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From: tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.philosophy,net.physics
Subject: Re: Comment about Uri Geller
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Date: Mon, 3-Jun-85 21:05:09 EDT
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Posted: Mon Jun  3 21:05:09 1985
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Dave Trissel states:

> Uri Geller has been known to fake things quite often.  However, I would
> love to see a professional magician do what some friends of mine have seem
> him do.

Frankly, Dave, I doubt that.  Your message leads me to believe that you want
to believe in psychic powers; your uncritical acceptance of your friends'
story and your failure to research Geller's methods seems to indicate that
fairly strongly.

Professional magicians can do what Geller did easily.  I know this because
James Randi has written a book called "The Magic of Uri Geller" explaining
in precise detail how Uri does his tricks.  This includes bending forks from
a distance, as you have described:  "Quite unexpectedly, one of my friends
noticed that his fork in the table in front of him was MOVING!  It was
bending slowly to an acute angle.  He made a yelp and commented on what was
going on.  Then the person accross from him noticed that his fork was
bending as well."

You see, a stage magician creates illusions.  He does not simply cause
objects to do things one would not ordinarily believe they could do; he
deceives the mind of the spectator into believing something happened which
did not happen at all.  One of the leading techniques of illusion is making
someone remember something differently from the way they saw it, whether
through verbal misdirection or other methods.

In short, what I am saying is that your friend did report that story to you
that way, but that is not the way it happened.  No doubt Uri drew attention
to the fork initially and flattered your friend (people all like to believe
they have some special resonance with the psychic) by giving him the credit.
This could be done verbally, but it wouldn't have to be; just a sudden
glance in the right direction will usually draw people's eyes where you want
them.  Another of Uri's favorite lines is "Look, it's still bending": an
illusion that is very easy to create with a pre-bent utensil, as Randi
shows.  It is, finally, not very hard to make someone forget during what
exact period you were in a position to touch a fork: professional magicians
use misdirection techniques like this all the time.  You can find
documentation, both that these are common techniques and that Uri uses them,
in Randi's book.

The reason such a deception works is because people don't look for illusions
on that level.  They think, as you did, that maybe he dropped a special
chemical on the fork, or some other mechanical contrivance.  But the
illusion isn't happening in the physical world, it's happening in your head.
By looking in the world of matter, you miss the illusion completely; which,
of course, is precisely what the illusionist is after.

The most effective way of shoplifting, I have been led to understand, does
not involve concealing the item.  Rather, the thief simply picks up the item
in his hand or under his arm and walks out of the store without paying.  The
reason it is effective is that people are watching for the illusion on the
wrong level, looking for people who might have concealed goods.  Similar
techniques are employed all the time by prestidigitators.

Now that you understand stage magic a little better (if not, I recommend
Randi's book), I'm going to move on to your letter and show the many ways
in which you show that you want to believe in psychic powers.  The reason
I'm pointing this out is that the myth of psychic powers is maintained by
people who wish to believe in psychic powers, and manage to convince other
like-minded people using fallacious arguments and demonstrations.  Hopefully
at least one such person will read this and become more skeptical, and thus
I will have helped cut the monetary pipeline to cruel frauds like Geller.

> Now I presume Uri could have dropped some sort of chemical on the forks
> while he was passing by since no one was prepared to watch for any
> shenanigans.

Here you ADMIT that there was no careful observation of the man!  Yet this
doesn't faze you in the least.  This is evidence of a strong desire to
believe, is it not?

> He certainly wasn't handling the forks while they were bending as any
> magician would have to do.

You have no real knowledge of stage magic, yet you go around claiming that a
stage magician would have to do it a certain way, because this claim gives
you an excuse to believe in psychic powers.  I assure you that stage
magicians can do things you wouldn't believe -- in fact, that's the point of
the profession.

Further, you say "certainly" in reference to events that you did not
yourself witness and for which you have no evidence beyond your friends'
stories.  Once again, we are led to the conclusion that you have an
emotional stake in believing in psychic powers.

> Also a magician could not make the forks keep bending while not under some
> constant pressure.

See the above note.  You are assuming way too much about how the deed was
done.  You don't even know that the forks really bent while your friends
were watching; all you know is that they remember it that way, and, once
again, professional magicians deliberately mess with people's memories as
part of their illusions.

> Fork substitution is a remote possibility but its hard to believe he goes
> around with all these forks hidden in his pants.

Y'know, I've never seen a restaurant that didn't have a ton of forks.  Here
you are clearly making excuses (repeat after me, kids: "evidence of a desire
to believe").  Bending someone's fork while he isn't looking is a VERY easy
feat of misdirection, and as I mentioned it is fairly easy to create an
illusion of continuous bending in a pre-bent utensil.

> Finally, I doubt if any chemist/physicist/scientist could show me a fork
> which after it leaves their presence would start bending a minute later and
> continue to bend for a time without any indication of acid, heat, or
> deformity to the lateral width (cross section) of the metal in the fork.

