I'm sure many of you know about classical conditioning, a feature of learned behavior in which an individual learns to associate two things because of an accidental relationship. Dogs can be classically conditioned; this was demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov in his famous experiment wherein he trained a dog to associate the sound of a bell ringing with being fed. (That dogs are so readily conditioned this way is why many dog trainers are now recommending "clicker training" as a quick and reliable method for teaching dogs to obey simple commands.)
Of course, it's not just dogs. People can be classically conditioned. One day in my school, the bells malfunctioned, and rang at the wrong time -- and several students started packing up their books, even though we'd only been in class for ten minutes. It's all too easy to turn off the higher brain and let conditioning take over -- because classical conditioning, after all, does not sit very high on the ladder of intelligence, whatever its utility in training dogs (and children).
This tendency to shut off the prefrontal cortex and let ourselves turn into Pavlov's dog is the source of a lot of superstitious behavior. You go to watch the Minnesota Twins play, wearing your Twins hat, and amazingly enough, they lose -- so you decide that your hat is unlucky. You've formed an association in your brain between two things that have no real functional connection, instead of recognizing the truth, which is that the Twins suck.
This, of course, is the origin of curses. All sorts of things have been thought to hold curses; the pyramids, the Hope Diamond, James Dean's Porsche. Accidental patterns also create the same response in our brains -- thus the "27 Club" (the superstition that holds that famous rock musicians are likely to die in their 27th year, citing examples such as Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix, and conveniently ignoring all of the thousands of musicians who safely make it to 28) and "Tecumseh's Curse" (alleging that because of William Henry Harrison's mistreatment of Native Americans, all American presidents elected in a "zero year" would die in office -- a pattern broken by Ronald Reagan in 1980).
And now we have another instance of that phenomenon, in the news yesterday -- a billionaire who is determined to flout "the Curse of the Titanic."
Clive Palmer, a phenomenally rich Australian mining magnate, has for some reason become convinced that he should rebuild the Titanic. And, of course, being that money talks, the project looks like it's going ahead, with the Titanic II scheduled to take its maiden voyage in 2016. This, of course, has woo-woos bleating all sorts of warnings, about how the name is cursed and how the ship is going to sink, and how no one in his right mind should consider traveling on it. One rather hysterical article about the endeavor (here) says, with apparent relief, that at least Palmer "has not called his ship unsinkable." Because that, obviously, would be the last straw, fate-wise.
Oh, c'mon, people. Really? From what I recall of the story, the original Titanic wasn't sunk by a curse, it was sunk by a great big iceberg. And as far as I can tell, the only other thing that might possibly be attributable to a Titanic-related curse is the fact that radio stations are still for some reason playing Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On."
All I can say is: if I had the money and opportunity, and it was going somewhere cool, I would without hesitation book a trip on the Titanic II, as long as I could be guaranteed that Leonardo DiCaprio was not scheduled to be on board. There is no such thing as "the Curse of the Titanic," any more than the Hindenburg blew up because of its name, or Janis Joplin died because she was 27, or the JFK was assassinated because he was elected in 1960... or the Twins lost because of your hat.
It's kind of scary, really, when you realize how easy humans are to condition. Part of becoming a critical thinker is rising above our conditioning, and actually learning the principles of scientific induction -- which remains our best tool for discerning which connections are coincidences, which are correlations, and which represent actual causation. So there's no need to ascribe luck (or lack thereof) to some random circumstance -- there are always other reasons for the patterns you see. Such as the fact that icebergs can sink ships, hydrogen is explosive, heroin can kill you (as can a gun in the hands of an assassin)... and the Twins still suck.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
Reconciling the irreconcilable
It's interesting to consider what happens when acceptance of a particular set of religious beliefs runs you headlong into conflict with evidence from personal experience.
For some people, it can be agonizing. I remember one student, a devout (and recently converted) born-again Christian, who was taking my AP Biology class. His mental acuity made it impossible to dismiss evolution and the antiquity of the Earth as "flawed science" (as so many of the creationists claim); yet it flew right in the face of what he was being told at church, and what he had heartily embraced for other reasons. The whole thing was a cause of considerable pain, and I don't know how it ended, as he graduated (and has since gone on to pursue a medical career) and I haven't been in contact with him. But I still recall his expressing his anguish to me over the impossibility of reconciling two ideas that he very much wanted to believe, for different reasons, but which were mutually incompatible.
Just recently, I saw two other attempts to bring together beliefs with experience, in some rather odd realms, and I thought those might be interesting to consider.
First, we have an article (here) in which a devout Christian tries to frame his experience of having seen a UFO in terms of biblical prophecy.
What I find interesting about this article is not the questionable messing-about with numerology and kabbalistic nonsense, but the part in which the author describes having seen a UFO (he refers to the object he saw as the "Moon of Memphis"), and wondering if this was heralding the Second Coming:
Next, we have a new blog (here) that the author is hopeful will generate a book -- on the topic of "the Christian perspective on Bigfoot."
"This will be the title of a new book, written by….you….and me….and other Christians who’s lives have been forever changed by an encounter with the creature called 'Bigfoot or Sasquatch'," the author writes in his introduction. "As Christians in this situation, we are uniquely challenged in our faith, in our relationships with family and friends and particularly other Christians... What have been your spiritual struggles because of your experiences?"
While once again I won't get into the question of Bigfoot's actual existence, as I've debated that topic in enough other posts, one has to wonder how someone who believes that humans are god's special creations would deal with receiving direct proof of the existence of a large, intelligent proto-hominid.
Or alien life. Or anything else that, like science, further reinforces the idea that Homo sapiens aren't the center of the universe, we're just another animal species on a little globe spinning in the immensity of space. That concept doesn't bother me -- I guess I'm too awestruck by the beauty and complexity of the universe to be much put off by our insignificant place in it. But you can see how someone who was heavily invested in the centrality of humanity and the Earth -- as the place where god's truth was revealed, and as the species god chose to invest with immortal souls -- would be blown away by the revelation that there was something more out there, something outside the realm of biblical writ, something not explainable from within the paradigm. It would take a lot of reevaluation -- and as with my long-ago student, it couldn't help but be painful.
