A plea on behalf of Schrödinger's cat

I'm going to make a dual plea to all y'all:

1. Before you accept a paranormal or supernatural explanation for something, make sure you've ruled out all the normal and natural ones first.
2. Before you try to apply a scientific explanation to an alleged paranormal phenomenon, make sure you understand the science itself first.

I stumbled on an especially good (well, bad, actually) example of what happens when you break both of these rules of thumb with "paranormal explorer, investigator, and researcher" Ashley Knibb's piece, "Into the Multiverse to Search for Ghosts: Are We Seeing Parallel Realities?"  The entire article could have been replaced by the word "No," which would represent a substantial gain in both terseness and accuracy, but unfortunately Knibb seems to think that the multiverse model might actually explain a significant chunk of supernatural claims.

Let's start out with the fact that he joins countless others in misusing the word dimension to mean "some place other than the regular world we see around us."  To clear this up, allow me to quote the first line of the damn Wikipedia article on the topic: "the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it."  We live in a three-dimensional space because three measurements -- up/down, right/left, forward/backward -- are necessary to pinpoint where exactly something is.

So saying that something is "in another dimension" makes about as much sense as saying your Uncle Fred lives in "horizontal."

Then he goes on to mention the quantum multiverse (also known as the Many-Worlds Interpretation), the bubble universe model, and brane theory as possible scientific bases for explaining the paranormal.  First off, I'll give him as much as to say that these are all legitimate theoretical models, although the three have little to nothing to do with each other.  The Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum theory arises because of the puzzle of the collapse of the wave function, which (in the Copenhagen Interpretation) seems strangely connected to the concept of an observer.  Physicist Hugh Everett postulated that observer-dependency could be eliminated if every quantum collapse results in a split -- every possible outcome of a quantum collapse is realized in some universe.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Christian Schirm, Schroedingers cat film, CC0 1.0]

Then there's the bubble universe model, which comes from the cosmological concept of inflation.  This theory suggests that our current universe was created by the extremely rapid expansion of a "bubble" of inflating spacetime, and that such bubbles could occur again and create new universes.  Finally, brane theory is an offshoot of string theory, where a brane is a higher-dimensional structure whose properties might be used to explain the apparent free parameters in the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

These three models do have one thing in common, though.  None of them has been supported by experimental evidence or observation (yet).  For the first two, it very much remains to be seen if they could be.  In Everett's Many-Worlds Interpretation, the different timelines are afterward completely and permanently sealed off from one another; we don't have access to the timeline in which a particular electron zigged instead of zagging, much less the one where you married your childhood sweetheart and lived happily ever after.  The theory, as far as it goes, appears to be completely untestable and unfalsifiable.  (This is what led to Wolfgang Pauli's brilliantly acerbic quip, "This isn't even wrong.")  

And as far as the bubble universe goes, any newly-formed bubbles would expand away from everything else at rates faster than the speed of light (it's believed that space itself isn't subject to the Universal Speed Limit -- thus keeping us science fiction aficionados in continuing hopes for the development of a warp drive).  Because information maximally travels at the speed of light, any knowledge of the bubble next door will be forever beyond our reach.

Be that as it may, Knibb blithely goes on to suggest that one of these models, or some combination, could be used to explain not only ghosts, but poltergeists, "audible phenomena," déjà vu, the Mandela Effect, sleep paralysis, and cryptid sightings.

Whoo-wee.  Sir, you are asking three speculative theories to do some awfully heavy lifting.

But now we get to the other piece, which is deciding that all of the listed phenomena are, in fact, paranormal in nature.  Ghosts and poltergeists -- well, like I've said many times before, I'm doubtful, but convincible.  However, I'm in agreement with C. S. Lewis's character MacPhee, who said, "If anything wants Andrew MacPhee to believe in its existence, I’ll be obliged if it will present itself in full daylight, with a sufficient number of witnesses present, and not get shy if you hold up a camera or a thermometer."  A lot of "audible phenomena" can be explained by the phenomenon of priming -- when the mind is already anticipating a particular input (such as a creepy voice on a static-y recording) we're more likely to perceive it even if there's nothing there in actuality.  (As skeptic Crispian Jago put it, "You can't miss it when I tell you what's there.")  Déjà vu is still a bit of a mystery, but some research out of Colorado State University a few years ago suggests that it's also a brain phenomenon, in this case stemming from a misinterpretation of familiar sensory stimuli.  The Mandela Effect is almost certainly explained by the plasticity of human memory.  Sleep paralysis is a thoroughly studied, and reasonably well understood, neurological phenomenon (although apparently scary as hell).

