading what we had in case of a fellow died in Fort Lauderdale I just heard about it a couple of weeks ago there he died of an overdose forgot to take his medicine all right okay all right you're talking about a man's death now he perished it was a terrible thing to see terrible thing to see so folks that's just one thing that we have to consider at the James Randi Educational Foundation in Fort Lauderdale Florida WWE are ngor G look it up we have to consider the homeopathy from that description would have to be paranormal or supernatural if it worked at all now does it work at all well we've done comprehensive tests of it just a couple of years ago on bbc4 the the it's at the Royal Academy of the Royal Institution afternoon in Britain any UK or it's out there yeah look I wouldn't rule a society I think probably yes okay yes I'm sorry pardon my ignorance that is the effects of the operation folks I I did a test I had them do the chest oh by the way yes when they did the test I sent them a protocol that I suggested for her and the homeopathy accepted it because and I I decided because it's in line with what home you're past due or think they do and I said to them I said I don't want to know when the test takes place however I only want to know well after the test has been done and the figures have all been recorded and whatnot and they said why I said because the homeopaths as well as many other people who want to be tested by our foundation they say that I shouldn't know about it because if I know about it then I can put out negative vibrations da again negative vibrations that will inhibit the experiment you see so I want to make sure that I didn't know when it was being done and what they called me and said it was done I said ah quelle suprise you know I mean I really didn't know and what were the results oh we can't tell you mister out at your request I said that's true so we had the statistician there prepare all the information error bars the whole business but not actually enter the data to it until I arrived in the UK and I sat in front of cameras the Royal Society and the the president I believe over the Rose Society being there with me and he said are you ready mr. right now I was suffering from laryngitis I had developed it on the plane somehow and they got several camera shots of me going like this looking worried at the BBC actually edited that and I wasn't the least bit worried friends I had a million dollars riding on it from my foundation but not the least bit worried and so they edited that in so I had to chide the BBC for that so next time you see a BBC or give a little shot on my behalf and so they press the buttons on the computer and she up it came error bars like this data very nicely in the middle of it Thank You hallelujah and not only did we not have to give up the million dollars but then we had to listen to the homeopath sake oh those homeopaths didn't know what they were doing well we had chosen that their top people Reilly was one of them who is the Royal homeopathy the royal family in England depends on homeopathy by the way have you seen the state of the House of Windsor lately yes aside from the fire I mean they haven't been doing very well have they but they depended on homeopathy ever since it started in Switzerland way back now again this is one of the subjects that we had to make an exception for to handle it because I thought it was important but there are all kinds of other subjects now who applies for our million-dollar prize hundreds of people over the years 85% of them are dowsers diviners people with pendulums or with parallel coat hanger wires or what's a fork stick that's the original that's the honoured way to do it you see now that we in Italy we did a test of dowsing oh this was many years ago now this before the million dollar prize was in existence and there's one poor gentleman there oh it hurts me to even think about this he had this fork stick like this now what you do is you hold it like this you see and you tension always kind of go down or up no two ways about it it's a green stick is he very flexible so to keep it steady you have to do this kind of thing you have to really work and you sits there and it trembles up and down and they look at this as oh that's the force this force that's what's happening it wants to go up or down and you're preventing it from going up and down you keep it yet balance and this poor chap was walking along and suddenly it flipped downwards think about that well hi that was quite a surprise so he got it straightened out again and he walked rather funny after that but then it clipped upwards hit him between the eyes and really broke his glasses into the frames and he he had to walk around with the glasses more like this on his face the poor chap I mean he was not only wounded almost mortally but blinded at the same time he didn't find the water underground that we had planted we had set pipes outside there on the ground and we dug the the pitch simply put the pipes and then we had a set of valves that would send it through one of them at random one of the paths that under the ground there and they failed miserably on that but the dowsers always fail and why do deserts believe that they can really do this because of a thing known as the ideomotor reaction it doesn't mean you're an idiot if you have it what it means is that you were actually moving the dowsing stick yourself and you're not aware of it you're actually because as it's always with the system in poor equilibrium a pendulum for example very hard to keep that from swinging very very hard and you'll actually see people we fastened little a sequence to the back of their hands and reflected lasers off them so that you see them jumping all over the ceiling they're supposed to be sitting perfectly still like this with the