I don't expect that the million will ever be won, simply because there is no confirming evidence for any paranormal claims to date.
Interpretation
James Randi expresses skepticism toward paranormal claims due to a lack of evidence, implying that belief should be grounded in verifiable facts.
In this quote, James Randi, a renowned skeptic, emphasizes the importance of evidence in evaluating paranormal claims. He argues that without concrete proof, the chances of winning a million-dollar challenge he offered for any demonstrable paranormal ability are slim, highlighting the necessity of skepticism in the pursuit of truth.
In practice
In a discussion about UFOs, you might say, 'I don't expect that the million will ever be won, simply because there is no confirming evidence for any paranormal claims to date.'
Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.
[Psychics] use exactly the same gimmicks that we magicians do - the same physical methods, the same psychological methods - and they effectively and profoundly deceive millions of people around the earth, to their detriment.
Escapology has one thing going for it that probably made Harry Houdini such a superstar in his day and a legend in the present. Everyone wants to escape from something. Taxes, contracts, illness, work, the multitude of burdens that we chafe under are shadows from which we want to escape.
There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.
It was one time when people thought the value of the fine structure constant was important. Now of course it's still important, of course, as a practical matter,but we now know that the value it has is a function, that in any fundamental theory you derive the fine structure constant as a function of all sorts of mass ratios and so on and it's not really that fundamental.
Mathematics is the study of analogies between analogies. All science is. Scientists want to show that things that don't look alike are really the same. That is one of their innermost Freudian motivations. In fact, that is what we mean by understanding.
Yes, I am the last man to have walked on the moon, and that's a very dubious and disappointing honor. It's been far too long.
Tell me why the stars do shine, Tell me why the ivy twines, Tell me what makes skies so blue, And I'll tell you why I love you. Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine, Tropisms make the ivy twine, Raleigh scattering make skies so blue, Testicular hormones are why I love you.
It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
The existence of these patterns [fractals] challenges us to study forms that Euclid leaves aside as being formless, to investigate the morphology of the amorphous. Mathematicians have disdained this challenge, however, and have increasingly chosen to flee from nature by devising theories unrelated to anything we can see or feel.
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