As far as cryptid sightings -- well, y'all undoubtedly know what I think of most of those.

So the first step with all of these is to establish that there's anything there to explain.  The second is to demonstrate that the scientific explanations we do have are inadequate to explain them.

The third is to learn some fucking science before you try to apply quantum physics, inflationary cosmology, and string theory to why you got creeped out in a haunted pub.

Okay, I'm probably coming across as being unwarrantedly snarky, here.  But really.  There's no excuse for this kind of thing.  Even if you're not up to reading peer-reviewed science papers on the topics, a cursory glance at the relevant Wikipedia pages should be enough to convince you that (for example) the bubble universe model cannot explain ghosts.  Misrepresenting the science in this way isn't doing anyone any favors, most especially the people who seriously investigate claims of the supernatural, such as the generally excellent Society for Psychical Research.

As far as whether there's anything to any of these allegedly paranormal claims -- well, I'm not prepared to answer that categorically.  All I can say is that of the ones I've looked into, none of them meet the minimum standard of evidence that it would take to convince someone whose mind isn't already made up.  But I'm happy to hear about it if you think you've got a case that could change my mind.

Just make sure to tell the ghost not to get shy if I hold up a camera or a thermometer.

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Quantum leap

Every once in a while, the targeted-ad software that decides which advertisement to paste to which website screws up, and you'll see something so poorly placed that it's comical.  This happened yesterday, when the software evidently picked up words from my blog like "psychic" and "quantum" and "alternate universes" without picking up words like "nonsense" and "bullshit," and pasted an advertisement for "Quantum Jumping" at the end of my last post.

Naturally I had to click on the link, and was greeted by a banner headline that said, "Jump into a universe of infinite possibilities."  I thought at first that they were speaking metaphorically, that whatever your situation, you can change your life's trajectory -- but no.  Apparently these people are really claiming that the 80s science fiction series Quantum Leap was a scientific documentary, and that if you don't like your current life, you can just leap into a different universe.

Here's a direct quote:

Since the 1920s, quantum physicists have been trying to make sense of an uncomfortable and startling fact -- that an infinite number of alternate universes exist.  Leading scientists like Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, and Neil Turok, all of whom are responsible for life-changing breakthroughs in the field of quantum physics, have all suggested the existence of multiple universes...  This jaw-dropping discovery was first made when, trying to pinpoint the exact location of an atomic particle, physicists found it was virtually impossible.  It had no single location.  In other words, atomic particles have the ability to simultaneously exist in more than one place at a time.  The only explanation for this is that particles don’t only exist in our universe -- They can spark into existence in an infinite number of parallel universes as well.  And although these particles come to being and change in synchronicity, they are all slightly different...  Drawing on the above-mentioned scientific theory and merging it with 59 years of study into mysticism and the human mind, Burt Goldman has come to one shocking conclusion: In these alternate universes, alternate versions of you are living out their lives.

To make a long, drawn-out explanation a little shorter, Goldman claims that through his training course (downloadable for $97, or available on DVDs starting at $197) you can mentally slide into these alternate universes, meet alternate versions of yourself, and learn from them.  It is how, he explains, he learned how to paint, to write, and (presumably) to market a serious bill of goods to the gullible.

Well, first of all, he evidently learned his physics from watching Lost in Space reruns, because the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (which I believe is what he is referencing when he mentions particles not having single locations) has nothing to do with things "sparking into existence in an infinite number of parallel universes."  What he's talking about is the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is a fascinating but unproven (and probably unprovable) way of resolving the Schrödinger's cat paradox.  It says, in essence, that whenever a particle's wave function collapses (it is localized in one position), it splits the universe -- and in those alternate universes, the particle was localized in every other possible position it could have occupied.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons courtesy of Christian Schirm]

Now, while the Many-Worlds interpretation is intriguing, and has been the subject of thousands of plot twists on Star Trek alone, it has never been demonstrated experimentally.  (It's also the basis of my novel Lock & Key, available in fine bookstores everywhere, but which I feel obligated to point out is fiction.)  Most physicists believe that even if this interpretation is correct, those theoretical alternate universes are "closed off" to us permanently after the event that caused the split, and therefore such experimental verification is impossible by definition.  Thus, this model remains an interesting, but untestable, idea.

