Seth Raphael claims Randi's Million Dollar Challenge

all right this brings us to I think the most exciting part of this morning here now I'm very pleased to introduce two fascinating people James Randi who is a former magician and now a professional skeptic and Media Lab alumnus death Raphael many of you have seen the magic of my former students Seth who has shown us his mind-reading computer when steth found out that we had invited James Randi to speak today on technology and trust Seth went down to visit him in Florida and challenged James Randi to debunk his psychic computer so Randi spends his time these days debunking fraudulent psychics who claim to have supernatural powers and now he's very famous for his million-dollar challenge which you'll see described in a video shortly basically in the million dollar challenge Randi has agreed to award a million dollars to anyone who can prove that they are psychic or have paranormal powers many people have challenged him but no one has ever succeeded under test conditions all the psychics have been shown to be frauds Seth claimed to Randy that his computer could pass and E's challenged and he showed Randy his computer's abilities and Randy and his business manager I understand were both very impressed but then the manager said yeah but that is on your computer can you make it work on our computer well Seth then made it work on their computer business manager very important line a mysterious manager said if you can make it work on our computer then we'll give you the million dollars Seth made it work on their computer and then the business manager said oh but it has to be under the right test conditions and that's true once on Randy's website he's got the right test conditions there so what we have attempted to do this morning is to create the right test conditions in order to help Seth's career now I'm I'm willing to be shown I'm very willing to be shown as a matter of fact as you see I've put up a 1 billion dollar prize and I have to at this point introduce someone that some of you will know many of you will know Seth Rafael would you step forward please this is the gentleman who came to visit me at the James Randi Educational Foundation in Fort Lauderdale Florida and he showed me what I and my manager considered to be rather astonishing demonstrations I'm not convinced by them not yet but Seth is now going to have an opportunity to try for the million dollar prize so I'll turn it over to him and let's may the best man win or something like that I think that's the expression that you give Seth would you take over at this point make sure you're plugged in there you're plugged in and away we go hello yes I am Seth Rafael and I am going to attempt to show you Randy that in fact there is something worth a million dollars out there I'm gonna put the mic on properly in just a second we're going to first scan me for wireless devices to make sure that there's no hidden devices on me in in just a moment so I'm going to come over here how do I know we can trust this man here here is the floor it's the floor I think you're then effectively wanded as they say all right I don't think we should be watching at this point all right now Randy we have talked about this I came down to Florida and I call myself magics hat and claim to be a computer psychic these are not trivial things I am claiming here I am claiming three main options for the first one is that my computer can read a person's mind I'm not saying that this computer right here can tell what you're thinking there but I'm saying with the appropriate technology for example the bracelets that people are wearing out there a computer can begin to sense what a human is thinking and that I have developed my computer and technology to a point where it can read people's minds consistently secondly I can read the contents of the memory of my computer without the aid of any device using only my mind so if my computer is closed I can read the contents of the memory of my computer I can read the contents of memory cards from cameras by holding them to my head that is if the top is down so you can't see this if it's entirely closed the computer can even be off because the contents of memory is retained for a short time and lastly that I can read a person's mind using my computer as an intermediary given the sufficient devices in the middle so you have agreed that this if I meet all these three claims this will be sufficient to for the million dollars challenge I believe so yes all right let's see so I must show all three phenomena to your satisfaction according to our mutually agreed-upon testing methods so now we are going to need somebody who is wearing a sensor who who has I should get to choose that person don't you think I guess that all right could I have a showing of hands those who are wearing them now this is not showing your hand this is showing your hat okay there you go much better I am going to take the closest person to the stage because I think that's a reasonably random way of doing it I don't okay this gentleman right here is the nearest one we'll use him then all right you want to keep it totally fair reasonably fair reasonably reasonably fair all right you've got a censor you've got it alright go ahead have a seat please you've got 32 new messages okay I need to check to see what sensor number you have do you know what number you have okay we're just gonna check we want okay what's your name Dominic Dominic do you have Dominic's number which number is it number 24 we're going to enter your number here once we begin the test I will not touch the computer for fear that I may be interfering in some way but to set it up we're going to enter your sensor number you're sure you're getting sensor 24 back there sometimes it's just oh okay we've got it we've got it excellent all right Dominique we have a bunch of cards here they're gonna scan across the screen in just a moment and it's gonna be reading the senses your skin conductance from this bracelet it's gonna be a number of cards here how many cards just to pull dick oh there's a full deck on the screen and a full deck here yes Oh run deep it's rather big so that everyone in the audience can see everything that's going on would you like to look at them no no I'll look after having bridge if I have to all right okay Dominic you're going to spread them across the table just just very beautifully just like that and I'm not gonna watch because I don't want to be accused of reading marked cards I let's cut the deck though he did see the bottom card everyone saw the bottom card on the fact would you just take half of them and just cut them and then spread them face okay I didn't say cut three times but that's close enough okay go ahead okay now spread them out please yes and please reach out and touch any card you want at random just touch it with your finger and slide it out so that you can see the identity make sure you've got just one look at it do you see what it is don't show it to anyone put it on the table next to the deck so that we can verify at the end all right I will not turn around are you ready now you're going to click the button that should say scan on screen please go ahead and click that and watch the cards carefully on the screen the whole time are they scanning [Music] they've scanned once now they'll go through the X several times until it gets a strong enough signal to make a determination nice so scanning okay I'm still skinny district hard it should pop up a new one in case and turning around you're able to see the back of the card which may have 100 oh excuse me we Randy will you please