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Comment by superposeur | Hacker News Reader

The message of the article seems to be that everyone should just chill out about whether Geller is really performing magical feats or not — he himself persists in saying that he is and lots of people persist in believing him.

I strenuously disagree with this attitude and agree with James Randi that chilling out about what is actually, literally true is a dangerous step. When this mushy mentality sets in, bad people will find a way to use this to their advantage.

This is especially true in our era of competing narratives, misinformation, and deepfakes.

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This article was so bad. The comparisons to AI were forced, and the idea that tricking mining companies out of millions is somehow morally superior to tricking individuals is ridiculous. Both involve the exact same deceit and poor character.

Agreed.

> If Mr. Geller can’t actually bend metal with his brain — and civility and fairness demands this “if” — he is the author of a benign charade

This isn’t a benign charade.

With half the planet on Reiki, healing crystals and essential oils I don't think Geller needs to worry about his income and while Randi is very much right plenty of people will chose to believe rather than to use their brains.

Funny that you mention those things but not that Catholics (1.4 billion people) supposedly believe that transubstantiation literally turns bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Do we just accept that they don't really believe what they say they believe? Do the Reiki people really believe it?

My heuristics for telling what people really believe are observing what they laugh at and observing what they get offended by. Nobody laugh or get offended by something they consider to be nonsense. Nobody would get offended if you disputed their belief in gravity. Nobody would laugh if you joked about something imaginary with no basis in reality. But I do believe if you made the right joke about transubstantiation then people would laugh, because they don't really believe it. Same for spoon bending or crystals etc.

> Funny that you mention those things but not that Catholics (1.4 billion people) supposedly believe that transubstantiation literally turns bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

Does it need mentioning? Were you not aware of this? Or do you think that maybe I left it out because offending people because of their religion is counterproductive in discussions like these?

Too late now, next we have to discuss the reliability of various religious texts and the existence of God.

Not. Going. There.

I was curious why you would pick such trivial little targets that I assume are popular right now when there are huge mainstream examples of the phenomenon. I wonder if it's just too obvious that people don't believe what they say they believe in the case of transubstantiation. Also not sure why offending people because of religion is not productive but apparently reiki or crystals is fair game.

That's because reiki and crystals are not official religions and the other ones are. Never mind that to me they are similar, to the people that practice them they are not.

> This is especially true in our era of competing narratives, misinformation, and deepfakes.

That's especially why Gellar doesn't really seem all that important. All he really does is claim some magic tricks are "real", and on the harmful-bullshit-scale it probably rates pretty low.

ISTR Copperfield does the same with most of his tricks, although everyone is aware he didn't actually make the statue of liberty disappear, or step through a wall.

I think it's because Geller's claims are small enough to not be obvious BS to everyone, yet they are obvious BS to most people.

As far as I'm aware Copperfield never claimed to have psychic powers.

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