with the dowsing with the pendulum in their hand and you see the that it's actually doing this kind of thing they're actually moving their hand and they're unaware of it now that may be hard for you to believe that they're unaware of the fact that they're actually moving the pendulum or the stick or the coat hanger wires oh with the coat hanger wires that's an interesting thing about dowsing to the school of dowsing they love to use these coat hanger wires that are bent like this and you hold them you try to hold them parallel you see and you walk a lot and if there's water flowing underground of course well what will they do what they cross here will they diverge well half the dowsers say that they should diverge when there's water underground the other half say that they cross so they disagree fundamental part there's also another division among the dowser they say it was never wear insulating Footwear the others say you must always wear insulating Footwear so there's disagreement among the ranks here you see but the basic fact is that none of them can dowse because we have we have established the fact over the years that no dowser can find the same spot twice and no two dowsers can same find the same spot once well that's that's rather damning I would say but these people believe in it because the ideomotor reaction is very strong I can't describe to you how strong it is unless you've experienced it yourself give you an example in Australia from my good friend Dick Smith there who is always willing to sponsor such a set of experiments we set a bunch of dowsers out into the into the field and we tested them thoroughly and they got exactly again error bars and results all in here we got exactly what we would expect by chance alone well deck Smith after that I assembled the $11 who had come from all over Australia and already be tested and he asked them a basic question how many of you still believe that you have the power to Dallas and they all shut up their hands because there is no convincing diss convincing I should say the true believer no matter what evidence is presented they can fail any number of times consistently and they still believe they've got the power no matter what so all the hands shot up and then one fella drew his hand down like this and dick jumped on a right way and said you don't believe you got the party said well I didn't say that no I had doubts about it now I have to think about this so a little bit more I think and dick turned to me and he said we got one other level we've never gotten the highest score like that I said no no we haven't gotten them yet give them four or five days I was wrong it only took him two hours he called for vote on the road after he had left and he said he figured out it was the walkie-talkies we were using to keep in communication they set up radio frequency he said he described it in detail radio frequency right and that's what interfered with the dowsing powers Oh drat we failed again now they the reporter that was there covering this for some scientific magazine I forgot what it was now he said but why did they believe and I told him it's the ideomotor effect and that I thought wow you know yeah little ding little light bulb or whatever now it's an incandescent one yeah a fluorescent wouldn't save power as you know and I got this great idea and I stuck to a filing cabinet was a big speaker magnet you know from interior of a a regular cone speaker very very strong you have to slide to the edge of the filing cabinet pull that off very very strong field and I laid it face up on the desk and I gave him one of the dowsing rods his coat hanger wire like this and I said now take it just pass it over the top of the magnet he did in pine and I pulled it down I said okay now you know that at that distance it'll pull it down I pulled it off and I said here take it and hold it sufficiently high up above here so you'll only feel the effect I said wait night rearranged a few things here and I said and it will work through a piece of cardboard too by the way and I had a piece of cardboard there and they laid that over top of the magnet and I said that doesn't inhibit result of course oh she would probably know and I said raise just past the dowsing rod back and forth until you just feel it as it passes over the magnet and he did this and he said oh yes you can I said you can feel it tugging said oh yes it very definitely it tugs right at this position here he moved it back for it and I said okay now move it away and I just flicked the cardboard off there was no magnet there I serve dishes he being a conjurer you see I had scooted it over to the far side of the desk and he looked at he passed the rod back again this time he didn't feel that the pulling power that's the ideomotor effect it's really a positive psychological effect you believe that you feel something like that when it's not there and that's why the dowsers are so convinced that they have the power to dowse now I think maybe it's time to throw it open to questions and perhaps answers I may have suggested a few thing and maybe you'd have questions about the status of the billion dollar challenge or how we would pay it up and whatnot I will add in advance there are two stages to testing further million dollar first of all you have to make application and fill out your description of what you can do under what circumstances with what accuracy three simple things that they can't seem to manage for some reason or other get the statement notarized and they sent it in and then there are two stages the preliminary stage and they the formal stage of the test no one has ever passed the preliminary stage at all the years that this prize has been out there no one has ever what you can't come close to it you see because the rules are laid out in such a way this is a