Talk:Spoon bending

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Contents 1 Spoon bending parties 2 Request for comment 3 NPOV 4 James Randi/NPOV 5 The Experiment 6 Discovery Channel thing 7 Utter Nonsense

[edit] Spoon bending parties

Does anyone have any experience with "spoon bending parties"? I've never been to one, but they're described as large gatherings in which nearly everyone ends up bending flatware. From what I've read, participants do touch the spoons and forks to bend them, but can do things like bend the bowl of a spoon in half or twist a handle as if it were a piece of string. -- Unsigned

Below is an image of mine from when I went to a spoonbending party. You have to physically touch it but you have to apply much less pressure than normal. -- iguana_nirvana14 19:10, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

-- iguana_nirvana14 19:10, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Michael Crichton talks about going to such a party in his auto-biography (Travels), and there's a number of net sites that describe the same thing. All of the spoon bending debunking sites, however, simply make their case against Uri Geller and leave it a that. --Jwanders 19:03, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Penn and Teller, on their series "Bullshit!", debunked spoon bending parties. — Phil Welch 19:38, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Oh, cool. Could you elaborate on that a bit? What did Penn and Teller say? —Jwanders 11:45, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I d/led and watched the episode after reading this, and it is a stretch to say that anything was debunked. They showed a few seconds of footage of people at a party bending spoons by obvious force, implied that that is how it is always done, and left it at that. No one was shown claiming that they bent their spoon without force. No explanation was offered for why so many seemingly reliable people, like Crichton, do claim so. Not even a dulcet "false recall" or "hightened suggestibility", but a simple mute snubbing. And I find that the net is similary silent. Anyone have a good explanation (of a non- supernatural kind)? 217.132.48.59 21:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we should mention such things. Wikipedia is not the skeptics dictionary. We should provide both sides. There are many links on the net that talk about spoon bending parties and many people all over the world believe they are able to do it. We should at least mention this phenomona. If there are proper critiques list them, otherwise just mention it and move on. It's kind of disappointing just how much the whole fundamentalist materialist philosophy is biasing wikipedia. It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not, or whether penn and teller believe it or not. We should try to stay neutral and just present facts.

Article has been updated to include the theory of "actual" spoon bending, and links to how-to sites and the PK party website. keep those minds open and give bending a go!

[edit] Request for comment

Please take a look at Talk:Out of This World (card trick)#Request for comment. Bovlb 2005-07-06 04:42:02 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

This article shouldn't be taking the view that spoon bending can only be done manually or as a trick. It should also allow for the possibility that Uri et al actually bend spoons with their minds, and that spoon bending is a psychic phenomenom (even though it isn't). - 00:44, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Heh, that's really funny! No, what really should be looked into is the rumour that the legendary japanese magician Dr. Sawa published the first known spoonbending effect in the english magic magazine "Abra" in the 60's, and that a young budding magician in Israel named Uri Geller subscribed to that magazine around that time. I have not checked out those rumours due to a lack of intrest, but that's how the rumour goes --TStone 22:50, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Rather, the article should allow that some people believe that spoons can be bend with the mind. That limits the absurdity that takes up unnecessary space. It may be possible that George Washington was actually cross-dressing woman. The lack of facts to that point is irrelevant under the theory that we should allow for all possibilities. There is a lack of facts supporting mental spoon bending. But we include that theory because it is a noticeable part of popular culture.

Anyone who comments about spoon bending being nonsense who hasn't actually been to a spoon bending party and seen what is going on is talking out of their hat.

I've collected a nice assortment of internet links about spoon bending from those who have been to spoon bending parties, including some very sober reports from skeptics and a newspaper article.Sdaconsulting 21:33, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] James Randi/NPOV

However the reports were met with skepticism by most scientists, and many reported performances were eventually exposed as tricks and frauds by professional stage magicians such as James Randi.

