James Randi Has Died | Hacker News Reader

James Randi Has Died

web.randi.org

616 pointsomnibrain84 comments

In January 2010, I went on a binge of every James Randi video I could find on YouTube. Him debunking psychics, talking about religion and faith, talking about magic, the works. I got so obsessed with him, that I found his website, and sent a very generic "fan email" to him, saying that I respect what he did, and think that he should keep up the good work.

Much to my surprise, he responded with a very quick "thank you!" message. I told my dad about this, and since we lived in Orlando at the time, and Randi was in Fort Lauderdale, he suggested we ask to buy Randi lunch. I figured there was no harm in sending the email, and much to my surprise, Randi agreed!

We drove over to Fort Lauderdale, and he actually spent the whole damn day with us, talking about psychics, doing magic tricks for us, talking about science fiction novels, etc. He was an incredibly awesome guy, and I thought it was beyond cool that he decided to hang out with some dorky fans from the internet.

RIP Randi. You made the world a better place, and you will always be missed.

That's awesome! When I was in my early teens I went through a similar stint and also emailed him with my thoughts, kudos and thanks. Also to my surprise he wrote back with a genuine message and note.

What a guy.

Yeah, he was one of the first "heroes" I've ever reached out to; I thought it was pretty awesome that he was willing to chat with his fans, and never got to a point of feeling "too good" to do something like that.

Since then, I pretty much email everyone on the internet that I have any respect for; I don't know how annoying I am because of that but I think we can thank Randi for giving me the courage to do so.

Wow, what an amazing story.

That's such a fantastic story! He truly inspired so many people worldwide.

Wow, what a lucky series of circumstances and a great story.

Yeah, I was definitely lucky, I must have caught him in a good mood or maybe he's just really affable. I was super fortunate to have met him though, a class act all the way. He will always be someone that I admire and respect.

dude, that is so cool, wholesome story from an amazing man

This reminds me; i used to email back and forth with Alex Grey, my favorite artist... he was so personable over email.

When i was building a datacenter in manhattan i went to his studio - Hall of Mirrors... or whatever its called...

I need to reach out to him again before such happens and make sure i talk to him before the world loses him.

Thank you for your story.

Alex Gray (note spelling!) was also very nice to me when I once hung out in his loft on New Year's Eve.

He is over twenty five years younger than Randi was, and seems to be in excellent shape, so don't write him off yet. :-)

He left Manhattan quite a long time ago and now lives here: https://www.cosm.org/

RIP James Randi.

My short anecdote. As a kid in 1984 in NJ I went to a high school where an english teacher claimed to have psychic abilities. At first I was enthralled but as I leaned toward scientific thought I grew skeptical. In english class with that teacher we ended up having debates as a project. I chose to debate the non-existence of ESP. James Randi lived in NJ at the time and I wrote or called (I don't remember) him to learn more to debunk these abilities. To my surprise, he invited me (and my father) to visit him at his home. He shared with me his thoughts, taught me an illusion (to use in my debate), and even shared that he had a file on my teacher who had claimed psychic abilities publicly and that he had failed Mr. Randi's tests. Thank you James Randi for your time, patience, education, and encouragement to pursue scientific thought.

How did the debate go?

I got an A!

RIP James Randi, and thank you!

I often think about how brilliantly and carefully the setups were designed, thought through and explained. For example:

Interviewer: “Which pipe was the water running through?”

James Randi: “Well, I'm not supposed to know that! I'm supposed to be doing this in a double-blind fashion. [...]”

Interviewer: “Did he get the right one?”

James Randi: “I can't tell you that.”

Source: https://youtu.be/cqoYrSd94kA?t=1405

The setup in this case was so well designed and explained that the participants themselves praised it:

James Randi: “The tests that were done, were they adequate to the purpose?”

Participant: “The testing, as far as I was concerned, and I think as far as the rest of the diviners were concerned, was done as fair and as square as could be.”

Source: https://youtu.be/cqoYrSd94kA?t=1937

More information about that dowsing test: https://www.skeptics.com.au/resources/articles/australian-sk...

Randi exposing Uri Geller in the 70s was huge event.

Previously Uri Geller had passed DIA funded experiment conducted by Stanford Research Institute. The paper of this experiment was published in Nature.

Geller was making millions. He was global celebrity.

There's a great documentary on Netflix called an Honest Liar that goes through Randi's entire career with him as the main narrator.

Unfortunately it looks like Uri Geller is still out there today and still making lots of money from cons.

Randi also exposed Peter Popoff, an evangelist who wore an earpiece and was fed info about audience members.

Unfortunately Peter too is back out there grifting millions. Last I read he was selling miracle water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Popoff

I'm in the wrong industry.

are there bootcamps for con-artist evangelism?

usually its done by a more old school direct apprentice type thing.

You could try the local jail.

there are for blockchains and crypto currency.

So...yes?

