It is worth knowing that Uri released a very expensive limited autographed DVD set that showed how he would do it "if" he was using various tricks. Needless to say, the effects he teaches are exactly what he performs on stage and television. It's no stretch to understand that they are his genuine methods, and he didn't go out of his way to learn how to fake his own real ESP.
His claims are his act. Magicians and mentalists all know his act is being in character all the time. Quite a few of them don't like that, and regularly speak out against it. But there is nobody in that circle thinking "well, maybe he actually does have ESP!" like there was during Randi's day.
There is a reason Uri hangs around with magicians and mentalists, and not psychics. He doesn't have psychic powers and doesn't actually lump himself into that category, except as the character we all know of him.
In other news, Teller can actually speak! Consider the similarities, as even though we all know he can speak, he still doesn't go out of character when he is with Penn. We suspend our disbelief knowing that he actually can speak (and many of us have heard him) yet doesn't in that character.
Similarly, [don't read this paragraph if you don't like spoilers] Derren Brown always pretends to explain his mentalism effects. Although his explanations are plausible, and sometimes true for effects where he leaves huge parts unexplained, his explanations are nearly never exactly what he actually did. For example, the Red BMX Bicycle episode - it was straight forward billet work. All the encoding of words was for the TV audience. In "the biz" it is called Dual Reality - the participant and the audience are reacting to slightly different observations.
I don't totally agree with your opinion. In the late years he's been walking away from the "psychic" part of him, embracing his "meme" or "performer" image (like in the DVD you mentioned), but previously he has made outrageous claims.
I find this particularly nasty and in bad taste:
"In 1992, Geller was asked to investigate the kidnapping of Hungarian model Helga Farkas. He predicted she would be found in good health, but she was never found and is widely believed to have been murdered."
He also has made a good bunch of frivolous lawsuits, even asking for millions of dollars, to people who said that he was doing tricks and there was no magic involved.
1. Teller openly and unequivocally breaks character. He will describe (out loud) how and why he does mime for his stage persona. Uri Geller is never this candid.
2. Teller’s stage lie does not meaningfully change people’s understanding of the world. There are definitely people who don’t talk. If someone mistakes Teller to be in this category, not really a huge deal. No one has proven to be able to do the things Uri Geller claims.
Derren Brown goes even further sometimes. The cups and balls on his TV show feature emphasis on certain words: 'for' said a little louder and longer than other words to make someone pick number 4 etc. He never directly explains this as 'influence' but it is intended so a keen viewer will watch many times and come to the conclusion "Aha! Neuro linguistic programming! I've worked it out" and stop looking for the sleight of hand that actually does the trick.
It's strange that Geller got so much pushback. The only truly negative thing he did was suing Randi.
I think Derren Brown has more believers than Geller for his mentalist acts, incorporates "dark demonic forces" and in general messes far more with the minds of his audience. Yet hardly any pushback from Penn and Teller.
Regarding the billet work: Yes, he also goes in shopping malls and "guesses" the correct amount of coins people have in their wallets. The easiest explanation is that he pickpockets them, counts the cash, puts the wallet back and then approaches his target.
Derren Brown doesn’t claim to have superpowers, he’s an illusionist and mentalist. It’s possible he is dishonest about his methods, but he is honest about being an illusionist.
In contrast, Geller has tried to bamboozle the world that he is genuinely psychic, and has other ‘abilities’ and is simply a huckster.
I’m not sure why it would be strange in this instance that one gets pushback from rationalists and one does not.
The issue Randi had with Geller is that Geller claimed to be performing these feats in reality. That he had genuine powers.
Randi had no issues with magicians, had no issues with lying on stage. That's literally the job of a magician or illusionist. He had issues with people claiming these things were anything but tricks.
And as to Randi trying to ride on Geller's coattails. Fuck. That. Noise. Randi began performing the year Geller was born and was known and respected by the time Geller started doing his bit. The man toured with Alice Cooper. He was touring with Cooper the year Geller went on Johnny Carson. Carson, who was an amateur magician himself, reached out to Randi to set up tests Geller couldn't pass.
Because Geller was claiming supernatural powers.
The entire article reads like a puff piece. The only reason Randi's grudge with Geller has ended is because Randi is dead.
Johnny Carson brought Geller onto "The Tonight Show" -- then surprised Geller by saying, "Well, we have some spoons here..." There's various clips of it on YouTube...
Penn Jillette says that Randi inspired him in his ethical beliefs.