For some people, it can be agonizing. I remember one student, a devout (and recently converted) born-again Christian, who was taking my AP Biology class. His mental acuity made it impossible to dismiss evolution and the antiquity of the Earth as "flawed science" (as so many of the creationists claim); yet it flew right in the face of what he was being told at church, and what he had heartily embraced for other reasons. The whole thing was a cause of considerable pain, and I don't know how it ended, as he graduated (and has since gone on to pursue a medical career) and I haven't been in contact with him. But I still recall his expressing his anguish to me over the impossibility of reconciling two ideas that he very much wanted to believe, for different reasons, but which were mutually incompatible.
Just recently, I saw two other attempts to bring together beliefs with experience, in some rather odd realms, and I thought those might be interesting to consider.
First, we have an article (here) in which a devout Christian tries to frame his experience of having seen a UFO in terms of biblical prophecy.
What I find interesting about this article is not the questionable messing-about with numerology and kabbalistic nonsense, but the part in which the author describes having seen a UFO (he refers to the object he saw as the "Moon of Memphis"), and wondering if this was heralding the Second Coming:
The “Moon of Memphis” was possibly the same object as the “Star of Bethlehem” but at a much lower altitude. The Book of Mormon states that a bright light appeared in the sky over Bethlehem. Was this the Star of Bethlehem at a much lower altitude like the “Moon of Memphis”? The “Moon of Memphis” ascended and appeared as a bright star until it ascended out of sight. The symbol of Islam is the moon and star. Was the “Moon of Memphis” trying to send a meaning to Islamic believers? At high altitude it appeared like a bright star reminding me of the “Star of David” or the “Star of Bethlehem”. It seems that the “Moon of Memphis” was trying to relay meaning to all of the religions of Zion; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This event also suggest that the "Star of Bethlehem" appeared as a very bright star from a distance but appeared as a full white moon to the people directly under it giving a moon-like light to the community below and baptizing the people with the Holy light of God.I don't want to get into the veracity of the sighting -- the article gave nothing in the way of evidence other than the author's word -- but it is interesting to consider how such an experience would shake a person of belief. And now that scientists are getting closer and closer to having the tools to find life on other worlds, how long will it be before Christians worldwide are forced to reconsider humanity's place within the cosmos, when we find out that we're not alone?
Was the “Moon of Memphis” a sign to tell the believers of all religions that they have a common God who is known by many names? Was it a sign of peace or the return of the messiah? Much change in the human condition have occurred since 1964 suggesting that it meant both a sign of the living God and his commitment to the earth to improve the world.
Next, we have a new blog (here) that the author is hopeful will generate a book -- on the topic of "the Christian perspective on Bigfoot."
"This will be the title of a new book, written by….you….and me….and other Christians who’s lives have been forever changed by an encounter with the creature called 'Bigfoot or Sasquatch'," the author writes in his introduction. "As Christians in this situation, we are uniquely challenged in our faith, in our relationships with family and friends and particularly other Christians... What have been your spiritual struggles because of your experiences?"
While once again I won't get into the question of Bigfoot's actual existence, as I've debated that topic in enough other posts, one has to wonder how someone who believes that humans are god's special creations would deal with receiving direct proof of the existence of a large, intelligent proto-hominid.
Or alien life. Or anything else that, like science, further reinforces the idea that Homo sapiens aren't the center of the universe, we're just another animal species on a little globe spinning in the immensity of space. That concept doesn't bother me -- I guess I'm too awestruck by the beauty and complexity of the universe to be much put off by our insignificant place in it. But you can see how someone who was heavily invested in the centrality of humanity and the Earth -- as the place where god's truth was revealed, and as the species god chose to invest with immortal souls -- would be blown away by the revelation that there was something more out there, something outside the realm of biblical writ, something not explainable from within the paradigm. It would take a lot of reevaluation -- and as with my long-ago student, it couldn't help but be painful.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Saturday shorts
Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch we're currently following four stories. Burning the midnight oil, burning the candle at both ends, and burning rubber in pursuit of truth.
And we are pleased to report that a criminal court in Zimbabwe apparently has the same goal, because they have found three prostitutes innocent of witchcraft. (Source) The prostitutes had been accused of "aggravated indecent assault" on the prompting of seventeen men, who claimed that they had been forcibly raped by the women. This by itself seems pretty implausible, but the implausibility crosses a line into the realm of "just plain crazy" when you hear why the men said they were raped:
To collect their semen in order to perform black magic.
It's scary to think that in this day and age that claim would even make it as far as a criminal trial, but at least the women were found innocent. After all, in some parts of the world, superstition still rules -- there have been other cases of alleged witchcraft, notably in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, where charges of sorcery have resulted in a death sentence. But in Zimbabwe, wiser heads have prevailed, and the seventeen accusers have to come up with a different excuse to explain to their wives why they were visiting a prostitute, now that "She made me do it in order to steal my semen!" has been ruled out by a court of law. Rationality triumphs again.
Which is more than I can say for the people at Nepal Airlines, who have fixed a mechanical problem in a troublesome airplane by sacrificing two goats. (Source)
Apparently, there was a technical issue with one of the airline's Boeing 757s, and after repeatedly attempting to repair it using conventional techniques, someone came up with the novel solution of sacrificing two goats to the Hindu sky god, Akash Bhairab. The problem, said Raju K. C., a senior airline official, was solved by this approach.
You have to wonder how this was explained to passengers facing delays because of the mechanical trouble. "We're sorry, but Flight 1488 from Kathmandu to Hong Kong has been delayed. Please be assured that your flight will board as soon as the captain and flight crew have finished sacrificing a goat on the runway. We apologize for the inconvenience."
I don't know about you, but if I heard something like this, I would elect to get from Kathmandu to Hong Kong by some other method, such as walking the entire way.
Next, we have a report that El Chupacabra might have left his desert home and be vacationing in England. (Source)
Sue Langham, a mother of two from Hale, England, was up early one day last week to catch a train, and saw sitting on her back doorstep a creature "with the head of a fox and a muscly body that was making a noise that sounded like a strangled wolf."