look at the card I've seen it yet we show it to the audience and determine if it is a match thank you all right and what is next so you will agree that we've established the first condition yes that is quite satisfactory yes all right it's easy for you to live from moving right along moving right along next we are going to attempt something different that was the computer just telling what you are thinking now we're going to demonstrate my ability to read the contents of the memory of the computer we're not going to do this through means like linking the screen we're gonna unplug you so that I can't watch the monitor anything to see which what you're looking at we're going to go to Flickr and you're gonna search Flickr for an image that way it's not an image that's already on my computer it could be any number of millions of images that are on the Internet so for example if we search for something like bird you're familiar with Flickr you can find pictures of birds you can scroll through and find the picture that you like and click on it make it large what you're gonna do is you're going to select an image then once you've selected it you're going to close the laptop so that it's off you're not going to think about although I'm not claiming I'm able to read your mind I'm gonna read the memory of the computer all right take you back to the search page and I get rid of that and we're going to take you offline I'm gonna do this right here and go ahead I'm gonna try to recreate the image that you are going to find so go ahead and start searching until you find any image that satisfactory to you you can search for anything try and keep it appropriate for this audience that that's a wide latitude in fact he looks the way I was operating my computer on JetBlue yesterday have you found any man Jeff yes yes so and it is occupying the full screen not the whole screen the oh do you wanted to fire maybe not the whole screen but it's bigger than just in a list of pictures yes okay please zoom or just close the laptop okay now it's off I can I can look I'm gonna come over and I'm gonna lay my hands on the laptop and it's time to read the image [Applause] No is it something with water never supposed to answer questions you know you're not allowed to answer yes or no it is not actually quite a lot no oh no oh you're supposed to be telling him and he should not be watching what you're drawing either Oh this may not be 100% accurate I'm at 400% though so that it would represent reasonably well the true the gentleman chose from the target pool how large is his target pool by the way I I don't know the exact number large isn't a number a million in total a million a day okay sufficiently large sufficiently large your description is quite correct okay all right this is as as good as I'm getting right now I'm gonna show it and then we'll open up the laptop yes I'm gonna do that that's that's the image I'm getting let's show that to the audience should I it's a bird in a tree at it although I guess now looks like two globes of the earth there's something I would try maybe two spherical things with latitude and longitude little lines drawn on them see if we can get hallelujah all right Thank You Dominic all right number three so you agree that that say I agree that that's impressive yes all right lastly we have number three and you have very specific instructions on this you have drawn a geometric shape you want a piece of paper and you have it in a sealed envelope that's correct so I'm not claiming I'm able to read your mind to know what's the contents of that envelope so I need my computer to read your mind all right so I'm gonna ask you to please sit here you're not wearing a bracelet right you don't have what - no I do not have a bracelet no I guess you cheap wristwatch okay all right I'm gonna load let's see so what is required is that you must hold the contents of the image note you don't need to bring out the envelope just hold the image in your mind all right and this is a device that was developed by beau who is at the Media Lab this is a it's very similar to an EEG I think I know that girl all right when we turn it on here you won't have any ugly hair to get in the wave we can make it both weird yeah so what this is is it has an array of diodes photo diodes and LEDs and what it does is it measures the heat in your brain so it measures blood flow to areas of your brain this is a this is a real device this is being used by scientists in labs across the country and it uses to measure topical topical heat of blood flow to the brain this one is designed you want to take a look at it these are centuries they were measure reflected light so there's each all overloaded I have no doubt I have no doubt okay so I'm gonna place this on your head now it may be the wrong size my okay oh no it's not too bad it's off it's a little a little heavy in the back yes I'm gonna ask you to hold it up there okay yeah all right now I'm gonna connect to it with my laptop and my laptop is gonna be streaming the raw content dump from the transceiver okay and I will be allowed to look at that correct mm-hmm yes and from that I will attempt to deduce what geometric shape you have in in this envelope oh so that I can substitute the elbow where I should bring the elbow work now I think okay that's thank you I might have a whole mess of them in there with different shapes on them right you okay okay let's see all right it looks what I usually see when in plane and that opens up I need you to please focus on the geometric shape very well it's just one shape yes one shape yes I'm not gonna show to you I am NOT certain I would like to leave it here on the table until you've shown yours and then and then I'll let you pick it up is that fair yes I'll have to keep my head down so that I don't run with it we're done we're done with that all right all right and moving the envelope embedded in my chest I have in here a piece of paper which has my secret drawing out it goes if you up close here you can see what it is - more or less equilateral triangles point to point in other words it's an X with the end of the top and the bottom of the X closed-off consisting of four lines essentially okay now please open up the image I received well Randy Randy I am in full support of the J with James Randi Educational Foundation and I do not intend to actually take the Millers I must say that I would insist that this be completed as as per our agreement I have not yet signed this check I will do that this is a check for $10,000 which is a token pregnant not a million no no but this this check according to the agreement is published on our web page this is the agreement that I will pay over this amount of money immediately as a token of the fact that within 48 hours the rest of the prize money will be forthcoming there you are said [Music] what can I say you didn't write the date well what is the date is its April 3rd according to have my watch it's April the 1st its inch April Fool I don't think we need this to be ok that's just souvenir for you alright yeah we got him I think so alright thanks [Applause]

Channel: Magic Seth

Views: 3,302,401

Rating: 3.3510215 out of 5

Keywords: googlevideo

Id: c_0E1XJP33E

Length: 27min 1sec (1621 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 08 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Esanik]

What's up with Seths hair?

[u/Esanik]

Thank you for your research! But if he suffers from that condition, why not just shave all of his head? I understand that you don't know the answer but it's kinda strange to me why someone want to keep that hair on his scalp.