Hacker Cinema
An Honest Liar
2014 · Film · documentary · 90 min
Directed by Tyler Measom, Justin Weinstein
An Honest Liar tells the incredible story of the world-famous magician, escape artist, and world-renowned enemy of deception, James 'The Amazing' Randi. The film brings to life Randi's intricate investigations that publicly exposed psychics, faith healers, and con-artists with quasi-religious fervor. A master deceiver who came out of the closet at the age of 81, Randi created fictional characters, fake psychics, and even turned his partner of 25 years, Jose Alvarez, into a sham guru named Carlos.
9 positive1 neutralfrom 10 commenters
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11 comments on Hacker News
There is a documentary "An Honest Liar" about him. It goes to unexpected places
By strict definition it is bad faith because the troll's goal is agnostic to the position advertised and the only real intention is to provoke people.
However I think that like art, trolls can use a lie to tell the truth. My preferred example is James Randi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi, see also the documentary An Honest Liar). You might say that his goal was not to provoke a reaction, but given the repeated humiliations of the conman he exposed I beg to differ.
Personally I like to tell the exact opposite of the truth that nobody knows or most people ignore but would make them change their mind. For instance, it is known vaccines are used to only prevent hospitalizations.
> ""How is it possible to test for "supernatural behavior"?
- "I'm a psychic and can tell what's in these containers without looking"
- "I can detect water with magic rods"
- "I can heal you with the power of god"
It's worth watching An Honest Liar about the life of the Amazing Randi.
What's interesting is even when Randi shows people how they're being tricked they refuse to believe it.
The above examples are pretty easy to test (and people do), but believers just ignore the results or make up reasons why results don't matter or can't be tested.
An amazing man.
This biographical documentary is well worth a watch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Honest_Liar
The documentary "Exposed: Magicians, Psychics and Frauds" about him is great if you can find it. (Was on iPlayer here, but not available now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04ndsb3)
Edit: Apparently it was released as "An Honest Liar" (https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Exposed:_Magicians%2C_Psychics_and_Frauds)
There's a great documentary on Netflix called an Honest Liar that goes through Randi's entire career with him as the main narrator.
Unfortunately it looks like Uri Geller is still out there today and still making lots of money from cons.
RIP. I remember going to The Amazing Meeting (skeptics convention) years ago and running into a coworker there. It was his second time attending and he spotted James Randi and told me, let's go say hello and that he's super friendly and will chat with anyone. We went over and lo and behold he was super friendly and welcomed me to the con warmly.
I was familiar with his debunking work, but not much beyond that. I watched the documentary about him, An Honest Liar, later on and was impressed with him as a human. Worth checking out to learn more.
I first learned about him through some things Martin Gardner wrote, I believe. But I felt like I came to know him a lot better from watching the movie An Honest Liar [0].
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2246565/
Have you seen the documentary on the amazing Randi? It's called an honest liar. It shows that he actively deceived people in order to push his own agenda of what 'truth' is. So I didn't think he was a debunker as much as a persuader.
FYI - I met Randi personally about eleven years ago. He was a wildly charismatic person to talk to. It doesn't show as much when he's on stage or on an interview speaking to an audience.
There is an award winning documentary on him released recently - "An Honest Liar".
http://anhonestliar.com/
It makes me so happy to see him getting this deserved attention while he's still around to enjoy it. 20-odd years ago I was lucky enough to see him perform and speak and he was indeed amazing.
For those who want to know more about him, there's a recent documentary out: http://anhonestliar.com/wp/
It's a great example to me of how Kickstarter can really work. I was happy to help fund it. They raised circa $100k over the goal, and I'm sure that's because there were a lot of Randi fans like me who were happy to chip in. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/220588101/an-honest-liar-the-amazing-randi-story