Harold Puthoff, one of the SRI researchers who studied Geller, was in the news somewhat recently. He was involved in that "navy UFO" business. He co-founded the "To The Stars Academy", which produced a History Channel documentary about the videos and the findings of the "Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program" which Senator Harry Reid had spearheaded. Incidentally, he was also involved in the "research" conducted under that program (including some real goofy stuff[1]). It's always sad to learn the government funded pseudoscience, but at least they only wasted $22 million.

I wish I could have heard Randi's thoughts on it all, given he was familiar with some of the people.

[1] https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2019/01/aatip-list/

That's important connection to know.

My favorite story about him from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/magazine/the-unbelievable...:

> When he was still a young man appearing in Toronto nightclubs and pretending to predict the future, Randall Zwinge created what he hoped would be his greatest trick. Each night before he went to bed, he wrote the date on the back of a business card along with the words “I, Randall Zwinge, will die today.” Then he signed it and placed it in his wallet. That way, if he were knocked down in the street or killed by a freak accident, whoever went through his effects would discover the most shocking prophecy he ever made. Zwinge kept at it for years. Each night, he tore up one card and wrote out a new one for the next day. But nothing fatal befell him; in the end, having wasted hundreds of business cards, he gave up in frustration. “I never got lucky,” he told me.

I know it is too early to ask about someone checking his wallet.

RIP. I remember going to The Amazing Meeting (skeptics convention) years ago and running into a coworker there. It was his second time attending and he spotted James Randi and told me, let's go say hello and that he's super friendly and will chat with anyone. We went over and lo and behold he was super friendly and welcomed me to the con warmly.

I was familiar with his debunking work, but not much beyond that. I watched the documentary about him, An Honest Liar, later on and was impressed with him as a human. Worth checking out to learn more.

He made fighting disinformation something for others to strive for, or at least that was my view of him. "Critical thinking is as to friendly fire isn't"

> "Critical thinking is as to friendly fire isn't"

Parser error on line 1

Critical thinking : not critical thinking :: friendly fire : not friendly fire

I still don't see how to parse it.

Friendly fire isn't friendly, but critical thinking is critical.

There you go. But once you phrase it clearly, anything that was particularly amusing about the unparseable construction must go away.

I think there are some spurious words included.

"Critical thinking is as friendly fire isn't" works. "Critical thinking is; friendly fire isn't" works better (along the same lines as "Variables don't; constants aren't.")

That's gotta be what they meant.

I met James Randi around 2007 when he came to campus at UBC to give a talk. He told the following story about a magic trick that he worked on for years, which concerned guessing the timing of his death. I haven't heard him tell that story elsewhere, so now seems like a good time to share it.

He said that for a good number of years, every time before going to bed, he would write on a little card that he predicted he would die that night during his sleep. In the morning, he got up and happily threw away the little card. Every day. For many years. His concept was that, on the rare chance that this actually happened to be last day, people would think that he pulled the ultimate magic trick. People would not suspect that he wrote this on a little card every day because, well, nobody does that.

Harsh, ruining his last trick. He spent how much time setting this one up?

Well, I guess he stopped doing it at some date before 2007. That's why he told an audience of 500 people about it. He sorta "cashed out" by making it a fun story about him being clever, instead of a last magic trick. He must have simply gotten tired of doing this every day and seeing all those cards in the waste basket (or burning them?).

If he had indeed tried to pull that trick in 2020, a lot of people would have remembered that he said he was setting it up.

Who is the successor to Randi's tenacity, wit, and intellect?

I used to hope Shermer or someone born out of Skeptic would take up the mantle (and I appreciate comedians like Gervais who take a swing at it) but I don't see anyone who hits as hard and succinctly as Randi did. I think it was also his showmanship that made it all work so perfectly.

And his kindness. He never came across as doing what he did out of cruelty.

Randi was also a very good magician himself which gave him insights and credibility that other skeptics that followed have never had.

Penn and Teller?

I'm thinking them, but also Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer) is a candidate.

P&T are a bit too much about being "in your face". Penn just loves to yell to get his point across, where as Randi was tactful and calm. I also had in issue with them grossly misrepresenting several issues, specifically their PETA debacle. They're a bit too scattershot IMHO.

I guess Banachek is closest to that. He Randi help him with debunking Peter Poppof

Captain Disillusion?

I would vote for yes, Captain Disillusion. See for example videos like [0]. He's great because he follows in the spirit of people like Randi while being at the same time original and appropriate to his era by focusing on dishonest visual effects and editing.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dSp_f0f9gE&t=25s

I'm a huge Captain Disillusion fan. For anyone that doesn't know, he does "debunkings" of viral videos featuring something supposedly supernatural.

I don't know if I would categorize hims as the same as Randi, tbh. But if anyone hasn't had the pleasure of seeing his videos, look them up on YouTube! He is one of my favorite content creators, and probably the least well known one. He deserves to be watched by anyone with even a moderate interest in skepticism, visual effects, or science.

He actually did a collaboration video with Randi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QcJO8uHrc8

There are bad, regular, and good people. Randi was in the smallest group of all, the truly great people. They're the ones whose work benefit us all and who do it because it was something they loved to do. Losing people like him makes our world a little sadder and colder place.

