What should a doctor do when a patient insists (s)he has a disease, and there is no objective evidence of it?
There are a number of diseases which, especially in their early stages, are hard to diagnose except by the symptoms the patient reports. Many autoimmune diseases fall into this category, as does fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. (In fact, there are still doctors who think the last two don't exist, but are simply hypochondria. The numbers of doubters are decreasing, however, especially with fibromyalgia, for which better tests are now available.)
I had my own run-in with a doctor over this very issue, as I seem to be in the first stages of rheumatoid arthritis. My mother had it, a great aunt had it, and I know what it looks like; and I show the same symptoms my mom did when she first began to suffer from the disease (and am the same age as she was). Nevertheless, when an antibody test turned up negative, the doctor was dismissive of my symptoms, and would not refer me to a rheumatologist -- despite the fact that 25% of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers test negative for the antibody within the first five years. The last time I went in for a checkup, she asked me how my joints were, and I said, "intermittently pretty painful" -- and she said, in a patronizing voice, "Yeah, getting older is tough, isn't it?"
I'm considering finding a new doctor.
No disease, however, has proven more difficult to establish than Morgellons syndrome. In this bizarre condition, patients report that they feel like their skin is infested with parasites. They have chronic itching and dermatitis, coupled with ulceration of the skin. Most oddly, they frequently report finding foreign material embedded in their skin -- usually fibers, often brightly colored, which on analysis have proven difficult to identify.
There is a Morgellons Research Foundation, dedicated to study of the disorder, and their take is clearly that it is an actual disease with actual physical manifestations (i.e. not psychosomatic). The Mayo Clinic has a webpage called "Managing Morgellons," although they hedge a little by saying that it "isn't widely recognized as a medical diagnosis."
And now, a study at the Mayo Clinic has resulted in a finding that may result in their strengthening their caveat -- or maybe revising the webpage totally. An intensive study of biopsy results from 108 patients who showed the symptoms of Morgellons syndrome over the past ten years has resulted in... nothing. Dr. Sara Hylwa and her team did a retrospective study of Morgellons claims, and her conclusion, published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was that there was no evidence of parasite infestation. Fibers and other materials provided by patients were "of synthetic origin" -- i.e. clothing or carpet fibers. Hylwa refers to the disorder not by its more common name of Morgellons, but as "delusional parasitosis" -- making her stance on the whole thing abundantly clear. "The majority of skin biopsy results did show dermatitis," Hylwa states, "raising the possibility that skin inflammation and its attendant tactile discomfort might be the trigger provoking delusional symptoms in susceptible individuals."
It is certain that the mind can affect the state of a person's health, sometimes in complex and bizarre ways. That said, there are many illnesses that were once said to be "all in the patient's head" that now are considered valid diagnoses, with a known etiology. Couple this with the fact that doctors are paid to be certain -- no one is satisfied with a medical professional whose diagnosis is "beats the hell outta me." The result is that medicine is not quite the hard science that medical researchers claim it is.
As a scientist myself, far be it from me to cast doubt on Hylwa's study, which sounds as if it was thorough and painstaking. There's still a niggling doubt in the back of my mind, however -- that simple delusion is not sufficient to explain all of the claims of Morgellons patients. How, for example, does this account for the other, less talked-about symptoms of Morgellons -- joint pain, short-term memory loss, and severe fatigue? How does it account for the fact that the majority of cases in the United States have come from clusters in the states of California, Texas, and Florida? To me, there is still too much unexplained about this peculiar disease to write it off as a psychosomatic illness.
The fact is, there are still diseases out there whose status remains uncertain. This may be an uncomfortable position for doctors and medical researchers, but in science, you can't be afraid of the fact that you don't know everything. It is certain that there are diseases that are truly psychological, and not physical in origin; others thought to be psychosomatic have later turned out to have a clear biological basis. Coupling the certainty of Morgellons sufferers with the negative findings of Hylwa's study leaves one wondering in which category Morgellons should be placed.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
MIBs, Mothman, and short guys with bowl haircuts
Well, given that it's May 22 and we're all still here, it's time to turn to more important topics, namely: the terror campaign being waged by the Men in Black.