"I was shocked by what I saw," Langham told reporters. "We sometimes see foxes in the back garden and this was nothing like that."
Myself, I think this sounds like a clear report of El Chupacabra. Okay, I know that most of the sightings of that creepy cryptid are from the American Southwest. I also know that all the reports of El Chupacabra that have resulted in tangible evidence have turned out to be coyotes, foxes, or dogs with mange, but still. Why couldn't the mysterious bloodsucking fiend make its way to England? I know that given the number of people with guns in England as compared to, say, Texas, if I were a Terrifying Carnivorous Beast From Hell, I would prefer to take my chances with the Brits.
And this is doubly so now that a senior official with Texas Parks and Wildlife's Law Enforcement Division has publicly stated that it's legal to kill Bigfoot. (Source)
John Lloyd Scharf, of Cryptomundo, wrote to Parks and Wildlife to ask the question, given the number of recent Sasquatch sightings in the Lone Star State. He got the following response from L. David Sinclair, the Law Enforcement Division's Chief of Staff:
So listen up, Bigfoot: you're on notice. If you go messin' around with anyone in Texas, you're likely to find yourself in a world o' hurt, and the law ain't gonna protect you. You might just want to get outta Dodge now. Try England, I hear it's really nice this time of year. But I don't recommend trying to get there on Nepal Airlines.
And we are pleased to report that a criminal court in Zimbabwe apparently has the same goal, because they have found three prostitutes innocent of witchcraft. (Source) The prostitutes had been accused of "aggravated indecent assault" on the prompting of seventeen men, who claimed that they had been forcibly raped by the women. This by itself seems pretty implausible, but the implausibility crosses a line into the realm of "just plain crazy" when you hear why the men said they were raped:
To collect their semen in order to perform black magic.
It's scary to think that in this day and age that claim would even make it as far as a criminal trial, but at least the women were found innocent. After all, in some parts of the world, superstition still rules -- there have been other cases of alleged witchcraft, notably in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, where charges of sorcery have resulted in a death sentence. But in Zimbabwe, wiser heads have prevailed, and the seventeen accusers have to come up with a different excuse to explain to their wives why they were visiting a prostitute, now that "She made me do it in order to steal my semen!" has been ruled out by a court of law. Rationality triumphs again.
Which is more than I can say for the people at Nepal Airlines, who have fixed a mechanical problem in a troublesome airplane by sacrificing two goats. (Source)
Apparently, there was a technical issue with one of the airline's Boeing 757s, and after repeatedly attempting to repair it using conventional techniques, someone came up with the novel solution of sacrificing two goats to the Hindu sky god, Akash Bhairab. The problem, said Raju K. C., a senior airline official, was solved by this approach.
You have to wonder how this was explained to passengers facing delays because of the mechanical trouble. "We're sorry, but Flight 1488 from Kathmandu to Hong Kong has been delayed. Please be assured that your flight will board as soon as the captain and flight crew have finished sacrificing a goat on the runway. We apologize for the inconvenience."
I don't know about you, but if I heard something like this, I would elect to get from Kathmandu to Hong Kong by some other method, such as walking the entire way.
Next, we have a report that El Chupacabra might have left his desert home and be vacationing in England. (Source)
Sue Langham, a mother of two from Hale, England, was up early one day last week to catch a train, and saw sitting on her back doorstep a creature "with the head of a fox and a muscly body that was making a noise that sounded like a strangled wolf."
"I was shocked by what I saw," Langham told reporters. "We sometimes see foxes in the back garden and this was nothing like that."
Myself, I think this sounds like a clear report of El Chupacabra. Okay, I know that most of the sightings of that creepy cryptid are from the American Southwest. I also know that all the reports of El Chupacabra that have resulted in tangible evidence have turned out to be coyotes, foxes, or dogs with mange, but still. Why couldn't the mysterious bloodsucking fiend make its way to England? I know that given the number of people with guns in England as compared to, say, Texas, if I were a Terrifying Carnivorous Beast From Hell, I would prefer to take my chances with the Brits.
And this is doubly so now that a senior official with Texas Parks and Wildlife's Law Enforcement Division has publicly stated that it's legal to kill Bigfoot. (Source)
John Lloyd Scharf, of Cryptomundo, wrote to Parks and Wildlife to ask the question, given the number of recent Sasquatch sightings in the Lone Star State. He got the following response from L. David Sinclair, the Law Enforcement Division's Chief of Staff:
Mr. Scharf:
The statute that you cite (Section 61.021) refers only to game birds, game animals, fish, marine animals or other aquatic life. Generally speaking, other nongame wildlife is listed in Chapter 67 (nongame and threatened species) and Chapter 68 (nongame endangered species). “Nongame” means those species of vertebrate and invertebrate wildlife indigenous to Texas that are not classified as game animals, game birds, game fish, fur-bearing animals, endangered species, alligators, marine penaeid shrimp, or oysters. The Parks and Wildlife Commission may adopt regulations to allow a person to take, possess, buy, sell, transport, import, export or propagate nongame wildlife. If the Commission does not specifically list an indigenous, nongame species, then the species is considered non-protected nongame wildlife, e.g., coyote, bobcat, mountain lion, cotton-tailed rabbit, etc. A non-protected nongame animal may be hunted on private property with landowner consent by any means, at any time and there is no bag limit or possession limit.
If you have any questions, please contact Assistant Chief Scott Vaca. I have included his e-mail address. I will be out of the office and in Houston on Friday.
Best,
L. David Sinclair
Chief of Staff – Division Director I
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
Law Enforcement Division
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744
So listen up, Bigfoot: you're on notice. If you go messin' around with anyone in Texas, you're likely to find yourself in a world o' hurt, and the law ain't gonna protect you. You might just want to get outta Dodge now. Try England, I hear it's really nice this time of year. But I don't recommend trying to get there on Nepal Airlines.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Ouija wisdom
It's interesting how woo-woo trends come and go. Conspiracy theories are currently all the rage, especially amongst people who think our government is way more evil, and also way more intelligent, than it actually is. On the other hand, interest in Bigfoot and other cryptids seems to be on the wane, with the current spate of television shows about monster hunters ("squatchers") now played more for laughs than anything else.