But the thing that pissed me off the most about the site was the namedropping.  Using quotes from such luminaries as Hawking, Kaku, Max Planck, Nikola Tesla, and various others is both unfair to those quoted (who, I suspect, would laugh Goldman's ideas out of the room) and is also Appeal to Authority in its worst form.  If I were one of the scientists quoted, I'd be pretty perturbed.

I also find it interesting that he claims that you can learn from your alternate selves, because in some universe you are a published author, a rock star, or a Nobel-prize-winning scientist.  Just given the law of averages, wouldn't you also expect that it's a 50-50 chance that in any given alternate universe, you'd be instead a bum, a felon, or dead?  Although, to be fair, I'd guess that you'd learn something from meeting those alternate selves, too.  It's like James Randi's criticism of mediums; that all of the dead relatives these people contact seem to have ended up in heaven.  Never once does a medium say to the subject, "Um, bad news...  Great-Uncle George isn't in heaven.  He's sort of, um, unavailable at the moment, but did ask me if you'd mind sending down an air conditioner."

However, I'd like to look more closely at something I saw on another website, one critical of Goldman and his claims.  The post by the critic launched something of a comment-war between people who agreed with the skeptic, and those who thought Goldman's ideas were reasonable.  The most interesting comment, I think, was the following:

Why are you bashing Quantum Jumping?  Maybe he's wrong about how it works, but who cares, as long as it does work?  If it can make someone's life better, then there's nothing wrong with what he's doing.

It probably goes without saying that I disagree with this (but I'm going to say it, anyhow).  The main point is that Goldman's claim states that other selves in other universes actually, honestly, truly exist, and he is actually, honestly, truly going to put you into direct contact with them.  Despite the testimonials, there is no evidence that this claim has any merit whatsoever.  So if his technique is really a visualization or actualization method -- the same as many others available out there -- then he should market it as such, and drop all of the bullshit about quantum physics and alternate universes.  Of course, he won't do that; mentioning Hawking and Kaku and the rest gives him credibility, and (most importantly) it sells DVDs.

Now, if you buy it, and it improves your life, allows you to accomplish things you otherwise would not have been able to do, then I'm glad for you.  But the fact remains that what Goldman is saying is false.  And honestly, if you accomplished wonderful things using his program, I strongly suspect you would have been able to do them equally well without it.

What it boils down to is a point I've made more than once: telling the truth matters.  The world is what it is, and scientists and other skeptics are trying their best to elucidate how it works.  When a huckster like Goldman comes along, and tries to convince you otherwise -- and makes lots of money at your expense in the process -- it is simple dishonesty, and is no more to be respected than were the peddlers of miraculous tonics in the nineteenth century.  Like those tonics, Quantum Jumping is so much snake oil -- and as usual, caveat emptor.

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I have often been amazed and appalled at how the same evidence, the same occurrences, or the same situation can lead two equally-intelligent people to entirely different conclusions.  How often have you heard about people committing similar crimes and getting wildly different sentences, or identical symptoms in two different patients resulting in completely different diagnoses or treatments?

In Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, authors Daniel Kahneman (whose wonderful book Thinking, Fast and Slow was a previous Skeptophilia book-of-the-week), Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein analyze the cause of this "noise" in human decision-making, and -- more importantly -- discuss how we can avoid its pitfalls.  Anything we can to to detect and expunge biases is a step in the right direction; even if the majority of us aren't judges or doctors, most of us are voters, and our decisions can make an enormous difference.  Those choices are critical, and it's incumbent upon us all to make them in the most clear-headed, evidence-based fashion we can manage.

Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein have written a book that should be required reading for anyone entering a voting booth -- and should also be a part of every high school curriculum in the world.  Read it.  It'll open your eyes to the obstacles we have to logical clarity, and show you the path to avoiding them.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]