Two problems with that sentence: most scientists is an impossible claim, unless every scientist in the world has stated their opinion and more than 50% were skeptic. Also, the performances weren't exposed as tricks by Randi, etc. He merely suggested his own theories on how Uri Geller could have performed the spoon-bending.

Wikipedia is meant to be NPOV, but the second paragraph implies that Randi's opinion of Geller as a fraud is a proven fact. 172.162.155.129 00:46, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

```See Spoon bending and especially the photos and videos in external links. Fork-you.com is the coolest one. (Personally, just the thought of a critical scientist proving PK by the bending a spoon is scraping the bottom of the barrel). User:Kazuba 21 Oct 2006

[edit] The Experiment

```Thought experiment...Look at this way. Imagine you are the president of a university. Madonna writes a will giving you the decision of funding $5,000,000 of her money to only spoon bending research or medical research. Madonna croaks. Now which one do you chose? Are you prepared to make the choice? This is what it really comes down to, dollars and cents. It's your call. User:Kazuba 19 Oct 2006

[edit] Discovery Channel thing

A while back I saw a documentary about this on the Discovery Channel. At one point it featured a "school" of sorts with kids that were supposed to have some sort of psychic gift. They put the spoon in a plastic jar, closed the jar, then worked their magic remotely, without direct contact with the spoon. Then the jars were opened, with the spoon now bent. Of course there is always the possibility of a simple trick, in this case including the camera.

In another segment of this show, they also demonstrated (using thermal imaging) the apparent ability of a man to generate inordinate amounts of heat simply using his bare hands. He was even able to make wet towels create steam. There doesn't seem to be any way to dismiss that other than offering some explanation about conditioning the mind to learn how to control body temperature, which isn't *too* supernatural since the subconscious brain already does it (as with breathing or heart rate, and these can also be controlled, to varying extents). This segment also showed monks sleeping in freezing snow, wearing nothing but light robes (which did not even cover the entire body), and yet they were able to maintain a normal, warm body temperature, presumably through temperature control.

I wonder if these phenomena are related -- in holding and attempting to bend a spoon and "focus energy" on it, the person is actually learning how to adjust the temperature in his fingers, to the point where the metal becomes warm enough to be flexible (this would also depend on the strength and quality of the metal). And since metals are thermal conductors, the heat would transfer readily across the entire body of the spoon, not just the point of contact, so the person would be able to bend not only the neck of the spoon but in some cases the actual bowl (or more easily, the prongs of a fork) as has been claimed in some of these reports. Of course, if there is a scientific, biological principle of heat generation and transfer at work, it doesn't explain how the kids were able to bend spoons through a plastic jar. Perhaps magnetism has something to do with that.

At any rate, the sheer amount of documented evidence that this phenomenon does occur, and the outright freakiness of it, warrants research funding. This is one of those things where people (mostly Westerners) are justified in skepticism, but this is due mainly to certain biases in how Westerners approach science. It's a lot like acupuncture. Even many Western doctors acknowledge that it works, and there probably is a scientific explanation for it, but Western scientists are not motivated to find that explanation, relying instead on building their chemically-oriented knowledge of medicine and ignoring the possible role of electromagnetism and similar subtle realities that may affect the human body -- realities which will only become more poignant as we increase the number of invisible radio transmissions shooting around on a daily basis. Recently, Western doctors also widely accept that a person's psyche affects their physical health, something that they just as easily dismissed just a few decades ago, lacking better understanding of brain chemistry.

So I don't think that spoon bending is ultimately a supernatural phenomenon, simply one that has not been researched enough to have a solid scientific understanding. The fact that it freaks people out is simply indicative of our ignorance on the subject. Given that it could yield applications in medicine, I think it is perfectly deserving of research grants -- Madonna's or anyone else who cares to give it.