I bring this up because of the recent publication of a book by Nick Redfern called The Real Men in Black: Evidence, Famous Cases and True Stories of These Mysterious Men and Their Connection to the UFO Phenomena. Which, if nothing else, is remarkable for being the longest book title I've ever seen. As for the contents of the book itself, it describes the effort by the aforementioned Bad Dudes to spread confusion, disinformation, and threats to blind ordinary folk to... well, to something, presumably. Redfern himself seems unclear on what they're actually trying to do. Here's a quote from the description of the book, on Redfern's site, UFOMystic:
He then goes on to describe how witnesses to UFO sightings have been intimidated by "painfully-thin, white-faced and sunken-cheeked" men who have scared the witnesses to the point that they have "firmly distanced themselves from the UFO controversy, vowing never, ever to return to the fold." The logic, presumably, is that receiving a visit from a scary alien guy would make you less likely to tell anyone about seeing an alien spacecraft.
He then drifts onto the whole Mothman thing, as if John Keel's rambling, incoherent, and generally dreadful book The Mothman Prophecies hadn't already beaten this incident unto death. Redfern describes an encounter between Men in Black and Mary Hyre, the Point Pleasant (West Virginia) journalist who is largely responsible for the Mothman nonsense in the first place:
The take home message: The short guys with Beatles haircuts are out there. And they want your ball-point pens.
Me, I'm unimpressed. It's interesting that Hyre was the only person to see the pen-obsessed alien; given the fact that her credibility is already nil from her Mothman claims, I'm not going to treat any of her other paranormal stories particularly seriously. Redfern, of course, is willing to turn logic on its head, and seems to think that because no one else saw it, it therefore must be true. He tells of a further encounter between Hyre and a pair of Men in Black that looked like identical twins:
Redfern, unsurprisingly, seems to swallow the story whole, once again highlighting the vast gulf between my definition of the word "evidence" and that of the conspiracy theorists.
The Real Men in Black is available from Amazon, if against better judgment and general common sense you'd like to buy it. But as one author to another, I thought I'd at least do him the courtesy of mentioning the fact.
In any case, I'd like to end by saying that if there are any Men in Black out there, I'd love to meet them. I haven't seen any UFOs, or Mothmen, or much of anything else worth talking about, so I guess they wouldn't have much of an incentive for showing up on my doorstep and threatening me. ("Don't mention to anyone what you've seen, or else." "Actually, I haven't seen anything." "Um... good, then. Right. Well... just remember. See that you don't. Or else. We're not joking.") But even so, I'm issuing a general invitation for any MIBs out there to pay me a visit. Especially any who are wearing "thick shoe souls."
I bring this up because of the recent publication of a book by Nick Redfern called The Real Men in Black: Evidence, Famous Cases and True Stories of These Mysterious Men and Their Connection to the UFO Phenomena. Which, if nothing else, is remarkable for being the longest book title I've ever seen. As for the contents of the book itself, it describes the effort by the aforementioned Bad Dudes to spread confusion, disinformation, and threats to blind ordinary folk to... well, to something, presumably. Redfern himself seems unclear on what they're actually trying to do. Here's a quote from the description of the book, on Redfern's site, UFOMystic:
For decades – or perhaps even for centuries, some firmly believe – the infamous Men in Black have been elusive, predatory, fear-inducing figures that have hovered with disturbing regularity upon the enigmatic fringes of the subject of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), coldly nurturing, and carefully weaving, their very own unique brand of horror and intimidation of a definitively other-world variety.
He then goes on to describe how witnesses to UFO sightings have been intimidated by "painfully-thin, white-faced and sunken-cheeked" men who have scared the witnesses to the point that they have "firmly distanced themselves from the UFO controversy, vowing never, ever to return to the fold." The logic, presumably, is that receiving a visit from a scary alien guy would make you less likely to tell anyone about seeing an alien spacecraft.
