Before Randi's retirement, JREF sponsored the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, which offered a prize of $1 million to applicants who could demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event under test conditions agreed to by both parties.

You can imagine how many zeros of millions they paid out

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I’ve just now read through his extremely lengthy Wikipedia article and all I can say is: What an amazing man.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Quite the guy!

Also - two kinds of Lemmings

(Second response was to screenshots of: a paragraph, a graph, and four bullets) 😉

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I found your post and I actually was reading about American (il)literacy rates about a month ago hahaha. It’s truly sad. But that’s a funny reply!

[–] FlyingSquid 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

He wrote a terrific book called Flim-Flam!, which I've read multiple times. It's incredibly good. A book about anti-scientific bullshit written in 1980 holds up just as much today because it's the same bullshit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flim-Flam!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Sign me up! Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

Really disappointing that so called people would rather believe in some random organisation for science instead of you know actual scientists and scientific groups like IONS for example investigating phenomenon scientifically

People are fools if they'd rather idolise figures instead of listening to actual qualified scientists and I'm tired of people listening to insufferable pop "scientists" who spout their own toxic opinions instead of listening to actual scientists

[–] breadsmasher 5 points 3 months ago

so called people

what does this mean?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Thanks for sharing that and for the name of the organization. They sound great. Am I reading this correctly that one may potentially fund the other in some circumstances, and thus there is room for both?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Also I'd suggest getting information about IONS from IONS themselves and not wikipedia

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

IONS Is actually serious about doing research into it while jref are like toxic atheists

All I've heard of jref and randi is that they are against research into it and try to discredit any organisations that want to seriously research and study it in bad faith, its the same thing I've seen atheists do

Basically IONS is the kid who wants to play card games with people in class while jref, randi and atheists are the negative nancy kid who wants to take away those cards and ruin the fun for everyone because they don't like it

The jref article on Wikipedia is also likely under the control of that guerilla wikipedia editing group that has taken over control of certain sections of Wikipedia

That guerilla group acts like the negative nancy kid I described in the earlier analogy

These are the same kinds of groups that spawn wikipedia editor wars

I'm not going to mention that groups name because it'll show up on Google indexes for anyone using advanced google search operators and will put a target on my comment

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

That is totally wild! Never would’ve guessed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Why didn't any of these supposed scientists make an easy million dollars by scientifically proving the existence of a supernatural phenomenon, then?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So does that mean he actually payed out the largest fortune in human history?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Thankfully zeros of millions (0s of $$) and not millions of zeros ($1x10^10000000^) :)