Of course, interest can rekindle, and that seems to be the case with the Ouija board. I remember these things from when I was a kid -- a flat board, with letters and numbers and a few words ("yes," "no," and sometimes "goodbye"), and a little piece of lightweight wood resting on three legs called a "planchette" that had a pointer. The players lightly rest their fingers on the planchette, and "invite the spirit world to communicate with them," and if the spirits are in an obliging mood they shove the planchette around to spell out messages.
Ouija boards kind of went out of fashion for a while, but they're coming back... in fact, Universal Studios has a movie (creatively called Ouija) in production, and if it's halfway successful, you can expect a sudden upsurge in interest in the divination tool. Not to mention a sudden upsurge in religious folks telling you how dangerous it is, how it is the handiwork of the devil and not to be taken lightly.
All of this is pretty funny, because the Ouija board is a fairly recent invention, and not by Aleister Crowley or anyone of that ilk -- it was invented in 1890 by a trio of parlor game designers, E. C. Reiche, Elijah Bond, and Charles Kennard. Of course, they wanted it to appear mystical; they said, for example, that the word "Ouija" is the Egyptian word for "good luck," which is patently false. When Kennard lost control of the company to his foreman, William Fuld, Fuld was interviewed and admitted that the whole mystique around the board was his own creation-- there was nothing occult about it, and in fact the name "Ouija" was coined simply by splicing together the French and German words for "yes." And the ability of the board to spell out messages is adequately explained by the ideomotor effect, the ability of the mind to subconsciously guide actions such as small motions of the fingers. Controlled studies of Ouija boards using blindfolded people resulted in the production of gibberish -- given that it wasn't the spirits wearing the blindfolds, you'd think it wouldn't matter. (Actually, if there really were spirits making people's hands move, you have to wonder why the spirits can't just make the planchette itself move, and eliminate the middle man.)
Of course, a rational explanation doesn't discourage most woo-woos, and there are lots of alleged psychics who still love the Ouija board, and lots of conservative Christians who still think it's a tool of Satan. Hasbro, who has the marketing rights for the game, is the recipient of frequent requests from church leaders to discontinue sales of Ouija boards, because they're "encouraging children to call up demons." In 2001, a bunch of religious folks got together in Alamogordo, New Mexico and burned a pile of Ouija boards -- but they also added a bunch of Harry Potter books to the bonfire, so I'm not sure their ability to discriminate fact from fiction was all that sharp to begin with.
I remember messing with a Ouija board once when I was a kid -- a neighbor of mine had one. We sat there, lights turned down, fingertips on the board, trying to get into a mystical frame of mind... and then... suddenly... nothing happened. We waited for a while, but evidently most of the more helpful spirits were vacationing in Maui that day, because neither of us felt any ice-cold fingers pushing our hands around. Eventually the planchette did move a little (I still suspect the neighbor kid may have had something to do with it.) But after spelling out some highly important messages from the Other Side, such as "You smell bad," the spirits became balky and refused to cooperate, and we got bored and went outside to play. And the latter, frankly, is what both the psychics and the Christians should do.
Myself, I think as divination tools go, we should go back to the tried-and-true Magic Eight Ball. It's simple, direct, and gives you answers to any question you might have. But of course, you have to ask yourself, is it accurate? Is it actually accessing hidden knowledge to give you wisdom, or is it just random? Let's see what it has to say about that.
*shakes up Magic Eight Ball*
Um... "Reply hazy, try again later." Okay, I'll have to get back to you on that one.
Of course, interest can rekindle, and that seems to be the case with the Ouija board. I remember these things from when I was a kid -- a flat board, with letters and numbers and a few words ("yes," "no," and sometimes "goodbye"), and a little piece of lightweight wood resting on three legs called a "planchette" that had a pointer. The players lightly rest their fingers on the planchette, and "invite the spirit world to communicate with them," and if the spirits are in an obliging mood they shove the planchette around to spell out messages.
Ouija boards kind of went out of fashion for a while, but they're coming back... in fact, Universal Studios has a movie (creatively called Ouija) in production, and if it's halfway successful, you can expect a sudden upsurge in interest in the divination tool. Not to mention a sudden upsurge in religious folks telling you how dangerous it is, how it is the handiwork of the devil and not to be taken lightly.
All of this is pretty funny, because the Ouija board is a fairly recent invention, and not by Aleister Crowley or anyone of that ilk -- it was invented in 1890 by a trio of parlor game designers, E. C. Reiche, Elijah Bond, and Charles Kennard. Of course, they wanted it to appear mystical; they said, for example, that the word "Ouija" is the Egyptian word for "good luck," which is patently false. When Kennard lost control of the company to his foreman, William Fuld, Fuld was interviewed and admitted that the whole mystique around the board was his own creation-- there was nothing occult about it, and in fact the name "Ouija" was coined simply by splicing together the French and German words for "yes." And the ability of the board to spell out messages is adequately explained by the ideomotor effect, the ability of the mind to subconsciously guide actions such as small motions of the fingers. Controlled studies of Ouija boards using blindfolded people resulted in the production of gibberish -- given that it wasn't the spirits wearing the blindfolds, you'd think it wouldn't matter. (Actually, if there really were spirits making people's hands move, you have to wonder why the spirits can't just make the planchette itself move, and eliminate the middle man.)
Of course, a rational explanation doesn't discourage most woo-woos, and there are lots of alleged psychics who still love the Ouija board, and lots of conservative Christians who still think it's a tool of Satan. Hasbro, who has the marketing rights for the game, is the recipient of frequent requests from church leaders to discontinue sales of Ouija boards, because they're "encouraging children to call up demons." In 2001, a bunch of religious folks got together in Alamogordo, New Mexico and burned a pile of Ouija boards -- but they also added a bunch of Harry Potter books to the bonfire, so I'm not sure their ability to discriminate fact from fiction was all that sharp to begin with.
