The train to CrazyTown

It always astonishes me how much it takes for people to say to some nonsense-spouting pseudo-pundit, "You are nuttier than squirrel shit, and I am no longer listening to anything you say."

Or, more accurately, I don't know how much it takes, because it almost never happens.  Once people have decided they like someone's views, it seems like it's damn near impossible to get them to change their minds.  Said pundit could go on national television and say, "Scientists have found that the mantle of the Earth is not made of molten magma, it's made of my Grandma Betty's Special Tasty Banana Pudding," and I swear, 95% of the followers would just nod along as if this was a revelation from the Lord Almighty Himself.

It may come as a significant surprise that for once, I'm not talking about Donald Trump.  No, this time the person who has given strong evidence that he's been doing sit-ups underneath parked cars is Tucker Carlson, disgraced ex-Fox News commentator, who despite being too obnoxiously racist even for Fox, is still somehow finding venues for his insane vitriol.  (One of them, unsurprisingly, is The Social Media Platform Formerly Known As Twitter, because Elon Musk appears to be as much of a bigot as Carlson, if arguably a bit saner.)

The latest missive from Tucker Carlson, though, amazingly has nothing to do with how brown-skinned immigrants are coming for all of us white people.  It concerns UFOs (or UAPs, as I guess we're now all supposed to call them), and springboards off the kerfuffle the last few months about government cover-ups of what David Grusch elliptically referred to as "non-human biological entities."  (Fer cryin' in the sink, if you mean the A-word, say the A-word.  And yes, I'm being deliberately ironic by not saying the A-word myself.)

[Image is in the Public Domain]

Carlson, though, has no such sense of delicacy, but he thinks they're not extraterrestrial species -- at least in the conventional sense.  Here's what he said, as part of a two-hour interview which I made it through about fifteen minutes of, before my forehead hurt so much from faceplanting that I decided discretion is the better part of valor and gave up:

It’s my personal belief based on a fair amount of evidence that they’re not aliens.  They’ve always been here, and I do think it’s spiritual,  There are forces that aren’t human that do exist in a spiritual realm of some kind, that we cannot see, and that when you think about it, will sorta make you think we live in an ant farm...  I do know that informed people have said that the U.S. government has an agreement with these entities.

The whole thing smacks of the "prison planet" hypothesis, whose most vocal supporter is Ellis Silver, about whom I wrote here at Skeptophilia a while back.  The idea is that humans evolved elsewhere in the universe, and our ancestors were transported to Earth because we're so violent, and we're stuck here until we learn our lesson.  (Given recent world events, we don't seem to be catching on very quickly.)

In any case, Carlson takes it a step further, hybridizing Silver's ideas with the Book of Enoch and various episodes of The X Files to create a new brand of batshittery all his own.  In short, he seems to have taken on a job as conductor of the Express Train to CrazyTown, and a significant slice of Americans are just thrilled to hop on board.

So I encourage you to watch the interview (linked above), if you've got the stomach for it.  Myself, I have a hard time watching Tucker Carlson even with the sound turned off, because in my opinion he's only beaten out narrowly by Ted Cruz in the contest for the World's Most Punchable Face.  But given that Carlson has been floated seriously as a contender for the vice presidential choice for whomever the Republican nominee is for president in 2024, and a possible candidate for president in his own right in 2028, it behooves us all to be aware that he appears to be a few fries short of a Happy Meal.  To quote skeptic Jason Colavito, "That a leading contender for high office and one of the most influential figures on the right believes in some variation of Nephilim Theory is depressing.  That a powerful network of advocates has infiltrated both political parties to spread ancient mythology as though it were scientific revelation, and government and media cheer them on, is terrifying."

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The Children's Guide to Nonsense

Two weeks ago I wrote a post suggesting that people who have any concern for the promotion of quality information about how the world works should boycott The History Channel until it stops claiming that shows like MonsterQuest have the least thing to do with reality.

This post prompted a number of emails and comments, which can be distilled down to (1) there's nothing wrong with entertainment, (2) THC is not trying to convince anyone who isn't already convinced, and (3) lighten the hell up.  The number of responses I got along those lines made me wonder for a while if maybe I was taking the whole thing a little too seriously.

Until I read a post a couple of days ago on Jason Colavito's wonderful blog, entitled "History Channel Official 'Ancient Aliens' Guide for Children, Teaches Kids Aliens Are Behind Everything."

I don't want to steal Colavito's thunder, and all of you should check out his post, which is spot-on.  But the gist is that THC has released a book called The Young Investigator’s Guide to Ancient Aliens: Based on the Hit Television Series.  The Amazon page for the book describes it thusly:

As a tie-in to the wildly successful History Channel show, perfect for young readers, here's a book filled with fascinating tales, ancient folklore, and compelling evidence of the role extraterrestrials may have played in human history. 

What really happened to the dinosaurs? Who actually built the ancient pyramids in Egypt? Are airplanes really as modern as we think they are? This book takes a close look at landmark events throughout history and asks the question: What if aliens were involved? 

Spanning history, from the earliest of human civilizations to the modern period, this book exposes evidence of the presence of extraterrestrials in some of our most triumphant and devastating moments.

Entertainment, my ass.  This is a calculated effort to catch children while they're young and naïve, and convince them that a zero-evidence pile of horse waste actually has legitimate standing in the world of science.

I was heartened, however, to see that The Young Investigator's Guide has thus far received five reviews, all one-star.  Here's a sampling of the comments from the reviews:

Keep this toxic claptrap away from children. 

The War On Science is fought on several fronts, from the schools of red state America to our television screens.  'The History Channel' is contributing to this as it debases the meaning of the word 'History' into anything it thinks will sell no matter what the consequences. 

This has to be considered an extension of the mind-numbing influence of ratings-driven TV.  Ratings-driven TV exists as a money sucking virus seeking viewers at all cost.  It doesn't exist to educate or enlighten, to make things better or to warn us about shams and fiction posing as fact.  It exists only to promote an uncritical passive hoard of watchers who predictably consume what is offered in the commercials.  It dumbs us down to serve corporate agendas. 

Will we soon be selling electronic editions of "The Little Holocaust Deniers' Guide to the Early 1940s"?

To which I can only add: Huzzah.

Lest you feel too optimistic, however, Colavito points out that the Toronto Public Library System purchased 31 copies of the book, to make sure that several of the 23 libraries in the system had more than one copy.  Not to mention the fact that it's shelved under "nonfiction."

The whole problem here, of course, is that this sort of thing is like a gateway drug to woo-woo.  You hear the "what's the harm?" argument come up, over and over again, with respect to ideas like Ancient Aliens, Astrology, the Tarot, and so on.  And the direct harm is certainly to nothing more than your pocketbook.  But there's a more subtle reason to fight pseudoscience; accepting an idea on anything other than the standards of scientific evidence establishes a habit of uncritical thinking.  If you're willing to buy into nonsense like this based on an I Want To Believe attitude and very little else, what's to stop you from accepting other unscientific ideas that do cause direct harm -- homeopathy, anti-vaxx, climate change denial, and so on?

In any case, check out Colavito's take on the whole thing, which is well worth reading.  And to the "it's just entertainment" crowd; maybe you should give some second thoughts to how insidious a non-scientific approach to the world can be.