Thursday, January 24, 2013
James Randi
An interesting thing that I have learned in AP PSYCH so far is how skeptical sometimes you have to be. What I mean by this is that sometimes people can easily fool you and take money out of your pocket while you think their some kind of a genius. One of the people I have seemed to admire and kind of start using what he does is James Randi. As talked about in class, Randi tries to take everything with a skeptical approach and hates anyone who lies and tricks people to make a living. A particular category he hates are Psychics. He beleives there are no such thing as Psychics who have supernatural powers. I didn't use to care at all weather psychics were real or not but when I heard what Randi had to say, I was quit amazed. The video we watched in class made me feel as if wow this guy is a genius. In the future I would like to learn more about Randi and his skeptical approach because in all honesty this guy is a genius. Here is a video of him exposing James Hydrick James Randi.
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I agree. He had many influential points that really got me thinkng about the people that claim to be psychic. I never really beieved them in the first place but he had some really good points. You have to wonder if maybe he had a bad experience with psychics and that's why he's so strongly against them.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with what you said Dave. Summoning up and talking to someone's deceased is a very emotion event. It is for this reason psychics are as succesful as they are. People want closure in their lives, ecspecially when it invlolves loved ones. These psychics prey on this to "make a living". They exploit people's emotions to make a few easy bucks.
ReplyDeleteI was pretty surprised by the video we were shown in class about the goats and the car too. It seems as though the answer is clearly a 50/50 chance after the first door is opened. But its not! People use false information that appears to be true in order to make money. While this information does help people to feel better and move on with their lives, it is often costly. Im neither for or against it, but people should be more aware of scams and con artists.
ReplyDeleteI also think he is pretty interesting. Based on the video we watched, he seemed like a pretty funny and intelligent guy. I do not blame him for being skeptical about psychics.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed the video we watched in class about Randi. I admire how he will criticize and not listen to a thing psychics say. I don't understand why anyone would pay money to have someone tell them things about their dead loved ones that they already know.
ReplyDeleteI agree, as humans we rarely take a skeptical approach toward the supernatural. We want to believe that things like ghosts and psychics are real even though there is no science to back them up. I found your video clip about James Randi very interesting. At the beginning of the video I was skeptical that the man could move objects with his mind but when he demonstrated it was pretty believable. However, when Randi demonstrated that the pencil trick could be performed by blowing on it I became much more skeptic. In the end, after performing a controlled experiment, Randi was correct the man could not move objects with his mind without blowing on them. Overall I find Randi’s work to be interesting and insightful.
ReplyDeleteJames Randi was pretty fun to watch because there are so many things people are tricked into believing. He could probably crack down singlehandedly on a number of scam artists out there. But he seems pretty lax to the point where he's probably just encouraging skeptism and using these people he debunks as examples. Either way, he seems to be almost a god for skeptics. Pretty great guy. - Cooper DuQuaine
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Dave Dave, often times people accept whats being said, they don't have thaat skeptical eye that Drier is trying to instill in us. I think they tend to play off of emotions too whenn trying to make a quick buck. Most people are willing to pay a good chunck of cash to find out who they may get married to someday (in terms of ESP usage).
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