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One day I was telling my coworker about how frustrated I was that my father goes to see a chiropractor when they are total quacks. It bothers me particularly because my dad is a science teacher who is a stereotype of those “I Fucking Love Science�� science worshippers. My 60 year old coworker was sympathetic to my complaints as he is an avid reader of The Skeptical Enquirer. He recommended I read this book, which I had coincidentally already set aside so that I could show a picture to Kai because the title made me laugh.

The book is by a magician, James Randi, who has dedicated his life to debunking psychics, paranormal claims, astrology and that sort of thing. I’m never quite sure where I stand on all of this. My partner and I both grew up in families that place a very high emphasis on spirituality. Her grandpa was a professional astrologist. My childhood home had a whole room dedicated to the altar where my dad does this whole divination runestone process every morning. Even though he considers himself a man of science his spirituality is deeply, deeply important. It’s something i’ve always been surrounded by and it continues as many people I know are really into spirituality and tarot and astrology and the like. I had a few years of being an atheist (this was mostly as backlash to going to church) but now I’m kinda at the stage where it seems like a buzzkill to be against it and some of it is fun. I don’t really care as long as it isn’t actively harmful. I am not particularly into woo woo stuff but I respect other’s beliefs. But what gets me is when there is a veneer of scientific legitimacy over it, like the way people think Chiropractors are serious medical facilities. The whole thing is tricky because I can completely understand the problems with western medicine and the deification of Science as something Pure and True opposing other fields of knowledge as lesser and silly. There is of course a racial component to all of this, with white western medicine seen as legitimate and nonwhite medicine as unscientific hocus pocus. But at the same time if a loved one were refusing cancer treatment and only getting reiki I would be furious. Idk.

Randi has an ongoing offer of 10,000 to anyone who can prove a paranormal/ESP/etc claim to him. Because he is a magician, he is well qualified to expose sleight of hand trickery. Most of the book is him detailing (the details are VERY detailed to the detriment of the reader’s enjoyment) the experiments and either flaws in the experiments or the way the subject deceived the testers. He goes into overwhelming detail on every one of them. He warned us in the first chapter that he would be “killing the gnat with a sledgehammer��, so I can’t say I didn’t know it would be like this. He debunks psychics, the bermuda triangle, biorhythms, dowsing, and various other paranormal events. It gets to be exhausting.

Here lies the fatal flaw of the book. People literally don’t care about proof or facts. Belief and faith do not need facts. To quote Paramore, it’s not faith if you use your eyes. If you could simply disprove something to get people to stop believing it, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in today.The problem with atheists/skeptics is the human spirit yearns to believe in magic, and science/enlightenment has not proved sufficient to fill that void in people’s hearts. To his credit, Randi is aware of this: “Once an individual, especially a fairly bright one, latches onto a belief system that offers comfort and universal answers, then nature has provided him with innumerable mechanisms to avoid facing up to discomforting challenges to that belief�� (106).

Part of the book I wondered why exactly Randi cared so much�� what’s it to him if some 15 year old says they can read while blindfolded? How would that trick impact anything? But I guess at this time there were so many legitimate and respected institutions like Stanford throwing money at what should’ve been obviously seen as hogwash. Randi seems aware of the fact that facts don’t dissuade people, citing millenarian sects such as the 7th day adventists that are still around today despite the world ending prophecies not happening back in 1844. Yet he soldiers on, because he wants a rational world.

I felt sad for him knowing that in many ways we still have just as many problems with determining what is true or not. In fact things are probably as bad as they’ve ever been. I’m not the first person to go on about post truth society, so I won’t get too much into it. It’s even worse because beliefs are determined along culture war lines. Thinking specifically of how “science�� has been trotted out during the pandemic and all the shoddy treatments people have been taking.

I was like what’s Randi’s deal re: being so obsessed with Uri Gellar’s claims being fake, let the man live! But then I thought of some examples of times someone has been unrelenting about proving the truth to society’s benefit. I could say the same about John Carreyrou, the author of Bad Blood, being obsessed with Elizabeth Holmes. Just let her live, she just wants to help people get simpler healthcare! But of course we all know how the Theranos saga went down, and I’m glad for it.

Overall, I found this book thought provoking even though it is a little outdated. But it is interesting to see what things are still around today 40 years after this book came out. Harold Puthoff, one of the parapsychologists in chapter 7, is still around today. He actually is the co-founder of To The Stars, the UFO organization with Tom Delonge the Blink 182 guy. I file the UFO conspiracies in the harmless fun category. I never hear about Dowsing these days, but astrology is more popular than ever. I don’t see the harm in that, but I do see the harm in cults or in damaging medical beliefs.

I thought much of Randi’s criticism to be misplaced. He spends a whole chapter on Transcendental meditation, and cites experiments that seem to show that meditation is just falling asleep. I don’t see the point in disparaging meditation itself, who cares if you can prove whether someone goes into a different brain wave state or not. If there are benefits like less anxiety, which he acknowledges, why not do it? But I do see the harm in the organization Transcendental Meditation. I don’t think disproving meditation itself is a good way to stop people from joining it, I think showing people the cultiness and financial drain and level of control is a better deterrent. Randi has a blanket anti-falsehood stance and believes all of it is harmful. I can respect the consistency, but I think to be effective in convincing others you have to choose your battles.

My coworker the skeptic and I were discussing the book and I voiced some of these concerns. He said that he feels that sometimes the skeptic community is just as fanatical as those they decry. He said that I should take what good I can find with the book and throw out what isn’t useful to me. I know that I have almost at random decided what things I will and won’t believe, and they are not all based in reason or logic. I also know I have experienced plenty of things that I simply can’t explain.


Other thoughts:
My whole thing with numerology is that none of it makes sense because it is all using our base 10 system when anyone with a brain should know the cosmos and magic and nature should all be using a base 12 system�� Many of my friends have kindly sat through my powerpoint on this topic.

The whole book reminded me of 2 stories in the Exhalation collection by Ted Chiang. One was the truth of fact the truth of feeling, about the myths we make for ourselves, and the other was the story of the scientist coming to terms with the fact that the world may not be 6,000 years old. I think I talked about this a lot in that review so no need to rehash.

Randi has a good takedown of why the ancient aliens theory is simply racist. “At no point does he [ancient alien theory proponent] call to our attention the miracle of the Parthenon or Stonehenge, because these wonders are European, built by people he expects to have the intelligence and ability to do such work. He cannot conceive of our brown and black brothers having the wit to conceive or the skill to build the great structures they did leave behind. Instead, to satisfy what appear to be his personal prejudices, he invents some sort of divine/extraterrestrial/supernatural intervention that he maintains was necessary to enable inferior races to put stone upon stone of place paint upon a cave wall�� He spends the rest of the chapter talking about how he finds the sublime everywhere he goes. I get that he feels frustrated that people need to seek out all this extra divine magic when the world is already pretty magical as it is.