He then drifts onto the whole Mothman thing, as if John Keel's rambling, incoherent, and generally dreadful book The Mothman Prophecies hadn't already beaten this incident unto death. Redfern describes an encounter between Men in Black and Mary Hyre, the Point Pleasant (West Virginia) journalist who is largely responsible for the Mothman nonsense in the first place:
In early January 1967, for example, Hyre – who, at the time, was working as the Point Pleasant correspondent for the Athens, West Virginia-based Messenger newspaper – received her very own, and typically absurd and unsettling, visit from a Man in Black. The new stranger in town wore his black hair in a bowl-style, was less than five-feet in height, possessed a pair of weirdly hypnotic eyes, and had curiously thick soles on his shoes. Notably, the late Jim Keith, who wrote his very own book on the Men in Black, pointed out that: “Thick shoe souls [sic] are a recurring detail in many MIB encounters.”
Crazier still: the odd, little man seemed strangely entranced by Hyre’s ballpoint-pen. When Hyre told him he was welcome to keep it, his only response was a bone-chilling, cackle-like laugh, and he charged out of the door at high speed, duly vanishing into the cold, dark night as mysteriously as he had first arrived.
The take home message: The short guys with Beatles haircuts are out there. And they want your ball-point pens.
Me, I'm unimpressed. It's interesting that Hyre was the only person to see the pen-obsessed alien; given the fact that her credibility is already nil from her Mothman claims, I'm not going to treat any of her other paranormal stories particularly seriously. Redfern, of course, is willing to turn logic on its head, and seems to think that because no one else saw it, it therefore must be true. He tells of a further encounter between Hyre and a pair of Men in Black that looked like identical twins:
One of the Men in Black noted, blankly, that there had recently been a lot of UFO activity in the area; a statement with which Hyre concurred. Then a barrage of questions began: had anyone asked Hyre not to publish the details of such activity?
Hyre assured the pair that, no, there had been no hush-up attempts by anyone. And, the MIB wanted to know, what would Hyre’s response be if someone did warn her not to print such tales?
Her forthright reply was concise and clear: “I’d tell them to go to Hell.” Perhaps this dark duo interpreted Hyre’s words quite literally. After glancing back at the mounting workload on her desk for a moment, Hyre looked up again and both MIB were utterly gone.
Redfern, unsurprisingly, seems to swallow the story whole, once again highlighting the vast gulf between my definition of the word "evidence" and that of the conspiracy theorists.
The Real Men in Black is available from Amazon, if against better judgment and general common sense you'd like to buy it. But as one author to another, I thought I'd at least do him the courtesy of mentioning the fact.
In any case, I'd like to end by saying that if there are any Men in Black out there, I'd love to meet them. I haven't seen any UFOs, or Mothmen, or much of anything else worth talking about, so I guess they wouldn't have much of an incentive for showing up on my doorstep and threatening me. ("Don't mention to anyone what you've seen, or else." "Actually, I haven't seen anything." "Um... good, then. Right. Well... just remember. See that you don't. Or else. We're not joking.") But even so, I'm issuing a general invitation for any MIBs out there to pay me a visit. Especially any who are wearing "thick shoe souls."
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Today's Rapture called because of rain
When I was in college, I knew a guy named Mike who claimed to be a solipsist. Holders of this rather peculiar philosophy believe that they are the only thing that exists in the universe, and that the entire cosmos is a figment of their imagination. Therefore, large swaths of the universe vanish when they are not observing them (or thinking about them, which in their minds amounts to the same thing).
You can imagine how well this went down with Mike's classmates. We used to sneak up right behind him and say, "We're still heeeere!" And then duck, because he'd whirl around and try to whap us with the huge briefcase he always carried around. You have to wonder why, if he was manufacturing the world with his magnificent brain, he didn't people it with folks who were less determined to annoy the hell out of him.
