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!
I realize you are asking OP so pardon me, but Physics appears to be completely arbitrary at its root. That arbitrariness to me kind of looks like magic.
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.
> 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.
Does it need mentioning? Were you not aware of this? Or do you think that maybe I left it out because offending people because of their religion is counterproductive in discussions like these?
I was curious why you would pick such trivial little targets that I assume are popular right now when there are huge mainstream examples of the phenomenon. I wonder if it's just too obvious that people don't believe what they say they believe in the case of transubstantiation. Also not sure why offending people because of religion is not productive but apparently reiki or crystals is fair game.
That's because reiki and crystals are not official religions and the other ones are. Never mind that to me they are similar, to the people that practice them they are not.
> 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.
Why is the NYT so willing to be complicit to his fraudulence? Or at least, trying to sell the reader on the idea that being charmed by a fraud is acceptable?
I find it galling.
When one of the Davids does magic, we know what they mean. Geller's behavior is fraud. It is neither civil nor fair to the readership of a serious newspaper to hold back.
It also promotes a lenient relationship to the truth. It promotes bullshitting: Who cares what's true as long as he/she is entertaining? If such a stance becomes broadly accepted, eventually bullshitters become president.
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.”
I've been looking for a new source of news, now that Reddit, et.al. have been going weird. I've subscribed to the Washington Post for a bit now, even though I'm on the West Coast.
This is the sort of thing the NY Times has been pushing lately, which seems to be obviously some sort of weird re-writing of history for several topics. It's not the mainstream topics, but it is enough to raise up alarm bells and wonder what's pushing this. All of the articles on Netflix "The Bear" falls on the same thing, and they're pushed as front page news/promotions.
I do like a top word-game, and NYTimes is the pinnical. But, it seems like they're obviously pushing something, not sure what. I don't think all major news sites are like that, but maybe they are.
I think there's two things going on here. First, there's a phenomenon wherein people, many of them journalists, don't know or care about anything that happened more than about five years ago. They live in the moment, unmoored from any historical perspective and immune to books, encyclopedias, archives, and anything that contains information about things Before. I don't know if this is something that's increasing; it seems that way to me, but it may be that I'm starting to get old enough that I remember a bunch of things first-hand that younger people don't know or care about.
The second is that the core audience for the New York Times is rich Manhattan assholes, and there's sort of a bread-and-butter Times article that's basically "Hey, this rich asshole who makes the world a worse place every second he continues to draw breath is actually a complex nuanced person for reasons we will not adequately explain, so maybe you, Rich Manhattan Asshole, also have redeeming qualities and you should feel better about yourself and keep buying our newspaper".
> obviously some sort of weird re-writing of history
Might this not be a way to get people to accept the reality that the view of reality to which we have been exposed since birth is asymptotically approaching 100% phony, e.g. euphemism, puffery, imaginative vacuity and partial truths at best, paid-for praise, publicity, fraud, BS, deceit, whole cloth hokum and honey-fugling the norm, with every successful persona, product, purveyor and position diligently designed and manifested to be taken up by a specific audience, and to thrive among the myths already held dear by that audience? The NY Times is a media company that has reinvented itself to survive, dedicated to the proposition that survival is the sine qua non of meaning. The facts are not as important as the meaning, and the modern thoughtful reader, particularly the
sophisticated reader of the NY Times, engages the text, imagining and constructing their own meaning. Facts are the new adverbs -- to be used cautiously and sparingly, more for distraction or inspiration than for navigation or inference.
I would suggest that perhaps you are not looking for news, rather entertaining, thoughtful writing. Maybe something like Lapham's quarterly, and other literary focused publications would scratch that itch? I have realised how much nonsense masquerades as news since using boring report (https://www.boringreport.org/app) but YMMV.
Think of it as fodder for tiresome brunchers to annoy their companions with.
“I was reading this article about Uri Geller, and it turns out that few people know spoon bending was really part of the deep essence of his magic act…”
(I too prefer WaPo, and LA Times - also a west coaster.)
This article sets a new benchmark for mental gymnastics.
The "skeptics couldn't debunk him" (ignoring Randi and plenty of others), and by that we mean, "The real point is Mr. Geller is an entertainer" who "challenges our relationship to the truth".
Weird that he "is less dogmatic about claims to otherworldly gifts now" given that the "skeptics couldn't debunk him" and the "anti-Geller brigade laid down its arms."
But really, aren't deep fakes much worse? I mean, not that Geller was bad.
I’ve seen a lot of great illusionists who never claimed to be doing real magic, and they were no less entertaining or mystifying. We don’t need to give up on respecting truth to enjoy a bit of fantasy.