successful result this is not a successful result and there's no arguing and no judging no evaluating or assigning value to it know it you either do it it's like I can fly by flapping my arms step over to the window you lose sorry you know it's decisive you don't have to make a decision on it and they always say old James Randi is the one who makes the decision no there's no decision to make and in most cases I have nothing to do with the testing procedure what sir we get Oh some of you folks here might be available for that purpose if if somebody in San Jose for example decides they want to take the million-dollar prize we can send them around here to be tested oh boy that would be fun yes so we're looking for volunteers all the time people who are capable of of doing such a simple test you see these are very simple tests because they're very simple folks what can I say so I'll say that in preparation for what might be questions and hopefully will be answers and by the way holding your hand up it's not like this this is holding your hand up okay just in case you weren't aware of that let's see hands yes sir wait wait I'll get the mic over oh yes I'm sorry I was wondering what your opinion was on the global consciousness project well this is not something that you made a global consciousness you said yes other global conscious yes yes yes who present a memory lapse here but who who have people in behind that you don't know what well I don't know either so there you go I can't think I am having memory lapses folks I apologize for that long out of settings over a period of 14 months and I have having memory lapses the global consciousness any way I can describe that to you this is an idea that there's some sort of a of a mother lode of thoughts or something out there that everybody is in connection with everybody all brains are in contact with lichens and various forms of other boss and other individuals and Republicans you know people like that that there is some sort of communication or connection a global network all over the world and they they look at what they do is they they look for anomalies in nature and they try to make them correspond or relate to such things as 9/11 for example oh they they find relationships of course they don't look for something for eight eleven or even nine ten they don't look for it they only look for it at nine eleven because something really happened there you see that show was rather important socially and ecologically and emotionally but the global consciousness thing they are data searching they are literally data searching they are looking for something that they believe should be there after the event and you can't do that you you should be able to announce that certain things when there are certain Peaks that that you're looking for that they exist you don't have to go look for an event to match up to it because somebody's birthday might be much more important than some other kind of the Titanic say sinking or something like that although I don't think global consciousness was around but the Titanic was sailing the oceans I'm pretty sure of it no that's such a general claim it is such a general claim and it does not stand examination when you see the way they consider the data though it's very popular among the woowoo artists out there and there are many many of them perhaps even in the same room I'm not sure but you'll all be tested shortly so bear that in mind other questions that we could yes back there have you thought of charging an entry or application fee so that then you can offer a two million dollar prize soon okay well what we've done is we've changed the rules of application for the prize now if we charge any kind of a fee there's a I some money making scheme you say so and we're a 501c3 after all so we have to be careful that respect and of course I wouldn't do that ethically in a way but we have changed the rules just recently as of April the 1st which we thought was a good day to change them we were founded on April the 1st as a matter of fact and I wish I'd been born of April at first I tried hard but wasn't able to manage it we changed the rules now people all the applicants have to have a a media presence that means they have to have been written up or featured on a TV show and not say Oprah or something important like that but they have to it can't be the local chiropractor news or something like that but it has to be something a reasonably recognizable as a media presence and they have to have at least one academic to support them now that latter one would be very easy to do because we have academic oh look at Brian Josephson Nobel laureate a winner in the UK and Cambridge oh he said to us some time ago - Bob Park my good friend Bob Park with the American Physical Society he wrote them and he said I'm sure the APS won't bother to look into benveniste Ames that's a scientist recently deceased unfortunately in France who was probably plugging up the whole homeopathy picture he said I'm sure you won't use benveniste to test told me opti so Bob called me and said what do you suggest we do I said except except that I'll throw my million dollars in - and so he not only did that but he said the American Physical Society the APS will cover all expenses of this which would have come to you about ten to fifteen thousand dollars and they were willing to fund I never heard from Josephson from this moment on now there's a Nobel laureate in physics who you know physics is the queen of Sciences right right yeah well okay some discussion on that matter - I'm told Josephson hasn't responded to us since that time not a word not a word out of them and benveniste conveniently perished so we don't get much reaction to that anymore but the fact is that scientists are not immune to this kind of thinking not at all may