So what?  In what way does that lend credence to the story?  This is just
more gosh-wow-ism, designed to appeal to those who want to believe; it
contributes nothing to the evidence.

> To make this more bizzare, that same evening Uri was caught putting a
> picture into an aquarium.  He was going to claim he had materialized it, I
> suppose.  His ego seems to demand that he be proving his powers to others,
> even if he needs to fake it.

Again you are obviously making excuses for something you want to believe in.
The attitude of Gellerites toward the many instances in which he has been
caught cheating is completely absurd, the most ridiculous thing about the
whole charade.  Apparently when he gets caught, he is cheating, but all the
other times he pulls off impossibilities, he is using psychic powers.
Right.  Can you say "Only an extremely gullible person would believe that"?
I knew you could....

> There were several other things that happened which are just as bizzare.  I
> will only mention one more I would like to see a magician do.  As I said
> before Uri was giving a talk in Houston.  It happened that the then Mayor of
> Houston decided on the spur of the moment to give a key-to-the-city to Uri.
> He was at his office when he decided this and had his aid bring one along as
> they were to meet Uri at the Astodome where the talk was scheduled.
>
> The mayor met Uri outside and told him he would receive the key-to-the-city.
> The key was in an elongated cardboard box with a clear plastic top.  Uri
> told the mayor to put his hand over the box (it had not been opened yet) and
> then held his own hand over the mayor's.  After a short time Uri told the
> mayor to remove his hand.  The key was noticibly bent and everyone was quite
> shocked.

Bullshit.  Where did you hear this story?  You weren't within close
observational range, I assume, and neither were your friends.  Something
like that may have happened, but you have presented no evidence for the
salient points, being:

(1) Uri had no advance knowledge that he would receive the key.  (From your
description, he was pretty friendly with the mayor and vice versa.)

(2) The key was in a closed box with a clear plastic lid.  (Seems pretty
chintzy for a key to the city, but I won't pick.)

(3) Uri did not touch the key before the bending.  (He has frequently been
observed before events using his charisma to get access to various parts of
the demonstration.  One particularly useful trick is telling the secretary
he thinks she has psychic powers.)

> Substitution before the event is the only way a magician could have
> accomplished the same thing.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

> (Nobody seemed to have examined the key before it was presented.)

Boy, this is getting pretty repetitive.

Did you see Geller on Carson?  Carson used to be a stage magician himself,
and he made sure that all the ways a magician could do Geller's tricks were
prevented.  (For instance, making sure that Geller couldn't shake the table
with the film cans on it by stomping -- though he tried....  It was
reportedly very funny watching him frantically stomping around on stage
during the commercial break....) Carson made sure that the set was
thoroughly inspected beforehand, and that Geller and assistants had no
access to it before taping.  He gave Geller no opportunity for large-scale
misdirection.  Guess what?  Not a single trick worked!  Hmm, these things
don't happen when someone is taking precautions against prestidigitation,
and happen freely when people aren't checking at all.  Does that, by any
chance, suggest an alternative to psychic powers as an explanation?

> I find it highly unlikely that Uri had any way of 1) knowing beforehand that
> he would have gotten the key 2) arranged to have a bent duplicate of the
> key-to-the-city made and 3) somehow switched it with the real thing.

Oh, well, if you think it's unlikely it must not have happened.  Surely your
opinions couldn't be shaped by pre-conceptions about psychic powers.

Seriously, why don't you think he could have bent the key?  What is this
"duplicate" stuff you keep bringing up with forks and keys?  When you only
bring up unlikely alternatives to psychic powers and completely ignore
likely alternatives, I have to think that you probably are working from
conclusion to premise, not the other way around.

> Obviously 3) is easy to do and 2) is not easy but possible if you have
> several days to prepare.  Item 1) above is the real clincher since the mayor
> did not decide to do this until the last minute.

Again, according to whom?  Do you know for a fact that neither Geller nor
his assistants were at the mayor's office then?  Do you know for a fact that
it was a spur-of-the-moment decision, and Uri hadn't set it up previously
by, say, remarking on another key he saw in the office?  Do you know for a
fact that the key was kept separate from Geller and assistants for the
entire time between the mayor's decision and the mayor's noticing the key
was bent?  I doubt you KNOW any of these things, though you do appear to
believe them uncritically from stories you have heard.  How strange.  Why
would someone believe such an outlandish story -- unless he wanted to?

> Uri has bent some metal in a lab and the bend-point was examined with an
> electron microscope revealing a fracture which cannot normally be created.
> Of course scientist can be as fooled as anyone else.  But a EM is a little
> harder to fool.  I'll give more details if there is interest.

As I recall, these experiments were done by Targ and Puthoff.  Enough said.

> Uri's a good showman and its easy to dismiss everything he does as fakery.
> But I think there is more to it than that.

That's right, you do.  And the reason is that you have a closed mind.  No
one would believe in a "psychic" who was repeatedly caught cheating and who
was unable to perform under controls established by magicians.  No one, that
is, except someone who has already made up his mind and shut it.
-=-
Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University, Networking
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