Remember the Amazing Randi’s $1 million challenge to prove the paranormal?

_{Denyse O'Leary

June 17, 2014

Mind, Neuroscience, News}

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Of course, it is most unlikely that anyone could win such a challenge, irrespective of evidence, because Randi’s career and fan base depends on finding reasons why it isn’t true. One can find a reason to doubt anything, or else change the definitions. Or start asking what the meaning of “is” is. But so?

At any rate, Deepak Chopra, sympathetic to the existence of the paranormal, offers a $1 million dollar challenge to Randi:

Please explain the so-called ‘normal’: how does electricity going to the brain become the experience of a three-dimensional world of space and time. If you can explain that, then you get a million dollars from me. Explain and solve the hard problem of consciousness in a peer-reviewed journal; offer a theory that is falsifiable—and you get the prize.”

Prediction: All present “explanations” of the hard problem of consciousness will amount to nonsense.

See also “Consciousness: Where even the easy problems are hard”

and “Hard problem of consciousness not so hard?” (wishful thinking)

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

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Comments

@conceptualinertia:
This allows the testers to set up protocols that it knows the candidate will be unable to succeed under or will reject.

Randi: Neither the Foundation nor the claimant can force a testing procedure without the approval of the other side.
Do you think the hundreds of people who took the challenge are mentally retarded?JWTruthInLove_{June 18, 2014
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My guess is that the OP means that it is impossible to "prove" the paranormal, meaning a 100% proof. Obviously, however, the JREF does not require 100% proof. On the other hand what exactly the level of proof necessary is, and what the protocols are, are not set in stone. This allows the testers to set up protocols that it knows the candidate will be unable to succeed under or will reject. I a m not saying that they do this but only that I can understand why people might be skeptical.conceptualinertia_{June 17, 2014
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As to
"Amazing Randi’s $1 million challenge to prove the paranormal?" "we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event."
It is interesting to note that the 'Amazing Randi' provided his own irrefutable evidence that he has a 'supernatural' component within himself (i.e. a mind) when he wrote out his challenge. Material processes have never been observed generating non-trivial levels of information. The reason is why material processes have never been observed generating information is quite simple. Information is not reducible to a material basis:
"Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day." Norbert Weiner - MIT Mathematician -(Cybernetics, 2nd edition, p.132) Norbert Wiener created the modern field of control and communication systems, utilizing concepts like negative feedback. His seminal 1948 book Cybernetics both defined and named the new field. http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/wiener/ “One of the things I do in my classes, to get this idea across to students, is I hold up two computer disks. One is loaded with software, and the other one is blank. And I ask them, ‘what is the difference in mass between these two computer disks, as a result of the difference in the information content that they posses’? And of course the answer is, ‘Zero! None! There is no difference as a result of the information. And that’s because information is a mass-less quantity. Now, if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation account for its origin? How can any material cause explain it’s origin? And this is the real and fundamental problem that the presence of information in biology has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic, evolutionary scenarios because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce. In the nineteenth century we thought that there were two fundamental entities in science; matter, and energy. At the beginning of the twenty first century, we now recognize that there’s a third fundamental entity; and its ‘information’. It’s not reducible to matter. It’s not reducible to energy. But it’s still a very important thing that is real; we buy it, we sell it, we send it down wires. Now, what do we make of the fact, that information is present at the very root of all biological function? In biology, we have matter, we have energy, but we also have this third, very important entity; information. I think the biology of the information age, poses a fundamental challenge to any materialistic approach to the origin of life.” -Dr. Stephen C. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of science from Cambridge University for a dissertation on the history of origin-of-life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. Intelligent design: Why can't biological information originate through a materialistic process? - Stephen Meyer - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqiXNxyoof8 John Lennox – Is There Evidence of Something Beyond Nature? (Semiotic Information) – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6rd4HEdffw
bornagain77_{June 17, 2014
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@News: I'm not a native speaker. What does "hardly doubts" mean?
How likely would the participants be able to change them in such a way that the house wouldn’t always win? Las Vegas has all this nailed down.
Please look at the FAQs:
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/component/content/article/37-static/254-jref-challenge-faq.html 2. Protocols 2.1 Protocols must be “mutually agreed upon,” what does that mean? Neither the Foundation nor the claimant can force a testing procedure without the approval of the other side. The testing procedure is a negotiation, and no one can put their foot down. If at any time it a deadlock is reached, the application process will be terminated, and neither side will be blamed or considered at fault.
JWTruthInLove_{June 17, 2014
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JWTRuthinlove, did you happen to notice that the passage you quote does not state that no one has tried to win? One hardly doubts that the protocols are all defined beforehand with the participants' approval. How likely would the participants be able to change them in such a way that the house wouldn't always win? Las Vegas has all this nailed down. Look, it's Randi's money anyway. We should get him and Chopra to critique each others' protocols. News_{June 17, 2014
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Of course, it is most unlikely that anyone could win such a challenge, irrespective of evidence, because Randi’s career and fan base depends on finding reasons why it isn’t true. One can find a reason to doubt anything, or else change the definitions. Or start asking what the meaning of “is” is. But so?
What!?? Many have tried to win the challenge. The protocols for the tests are defined beforehand with the participants' approval. So why the heck is it unlikely for the participants to win the challenge??JWTruthInLove_{June 17, 2014
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