not be a surprise to many people in this room but it is true you would think that people who are trained in science and in logic and rationality would have a better picture of how the real world works and that they wouldn't accept some of these woowoo things but they do David Bohm at one point fell for it as well and believed that area Geller could actually bend spoons with his mind ooh now there's a youthful talent by the way it's moved humanity forward enormously as we know in the last 35 years since it was invented other questions we passed that along yes sir have you ever tried the I'm feeling lucky button well you know a good friend of mine Richard Wiseman in the UK a parapsychologist who has never had a positive experiment in his life and is proud of it no he's our good friend and he knows how to do science he set up kiosks all over the UK with multiple choice questions on there I had to guess I think was just a heads or tails thing as to what would happen on the screen and such and he found out an astonishing fact ladies and gentlemen laws of statistics still work distribution permutations combinations still works folks so in case you are wondering whether those laws were giving up or whatever due to the president administration with face based reasoning of course you know apparently that is not the case and Wiseman per add a huge database I forgot what it was now but a huge database and automatically recorded by all these machines these kiosks all they got a good some good funding for a tooth from some agency out there and so the the law of probability laws of probability still work at and statistics and all that kind of things so you can be perfectly safe other questions yes yes sir do we related questions first what's the most interesting claim you've ever received and second has anybody claimed that it could fly or levitate timing I told you levitate it let me taste it ah well I have we have had a lot of claims of levitation yes but they usually don't go beyond the application point you see most of the applications are good oh good I'd say 75 maybe 80% of the application never go beyond the stage of sending in the form and then we can't contact them what PhD here in California as a matter of fact not far from here as a matter of fact it was to actually teaches remote viewing that's casting your mind off to Jupiter or to Afghanistan or something they never want to cast it to Fort Lauderdale weather weather is much nicer because I have a coverage there a locker presently with something close that every two weeks we change the object that's in there all you have to do it do the remote viewing and there and tell us what it is me and you win the prize but the this word was I yes the xi old levitation the levitation thing we we get claims for this constantly but again never go beyond that certain point of just sending in the the forum because they can't decide how they're going to do it see I want you to float oh well now you're putting me to the test yes that's the idea million dollars in here you see what was the first part of your question I'm sorry both in the most exciting claim oh well most interesting case they're all mildly interesting and some a little more interesting than others well we've had claims most of the claims are on healing that we that we get that are interesting because they can cure one specific thing usually I can cure menopause or something like this and we get this frequently oh yes and oh they're there one of the things that maybe I can't get into some of the details of them but one lady was sure that she could arouse a gentleman's interest in certain directions by remote control we we decided that maybe that was a little too frivolous for us and we didn't get into it but I really wanted to try it you know a challenge a challenge I'd say the least so but they are there scent of such a wide spectrum but again most of them good 85% of our dousing in one way or another whether it's finding or or finding lost children oh and by the way we've also not part of the challenge but I have invested yet is such things that the Quadro rod which you may not have heard of but your government spent an awful lot of money on Quadra rods these are dowsing rods they look like like a TV remote control with a the antenna colossal antenna that comes out the side of it you see and it waggles are it's the same old thing it just like the coat hanger work but they don't seem to know that and we it was actually tested the Department of I know the total defense know not to partner sensor primitive energy do e they did a test one and they took it apart and they found out that the working part in it was a piece of epoxy hardened epoxy with I hope you're ready for this dead ants in it now how this is what the power the peg I have no notion whatsoever your ideas are as good as mine and my minor absolutely zero but that device was sold to the government and it was sold to customs agents and to members of the Homeland Security all over the country at seventy-five thousand dollars a shot and it didn't work hey really it didn't work no it didn't work and what they spent the money on it they spent the money on it and I was instrumental with the Department of Energy and helping them design simple tests for it because I knew what the ideomotor reaction was and they had to be done double blinded of course but no these these are among some of the more interesting ones but we have filing cabinets just full of the on my website someplace I have a picture of our associate Cramer of sitting it along a whole bunch of filing folders I believe me at all with little red stickers on them that means they've been tested and you know no good they could reapply after a year by the way only one person has ever reapplied and then did go through it after all so you know very