"The Ever More Amazing Randi" by Troy H. Cheek on Apr 20, 2005

A while back, I made a casual comment about something which got a disproportionate amount of response, so naturally I had to bring it up again. That way, when I get another email about it, instead of taking the time to write a reply, I'll just direct them to this page.

Yes, I'm really that lazy.

The casual comment was a quip about how I wish I could cause a certain bit of weirdness in my life to happen whenever I wanted it to because I could really use one of those million dollar prizes that James Randi keeps giving out.

I was refering to a program which I thought the whole world was familiar with. Judging by all the requests for more information, I'd say it's not nearly as well-known as I thought. I guess an explaination is in order.

Please keep in mind that this explaination is dragged from the recesses of my memory. Since people seem to want to know what the Hell(tm) I was thinking when I wrote that, I decided to present the facts as I remember them from years past. Yes, many of the things stated below are going to lack details or simply be incorrect. I'm not doing a research paper; I'm just telling you how I remember it.

James Randi was a professional magician who performed under the name The Amazing Randi or The Great Randi or something like that. He once had his own tevelision show. This was BC, or Before Cable, when there were only three networks and whatever local UHF station happened to be within 20 miles of your house, so having a TV series actually meant something back then. I've heard him described as everything from brilliant to barely competent, but as I've never seen him perform myself, I'm just assuming that he's pretty good. In a perfect world, you can't make a living at something if you're not pretty good at it.

I keep hoping to wake up one morning in a perfect world.

At some point in his life, Randi started exposing frauds and debunking mystics. A professional magician is just the sort of person you want looking into such things. If there's a quick and easy way to fake something, a magician knows about it. And he can probably look good doing it. Me, I'm lucky if I can pull a coin out of your ear when you're not expecting it.

Randi made a hobby out of psyching out psychics and, when he retired from life as a magician, began doing it full-time. He founded the James Randi Education Foundation, which is devoted to stamping out ignorance. He'll never manage to do it, human beings being what they are, but I see that as job security.

Randi claimed that there's no such thing as the paranormal. Everything is explainable in mundane terms, if studied under controlled conditions. Oh, and if you can't study it under controlled conditions, it doesn't exist.

I, among many other people, disagree with this philosophy, but that's beside the point.

James Randi focuses on psychic ability. He challenges anyone who believes that they possess a psychic ability to contact his organization and fill out an application. Randi will work with them to develop a mutually acceptable test in his presense which will prove their claim of psychic ability. If they pass the test, he will give them $1,000,000. That's a million dollars for those of you who don't want to count the zeroes.

As an aside, what does a true psychic need with a million dollars, anyway? Why don't psychics just pick out a few winning lottery ticket numbers, cash in, and live out their days in luxury? One answer is that it's hardly nice to take unfair advantage of other people like that, and a psychic by definition would have to be sensitive to the pain of others. Some might feel that using their abilities for personal gain is an insult to their gifts. Another answer is that only so many psychics can win weekly drawings before the authorities decide that somebody is cheating and stops all the checks.

As I mentioned in the earlier article, I have weird things happen to me all the time. I think most of us do, if we think back. I don't mean Earth-shattering things, either. Just think back to the last few days and those little things that aren't a big deal, but neither do you want to mention to any of your friends for fear that they might think you're a little off.

All my friends know that I'm a little off, so it doesn't bother me at all to recount how I planned a trip that Mapquest says should take four hours, but actually took three hours on the trip out and only two hours on the trip back. Unfortunately, this happens only occasionally and I can't force it, so there's no way to set up a test to prove it. I'm not sure if that counts as a psychic ability, anyway.

The closest thing to a repeatable, testable psychic ability is something I experience many times in my youth. Remember, I'm old. When I was a child, a telephone was a huge black metal thing permanently wired into the wall. Telephones rang because they had little bells inside them. You dialed a phone by actually turning a dial. A party line wasn't a political platform or a number you called to get the location of the latest rave in town.

Back in those days, when caller ID was an unheard of possibility and it really did take as long for police to trace a call as they still show on television drama shows, I was a human caller ID. I would on rare occasions find myself rising from my chair to go answer the phone before it started ringing. Much more often, I found myself blurting out the name of the person calling in before anyone answered the phone. I couldn't do it if I was trying, but if the phone rang and I just opened my mouth, the name of the caller would just tumble out.

As I remember, I was wrong exactly once, when I predicted it was a female schoolmate of mine calling but answered the phone to find that it was a male schoolmate. He ribbed me about calling him "Sweety."

The female schoolmate called later. She said she'd tried to call earlier, but the phone was busy.

Unfortunately, I outgrew this ability, and by the time caller ID became available in our area, I actually needed it. So much for my million bucks.

Of course, besides me, there are probably thousands if not millions of people in this world who believe they possess some sort of psychic ability. Then why isn't James Randi buried under applicants? I believe the official explaination is that they know they are frauds and don't want to embarass themselves by proving it. Another reason given is that many have applied, but were unable to provide even an informal demonstration to Randi's associates.

That's the official party line.

Unofficially, it's a whole other ballgame. Randi is accused of refusing to acknowledge that certain psychic abilities are indeed psychic abilities if they can be duplicated by other means. You might actually be able to use your ESP to sort a deck of cards without looking at their faces, but if James Randi or one of his magician associates can fake it under the same circumstances, it doesn't count.

My caller ID trick can easily be duplicated with today's technology, so I'm pretty sure Randi won't accept it.

Randi is accused of demanding test conditions that the applicant has already acknowledged they can not perform well under. If the applicant can levitate a playing card at six feet, Randi will demand they do it at 12. If the psychic works best with small audiences, Randi will demand many observers to the test. If the ability works best in broad daylight, Randi will schedule the test for dusk.

A friend and I looked over the application Randi expects everyone to sign and, even though I Am Not A Lawyer and neither is he, it seemed pretty fishy to us. My friend didn't like the part about Randi and the applicant having to mutually agree on the test conditions. My friend says that's in a contract when one side or the other wants to hold up things indefinitely. The stalling side can always honestly say that the two parties have not come up with a mutually agreeable arrangement.

I didn't like the way that all documentation and evidence pertaining to the test remained the property of the James Randi Education Foundation and could be used in any manner they saw fit. Between that and a few other restrictions, it seemed to me that someone could apply, test, prove their psychic abilities, get their million bucks, but then have no proof that they bested James Randi and be prohibited from telling anybody about it. People could be proving their abilities regularly and we'd never know about it.

My friend made the most compelling argument. Randi, in trying to convince people that his challenge is legit, repeatedly assures us that he's collected and placed in trust the million dollars. This money has been stashed aside for years. Also, in trying to convince us how correct his world view is, he's repeatedly stated that nobody has ever collected this million dollars. My friend's argument was this: If Randi already has the money to pay off this challenge and nobody has ever won said challenge, then why is he still collecting money on his website for this challenge?

It could be that his Foundation requires more operating capital than he can get from the interest off that million bucks.

Or it could be that he's already had to pay out that million dollars at least once and needs to rebuild the nest egg.

My psychic ability has yet to reveal the answer...

Copyright 2005 by Troy H. Cheek. Reprint with prior written permission only. Comments and questions to