All of this comes up, of course, because the Rapture is happening today, and in fact supposedly has already started. Harold Camping et al. used bible passages, dates of a number of historical events, and some fairly abstruse math to calculate the day on which the Righteous will be swept bodily into heaven, leaving behind the rest of us slobs to fall prey to beasts, fire, earthquakes, storms, and various other special offers from the God of Mercy, before Satan comes down on October 21 and turns the Earth into a giant charcoal briquet.
Well, of course, this has resulted in 99% of humanity pretty much reacting like my college buds and I did to Mike's pronouncements. Facebook now has events like "Post-Rapture Looting," which will take place Everywhere on May 22. The Twitterverse has been buzzing with humorous commentary on the situation. At least one person I know is planning on going to the Salvation Army today and buying armloads of old clothes, and draping them on park benches.
None of this has made the slightest difference to Camping and his followers. A news story today describes how some of the true believers are planning on tearful farewell lunches with their families, walks in favorite spots in the woods, and so on. Some have already arranged homes for their pets. A few have blown every cent they owned publicizing the Rapture -- according to a news story I read, one man spent his entire life savings of $140,000 buying billboard space, advertisements on the sides of buses, and so on, with the message, "Repent Now! The Lord is Coming on May 21!"
This kind of thing stirs the compassionate side of my personality. You have to wonder how these people are going to feel tomorrow morning. There are already plans by some churches to offer counseling to Camping's followers when the Rapture doesn't occur. On the one hand, I feel like anyone gullible enough to believe such a ridiculous prediction deserves everything (s)he gets, but then I put myself in the shoes of the believers. What if, for some reason, I did become convinced of some Great Big Cosmic Secret, and put everything I had into it, and then it turned out to be false?
And, of course, that's exactly what a lot of Christians think is going to happen to me when I die. The irony of this isn't lost on me. Not, mind you, that I'm planning to convert. But the point is, I guess we all have our convictions.
The difference, I think, is where they come from. I was asked by a student just a couple of days ago what it would take for me to believe in god. My answer was "hard evidence." Presented with evidence, I would change my beliefs -- but at that point, it wouldn't be belief any more, would it? It would be knowledge.
And that's what I find so baffling about people like Mike, and Harold Camping and his followers. For them, belief is enough. No evidence is needed. Camping says, "Such-and-so is true," and his followers just bleat and accept it all. Of course, they don't see it that way; they call it "faith." I've never quite understood the concept of faith, which is stressed so hard in the bible -- it's always seemed to me like, "Believe despite what you see, despite what you know, despite everything." I once asked a Christian to define the words "faith" and "delusion" in such a way that a non-believer would understand the difference. He just got pissed off and refused to answer (at least he didn't try to hit me with a briefcase).
Anyway, I think the great likelihood is that tomorrow morning we'll be able to sneak up behind Camping and say, "You're still heeeeere!" You have to wonder how he'll explain it all. Were his calculations off? Was the Earth issued a reprieve? Did god tell him that the Rapture had been called because of rain? Or were he and his followers just deluded wingnuts for believing the whole story in the first place?
I'm thinking that somehow, the last is the one he's least likely to say.
You can imagine how well this went down with Mike's classmates. We used to sneak up right behind him and say, "We're still heeeere!" And then duck, because he'd whirl around and try to whap us with the huge briefcase he always carried around. You have to wonder why, if he was manufacturing the world with his magnificent brain, he didn't people it with folks who were less determined to annoy the hell out of him.
All of this comes up, of course, because the Rapture is happening today, and in fact supposedly has already started. Harold Camping et al. used bible passages, dates of a number of historical events, and some fairly abstruse math to calculate the day on which the Righteous will be swept bodily into heaven, leaving behind the rest of us slobs to fall prey to beasts, fire, earthquakes, storms, and various other special offers from the God of Mercy, before Satan comes down on October 21 and turns the Earth into a giant charcoal briquet.