disappointing we're trying to find Nobel prizes all over the place and we apparently can't award them other questions right down here yes sir it's a pleasure listening to you today I've been following your work for quite a few years as I'm sure many others have so I want to know what's your position on acupuncture acupuncture I was in the bait I live in Beijing several times over the past few years but but the third last is that I guess I got a chance to go to an acupuncture center there I've forgotten the name of the organization within Beijing but the the people who sponsored us and served us very well there in Beijing I focused several conferences in Beijing as well over the years and I've always been well-received in fact my books are all on sale in Beijing I got a hundred and twenty dollars for the rights to my books well that was just to pay the lawyers my lawyer to make sure that I was being protected in some way or another but I wanted the books to be in in circulation of course and I think that China certainly can use it because that's a there's a lot of woowoo going on in China though my good friend semen on over there is very active he's sort of the James Randi of China it's doing a wonderful job to try to going around from Center to Center to to teach people in small towns particularly not to go for the woowoo if they can possibly avoid it but in any case I went to this acupuncture clinic and I spoke to two gentlemen there spoke perfect English and they one of them had been educated at MIT as a matter of fact and they explained to me they said we have such huge medical problems here in China and so what we have to do is we have to present any civilized country does of course we have to sort people out who are just working on imaginary ailments and would like some personal attention some TLC and so we bring them into the acupuncture clinic and we give the moxibustion which is acupuncture with little bits of incense burning on the end of them the heat transfers down the wire you see right and we bring them consolation that we bring them some satisfaction and they feel better they feel better and they feel that they've gotten so much from the government but we make sure that these aren't people who require antibiotics or surgery or anything like that otherwise we'll take care of them and now this is a confession from the two guys in charge they're the two senior officers that they knew that acupuncture didn't really work except on a suggestive basis and I guess I'll have to take the word of the experts on this these people would appear to me to be the experts because they deal with it every day and there were crowds of people lined up outside to come in and have needles stuck into them and in the right places of course I don't know whether you know acupuncture is very interesting in that it's typical sort of numerology astrology everything combined there are 365 acupuncture points around the body each one may add each one name for a specific day and name for a specific disease so if you go in there you have a specific Gale but if they use that acupuncture point it's much more efficacious than if they used next Thursdays for example they were I wouldn't be wouldn't be applicable at all so it's it's mysticism it really is mysticism but it is an attempt and we have to respect this this is an attempt by early people of that country and in India and Burma and for all over the world as a matter of fact to try to solve how to heal people and how to solve life's mysteries because religion after all is at a very first attempt at that I believe to try to solve how things work Hey something hit me on the back of the head there's no one around that must have been oh I'm neural maybe a stone came out no that's probably the mountain God threw a stone at me or water came low to the air oh that must be the rain God kind of thing because water is in the river it doesn't normally come out of the air at must be the rain god this is a way to try to explain the universe and it's an early attempt into primitive attempt but it eventually well alchemy becomes chemistry eventually and witchcraft becomes medicine when you come right down to it and these are both witchcraft and medicine are largely undeveloped but no medicine is one of those things that is and can seem to be magical to the layman and that's why quackery is so very popular these days first time shoes for example you could buy up until oh I think about five or six years ago you could buy Magna force shoes magna for shoes had at the toe at the insole and at the heel neodymium magnets but wait about it the best part is they were Unipol diagnosed yeah now that's Nobel Prize right there I'm sure of it a Unipol magnet Florsheim shoes the the last remaining man with the name Florsheim sold the company this is some years ago now we've sold the company and it media fell into the hands of marketers and they announced right away that for $50 extra your shoes could now be magnet force now there was one very good thing about magnifier shoes if you ever needed a paperclip another one right here and razor blades and a few other things so you got to be careful neodymium magnets embedded in the solar shut why because it helped your circulation you see there's iron in blood da in the form of hail globe which isn't picked up by a magnet very readily i don't think try it on your blood next time you cut your finger try a bag see if it picks it up i don't think it's going to work very well but the point is that they can get away with this kind of advertising because there's iron in blood and blood circulation is he you put these in your feet and what that does it now this is their reasoning their reasoning in quotes it draws the blood down into your feet because the heart is going to pull it right back up again you see but it sometimes