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A million dollars isn't enough!

Phew. I'm glad you see what I was getting at now.

I hate people who come onto messageboards to to slag off a programme or a person. What's the point in that? I think Randi is great - I wish he'd come over here more often.

As to the million dollars, I think I have more chance with the lottery tickets.

Nice deer, by the way.
 
Roger,
Waddya mean "no reason to suppose different motivations". The hypothetical is that this person can levitate a ping-pong ball. That seems to be reason enough to me.

The idea that you are sure there would be nothing different about this person (other than the ability to levitate ping-pong balls) is taking a leap of logic. What if this ability only existed because the person had taken a vow of poverty? Then any attempt a garnering a million dollars would cause the ping-pong raising ability to vanish.

What if besides having this ability the person was painfully shy? This would make it impossible to claim a public award.
 
If *I* had real psychic powers, I wouldn't fart around with Randi's measley million dollars. I'd be making fistfulls of money at the race track, casinos, etc.
 
I've thought about this a bit, and I rather came to the conclusion that if I became convinced I had some sort of supernatural ability I would want to be tested to see if I was fooling myself. Seems like convincing Randi would go a long way to convincing myself I hadn't just gone nuts. :)

The million would be nice, but I assume you'd make far more money on the book and movie rights than just on the challenge. As to the fame and/or notoriety, well, I imagine it would get quite annoying, but you could always buy yourself a little island and a lot of guns... ;)

(Just my personal opinion, your mileage may vary)
 
Hhm. I still fear the freak show possiibilities. Or maybe I'm just more modest than you guys!
 
The interesting thing about the Challenge is that nobody has won it. Maybe Severin wouldn't want to go for it, fair enough, and maybe there could be a few others of the same mind. But.

I don't see any reason why having paranormal abilities that are real should be inevitably associated with a phobia about publicity. Occam's razor and all that. After all, we do know that thinking you have paranormal abilities (falsely) isn't associated with shyness. And if there's no such inevitable association, then statistics suggets that there can't be more than one or two such gifted people. A Venn diagram would demonstrate it.

Probability is there are none, actually.

Rolfe.
 
Has anyone here read Kurt Vonnegut's excellent short story, Report on the Barnhouse Effect? It was from his early days of writing sci-fi and it postulated a man with telekinetic powers. The story is summarized in the above link, but I recommend you read it. It is an excellent commentary on the question of "What would you do if you had magical powers?" and includes the theme that the government would try to use him for their purposes.
 
If I were truly psychic, I'd keep damn quiet about it. I wouldn't want to end up as some sort of lab rat or be pressurized into doing dodgy things for the military.
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If I were truly psychic, I'd collect the million dollars, and all the fame that goes with it, and use my amazing psychic powers to stay one step ahead of the Man.
 
Marquis de Carabas said:

If I were truly psychic, I'd collect the million dollars, and all the fame that goes with it, and use my amazing psychic powers to stay one step ahead of the Man.
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And that's the point. There's no logical reason to suspect that some of the genuine paranormally-powered woudn't take that view. If there were any.

Rolfe.
 
I tend to agree with the original point of this thread. The Million prize only tests those that have a power beyond the normal AND yet maintain normal motivations.
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People who believe they posesses paranormal abilities have 'normal motivations'? Your syllogy is skewed but I do see your point. The JREF challenge is inapplicable to those with such severe mental problems that they are not motivated by the usual motivations sane people recognize as persuasive prizes offered by the JREF (material gain, prestige, taking Randi's money, donating Randi's money to charity, helping science investigate a metaphysical talent, putting randi out of business, and many more very human motivations...).

Those sorts of people would be so far removed from the consensual reality of society that they would face great difficulty in this world aside from simply not being testable by the JREF, which should be the least of their worries. They would also be unemployable, may need constant help doing simple tasks, and might require extensive medications and institutionalization.
 
CurtC said:
If *I* had real psychic powers, I wouldn't fart around with Randi's measley million dollars. I'd be making fistfulls of money at the race track, casinos, etc.
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At the race track you'd kill your own odds as soon as you lay down a large bet and the very nature of a longshot is that it doesn't happen frequently (This is assuming your psychic power is the ability to see into the future, and not telekinetic in nature in which case you could just psychically move your longshot to the head of the pack!). The casino would boot you out as a card counter in no time. Why not just hit the lottery 10 times in a row? It's always a longshot with a big payoff. And hey, you could do it whether you are able to see into the future or telekinetically make those little ping pong balls with the the numbers on them get spit out of the machine at the lottery company in the right order! HMMM I guess we'd have noticed a pattern of repeat lottery winners by now if psychic phenomena were real. This is of course where a true-believer will move the goal posts and declare that real psychics are so spiritually advanced that they're not motivated by monetary gain. Of course they could win the lottery 10 times in a row and use the money to combat world famine, poverty, disease, war, etc... So if there are any real psychics out there, not only are they not personally greedy with their powers, they're also selfish in their unwillingness to use them to help others!
 
FoundIn said:
What if this ability only existed because the person had taken a vow of poverty? Then any attempt a garnering a million dollars would cause the ping-pong raising ability to vanish.
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This is why Randi has the applicant design the protocol. In this case the applicant would have to agree that the $1million prize wouldn't be part of the challenge.
 
If I could win the lottery at will through psychic means, I would probably only do one lottery for a large sum (over $100 million) and not tell anyone how I did it. If someone has already done this, how would anyone else know? I certainly wouldn't fault such a person for wanting to keep their psychic ability secret.
 
What if you could also predict the future that if you win the lottery you will buy a jet or a fast car which will crash and you will die? But then you could avoid it. But if you do then you didn't predict the future... if the future is 'not formed yet' and therefore changable then whatever you predicted wasn't the future but just a possible future. And if all you are doing is predicting possible futures then you wouldn't be predicting your lottery numbers coming up, you'd be making them come up.
 
Giambattista: ... if all you are doing is predicting possible futures then you wouldn't be predicting your lottery numbers coming up, you'd be making them come up.
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Agreed. Your analysis is one of many possibilities. Which is why my hypothetical example didn't specify how it was done. Notice that I specifically did not use the word "predict", although there are many ways that could be done without running into the paradox you describe.
 
It depends on the motivation of the person concerned.

If they wanted money they would be better off not doing the challenge and making millions Uri style. There is a lot more ongoing public interest (and money) in the does he cheat /doesn’t he cheat? How does he do it ? Improper tests speculation than a boring Oh yes we have proved it he really can read minds.

Lets face it when a psychic appears on an entertainment show its like motor sport, you want to see him crash.You tune in each time in anticipation. If you know he is not going to it gets boring it is not entertaining, ratings drop......

If they had a serious interest in science and discovering how the world works they would take the challenge.

The problem is the most likely exponents fall into the first category while their proponents fall into the latter.
 
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