Well, of course, this has resulted in 99% of humanity pretty much reacting like my college buds and I did to Mike's pronouncements. Facebook now has events like "Post-Rapture Looting," which will take place Everywhere on May 22. The Twitterverse has been buzzing with humorous commentary on the situation. At least one person I know is planning on going to the Salvation Army today and buying armloads of old clothes, and draping them on park benches.
None of this has made the slightest difference to Camping and his followers. A news story today describes how some of the true believers are planning on tearful farewell lunches with their families, walks in favorite spots in the woods, and so on. Some have already arranged homes for their pets. A few have blown every cent they owned publicizing the Rapture -- according to a news story I read, one man spent his entire life savings of $140,000 buying billboard space, advertisements on the sides of buses, and so on, with the message, "Repent Now! The Lord is Coming on May 21!"
This kind of thing stirs the compassionate side of my personality. You have to wonder how these people are going to feel tomorrow morning. There are already plans by some churches to offer counseling to Camping's followers when the Rapture doesn't occur. On the one hand, I feel like anyone gullible enough to believe such a ridiculous prediction deserves everything (s)he gets, but then I put myself in the shoes of the believers. What if, for some reason, I did become convinced of some Great Big Cosmic Secret, and put everything I had into it, and then it turned out to be false?
And, of course, that's exactly what a lot of Christians think is going to happen to me when I die. The irony of this isn't lost on me. Not, mind you, that I'm planning to convert. But the point is, I guess we all have our convictions.
The difference, I think, is where they come from. I was asked by a student just a couple of days ago what it would take for me to believe in god. My answer was "hard evidence." Presented with evidence, I would change my beliefs -- but at that point, it wouldn't be belief any more, would it? It would be knowledge.
And that's what I find so baffling about people like Mike, and Harold Camping and his followers. For them, belief is enough. No evidence is needed. Camping says, "Such-and-so is true," and his followers just bleat and accept it all. Of course, they don't see it that way; they call it "faith." I've never quite understood the concept of faith, which is stressed so hard in the bible -- it's always seemed to me like, "Believe despite what you see, despite what you know, despite everything." I once asked a Christian to define the words "faith" and "delusion" in such a way that a non-believer would understand the difference. He just got pissed off and refused to answer (at least he didn't try to hit me with a briefcase).
Anyway, I think the great likelihood is that tomorrow morning we'll be able to sneak up behind Camping and say, "You're still heeeeere!" You have to wonder how he'll explain it all. Were his calculations off? Was the Earth issued a reprieve? Did god tell him that the Rapture had been called because of rain? Or were he and his followers just deluded wingnuts for believing the whole story in the first place?
I'm thinking that somehow, the last is the one he's least likely to say.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Synthetic languages, dolphins, robots, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
I have three students this year who are doing an Independent Study course in linguistics with me. We have spent the year taking apart languages, and looking at the phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax, studying how languages have evolved over time, and seeing how children acquire language.
Their final project is to create a synthetic language.
It has to have, like all languages, consistent, rule-based sound and grammar structure (with some exceptions to the rules, because all languages have 'em). They decided, rather early on, to design an agglutinative language -- one in which new words are built by gluing together old ones, rather as German does. Thus, their word for "biology (class)" is "züpobyshada," made up of morphemes (units of meaning) for "life," "study," and "students."
They're finding out how difficult this process is. True synthetic languages, like Klingon and Tolkien's Elvish, are a real challenge to design, because to make them consistent, you have to think through things that most of us take completely for granted. For example, have you ever thought about the rule in English that you can't have an "ng" sound at the beginning of a word? You might be thinking, "Well, of course not. That would be weird." But that's just because English doesn't do that -- not because it's somehow impossible. Plenty of languages do. Consider, for example, the Masai name "Ngorongoro" for the famous crater in Tanzania, and the fact that one of the most common Vietnamese surnames is Nguyen.
So, to design a language, you have to start from the ground up, deciding what the sound inventory of the language is, how those sounds can combine, where in words they can (and can't) occur, and how words and ideas fit together to form sentences -- and realize that the patterns in English aren't sacred, but represent only one of a myriad of possibilities.