Or, going back a lot further, Paul Daniels, who did the same kind of thing Penn and Teller did on his TV show decades earlier, where he'd show you a trick, then show you it slowly, then show you how to do it, then show you the same trick with a twist you'd never figure out - real magic :-D
He actually wrote a computer game in the 1980s where you had to learn to do some close-up magic tricks in real life in order to solve the in-game puzzles.
The real magic is showing people exactly how the trick is done, and *still* fooling them with it.
Indeed an “entertainer” who “challenges our relationship with the truth” would be a good description of Trump.
This isn’t a glib comparison, as it gets to the heart of what is so wrong with letting public figures slide by with the excuse that they shouldn’t be taken literally. I can attest that many close relatives of mine literally believe the 2020 election was stolen b/c Trump says so. And as for Geller, he’s nothing special as a magician — his blurring of the actually true line is the very essence of his undering appeal.
There's already at this early point a curious amount of hostility in the comments - the height of Geller's fame was in perhaps a more woo-oriented time (post hippydom) and now he just seems like a clever showman who capitalised on his exoticness and niche ("its not magic, you see, its psychokinesis") to charm his western audience like some classic guru.
He kept a straight face, and maybe even believed it a bit himself.
His efforts now to stay newsworthy doing things like moving the Ever Given are obviously tongue-in-cheek and funny.
There has never been any "debunking" needed because he's subject to the same physics as the rest of us. Of course he's not really bending stuff with his mind! People were just more ready to believe he had some special exception, and he ran with it.
Randi's obsession and anger (reflected here a little?) seems as old-fashioned and silly as Geller's spoon-bending antics.
I see no evidence of woo-orientation slowing down - Deepak Chopra has seemingly never been more popular - and angry backlash is a perfectly understandable response to swathes of people being taken in by lies with spiritual overtones. We should be thankful that Uri Geller never attempted to become a true cult leader.
Yeah there's been an enormous resurgence in astrology in recent years, some semi-ironic but most of it absolutely sincere.
You can say "oh but isn't this harmless", but it's not really. Critical thinking isn't just a thing you can turn off and on. Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World" deals with this really well.
Maybe this was once true, but nowadays I'm afraid the etiology is rather more complicated than that - flat eartherism is now full-on cult territory. I recommend the documentary "Behind the Curve".
The appearance on Johnny Carson where Uri Geller failed to perform his magical ability is available online [0]. Johnny Carson used Paul Randi as an advisor to set up the experiment so as to counteract what tricks Uri Geller was using to deduce where the water was in the containers [1].
It's hard to overstate how poisonous Uri Geller and other charlatans were. I won't be able to find it but when I was younger I had a collection of essays from prominent physicists discussing different aspects of mathematics, quantum theory, etc. and one of the articles mentioned Uri Geller by name, talking about how the human brain could access quantum physics directly, using Uri Geller as an example. Apparently James Randi had to defend from a libel suit from Uri Geller for debunking the "magic" acts.
Definitely, but not worse than those other large groups of (mostly guys) claiming to have a connection to god, the ones that peddle reiki, essential oils, crystals and a ton of other nonsense to the gullible for a lot of profit. I have some 'true believers' in my surroundings and it always gets me how they are able to delude themselves, but it gets me even more how much energy they put into convincing other, even more gullible people. It's like an MLM for bullshit.
Derren Brown (and surely quite a few others) love pointing out that this is an industry where you tell your audience you are going to lie to them, then lie to them.
It's entertainment.
Uri was flat out lying, and refused to break character, basically turning him into a charlatan.
That's the first time I've seen this word, yet it definitely distinguishes against real (Olympic) wrestling.
I never watched WWF, now WWE, because I couldn't see any use for rooting for any one of them, since the matches are far more about the super-human "stunts" than about anyone in particular winning. Given how manufactured the fights were, whoever the winner was, was a moot point anyway.
There is a similarity here for sure. Imagine if Hulk Hogan claimed all his moves were genuine hard core painful moves, and not carefully rehearsed to merely look painful.
You might find this video interesting: Why there will never ever be another show like Monday Night Raw [0].
I have no knowledge of wrestling except for vague cultural osmosis, but I found this video makes a very compelling case that it is a modern form of live theater, and regardless of its low-brow connotations should be understood and respected as such. Essentially: WWE is modern day Shakespeare, not a sport.
I also don't watch WWF for the same reason, that it obviously is completely fake. As a dramatic performance, it's terrible acting as well. It's worse than a daytime soap
But you could appreciate it as a skilled live stunt act. Because it is genuinely dangerous. The moves must have been rehearsed, but the performers do get seriously hurt if they don't execute the act precisely in front of the audience
In conjunction with the video from 'dkbrk below, I'd recommend "The Unreality of Pro Wrestling"[1] as an excellent introduction into the ongoing storylines, etc., that WWE has on top of the 'super-human "stunts"'. Certainly opened my eyes and definitely shows that the winner isn't a "moot point" but plotted and planned well in advance to keep the soap opera going (and indeed, that storyline continued right up to a couple of weeks ago when they did Money In The Bank in London.)
