James Randi
“Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason” – James Randi
I was saddened today to learn of the passing of someone I greatly admire. The Magician James Randi is an inspiration to all skeptics and critical thinkers across the world. His lifetime’s work of debunking pseudoscience as well as inspiring objective reasoning and critical thinking has helped me immensely in terms of both my horsemanship, and in general matters of life. One way I feel can honour him is to post this information in the hopes it can inspire thought on one of the subjects that was close to his heart – that of the Psychic, and for me, this specifically relates to the “animal communicator”.
If I told you that I was psychic - and that I was able to communicate with your horse via telepathic means – I hope that you would require strong (near irrefutable) proof and validation of my claims via rigorous scientific testing before you believed me. You would also need to weigh the evidence of my claim against your established knowledge of horses and your current understanding of the natural world. Would you questions my motives and what I had to gain? Would you consider the possibility that I might be earnest in my beliefs, but misguided and self-deceiving? There are many very reasonable boring mundane explanations as to why I as a ‘psychic’ person might seem to be able to tell you all about your horse with acute accuracy. But the least likely and most fantastical explanation is that I am in fact psychic, and that these supernatural powers even exist.
It is important to be both critical and sceptical when presented with new information regarding both horses and the practice of horsemanship. By being critical I do not mean that we should be dismissive or disparaging about any information that we receive, but that we should be judicious and analytical about this information. Likewise being sceptical does not mean that we disbelieve any theories or information out of hand, it simply means that we require the validation of evidence before we commit to a belief, and understanding that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
When we consider the example of the Psychic animal communicator, in order to believe the individuals assertions we have to evaluate all potential probabilities that the observed behaviour was legitimately caused by the reasons offered. As a psychic I might approach you and your mare and state “Now we haven’t been doing any jumping recently have we?” and you answered “yes” I could reply “Yes because I’m getting signals from her that she really is really enjoying the challenge of that kind of work”. Had you answered “no” I might reply “No, but she’s telling me she would like to try some in the future”. Both situations I did nothing but ask a question framed as a statement, then repeat and elaborate on the reply given to me. In this situation I can never be wrong, and to a person willing to believe in (and pay to experience) telepathy will validate the effectively mundane experience of a one sided conversation as positive evidence of supernatural power.
Other tricks also validate the perception of psychic ability, such as stating the obvious, hazarding guesses about an evident situation, or even coming forearmed with knowledge gleamed from sources such as Facebook or word of mouth conversation and passing this information off as being gleaned from telepathic insight. In this situation I would ask you what is the most reasonable and likely explanation for me seemingly being able to psychically divine information about your horse? That I possess charisma and skill in the art of verbal deception – as well as being able to read people whilst forearmed with knowledge about a limited subject matter? Or that I have magic powers?
“The sleep of reason brings forth monsters” -James Randi