Given that this is so complex, it's a wonder we can speak at all, really. And more of a wonder is the fact that if children of normal intelligence are allowed to be together, but are not taught a language, they will just... invent one.
Grace and Virginia Kelly were twins whose parents were told at birth their daughters might be mentally retarded because of problems at birth. The girls were, in fact, mentally normal, but the parents upon finding out the possibility decided that they were retarded and completely neglected them. The girls periodically heard English and German from the parents, and heard Romanian from a nurse who cared for them; and some of the morphemes in their language come from those three sources. Some of them are, however, idiosyncratic and unique to their language. They even made up names for themselves (Poto and Cabengo). (If you're curious, when Child Protection Services found out about them, they were put into a foster home, allowed to attend school, and quickly learned to speak English.)
And now, scientists have taken the first steps to emulating what these children did, and what my students are doing, in robots.
Ruth Schultz and her colleagues at the University of Queensland (Australia) have created what they call "Lingodroids." These robots are equipped with mobile cameras, sonar range finding sensors, and wheels. And -- most importantly -- microphones and speakers, so they can talk to one another.
These robots are capable of doing a simplified version what Poto and Cabengo did -- they have a set of parent syllables and syllable-joining rules, and when they "see" an unfamiliar object, they name it and point it out. If one robot sees a block for the first time, it might say "liko." The other robots, hearing it, will rush up, trying to see if they can figure out what "liko" is, pointing things out and saying the word. If they agree, the connection between the word and the object is reinforced. They then say more words, not for objects, but to describe where they came from and how they got there -- giving them words that map out the space they live in, and words for distances. (For example, after a few interactions, the robots "decided" that "ropi hiza" meant "a short distance to the east.")
What I find fascinating about all of this is how natural the development of language is. Given only a few ground rules, these robots are basically creating a language from the ground up, and thereby providing linguists (and roboticists) with valuable information about how language structure works.
It does make me wonder, however, why humans are the only animals with true language. Language is defined as "symbolic communication using arbitrary sounds or written characters;" as such, a dog barking or a bird singing isn't language (because a bark or a twitter doesn't carry an arbitrarily linked meaning, in the way that the sounds of the word "dog" do). It's possible, of course, that dolphin and whale vocalizations might be language -- we simply don't know. It's hard enough to decode language when we are already certain that it is language (if you have any doubts about this, read the fascinating little book The Decipherment of Linear B by John Chadwick, which describes how linguists figured out how to read a written language for which we had no information about the letter-to-sound correspondence). To figure out if dolphins' clicks, pops, and whistles carry meaning, when we don't even know if it is language to begin with, is an enormously difficult question.
All of which brings up the question of whether we'll be able to understand communications from other planets, should those ever be detected. SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is a project of long standing, recently defunded by the government, which uses radio telescopes to search for intelligible signals from space. The task, although breathtaking in its goal, is in practice phenomenally difficult. For it to succeed, a single information-carrying signal would have to be detected from amongst the background clutter of naturally-produced radio noise -- and after that, decoded somehow. Still, it's sad that they've fallen on hard times. But amateurs have risen to the occasion, with SETI@home, which will allow volunteers to analyze the radio signal data on their home computers.
So, that's today's ramble, from synthetic languages to Poto and Cabengo to linguistic robots to dolphins to outer space. Think about all of this when you get to work today, and a friend says, "Hi, how are you doing?" and you answer, "Just fine, and you?", and consider how complicated what you just said actually was.
Try not to let it get you tongue-tied, okay?
Their final project is to create a synthetic language.
It has to have, like all languages, consistent, rule-based sound and grammar structure (with some exceptions to the rules, because all languages have 'em). They decided, rather early on, to design an agglutinative language -- one in which new words are built by gluing together old ones, rather as German does. Thus, their word for "biology (class)" is "züpobyshada," made up of morphemes (units of meaning) for "life," "study," and "students."