I remember messing with a Ouija board once when I was a kid -- a neighbor of mine had one. We sat there, lights turned down, fingertips on the board, trying to get into a mystical frame of mind... and then... suddenly... nothing happened. We waited for a while, but evidently most of the more helpful spirits were vacationing in Maui that day, because neither of us felt any ice-cold fingers pushing our hands around. Eventually the planchette did move a little (I still suspect the neighbor kid may have had something to do with it.) But after spelling out some highly important messages from the Other Side, such as "You smell bad," the spirits became balky and refused to cooperate, and we got bored and went outside to play. And the latter, frankly, is what both the psychics and the Christians should do.
Myself, I think as divination tools go, we should go back to the tried-and-true Magic Eight Ball. It's simple, direct, and gives you answers to any question you might have. But of course, you have to ask yourself, is it accurate? Is it actually accessing hidden knowledge to give you wisdom, or is it just random? Let's see what it has to say about that.
*shakes up Magic Eight Ball*
Um... "Reply hazy, try again later." Okay, I'll have to get back to you on that one.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Googling "Gootans"
I'll be honest, I have no idea how Google works. In fact, computers in general baffle me. I can do a few basic things, enough to get by on, but I really haven't the first clue about how it all works. And the whole search engine concept -- whatever its amazing utility -- seems to me like magic.
The "magic" analogy is pretty apt, because it shares with that dubious practice the characteristic of unpredictability. I discovered this when I started checking the statistics on my blog, and looking at how readers had found Skeptophilia. Predictably, many folks found me through Twitter and through the Networked Blogs feature on Facebook, being that I post links to my site on both of those social media platforms. But as my hit rate went up, an increasing number of folks found my blog via Google searches. What was fascinating and mystifying, however, was the search parameters they had entered that got them here.
Some were logical; my post on the alleged monolith on Mars was tracked down by googling, surprisingly enough, "Mars monolith." But apparently six people have found me by googling "panda apostasy." What? I am baffled as to how those words would end up in the same search to start with, much less how that got them to my site. I tried googling those words together myself, and the first three pages of hits had no links to Skeptophilia, so I still haven't explained that one. The same applies to the three people who found me by googling "scary German shepherd."
Sometimes, however, there's a connection, even if it takes me a while to figure out what it is. I saw two days ago that five people found my blog by googling "gootan." My reaction was, "What the hell is a 'gootan?' It sounds like some kind of obscure Chinese food." So I googled "gootan" myself, and I found not only my link, but a whole bunch of other stuff, as well.
It turns out that last year, I wrote a post about the writings of noted wingnut Erich von Däniken, and at the end I made a passing comment that if von Däniken was right, and the Greek gods were real (albeit extraterrestrial) superpowerful entities, they might want to protect us from the impending invasion by aliens from the planet Gootan. And I posted a link to a site that said we're about to be so invaded. And then I proceeded to forget all about it. But there's apparently a whole wacky mythology developing about Gootan, and its sister planet Zeeba, and how there's this gigantic fleet of spaceships on the way to invade Earth. Mentions of invasion by Gootanians (Gootanese? Gootanoids? Who the hell knows?) have made it into hundreds of sites about UFOs, aliens, and conspiracy theories, countless blogs... and most notably, the Korea Times (check out their story here).
So, I started doing some digging, to see if I could figure out where it all started. And in an eerie repetition of a previous attempt to find the origin of a weird news story (this one in Pravda, regarding an alien mass burial in Uganda -- read my post about it here), I found out that the whole Gootan and Zeeba thing began four years ago in...
... wait for it...
... The Weekly World News.
And I'm thinking: does every ridiculous story in the world start with these people? It's like they're the living embodiment of "All Roads Lead To Rome," except that it's "All Bullshit Leads To The Weekly World News." (Yesterday's headline: "Bat Boy to be Romney's VP") And as I commented about the whole Ugandan alien thing, what never fails to get me is how using the wonderful cut-and-paste ability computers have, stories get lifted in toto and posted elsewhere, and depending on where the posts end up, a ridiculous claim can end up garnering unwarranted credibility simply by virtue of moving around the internet for long enough.
So anyway, that's this morning's jaunt through the world of the woo-woo, along with some musings about how weird search engines are. At least I figured out how I got connected to the Gootan invasion -- it was my own fault, predictably enough. And now by doing a whole post on the Gootans I'm just going to make it worse. I still, however, am at a loss with regards to "panda apostasy."
The "magic" analogy is pretty apt, because it shares with that dubious practice the characteristic of unpredictability. I discovered this when I started checking the statistics on my blog, and looking at how readers had found Skeptophilia. Predictably, many folks found me through Twitter and through the Networked Blogs feature on Facebook, being that I post links to my site on both of those social media platforms. But as my hit rate went up, an increasing number of folks found my blog via Google searches. What was fascinating and mystifying, however, was the search parameters they had entered that got them here.
Some were logical; my post on the alleged monolith on Mars was tracked down by googling, surprisingly enough, "Mars monolith." But apparently six people have found me by googling "panda apostasy." What? I am baffled as to how those words would end up in the same search to start with, much less how that got them to my site. I tried googling those words together myself, and the first three pages of hits had no links to Skeptophilia, so I still haven't explained that one. The same applies to the three people who found me by googling "scary German shepherd."
Sometimes, however, there's a connection, even if it takes me a while to figure out what it is. I saw two days ago that five people found my blog by googling "gootan." My reaction was, "What the hell is a 'gootan?' It sounds like some kind of obscure Chinese food." So I googled "gootan" myself, and I found not only my link, but a whole bunch of other stuff, as well.
It turns out that last year, I wrote a post about the writings of noted wingnut Erich von Däniken, and at the end I made a passing comment that if von Däniken was right, and the Greek gods were real (albeit extraterrestrial) superpowerful entities, they might want to protect us from the impending invasion by aliens from the planet Gootan. And I posted a link to a site that said we're about to be so invaded. And then I proceeded to forget all about it. But there's apparently a whole wacky mythology developing about Gootan, and its sister planet Zeeba, and how there's this gigantic fleet of spaceships on the way to invade Earth. Mentions of invasion by Gootanians (Gootanese? Gootanoids? Who the hell knows?) have made it into hundreds of sites about UFOs, aliens, and conspiracy theories, countless blogs... and most notably, the Korea Times (check out their story here).