> There's no such thing as magic, there's no such thing as a supernatural. And I don't care if it's a sick kid or a healthy adult, you do not lie. I never ever want to leave someone believing that magic is real. That would be morally wrong.
This might be a bit pedantic, but I've never liked the term "supernatural", it's tautologically meaningless. If there were aliens or magical beasts roaming around, they would be natural.
As for magic, I despise people that claim magic isn't real. The world is made of magic and it's all around us. When you lose the ability to recognize the magic of reality you die a little inside and the world becomes a little bit less bright. The fact that the term magic gets hijacked to mean something negative and harmful is bullshit, and it should be reclaimed.
I couldn’t disagree more. Magic is not real. The “magic” of reality is precisely found in its non-magical roots. Nothing is more beautiful than an understanding of the natural world. Fully understanding how the universe works illuminates the world and makes life brighter. The hand-waving act of calling something magic robs the us of that enlightenment. If you mean to say “wondrous” or “fascinating” in your use of the term “magic” then yes, we should strive to hold on to the wonder of life. But we can’t claim that the word “magic” means something that it does not.
I came to this conclusion after being raised in a religion that discounted and discredited any explanation of how the world came into existence outside of simply saying it was created by god. As I learned about science I realized that to believe god created the universe by the wave of a hand was to rob the universe of it’s beauty.
I realize that some overlap can exist between these ideas but in general, that is not the norm.
> If there were aliens or magical beasts roaming around, they would be natural.
Sure, and if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bicycle.
I think the two categories you describe are orthogonal - rational people are open to the potential of alien life forms, but, similarly, would deny the possibility of 'magical beasts'.
(Depending on what 'magical beasts' might actually entail - your second paragraph seems to re-purpose the word to something closer to fascinating, if I'm reading that right. Though in context it feels more like supernatural than merely wondrous.)
I have found truth in your take recently in my life when previously (majority) I was against such a notion. Out of curiosity, could you expand on what you might be able to describe as magic from your perspective? I understand it is a slippery _thing_ or _suchness_ to describe but I appreciate any attempt. Thanks!
Of course there is such thing as magic, our clients keep asking for it. Telling them “magical experiences don’t exist” seems a bit dim. Most of the way these rationalists deal with magic is to simply define magic as something that doesn’t exist. Big win, there.
People say “Magic is just a psychological phenomenon” as though that is somehow reducing its power or purpose. Creating magic is a big part of many people’s jobs. That said, one of my favorite books is by the first president of the Royal Society, titled “Mathematicall Magick”. It deals with Natural Magick — a concept that helped transition the Renaissance to the scientific and Industrial Revolutions.
> Most of the way these rationalists deal with magic is to simply define magic as something that doesn’t exist. Big win, there.
What Penn means here is that there is no such thing as a superpower to mentally bend metal. Tricks exist, experiencing magic exists, but there is no wizardry involved.
Magic is a complex, multifaceted and ancient collection of phenomena that will resist tight definitions. That said, one way to define magic is “the capacity to manifest immaterial ideas into physical reality.” Another definition might be “the ability to use rituals or artifacts to produce desired outcomes through hidden or inscrutable means.”
A mundane example is architectural decoration, which can change the surrounding neighborhood vibe in a palpable way—but good luck trying to define and validate a physical model of how that psychological phenomenon takes place. Being open to a bit of magic doesn’t mean turning off rationality or believing in Uri Geller. But it might mean believing in charisma and vibes, even if they evade rational modeling. Music, for instance, is filled with magic. And people often like to be enchanted!
The message of the article seems to be that everyone should just chill out about whether Geller is really performing magical feats or not — he himself persists in saying that he is and lots of people persist in believing him.
I strenuously disagree with this attitude and agree with James Randi that chilling out about what is actually, literally true is a dangerous step. When this mushy mentality sets in, bad people will find a way to use this to their advantage.
This is especially true in our era of competing narratives, misinformation, and deepfakes.
This article was so bad. The comparisons to AI were forced, and the idea that tricking mining companies out of millions is somehow morally superior to tricking individuals is ridiculous. Both involve the exact same deceit and poor character.
With half the planet on Reiki, healing crystals and essential oils I don't think Geller needs to worry about his income and while Randi is very much right plenty of people will chose to believe rather than to use their brains.
Funny that you mention those things but not that Catholics (1.4 billion people) supposedly believe that transubstantiation literally turns bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Do we just accept that they don't really believe what they say they believe? Do the Reiki people really believe it?