The heat generation thing is easily explained. I saw it on YouTube where someone posted the clip from the show. (I can't find it now; it may have been removed.) It's a simple "bar-bet" type of trick that was performed on me many years ago by an amateur stage magician. If you pay close attention, you will notice that there's always a piece of foil involved to "distribute the heat evenly", sometimes layered between the towels, and that that towels are always damp. The foil is actually essential to the trick. One simply applies a bit of mercury chloride, which used to be commonly available as an antiseptic, and ordinary chemical reactions take it from there. Nowadays it's commercially available as "hypno-heat". [1] [2] The pain-relieving effects demonstrated -- no cure was claimed or demonstrated -- were temporary and indistinguishable from the normal effects of a heat pack. So I'm afraid the psychic world will have to do better than that, and other cheap tricks like bending cutlery. TCC (talk) (contribs) 06:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Utter Nonsense

"Everyone can do it! Look at this picture!" This spoon-bending thing is so ridiculous. If you could actually change the physical properties of a metal just by willing it, it would be a phenomenal achievement. I find it laughable at how nonchalantly all of the "spoon benders" are about it when they should be flipping out of their minds while screaming and running to the nearest University to examine this "phenomenon" in detail. If this was possible there would be such an uproar all over the world the likes of which would have never before seen as this violates every single currently accepted physical theory. Mind over matter, for REAL this time!! Hah!

All of the "evidence" presented so far have been pictures of bent spoons (= bullshit), and a video of the fork-you girl "bending a spoon." Here's what she should have done, she should have filmed herself taking that spoon and smashing at it with a hammer to show how difficult it is to bend it and *then* tried bending it herself, all in one take of course. She makes the claim that it's "easy" to bend it, yet says "I'm just a little girl" when asked to bend other objects such as nails. Seriously, why stop at spoons and forks? Why don't you super-heros go on to bend prison bars and lift cars and all that jazz? Mind-over-matter right? -- itistoday (Talk) 22:45, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The fact of the matter is that it's not all that difficult to bend forks and spoons at the narrow part. It's quite easy. The reason people assume it's not is because they generally don't attempt to ruin the cutlery. Have any of these people who think they're witnessing mind-over-matter ever tried to bend a spoon without "putting their energy into it" first?

Really, if you're going to apply forces to a spoon in a direction it was not designed to withstand, it's difficult not to bend it, even into a corkscrew! The fact that this page gives any credence at all to a fraudulent phenomenon is deplorable. TCC (talk) (contribs) 06:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't think that's what they're saying. I have tried to bend spoons etc, and indeed all of the ones I tried were incredibly difficult to bend without straining. That's not what they're saying, they explicitly state that the spoon will magically "soften" and turn into a "putty-like substance". Perhaps some spoons are easy to bend, but that's besides the point, they are referring to the ones that are not, and I'm calling them on it. -- itistoday (Talk) 23:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

No doubt some are rather difficult to bend. I think some are also much easier to bend than people think without actually trying; e.g. the "fork you" girl's demonstration. You're describing pretty much what I had in mind. I don't think they're softening the metal at all. They may well be working themselves into a mental state where a larger than normal muscular effort is made easier, much like a weight lifter "psychs" himself up for his lift. But the properties of metal are easy to determine. The way to test this is to see if the it really does become less stiff after they concentrate on it by proper measurement, not by attempting to bend it. TCC (talk) (contribs) 00:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Put a weight on one end of the spoon that is not enough force to bend it. Leave the spoon motionless/fixed to some surface. Then concentrate on it/will it to bend, without moving it. If the metal does become softer, the weight will do the rest, and you will know it took no extra foce to bend the spoon. It seems like an easy test to me (I don't think it would work, though). Sydius 20:03, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Really, what's the big deal? Believing in Houck's spoon-bending is like believing in UFOs (in the literal sense). They're both so abundantly documented that you'd have be a conspiracy theorist to doubt either one. That doesn't mean you have to accept that UFOs are alien spacecraft, and it doesn't mean that you have to accept some mental component to spoon-bending. Gazpacho 11:51, 25 February 2007 (UTC)