So, I started doing some digging, to see if I could figure out where it all started. And in an eerie repetition of a previous attempt to find the origin of a weird news story (this one in Pravda, regarding an alien mass burial in Uganda -- read my post about it here), I found out that the whole Gootan and Zeeba thing began four years ago in...
... wait for it...
... The Weekly World News.
And I'm thinking: does every ridiculous story in the world start with these people? It's like they're the living embodiment of "All Roads Lead To Rome," except that it's "All Bullshit Leads To The Weekly World News." (Yesterday's headline: "Bat Boy to be Romney's VP") And as I commented about the whole Ugandan alien thing, what never fails to get me is how using the wonderful cut-and-paste ability computers have, stories get lifted in toto and posted elsewhere, and depending on where the posts end up, a ridiculous claim can end up garnering unwarranted credibility simply by virtue of moving around the internet for long enough.
So anyway, that's this morning's jaunt through the world of the woo-woo, along with some musings about how weird search engines are. At least I figured out how I got connected to the Gootan invasion -- it was my own fault, predictably enough. And now by doing a whole post on the Gootans I'm just going to make it worse. I still, however, am at a loss with regards to "panda apostasy."
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Off the rails
One of the saddest things to me is to see a brilliant mind veer off course, and to be powerless to stop it. I'm not talking about actual mental illness here, although that is a tragedy of considerable magnitude as well; I'm talking about someone with intact cognitive faculties who becomes, for whatever reason, attracted by an ideology, and abandons any sort of critical thinking in favor of its appeal. I've only seen this happen a couple of times myself, but in my experience, any kind of rational argument is generally fruitless once it has occurred.
My most striking example of this was a young man who studied both introductory and AP-level biology with me. I remember him as a humorous, friendly, open boy, who had an inquisitive mind and a fine understanding of science. I was shocked to be contacted by him a couple of years ago and to find out that he had become an ultra-fundamentalist Christian, a young-earth creationist whose sole reason for writing to me was to express concern about the fact that I was headed to hell. I was, he said, using my influence to draw teenagers away from god, not only by my teaching of the "flawed science" of evolution, but by my being an out-of-the-closet atheist. He admitted that I didn't push my atheism on my students, but said that my standing as a respected teacher was "making atheism appealing." His email was a long, rambling diatribe about the evil that "secularizers" like myself were perpetrating upon society, and completely devoid of the sense of humor (and perspective) that I recall as one of his best qualities. After some consideration I wrote back, and this led to two or three back-and-forths -- but neither of us, of course, budged, and (I suspect) both of us were left saddened by the encounter.
A dear friend and former colleague of mine, one of the most talented teachers I've had the privilege of working with, told me yesterday about a recent similar occurrence. She told me about a former student, with "a seemingly brilliant mind," who had contacted her by telephone. The reason for the call was to ask her for money, because he was trying to get to Europe to meet with a healer, Dr. Philippe Sauvage. My friend said she was not in the position to donate money to his cause, and the young man asked her to refer him to "any rich friends she might have." Receiving a negative answer to this, the young man ended the conversation, presumably to canvass others to try to raise the money he needed.
I hadn't heard about Philippe Sauvage, so I decided to look into him, and what I found was fairly scary. Sauvage's site (here) strikes me as the ravings of a megalomaniac. Here's a sampling:
And more interesting, none of it is true.
An October 2009 BBC exposé (here) calls Sauvage a "conman," a "sham," and a "fraud," who has bilked people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and whose claims (including healing third-degree burns "overnight") are pure bullshit. Sauvage has been the subject of a number of legal investigations, and in fact fled France because he was about to be jailed for fraud. He has lived for a time in the United States, where he founded a "healing organization" called Catharsis, but after a judge in the US failed to grant him asylum with regards to the jail sentence pending in France, Sauvage went to England, setting up shop in Devon (and convincing dozens of people there of his powers, ripping more money off from the ill and vulnerable). His latest home has been Italy, but no one really seems to be all that sure where he is.
Interpol, of course, would love to find that out.
I am mystified as to the appeal that people like Sauvage have. I suppose, having never had a life-threatening illness, I may not fully understand the desperation that can sometimes engender. But I'd like to think that even if I were dying of some terminal disease, that my mental faculties would not go off the rails to the extent that I would fall for the claims of someone like Sauvage.
And as far as my friend's former student: all I can say is that it is doubly sad to see a promising mind pulled into the orbit of a counterfactual, irrational, toxic worldview. And unfortunately, from the (thankfully) few experiences I've had with this sort of thing, I don't hold out a great deal of hope for a positive outcome. I can only wish, in the case of this student, that enough of his friends and family refuse to fund his trip to Europe that he is forced to stay here in the US... and can be helped to escape from the influence of these charlatans.
My most striking example of this was a young man who studied both introductory and AP-level biology with me. I remember him as a humorous, friendly, open boy, who had an inquisitive mind and a fine understanding of science. I was shocked to be contacted by him a couple of years ago and to find out that he had become an ultra-fundamentalist Christian, a young-earth creationist whose sole reason for writing to me was to express concern about the fact that I was headed to hell. I was, he said, using my influence to draw teenagers away from god, not only by my teaching of the "flawed science" of evolution, but by my being an out-of-the-closet atheist. He admitted that I didn't push my atheism on my students, but said that my standing as a respected teacher was "making atheism appealing." His email was a long, rambling diatribe about the evil that "secularizers" like myself were perpetrating upon society, and completely devoid of the sense of humor (and perspective) that I recall as one of his best qualities. After some consideration I wrote back, and this led to two or three back-and-forths -- but neither of us, of course, budged, and (I suspect) both of us were left saddened by the encounter.