My heuristics for telling what people really believe are observing what they laugh at and observing what they get offended by. Nobody laugh or get offended by something they consider to be nonsense. Nobody would get offended if you disputed their belief in gravity. Nobody would laugh if you joked about something imaginary with no basis in reality. But I do believe if you made the right joke about transubstantiation then people would laugh, because they don't really believe it. Same for spoon bending or crystals etc.
> This is especially true in our era of competing narratives, misinformation, and deepfakes.
That's especially why Gellar doesn't really seem all that important. All he really does is claim some magic tricks are "real", and on the harmful-bullshit-scale it probably rates pretty low.
ISTR Copperfield does the same with most of his tricks, although everyone is aware he didn't actually make the statue of liberty disappear, or step through a wall.
I think it's because Geller's claims are small enough to not be obvious BS to everyone, yet they are obvious BS to most people.
Uri actually sold an autographed DVD set showing how he would do things if he didn't have ESP. That may or may not remind you of OJ's book... exactly the same idea. Which is to say, at least among his contemporaries, he makes it obvious it is all tongue in cheek.
That's these days. Prior to then he was a complete charlatan. An entertaining one, mind you.
I don't think the writers thought Geller wasn't a fraud. They verge close to saying so repeatedly, comparing his work to deepfakes, quoting him as admitting, “Doesn’t matter how I do it, whether it’s real or not,” holding back only due to "civility and fairness," etc.
So the NYT didn't "fall for" anything. The point is that at the end of the day he successfully tapped into people's desire to be duped and turned it into wealth and renown, whereas his naysayers spent a lot of time and energy but never really landed a knockout. Speaking as an admirer of Randi (and Martin Gardner and others) back in the day, I think that it ended up a win-win. Geller the hustler got to retire off of fleecing stupid mining companies, whereas the good guys got to write book after book that helped mainstream skeptical inquiry. And lots of curious kids took up the honest craft of magic.
they did not “fall for” anything. the article is very careful to never say that geller is capable of anything unexplainable. what they are doing here is a reframe: “hey, let’s just not call him a fraud anymore, okay? it’s more fun that way.”
Readit News
His claims are his act. Magicians and mentalists all know his act is being in character all the time. Quite a few of them don't like that, and regularly speak out against it. But there is nobody in that circle thinking "well, maybe he actually does have ESP!" like there was during Randi's day.
There is a reason Uri hangs around with magicians and mentalists, and not psychics. He doesn't have psychic powers and doesn't actually lump himself into that category, except as the character we all know of him.
In other news, Teller can actually speak! Consider the similarities, as even though we all know he can speak, he still doesn't go out of character when he is with Penn. We suspend our disbelief knowing that he actually can speak (and many of us have heard him) yet doesn't in that character.
Similarly, [don't read this paragraph if you don't like spoilers] Derren Brown always pretends to explain his mentalism effects. Although his explanations are plausible, and sometimes true for effects where he leaves huge parts unexplained, his explanations are nearly never exactly what he actually did. For example, the Red BMX Bicycle episode - it was straight forward billet work. All the encoding of words was for the TV audience. In "the biz" it is called Dual Reality - the participant and the audience are reacting to slightly different observations.
I find this particularly nasty and in bad taste:
"In 1992, Geller was asked to investigate the kidnapping of Hungarian model Helga Farkas. He predicted she would be found in good health, but she was never found and is widely believed to have been murdered."
He also has made a good bunch of frivolous lawsuits, even asking for millions of dollars, to people who said that he was doing tricks and there was no magic involved.
1. Teller openly and unequivocally breaks character. He will describe (out loud) how and why he does mime for his stage persona. Uri Geller is never this candid.
2. Teller’s stage lie does not meaningfully change people’s understanding of the world. There are definitely people who don’t talk. If someone mistakes Teller to be in this category, not really a huge deal. No one has proven to be able to do the things Uri Geller claims.
Of course, psychics don't have psychic powers either -- so I doubt that's the reason he eschews their company (or more likely, they eschew his).
I think Derren Brown has more believers than Geller for his mentalist acts, incorporates "dark demonic forces" and in general messes far more with the minds of his audience. Yet hardly any pushback from Penn and Teller.
Regarding the billet work: Yes, he also goes in shopping malls and "guesses" the correct amount of coins people have in their wallets. The easiest explanation is that he pickpockets them, counts the cash, puts the wallet back and then approaches his target.
In contrast, Geller has tried to bamboozle the world that he is genuinely psychic, and has other ‘abilities’ and is simply a huckster.
I’m not sure why it would be strange in this instance that one gets pushback from rationalists and one does not.
