James "The Amazing" Randi is the perfect mix of Science and Magic, a true conjurer of visual machinations that can fool our senses while, at the same time, explaining to us how our senses are fooled.
In my opinion this is the best example of a "human mind debugger", he gets right into the machinations of analog tricks and sees how our brains mistakenly manifests them as a possible reality. Randi also teaches us that illusion and trickery may be comforting to the human mind, but truth is far much more wonderful as it shows us the machinations from the chaos, the sense as well as the awe in both the tricks and the real world.
For several decades, Randi has gone on to expose hundreds of psychics and teach millions across the globe about how they could be fooled into believing in a system which could potentially make them vulnerable to trickery and perhaps psychical harm.
Randi is not afraid to go against popular opinion, as shown in his battle against so-called psychic Uri Geller in the late 1970's and early 1980's.
Randi has also gone against the bizarre practise of faith "healing" and contacting the deceased, and has exposed the cruel, callous and cynical nature of the people who claim to be performing "God's will", such as Peter Popoff.
Randi has also warned us time and time again about the fraudulent practise that is homoeopathic medicine and how it is essentially water solution, dished out as hocus-pocus medicine.
James Randi is the founder of The James Randi Educational Foundation, an organisation that attempts to bring reason to world by luring potential psychics into a trap, baited by a million dollar prize to prove their psychic "powers". "powers" here is a kind of vague term,as Randi knows, so the tests are usually on the so-called psychic's terms. No self-acclaimed psychic has ever won the prize.
Whether or not some form of psychic power exists is still an open question, however many psychics often do not properly gauge their so-called skills and instead brag about them, hence scepticism about such claims should not be so strange to their ears.
Unfortunately the vast amount of psychic powers they have seem to remove all self-esteem as many psychics are often uneasy about Randi's reasonable request and attractive million dollar reward.
Welcome to BadPsychics, your trusted resource for uncovering the truth behind fake psychics and debunking supernatural claims. We are committed to promoting skepticism and critical thinking, providing you with clear and factual information about the paranormal and pseudoscientific practices. At BadPsychics, we celebrate the power of science and rational inquiry. Our mission is to expose fraudulent psychics and unverified supernatural phenomena, empowering you with knowledge.
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10 September 2013
7 September 2013
Psychic Fraud News - Episode 2 - Predictions - 7th September 2013
Not all news, but due to the nature of psychic predictions and the constant effort to make it fit, it's old but news too.
3 September 2013
Psychic Fraud News - Episode 1 - 3rd September 2013
I uploaded this earlier than expected due to positive feed back from my friends on youtube, and I may well upload another by the end of the week.
http://www.youtube.com/user/robertwlester
http://www.youtube.com/user/robertwlester
15 August 2013
2005 Skeptics Society Conference: Brain, Mind and Consciousness:
The Brain, Mind & Consciousness conference, on what Nobel Laureate Francis Crick called "the greatest unsolved problem in biology," was held over the weekend of May 13--15, 2005 at Caltech.
Research on the brain, mind, and consciousness was given a significant boost by Nobel laureate Dr. Francis Crick in 1994, when he wrote in his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, "that 'you,' your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."
This is what is called "the hard problem"—explaining how billions of neurons swapping chemicals give rise to such subjective experiences as consciousness, self-awareness, and awareness that others are conscious and self-aware; that is, not only the ability to wonder, but the ability to wonder why we wonder, and even wonder why others wonder why....
Explaining each of the functional parts of the brain is the easy problem, such as the differences between waking and sleep, discrimination of stimuli, or the control of behavior. By contrast, what has come to be known as the hard problem in consciousness studies is experience: what it is like to be in a given mental state? Adding up all of the solved easy problems does not equal a solution to the hard problem. Something else is going on in private subjective experiences—called qualia—and there is no consensus on what it is.
Dualists hold that qualia are separate from physical objects in the world and that mind is more than brain. Materialists contend that qualia are ultimately explicable through the activities of neu- rons and that mind and brain are one. Our speakers, some of the top neuroscientists in the world, will address these and other problems, such as the evolution of the brain, and how and why it got to be so large. Skeptics will get a chance to interact with these world-class scientists on the breaks, during meals, and in a formal discussion period. We will also consider the implications of this new brain research to better understand apparent paranormal phenomena, as well as how and why people believe weird things.
Lectures included: The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach with Dr. Christof Koch, Children as Scientists: How the Brain Learns to Think with Dr. Alison Gopnik, In Search of Memory — True, False, Repressed, Recovered with Dr. Richard McNally, Sleep, Dreams, and the Subconscious with Dr. Terry Sejnowski, Exploring Altered States of Consciousness with Dr. Susan Blackmore, The Search for the Neurological Basis of the Social Emotions with Dr. John Allman, From Whence Trust Comes: Oxytocin and Behavioral Economics with Dr. Paul Zak, Consciousness is Nothing But a Word with Dr. Hank Schlinger, and From Biology to Consciousness to Morality with Dr. Ursula Goodenough.
Order the DVDs from
HERE
Research on the brain, mind, and consciousness was given a significant boost by Nobel laureate Dr. Francis Crick in 1994, when he wrote in his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, "that 'you,' your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."
This is what is called "the hard problem"—explaining how billions of neurons swapping chemicals give rise to such subjective experiences as consciousness, self-awareness, and awareness that others are conscious and self-aware; that is, not only the ability to wonder, but the ability to wonder why we wonder, and even wonder why others wonder why....
Explaining each of the functional parts of the brain is the easy problem, such as the differences between waking and sleep, discrimination of stimuli, or the control of behavior. By contrast, what has come to be known as the hard problem in consciousness studies is experience: what it is like to be in a given mental state? Adding up all of the solved easy problems does not equal a solution to the hard problem. Something else is going on in private subjective experiences—called qualia—and there is no consensus on what it is.
Dualists hold that qualia are separate from physical objects in the world and that mind is more than brain. Materialists contend that qualia are ultimately explicable through the activities of neu- rons and that mind and brain are one. Our speakers, some of the top neuroscientists in the world, will address these and other problems, such as the evolution of the brain, and how and why it got to be so large. Skeptics will get a chance to interact with these world-class scientists on the breaks, during meals, and in a formal discussion period. We will also consider the implications of this new brain research to better understand apparent paranormal phenomena, as well as how and why people believe weird things.
Lectures included: The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach with Dr. Christof Koch, Children as Scientists: How the Brain Learns to Think with Dr. Alison Gopnik, In Search of Memory — True, False, Repressed, Recovered with Dr. Richard McNally, Sleep, Dreams, and the Subconscious with Dr. Terry Sejnowski, Exploring Altered States of Consciousness with Dr. Susan Blackmore, The Search for the Neurological Basis of the Social Emotions with Dr. John Allman, From Whence Trust Comes: Oxytocin and Behavioral Economics with Dr. Paul Zak, Consciousness is Nothing But a Word with Dr. Hank Schlinger, and From Biology to Consciousness to Morality with Dr. Ursula Goodenough.
Order the DVDs from
HERE