Man Wins James Randi's Million Dollar Challenge

[FaithIsFilth]

Seth Raphael passed Randi's three tests and claimed the million dollars. Randi admitted defeat. Do you think this guy could have legit psychic powers?

[youtube:2pisy2yu]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_0E1XJP33E[/youtube:2pisy2yu]

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Nothing about this on Google news...

[PJS]

Watch the last 30 seconds

[Colanth]

I think it's reasonable to assume that they both could have foretold that they would get us.

[Plu]

Heh. That's very well done :)

[NitzWalsh]

I saw that title and thought "yeah, this has to be a joke." I wasn't disappointed.

[BarkAtTheMoon]

Not bad.

I wasn't terribly impressed through the whole video, although the "predictions" seemed pretty impressive. If it's a computer doing it, then it's technology and programming, not anything psychic. I was wondering why Randi wasn't calling him on that.

[Brian37]

I think there is more to this. I would be a bit shocked if Randi really did cave. I cant see that happening unless Randi is getting so old that it is affecting his mental capabilities, that does happen the older you get.

I'd chalk this up to Randi simply maybe not understanding the illusion the person is concocting before I would really accept the bullshit called a "psychic".

Plus something like this if real would be huge news internationally. And certainly the scientific community would show a huge interest. I smell a rat.

[Brian37]

It is a joke, guys, but for charity in any case. Unless Randi suffered a sudden brain injury or brain disease I don't see him ever falling for bullshit, he is too smart.

[Colanth]

Not bad.

I wasn't terribly impressed through the whole video, although the "predictions" seemed pretty impressive. If it's a computer doing it, then it's technology and programming, not anything psychic. I was wondering why Randi wasn't calling him on that.

Through the first part I was ready to call a "Clark" on it, but then it started becoming a bit obvious that Randi wasn't being Randi.

[St Giordano Bruno]

Does psychic powers cause alopecia?

[Plu]

It's actually the part where the guy claims to read the computer's memory that is most unlikely. That's the one where I immediately assumed a scam. It was only amplified when he said "this is the closest I can get", which makes absolutely no sense to anyone who knows how a computer stores imagery.

The average hard disk these days stores about 1,099,511,627,776 blocks of information. Good luck sifting through that, even if you can somehow read the data through the casing. And then if you somehow manage to find the image... it's not stored human representable, which means you will either know how to convert a .png or .jpg file to an image (giving you a perfect representation (or a headache, more likely)) or you will not know, which means it's just a garbled mess or numbers.

The others I can actually see being possible though. A computer being able to read a human's subtle changes when he spots the card he memorized on the screen through a sensor bracelet doesn't seem too far off. Likewise, a machine reading from the mind something you're heavily focussing on has also been done I think. But those aren't examples of psychic behaviour, just advanced machinery.