They're finding out how difficult this process is. True synthetic languages, like Klingon and Tolkien's Elvish, are a real challenge to design, because to make them consistent, you have to think through things that most of us take completely for granted. For example, have you ever thought about the rule in English that you can't have an "ng" sound at the beginning of a word? You might be thinking, "Well, of course not. That would be weird." But that's just because English doesn't do that -- not because it's somehow impossible. Plenty of languages do. Consider, for example, the Masai name "Ngorongoro" for the famous crater in Tanzania, and the fact that one of the most common Vietnamese surnames is Nguyen.
So, to design a language, you have to start from the ground up, deciding what the sound inventory of the language is, how those sounds can combine, where in words they can (and can't) occur, and how words and ideas fit together to form sentences -- and realize that the patterns in English aren't sacred, but represent only one of a myriad of possibilities.
Given that this is so complex, it's a wonder we can speak at all, really. And more of a wonder is the fact that if children of normal intelligence are allowed to be together, but are not taught a language, they will just... invent one.
Grace and Virginia Kelly were twins whose parents were told at birth their daughters might be mentally retarded because of problems at birth. The girls were, in fact, mentally normal, but the parents upon finding out the possibility decided that they were retarded and completely neglected them. The girls periodically heard English and German from the parents, and heard Romanian from a nurse who cared for them; and some of the morphemes in their language come from those three sources. Some of them are, however, idiosyncratic and unique to their language. They even made up names for themselves (Poto and Cabengo). (If you're curious, when Child Protection Services found out about them, they were put into a foster home, allowed to attend school, and quickly learned to speak English.)
And now, scientists have taken the first steps to emulating what these children did, and what my students are doing, in robots.
Ruth Schultz and her colleagues at the University of Queensland (Australia) have created what they call "Lingodroids." These robots are equipped with mobile cameras, sonar range finding sensors, and wheels. And -- most importantly -- microphones and speakers, so they can talk to one another.
These robots are capable of doing a simplified version what Poto and Cabengo did -- they have a set of parent syllables and syllable-joining rules, and when they "see" an unfamiliar object, they name it and point it out. If one robot sees a block for the first time, it might say "liko." The other robots, hearing it, will rush up, trying to see if they can figure out what "liko" is, pointing things out and saying the word. If they agree, the connection between the word and the object is reinforced. They then say more words, not for objects, but to describe where they came from and how they got there -- giving them words that map out the space they live in, and words for distances. (For example, after a few interactions, the robots "decided" that "ropi hiza" meant "a short distance to the east.")
What I find fascinating about all of this is how natural the development of language is. Given only a few ground rules, these robots are basically creating a language from the ground up, and thereby providing linguists (and roboticists) with valuable information about how language structure works.
It does make me wonder, however, why humans are the only animals with true language. Language is defined as "symbolic communication using arbitrary sounds or written characters;" as such, a dog barking or a bird singing isn't language (because a bark or a twitter doesn't carry an arbitrarily linked meaning, in the way that the sounds of the word "dog" do). It's possible, of course, that dolphin and whale vocalizations might be language -- we simply don't know. It's hard enough to decode language when we are already certain that it is language (if you have any doubts about this, read the fascinating little book The Decipherment of Linear B by John Chadwick, which describes how linguists figured out how to read a written language for which we had no information about the letter-to-sound correspondence). To figure out if dolphins' clicks, pops, and whistles carry meaning, when we don't even know if it is language to begin with, is an enormously difficult question.
All of which brings up the question of whether we'll be able to understand communications from other planets, should those ever be detected. SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is a project of long standing, recently defunded by the government, which uses radio telescopes to search for intelligible signals from space. The task, although breathtaking in its goal, is in practice phenomenally difficult. For it to succeed, a single information-carrying signal would have to be detected from amongst the background clutter of naturally-produced radio noise -- and after that, decoded somehow. Still, it's sad that they've fallen on hard times. But amateurs have risen to the occasion, with SETI@home, which will allow volunteers to analyze the radio signal data on their home computers.
