Randi's taking a well-earned week off. I'm filling in this week.

Hello, this is Jeff Wagg (JREF Webmaster). Ft. Lauderdale is still suffering the effects of Hurricane Wilma this week, and given Mr. Randi’s busy travel schedule, he’s allowed me the honor of writing this week’s commentary. He'll be back next week with some things he's been anxious to share.

First, a quick update on some technical things. There are a lot of changes being made to the JREF site. The forums have been updated (work continues on reliability..we know it's a problem). The JREF Shop has fun new items in it, and we have some multimedia content in the works. And the unofficial "JREF Chat" is a huge success, thanks to the folks at skepticsrock.com.

We also working to bring the site up-to-date standards-wise. This will take some time, but it is slowly happening.

A friendly reminder...the TAM4 early registration discount ends next week! Register today for what is shaping up to be the best TAM yet!

When The Amazing Randi was in need of a volunteer for a stage illusion, it was useful to employ someone with a kind disposition rather than an individual who would be difficult. By quickly scanning the audience, Randi would select helpful people instantly, and with no rational calculus, . He honed this skill over the years until he could select a helpful person with near-perfect accuracy in the blink of an eye. No plants were needed – these people were all completely unknown to him. When asked about how he did this, he said “It was just a feeling…”

Does this prove once and for all the Randi is really psychic? No, I think not, and neither does Randi.  His training and experience as a stage magician taught him to pay attention to his intuition, and there’s no reason to believe that we can’t all do the same to some degree.

There’s nothing paranormal about intuition. It’s a system of pattern recognition that is a combination of native ability and experience. It often provides good information, especially if you live in the hunter-gatherer type of society where it evolved. In the modern world, it creates pitfalls.

In a review of Malcom Gladwell’s book Blink, our good friend Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine says the following:

…have I ever been skeptical of something that turned out to be real? …I have a serious answer: intuition. As a skeptical scientist I have always treated with disdain the notion that one can intuit a truth about reality…Hunches, guesses, insights, feelings and intuitions lead to misdirection and error. …Well, I was wrong.

Malcom Gladwell examines intuition, and proclaims that it that can tell us things - in an instant - that are more reliable than any form of rational examination. Michael and Randi believe this and so do I. In fact, for most of the species history on the planet, intuition was probably the most useful mental ability, and the one responsible for keeping the species alive.

Today, we can employ intuition differently. When I was a tech support rep, my first few weeks were spent following the book and listening to every word of the customer's complaint. Then I learned that I could just trust my feelings. The customer might report problem A, but often I knew they had problem B. I don’t know how I knew, it just felt right…and it most often was. My brain was recognizing a pattern that I wasn’t conscious of. With enough research I might have been able to determine that pattern, but there was no need. My intuition was providing me a valuable, though un-teachable service.

Intuition can also provide false information, and Casinos thrive upon that fact. One of their more diabolical inventions is a tally board for roulette wheels. The past thirty or so spins are shown. What is this information for? You look at the board and you see that the ball landed on 14 three times in a row, as in the picture to the right. What does your intuition tell you the next number will be? (Highlight the area below the numbers to the right and see what the next spins were.)

Surprised? Most skeptics wouldn’t be because they’ve learned not to trust their intuition in these situations. If you bet on 14 and expected to win, you were a victim of the gambler’s fallacy. The odds against 14 coming up that many times in a row are very high, but they’re exactly the same for any three numbers. The pattern is false and meaningless. Casinos know this, and hope that you’ll be fooled into playing a game where on average they will earn 5.26% of every wager. An uninformed person might simply assume the pattern had shifted in favor of 34.

Some people continue to trust their intuition over their thoughts. Many of the dowsers who apply for the JREF $1,000,000 challenge do so because their intuition tells them it works. The stick dips, they dig, they find water…time and time again. In reality, it’s like the roulette tally board - the 14’s keep coming up. Except that in this case, they're successful because there are 14’s everywhere…you can dig most places and hit water. The stick is an unnecessary prop. Even when given this information, most dowsers continue to believe that dowsing works. They just haven’t learned to trust their thoughts over their feelings. 

By manipulating intuition, magicians fool people for the purpose of entertainment. Dowsers fool themselves. But there are many out there who use people’s intuitions against them for illicit gains. Psychics, vitamin pushers, homeopaths, faith healers …the list is long and discouraging. They tell lies that "feel right" so that you'll open your pocketbook to them. You’ll find these people exposed weekly right here in this column.

It has been suggested that there is a “belief gene” or a “skepticism gene.” Perhaps, there is, but maybe it’s just that skeptics have learned to trust their rational processes over their intuitive ones when judging the truth of a claim. Books like Blink remind us not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but if we don’t empty the tub, she’s going to drown.