RIP, James Randi.

One of my favorite James Randi actions was the debunking of Uri Geller.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTn0t_7pGZo

What strikes me about his presentation is the way he expresses skepticism without arrogance or superiority. It's easy for skeptics to sour their message that way ("how could you believe that?") but this mellow avuncular style seems much more effective.

I first learned about him through some things Martin Gardner wrote, I believe. But I felt like I came to know him a lot better from watching the movie An Honest Liar [0].

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2246565/

I feel this one. I'm trying to remember what I read most about him. I watched old episodes of his skeptic TV show, exposing fraud after fraud (who never once repented) and I remember an article about him continuing to trade magic tricks with other magicians.

RIP James Randi - Gone to the great beyond...$1 Million prize if you prove it in laboratory conditions

I remember the 3-4 months I used my copy of Flim-Flam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flim-Flam! to take down my relatives' delusions.

I guess I was probably as insufferable for them as they were for me, so thank you James Randi for helping me let them all know what's what!

James Randi has departed this corporeal reality... or has he?

Please let there be a "TA-DA" ending. :(

May he meet up with Ricky Jay. :)

Did he ever reveal what was in the safe? The contents of which he bet $1M that no one could divine? I just searched, and couldn't find mention of it.

Effective 9/1/2015 the JREF has made major changes including converting to a grant making foundation and no longer accepting applications for the Million Dollar Prize from the general public.

https://web.randi.org/home/jref-status

I'm imagining James Randi finding himself in an afterlife. He is more than surprised and investigates it deeply, very happy to finally get an answer to many questions.

One day, he hears a distorted voice, coming out of nothing - it's a psychic, asking him if he is worrying about the money.

Jokes aside, the world has lost a great man. All the stories you guys posted here are more than amazing. The dedication and selflessness is hard to come by today, I hope someone can continue his mentality. If there were more James Randi's in the world, maybe my grandma would stop believing Uri Geller bend her key she place on the TV 20 years ago.

I went to see him do a talk once... it was great. I even payed extra and lined up to chat with him for a few mins.

On top of that I managed to get him to sign a picture we took on my Note (phone with stylus) https://photos.app.goo.gl/yQB7rXH5JcdWT77b9

James had a huge impact on my thinking as a young man as I'm sure he did to many others. A life well lived.

RIP The Amazing Randi. Reading and watching Martin Gardner and James Randi has taught me so much. Gardner was already dead when I first heard of him and I've looked upto Randi ever since. From magic to religion and pseudoscience, I have always enjoyed their views. You will be missed.

He was one of the greatest magicians to ever live, but wanted to teach the audience how magic is just deception

He made it his life's work to disprove all people abusing the art of magic to con others into believing something that isn't real... Rest in Piece Randi

I have always been impressed how well he presented information. I will miss him so much.

Wow I’m so sad to hear this. I am such a huge fan of James Randi and his debunking and have most of his books in my personal library at home.

Losing a legend and an amazing champion of science.

Prove it.

Damn, beat me to it. It would be ironic if he became a ghost.

I wonder if he left behind a secret phrase, like Houdini, so some trusted people could know for sure if it was him communicating with them from beyond the dead, or not. I hope he did.

He'd show up at seances chastising the participants for believing in such nonsense.

RIP - You lived a legend

What a loss. Few people have done as much to champion rationality as The Amazing Randi. And he was very entertaining while he was doing it.

Not rationality I don't think. More like empiricism. He found truth not in what one could reaosn but in what one could test.

His take on climate change is interesting.

http://archive.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/805-agw-r...

What's especially interesting, to me, is that he published his take on thermodynamics without running it past a physicist. I'm not sure what to make of that.

RIP you magnificent human. I am not an atheist but I loved Randi for exposing the charlatans.

Terrible news. I saw him in Rochester, NY back the 1900's.

Paywalled, obviously, but a nice article from 2014.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/magazine/the-unbelievable...

This has saddened me. May he rest in peace. My condolences to Mr. James' family and friends. :-(

If thread lurkers don't know who this gentleman is I suggest you watch his videos on YouTube. There's also his foundation's channel on there, IIRC.[0]

He debunks psychics, astrology, homeopathy to name a few off the top of my head.

EDIT:

Here's a brief bio https://web.randi.org/about-james-randi.html

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/user/JamesRandiFoundation

He will be missed. :( One thing we can be sure of, he didn't die because of overdose of homeopathic sleeping pills. RIP

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

This is terrible, terrible news.

I'm a fan of Randi up to a point. Some of his investigations were culturally relevant, such as Popoff's prayer cards. But also some of his work was decidedly low stakes, such as Uri Geller's spoon bending (though Geller escalated with potentially ruinous lawsuits).

Ultimately the skeptic movement left us with tame establishment defenders such as Michael Shermer, and a complete disregard for the positive roles Christianity plays in our Western heritage, culture, and communities.

That all said, James Randi was a very impressive and entertaining man. And I love that he was an ambassador for sobriety which is rare, and I think fitting of the scientific mindset.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com