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Comment by Veen | Hacker News Reader

I'm somewhat surprised that BoingBoing published this. It's a slimy hit-piece by a man whose writing includes such gems as "How to Attract Money," which includes advice on becoming rich through visualization and learning "how your mind is a channel of the Higher Mind of the universe". Other titles include "The Power of Sex Transmutation : How to Use the Most Radical Idea from Think and Grow Rich".

He's a less successful Rhonda Byrne. In other words, exactly the sort of person you would expect to have a dim view of Randi.

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I used to read Boingboing daily up to about 10 years ago. They then started getting completely insane, and so did Xeni Jardin, personally.

I stopped reading about the same time I think because their style which was brilliant stopped working due to the internet evolving. Which is fine, their brilliance was they were part of a culture at a certain time.

I assumed they would have jumped the shark and become insane by now, but when I go back every now and again I don't see it. Just a little boring. But if you have links it'd be interesting.

If you think about what they (we) did back them, it was pure evil by today standards. But that's ok. When the internet was a teenager it had to explore.

I assume it is these reasons, to me, Boingboing hasn't gone crazy, both a learned experience over the Twitter "you're told how to act" and Boingboing has a dark past which could be dug up.

They really went to the monetization town

Instead of focusing on the person, maybe focus on the article? It seems to be well written and contains some valid points.

Which valid points? Its overarching point is that Randi was contemptuous of people who spent their time "studying" ESP, precognition, and other nonsense, with a few attempts to smear him with spurious comparisons to McCarthy. Of course James Randi was contemptuous of those people, and of course they hated him for it. But that doesn't make merit a vulgar character assassination a week after his death.

Plus, the article does precisely what you have just asked me not to do: it attacks the man and his character without making the slightest argument as to why he was wrong to dismiss ESP and occult research.

> He was to skepticism what Senator Joseph McCarthy was to anticommunism — a showman, a bully, and, ultimately, the very thing he claimed to fight against: a fraud.

I find it perverse that someone who makes a living touting the power of positive thinking to reshape reality and make you rich believes he speaks for the "real skeptics". It's tendentious nonsense from the first word to the last.

> It seems to be well written

It is well written or it isn't. What's with the "seems" business?

> contains some valid points.

Does it? Then why did you fail to mention a single one in your comment?

Why does it matter how well-written it is? Shouldn't it just matter if the points are valid or not?

> and learning "how your mind is a channel of the Higher Mind of the universe".

I mean, yeah?

> how your mind is a channel of the Higher Mind of the universe

However trashy these headlines might sound, I will not dismiss them as junk without actually reading the article. (Again, I do not mean to say his article was not trashy, just that I wont judge it based on headline alone.)

For example millions of people do Yoga which literally means to "join" where the joining implies joining with "cosmic self" which is the the supreme objective of Yoga. People can benefit immensely from Yoga despite not having belief in any kind of cosmic self. In fact people claim to benefit from all 8 limbs of Yoga (Yama, Niyama, Dhyana, Asana, Pranayama, Dharana, Pratyahar, Samadhi). Plenty of people benefit from Kundalini Yoga though the ideas that there is a snake like thing in our backbone that can rise to head is purely nonsensical in scientific terms. I think the article on Randi, does summarize a lot of problems with modern skeptics. They dismiss things their own prejudices and premises can not explain without bothering to reach out to other side.

I think someone like Nissim Taleb has a far better perspective on these sort of things.

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