doesn't get all the way down to your feet ah now why was this accepted in the in the general public oh they had leaflets I've got a copy of them at all they don't do it anymore because the first time guy bought the company back again thank goodness and I'm very happy that he did and he canceled magna for shoes you don't see them anymore though you may still pick up paper clips on your shoes occasionally so Gary no you may know that name PBS features of all the time in fundraising along with Deepak Chopra and a few of it and Wayne Dyer and a few other people like this these are the the quacks of philosophy and medicine and physics of the whole business and Gary Null PhD it cost them $40 for that PhD from a mail-order house and plus postage you have to pay postage as well so I think that's an easy way to get a PhD and I think I'll get three or four of them once I get some spare change Gary Nall is featured on PBS all the time and he made a statement in the Florsheim leaflet about nine to four shoes he says the magnets in the shoes interact with the natural magnetic fields of the earth okay in such a way that they neutralize one another and when you're in motion they they add to one another and so I've forgotten the term that he used they I forgot they used some sort of a they add up anyway and they firstly the blood to move around in your body and he said by the way they might get e poles of the earth are the only thing that keeps us from spinning off into space my comment of my webpage was if you're wearing manhole covers on each foot perhaps but that really slows down swimming and clog dancing and tap dancing is right out of the question altogether now this was actually printed by this man Gary Null who apparently has a PhD afforded only one Marja but nonetheless a PhD he has the netherlands wall i've seen it so it must be true they wouldn't put it on the wall otherwise now this is the kind of of nonsense pseudoscience quackery irrationality that we have to face up with every day and that's why the James Randi Educational Foundation exists and we do do something very crass by offering this million-dollar prize it's a huge carrot to waver out right but the fact that they will pick it up now sure as Sylvia Browne you know who Sylvia Browne is yeah I'm Sylvia Browne and I'm at the Larry King show Montel Williams just loves me you know she's we call her the talents she has nails about this long and such which she should have a slashed up face right now when she scratches their face at night I don't know but Sylvia Browne I she said that she would take us up on the the million dollar challenge on the Larry King show which is broadcast internationally as I'm sure you know sienta all over the world and she said yes she'll take the challenge well that was what eight and a half years ago if you go to my web page there's a picture of Sylvia Browne there you click on it you'll hear latest comments on it its cricket sounds by the way they because she hasn't made any comments on it she said it first she didn't know how to contact me she talks to dead people guys he talks to the dead regularly and she doesn't know how to contact me I'm in the phone book Sylvia so finally I sent her a registered letter and she signed for it it wasn't on my letterhead so she signed for it she wouldn't have otherwise I'm sure she signed for it and he said had in there my name and address my social security number blood type the whole thing everything she needs my sister in Canada my brother and Todd they gave them a subsidy in case I'm visiting them you see she wouldn't want to miss out on contacting me and I gave her ever the email address the whole business and she still hasn't reached me but she's got an excuse now as to why she doesn't reach me I'm not a godly person Oh that'll do it but wait a minute wouldn't she want to take my billion dollars then wouldn't she want to take the million dollar it's not my money always a blog for the Foundation which is a 501c3 I don't have a million dollars but it's there and it's available wouldn't she want to take that just to make me look like some sort of a fool or a dealer of a spoon bender he won't take the prize either he says hey first of all he doesn't need it which I believe the other thing is he doesn't like me but that would be a good reason to make me look like an idiot don't you think and it would only take 30 minutes mr. Joey hello are you there mr. Geller I don't hear any answer dude and isn't there a lineup outside here right now from people trying to win the million dollars wouldn't there be at the foundation why arrive in the morning wouldn't you think there'd be a long line up down the street of people champion to get it moving in front of one another in case the billion dollars is won by the guy in front of you but it doesn't happen that way we've thrown down the challenge we've said a billion dollars if you can prove that what you do is genuine that's all and I don't make the rules and I don't conduct the test we have two independent people do those things where are these people I have a question down here our weirdo actually I've got one um okay how'd you get started in all the DES mocking what caused you to devote a fair part of your life to this well I was born in a very very aged in the log cabin I hope my dad build and my parents were very poor and couldn't have kids so the people next door had me which is very nutrient hold on oh you mean the real story yeah as a magician as a professional magician probably in the world and ranking I would say tolerably well in the the the ranks of magician Society of American Magicians the International brother to magician the Magic Circle in London England and a few other prestigious organizations like that I traveled all over the world and I learned something along the way that people