Is that so? Most magicians do not pretend their illusions are actual magic. How do other performers lie? Do you think an actor is lying while they act?
Of course actors are lying when they act. To study acting is to study how to effectively lie. Do you think Patrick Stewart is actually Jean-Luc Picard? Of course not because you know it’s an act, a lie, a ruse put out to entertain you. Therein lies the difference between a con artist, who is acting, and an actor. We accept the actor’s lies because they entertain us, but that doesn’t make them any less of a lie.
The same is true for a magician’s illusions. The act is a lie. They don’t tell you that when they pull your card from the deck, because that ruins the entertainment, but the saying “a magician never reveals their secrets” exists because we know they’re lying to us.
I think you’re kinda robbing the word “lie” of some of its subtlety. It implies disingenuousness. But the actor or magician doesn’t want nor need you to believe they are actually the character, or that they are actually performing magic. They just want you to enjoy the show.
Compare to a con artist, who relies on the audience believing the act. It’s that, IMO, that makes them liars.
But there are plenty of acceptable reasons to lie to people beyond acting and illusions. Say your friend is getting into painting and they ask you if you like their most recent work. Objectively it’s average but you tell them you love it. It’s a lie but its intent is to encourage them and maintain your friendship. In this case it would be “bad” to tell the truth, unless maybe you’re an artist yourself who can provide actionable feedback in a constructive way.
Your comment doesn’t seem to relate to what I’m saying.
I don’t make a value judgment about lying. I’m just saying lying implies deceit. In your hypothetical scenario there is deceit, so there is the lie. I don’t think most actors or magicians are deceitful.
This is an interesting tangent. I agree that advertisers lie, and that some actors that appear in advertisements speak lies.
But I don’t think Matt Damon was lying when he portrayed Jason Bourne; nobody was under the impression that Bourne is a real person. They even put “Matt Damon” on the screen at the beginning so nobody is confused.
“They” in this case includes Damon himself. It’s not some separate group of people protecting the audience from Damon’s deceit. If I say to you “I am acting as a character” and then proceed to do so, where is the lie?
Similarly, if I say to you “This is nonsense: Water does not exist” was I lying as I spoke the last four words? Context is kinda important I think.
A lie involves the intent to deceive someone who is entitled to expect the truth from you. It's not merely a question of whether a statement is on its face true or false.
This is important, because if we are to make a sweeping statement that lying is wrong, then we need to make sure we are clear on what is and what isn't a lie.
I say all sorts of outrageous things to my children, but I'm not lying to them because I don't expect them to believe me -- and they don't. In an analogous way, magic shows are not lying because the deceit is part of the premise. Telling a knock knock joke when you're not actually a banana (or whatever) is similarly not a lie.
I found that lying is no more intrinsically bad than truth telling is intrinsically good. Both truth and lies commonly enable terrible harms.
Like pretty much everything, it depends. Consideration is a much better policy than honesty.
> lying is bad, especially when done for profit.
This so often ends up in a bad place that I'll likely flag it as problematic - even before I have complete information. But that's because of reality & history, not an arbitrary rule.
To clarify, are you advocating for the use of white lies in situations where the truth would do greater harm? Or are you promoting lying to larger degrees?
> To clarify, are you advocating for the use of white lies in situations where the truth would do greater harm?
I'm not advocating for truth or lies but for outcomes. Based on this, I think trying to qualify lies is the wrong place to focus.
One reason I'll lie is to convey more useful information. Lets say I have a mild ailment that weird and not easily explained. It's impacting my productivity. People who are impacted need a brief explanation. They don't need a rabbit hole or an organ recital or a reason to lose their lunch. I'll lie. I'll say I have a different ailment, one that signals my limitations and closes the subject.
Other reasons I might lie. To avoid a situation where a truth will cause someone pointless pain. To avoid an immediate bad outcome for someone - that a truth would cause now but would work well later. The deciding factor in play in these two is consideration. Their well being is better served thru consideration than by a rigid rule.
> Or are you promoting lying to larger degrees?
I am promoting consideration for others over a rule that is rigid by it's nature.
Looking at the other side, I will sometimes tell the truth where it isn't well received. Q: Can you keep a secret? A:No.
> If Mr. Geller can’t actually bend metal with his brain — and civility and fairness demands this “if”
<sigh> Logic and rationality demand the removal of that "if", and Uri Geller's bullshit deserves no civility. Fairness demands he present actual evidence or shut the hell up.
Uri, with all the powers you have you shall be famously remembered for bending f****** spoons. What a legacy to leave behind. Maybe in the future there is no spoon.