Randi had no issues with magicians, had no issues with lying on stage. That's literally the job of a magician or illusionist. He had issues with people claiming these things were anything but tricks.
And as to Randi trying to ride on Geller's coattails. Fuck. That. Noise. Randi began performing the year Geller was born and was known and respected by the time Geller started doing his bit. The man toured with Alice Cooper. He was touring with Cooper the year Geller went on Johnny Carson. Carson, who was an amateur magician himself, reached out to Randi to set up tests Geller couldn't pass.
Because Geller was claiming supernatural powers.
The entire article reads like a puff piece. The only reason Randi's grudge with Geller has ended is because Randi is dead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNKmhv9uoiQ
> There's no such thing as magic, there's no such thing as a supernatural. And I don't care if it's a sick kid or a healthy adult, you do not lie. I never ever want to leave someone believing that magic is real. That would be morally wrong.
As for magic, I despise people that claim magic isn't real. The world is made of magic and it's all around us. When you lose the ability to recognize the magic of reality you die a little inside and the world becomes a little bit less bright. The fact that the term magic gets hijacked to mean something negative and harmful is bullshit, and it should be reclaimed.
I came to this conclusion after being raised in a religion that discounted and discredited any explanation of how the world came into existence outside of simply saying it was created by god. As I learned about science I realized that to believe god created the universe by the wave of a hand was to rob the universe of it’s beauty.
I realize that some overlap can exist between these ideas but in general, that is not the norm.
Sure, and if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bicycle.
I think the two categories you describe are orthogonal - rational people are open to the potential of alien life forms, but, similarly, would deny the possibility of 'magical beasts'.
(Depending on what 'magical beasts' might actually entail - your second paragraph seems to re-purpose the word to something closer to fascinating, if I'm reading that right. Though in context it feels more like supernatural than merely wondrous.)
I love your interpretation of the importance of magic in maintaining our sense of wonder in the world.
People say “Magic is just a psychological phenomenon” as though that is somehow reducing its power or purpose. Creating magic is a big part of many people’s jobs. That said, one of my favorite books is by the first president of the Royal Society, titled “Mathematicall Magick”. It deals with Natural Magick — a concept that helped transition the Renaissance to the scientific and Industrial Revolutions.
What Penn means here is that there is no such thing as a superpower to mentally bend metal. Tricks exist, experiencing magic exists, but there is no wizardry involved.
A mundane example is architectural decoration, which can change the surrounding neighborhood vibe in a palpable way—but good luck trying to define and validate a physical model of how that psychological phenomenon takes place. Being open to a bit of magic doesn’t mean turning off rationality or believing in Uri Geller. But it might mean believing in charisma and vibes, even if they evade rational modeling. Music, for instance, is filled with magic. And people often like to be enchanted!
I strenuously disagree with this attitude and agree with James Randi that chilling out about what is actually, literally true is a dangerous step. When this mushy mentality sets in, bad people will find a way to use this to their advantage.
This is especially true in our era of competing narratives, misinformation, and deepfakes.
> If Mr. Geller can’t actually bend metal with his brain — and civility and fairness demands this “if” — he is the author of a benign charade
This isn’t a benign charade.
My heuristics for telling what people really believe are observing what they laugh at and observing what they get offended by. Nobody laugh or get offended by something they consider to be nonsense. Nobody would get offended if you disputed their belief in gravity. Nobody would laugh if you joked about something imaginary with no basis in reality. But I do believe if you made the right joke about transubstantiation then people would laugh, because they don't really believe it. Same for spoon bending or crystals etc.
That's especially why Gellar doesn't really seem all that important. All he really does is claim some magic tricks are "real", and on the harmful-bullshit-scale it probably rates pretty low.
I think it's because Geller's claims are small enough to not be obvious BS to everyone, yet they are obvious BS to most people.
https://groovyhistory.com/amazing-randi-uri-geller-tonight-s...
If you want to bend spoons as a magic trick, there are at least ten YouTube videos on how to do it.
That's these days. Prior to then he was a complete charlatan. An entertaining one, mind you.
So the NYT didn't "fall for" anything. The point is that at the end of the day he successfully tapped into people's desire to be duped and turned it into wealth and renown, whereas his naysayers spent a lot of time and energy but never really landed a knockout. Speaking as an admirer of Randi (and Martin Gardner and others) back in the day, I think that it ended up a win-win. Geller the hustler got to retire off of fleecing stupid mining companies, whereas the good guys got to write book after book that helped mainstream skeptical inquiry. And lots of curious kids took up the honest craft of magic.