A dear friend and former colleague of mine, one of the most talented teachers I've had the privilege of working with, told me yesterday about a recent similar occurrence. She told me about a former student, with "a seemingly brilliant mind," who had contacted her by telephone. The reason for the call was to ask her for money, because he was trying to get to Europe to meet with a healer, Dr. Philippe Sauvage. My friend said she was not in the position to donate money to his cause, and the young man asked her to refer him to "any rich friends she might have." Receiving a negative answer to this, the young man ended the conversation, presumably to canvass others to try to raise the money he needed.
I hadn't heard about Philippe Sauvage, so I decided to look into him, and what I found was fairly scary. Sauvage's site (here) strikes me as the ravings of a megalomaniac. Here's a sampling:
Philippe Sauvage has accomplished more in one of his 50 Earth years than any human dreams of in a lifetime. The contents of this page offer the barest sketch of his unbelievably dramatic career as Bio-Cosmic Justice Enforcer. Humanity has been not only blessed by his very presence this past half century, but just as we have begun to reap full force the effects of our own carcinogenetic destruction of our planetary organism (the Geo-Self), Philippe Sauvage has arrived to usher the Worthy through the cataclysmic geopolitical, geological, atmospheric and immunological disasters now emergent... Know, beyond the shadow of ANY doubt, that you are now introduced to the greatest figure the inhabitants of this planet have ever seen. Know that this is THE pivotal time of Your Life. Nothing else matters now but what You DO in response to this knowledge (or, most unfortunately, what you do NOT DO). Awaken or not, it is of no consequence to Philippe Sauvage as he completely fulfills his role regardless, but be certain it is of VERY Real Consequence to You.He claims to be the World's Last and Most Powerful Druid, a shape-shifter, and the inheritor of "ancient Hyperborean spirituality" through his Breton ancestry. He has made "revolutionary contributions" to evolutionary biology, criminology (through "subliminalistics" -- advanced technologies of distant subliminal mind control), psychology, anthropology, and medicine (this last was as a "charismatic miracle worker and healer"). He was also an undercover special agent, a paramilitary undercover anti-terrorist leader called "009." (No, I'm not making any of this up.)
And more interesting, none of it is true.
An October 2009 BBC exposé (here) calls Sauvage a "conman," a "sham," and a "fraud," who has bilked people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and whose claims (including healing third-degree burns "overnight") are pure bullshit. Sauvage has been the subject of a number of legal investigations, and in fact fled France because he was about to be jailed for fraud. He has lived for a time in the United States, where he founded a "healing organization" called Catharsis, but after a judge in the US failed to grant him asylum with regards to the jail sentence pending in France, Sauvage went to England, setting up shop in Devon (and convincing dozens of people there of his powers, ripping more money off from the ill and vulnerable). His latest home has been Italy, but no one really seems to be all that sure where he is.
Interpol, of course, would love to find that out.
I am mystified as to the appeal that people like Sauvage have. I suppose, having never had a life-threatening illness, I may not fully understand the desperation that can sometimes engender. But I'd like to think that even if I were dying of some terminal disease, that my mental faculties would not go off the rails to the extent that I would fall for the claims of someone like Sauvage.
And as far as my friend's former student: all I can say is that it is doubly sad to see a promising mind pulled into the orbit of a counterfactual, irrational, toxic worldview. And unfortunately, from the (thankfully) few experiences I've had with this sort of thing, I don't hold out a great deal of hope for a positive outcome. I can only wish, in the case of this student, that enough of his friends and family refuse to fund his trip to Europe that he is forced to stay here in the US... and can be helped to escape from the influence of these charlatans.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Being nice to time-traveling lawyers
Much is made of how thoughtless our society has become, how we fail to help each other, ignore those in need, accept unkind behavior as simply how the world works. I've no doubt that this can be true. However, in some ways (and perhaps in reaction to the perception that we need to be nicer), we have become too accepting -- not of people, but of ideas. Through our conviction that all people deserve respect (which is true) we have decided that all ideas deserve respect (which is nonsense).
In the media, this often plays out as pussyfooting around the purveyors of crazy ideas, calling their silly claims "alternative" or "unorthodox" or "non-mainstream" instead of simply "wrong." It's why very seldom will you ever see creationism, astrology, or homeopathy flat-out labeled as false. In our desperation to treat every idea "fairly," we have gotten so far away from scientific induction as the gold standard for thinking that we've lost the ability to tell a reasonable idea from an unreasonable claim.
I think this is insidious, because it leads one to the erroneous conclusion that stating that an idea is wrong is discourteous, or downright mean. It robs us of clarity in that very realm where it is the most critical.
Let me illustrate what I mean by introducing you to the time-traveling lawyer of Seattle.
Last Friday, Huffington Post had an article about Andrew Basiago, a lawyer in Seattle who sounds to me like he could use some serious psychological help, or possibly horse tranquilizers. He claims that there is a government program, "Operation Pegasus," that allows select individuals to time travel, and that using a machine invented by Nikola Tesla, he's had more trips through space-time than Marty McFly.
"The machine consisted of two gray elliptical booms about eight feet tall, separated by about ten feet, between which a shimmering curtain of what Tesla called 'radiant energy' was broadcast," Basiago told HuffPost reporters. "Radiant energy is a form of energy that Tesla discovered that is latent and pervasive in the universe and has among its properties the capacity to bend time-space." Travelers would then jump into the tunnel thus created, and "find themselves at their destination."
What evidence does Basiago have? Well, he says he was photographed in a crowd... while listening to Lincoln at Gettysburg:
Basiago is the one on the left. Yeah, the guy who conveniently has no recognizable facial features.
Basiago also claims to have been in Ford Theater when Lincoln was assassinated.
Time traveling, he says, does have its downsides. For one thing, you take the chance of running into yourself, something that has happened to him twice, and is "disorienting." Also, it can be difficult to stay put, rather like the problem that Christopher Reeve ran into in Somewhere in Time: "If we were in the hologram for 15 minutes or fewer," he explained, "the hologram would collapse, and after about 60 seconds of standing in a field of super-charged particles ... we would find ourselves back on the stage ... in the present."
Right. Fields of super-charged particles. I bet they look just like the transporter sparkle in Star Trek.