are being fooled by the exactly the same methods that I would use on stage or in a nightclub cabaret whatever or on television exactly the same methods are being used by people like John Edward and Sylvia Browne or the other rest of them and or a Yeller doing just common tricks people are being fooled by these by the the charlatans out there who are trying to tell people that what they're doing is the real thing ah no magician David Copperfield Penn & Teller who I introduced to one another years ago by the way I'm guilty of that for the existence of Penn & Teller these people would never try to tell you that what they're doing is the real thing do you think David Copperfield actually asked you to believe that he cuts a girl in half of the buzz saw you know and her mother comes backstage where's my daughter she's in Detroit and she's in Chicago that'd be a difficult answer to have to give to mom wouldn't it no we don't claim we magicians don't claim that we're doing genuine miracles at all what we the only thing we claim at any time is that we are we should say we're conjurer's we approximate the effect that a real magician someone who can subvert nature in some way or other the laws of nature subvert them I would do and we're entertainers and we're very very proud of being entertainers and our art is a difficult one it takes great subtlety and such and and a lot of training and a lot of skill a lot of skill constantly applied now we're proud of that as I say and we're very very angry at those people out there who try to fool people into thinking that they really have the powers they don't I can't prove that they don't but then the onus of proof is on them I don't say that not magical they say they are prove it get a million dollars question last question I think ok so there are lots of things in recent physics like quantum mechanics that I think people don't really understand like the einstein-podolsky-rosen effect I'm no quantum mechanic mechanic sister physicist but like Einstein called that spooky action at a distance but I think it's been confirmed at least a few times by modern physics does that count for the million dollars no because who else first of all the quantum physics has got me left way behind I'm a good friend of Murray go mom's by the way he's charming gentleman who if you ever get a chance to meet him meet him he's a character and a half love him and they he comes to our conferences quite frequently and speaks for us and he's a great speaker to such things as charm and color on particles that leaves me way behind I really can't understand where these terms come from but the problem of understanding what quantum physics is all about is that the language it borrows from the English language meaning vini such as as as charm and and color and such which don't mean charm and color I'm a particle how do you like that yeah it only that and color I don't know I I don't think that would be legal today would be looked upon as discrimination of some kind if you had the different color of different particles but it doesn't mean that of course the language the regular English language is used in different ways and that's what leads to misunderstanding of the misunderstand of the public because all the quacks out there all the the fakers they all throw quantum physics into their descriptions go onto Google hey there's a good place Google knows everything as you know right right and you go in there and you look up quantum and you look up some other woowoo subject in connection with it and you will find descriptions with that have the word quantum in them and vibrations they're very thought of the word vibrations - if you gave them a whole basket full of vibrations they wouldn't know what to do with them they don't know what they look like they don't know what their characteristics are they know what vibrations means but oh the vibrations are still there as in homeopathy you take the medicine out of the water but the vibrations are still there oh then I guess it's okay it's a misunderstanding the whole business the fact that the the public is is not well enough informed about these things and I don't know how they can get informed at this stage they the way things are moving so I had so much in particularly in physics but in science in general the fact that they're not well informed makes them perfect victims for the quack artists out there and they're falling left and right ladies and gentlemen I want to wait well I try to be superficially I'm a magician remember we we pretend on awful lot of stuff well we do it for good purposes I would say I I really want to thank you for having come here this this was sort of throwing it at the end of my little connection with Google Earth and there in an adjacent facility and which was a very rewarding experience for me - I spent three days there and had a wonderful time and Google extended this invitation to come and speak to you folks it's been very edifying I want to thank you for your patience with me and if there are some of you still believe in homeopathy out there shame on you that's all I can say thank you very much and thank you for the use of the hall

Channel: undefined

Views: 447,605

Rating: 4.8220611 out of 5

Keywords: talks at google, ted talks, inspirational talks, educational talks, The Amazing Randi, James Randi, Genius Grant, psychic debunker, how psychics work, psychic tricks

Id: MTPj9VlNzQ0

Length: 58min 11sec (3491 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 13 2007

Reddit Comments

[u/weasler7]

This talk is so long but it's pretty darned good! What a humorous lively man...

[u/trivial]

I wasn't aware that yotube allowed videos at this length. Is this something new? I was expecting this video to be broken into segments which would have forced me to look for it under google video.