Then, we get the appeal to authority kicking in. Basiago's claims are supported, the article says, by Alfred Lambremont Webre, a "lawyer who specializes in exopolitics." Webre is, throughout the article, treated as a credible witness -- and nowhere does it mention the truth, which is that he is a raving wingnut who has merited mention in Skeptophilia twice -- once for claiming that the Earth was going to be bombarded by "fourth dimensional energy" on November 11, 2011, causing the Earth's rotational axis to shift by 90 degrees (see the post here), and then to claim that he'd met President Obama while visiting Mars (here). So receiving support from this guy is not exactly going to earn you any validity points.
What gets me about this article is that except for the fact that it's filed under HuffPost's "Weird News" department, Basiago and his claims are treated with a fair degree of seriousness. Never once is an actual scientist allowed to weigh in on the subject -- although many respected physicists, notably Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, and Neil de Grasse Tyson, have expounded upon the topic, and the general consensus is that if time travel is possible at all, it requires energy that is far beyond anything we currently have the capacity to create. Never once did anyone say, "What you're claiming seems to be impossible. Demonstrate, in some scientifically valid fashion, that you are telling the truth." No, all that happens is an interview, with a couple of people at the end saying, "Well, it's an odd claim, but there are weird things in this world!" as if that somehow means that his claim merits consideration.
I find this all dreadfully frustrating. For one thing, having this sort of thing show up in a respected news source lends it credibility it doesn't deserve. For another, it leaves you with the impression that just because Basiago has a wild idea, we have to for some reason treat it with kid gloves -- to sit there and nod, listening to him ramble on about his to-ing and fro-ing through time as if what he was saying actually made sense.
Well, I'm sorry. All claims are not created equal. And Mr. Basiago, if you want anyone with a skeptical bent to take you seriously, you'd better have something more than a fuzzy photograph of a kid with big shoes to support your claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan said. And as that esteemed critical thinker also said: "It is true that geniuses were often laughed at, but this does not mean that if they laugh at you, you must be a genius. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers... but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
In the media, this often plays out as pussyfooting around the purveyors of crazy ideas, calling their silly claims "alternative" or "unorthodox" or "non-mainstream" instead of simply "wrong." It's why very seldom will you ever see creationism, astrology, or homeopathy flat-out labeled as false. In our desperation to treat every idea "fairly," we have gotten so far away from scientific induction as the gold standard for thinking that we've lost the ability to tell a reasonable idea from an unreasonable claim.
I think this is insidious, because it leads one to the erroneous conclusion that stating that an idea is wrong is discourteous, or downright mean. It robs us of clarity in that very realm where it is the most critical.
Let me illustrate what I mean by introducing you to the time-traveling lawyer of Seattle.
Last Friday, Huffington Post had an article about Andrew Basiago, a lawyer in Seattle who sounds to me like he could use some serious psychological help, or possibly horse tranquilizers. He claims that there is a government program, "Operation Pegasus," that allows select individuals to time travel, and that using a machine invented by Nikola Tesla, he's had more trips through space-time than Marty McFly.
"The machine consisted of two gray elliptical booms about eight feet tall, separated by about ten feet, between which a shimmering curtain of what Tesla called 'radiant energy' was broadcast," Basiago told HuffPost reporters. "Radiant energy is a form of energy that Tesla discovered that is latent and pervasive in the universe and has among its properties the capacity to bend time-space." Travelers would then jump into the tunnel thus created, and "find themselves at their destination."
What evidence does Basiago have? Well, he says he was photographed in a crowd... while listening to Lincoln at Gettysburg:
Basiago is the one on the left. Yeah, the guy who conveniently has no recognizable facial features.
Basiago also claims to have been in Ford Theater when Lincoln was assassinated.
Time traveling, he says, does have its downsides. For one thing, you take the chance of running into yourself, something that has happened to him twice, and is "disorienting." Also, it can be difficult to stay put, rather like the problem that Christopher Reeve ran into in Somewhere in Time: "If we were in the hologram for 15 minutes or fewer," he explained, "the hologram would collapse, and after about 60 seconds of standing in a field of super-charged particles ... we would find ourselves back on the stage ... in the present."
Right. Fields of super-charged particles. I bet they look just like the transporter sparkle in Star Trek.
Then, we get the appeal to authority kicking in. Basiago's claims are supported, the article says, by Alfred Lambremont Webre, a "lawyer who specializes in exopolitics." Webre is, throughout the article, treated as a credible witness -- and nowhere does it mention the truth, which is that he is a raving wingnut who has merited mention in Skeptophilia twice -- once for claiming that the Earth was going to be bombarded by "fourth dimensional energy" on November 11, 2011, causing the Earth's rotational axis to shift by 90 degrees (see the post here), and then to claim that he'd met President Obama while visiting Mars (here). So receiving support from this guy is not exactly going to earn you any validity points.
What gets me about this article is that except for the fact that it's filed under HuffPost's "Weird News" department, Basiago and his claims are treated with a fair degree of seriousness. Never once is an actual scientist allowed to weigh in on the subject -- although many respected physicists, notably Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, and Neil de Grasse Tyson, have expounded upon the topic, and the general consensus is that if time travel is possible at all, it requires energy that is far beyond anything we currently have the capacity to create. Never once did anyone say, "What you're claiming seems to be impossible. Demonstrate, in some scientifically valid fashion, that you are telling the truth." No, all that happens is an interview, with a couple of people at the end saying, "Well, it's an odd claim, but there are weird things in this world!" as if that somehow means that his claim merits consideration.
I find this all dreadfully frustrating. For one thing, having this sort of thing show up in a respected news source lends it credibility it doesn't deserve. For another, it leaves you with the impression that just because Basiago has a wild idea, we have to for some reason treat it with kid gloves -- to sit there and nod, listening to him ramble on about his to-ing and fro-ing through time as if what he was saying actually made sense.
Well, I'm sorry. All claims are not created equal. And Mr. Basiago, if you want anyone with a skeptical bent to take you seriously, you'd better have something more than a fuzzy photograph of a kid with big shoes to support your claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan said. And as that esteemed critical thinker also said: "It is true that geniuses were often laughed at, but this does not mean that if they laugh at you, you must be a genius. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers... but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
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