So, that's today's ramble, from synthetic languages to Poto and Cabengo to linguistic robots to dolphins to outer space. Think about all of this when you get to work today, and a friend says, "Hi, how are you doing?" and you answer, "Just fine, and you?", and consider how complicated what you just said actually was.
Try not to let it get you tongue-tied, okay?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
SmartPhone apps for the woo-woos
I suppose it was only a matter of time before the woo-woos went high tech.
Still, I have to admit that I was surprised, which is probably just a reflection of my own biases. I'd always thought that the woo-woo state of mind came with quasi-medieval accoutrements -- things like crystal balls, dowsing rods, decks of Tarot cards, and so on.
So I was fairly stunned to find that the Android/SmartPhone platform has a bunch of apps for conducting paranormal "research." Here are a few of the apps you can purchase, if you want to go on your own ghost hunt:
The Ghost EVP Analyzer. EVP stands for "Electronic Voice Phenomena" and refers to the common practice by devotees of haunted houses, of leaving a tape recorder running in an empty house, and analyzing the tape for voices. Now, you can use the app to analyze your digital recordings, and hear what the dead have to say. You can save files, in case the dead say something memorable; play the recordings half speed, in case the dead have been drinking too much coffee; and play them backwards, in case the dead are listening to songs by Styx.
Then, there's the Entity Sensor Pro-EMF Detector. The description for this one says that "this works just like special purpose EMF Detectors that cost up to several hundred dollars, and are used on the paranormal TV shows to find ghosts." EMF, by the way, stands for "electromagnetic field" -- a perfectly measurable phenomenon, well known to scientists and anyone who has ever used a compass. Ghosts supposedly "disturb the electromagnetic field" in some unexplained way, so this app allegedly allows you to detect these disturbances. It's uncertain why an old-fashioned compass wouldn't work just as well, but I guess I'm to be expected to say that, given that I'm a bit of a Luddite. It's also a little perplexing why, if ghosts disturb the electromagnetic field, no controlled experiment has ever detected one, because EMF detectors have been around for a long time, and are standard equipment in many scientific research facilities.
How about Ghost Radar? The tagline for this one says, "Ghost Radar® analyzes nearby energies. This application does NOT detect EMF nor gravity. Interpretations of the sensor readings are displayed using numeric, textual, and graphical readouts." My question, predictably, is "energies?" What kind of "energies?" This hearkens back to the tired old "psychic energy fields" so often bandied about by people who claim to be telepathic or clairvoyant. At least the makers of this app follow it up by saying "results may vary." I'll just bet they may.
Then, we have the DarkHaunts Haunted Site Locator, which will tell you the nearest "true haunted sites" to your location. It then gives you the latitude and longitude of the site, and "what to look for." I can only imagine this app as a sort of high-tech scavenger hunt for woo-woos. "4.2 miles NE of your present location you will find the ghost of an OLD LADY WEARING BUNNY SLIPPERS. Once you have collected the OLD LADY WEARING BUNNY SLIPPERS proceed 2.8 miles west to the HEADLESS MAN CHOPPING FIREWOOD."
Last, we have Paranormal Apptivity, which gives overviews of some famous hauntings, including the Enfield poltergeist, the Hampton Crown Court skeleton, and hundreds of others. If I actually understood technology well enough to merit owning a SmartPhone, which I don't, I might actually purchase this app. It sounds like it could provide some excellent material for future blog posts.
I know that by describing all of these apps, I'm giving publicity to the woo-woos (and the software developers who are trying to take advantage of them to turn a profit). I guess that's the risk you take by calling attention to purveyors of the paranormal. And I have to admit that the attitude that goofy ideas should simply be ignored into oblivion has its merits. The flip side, however, is that many of these ideas are reluctant to go into oblivion -- they just seem to keep on coming. On the one hand, it's kind of sad that we still have such a long way to go in terms of the public's general understanding of logic and the scientific method.
On the other hand, it's what keeps Skeptophilia in business.
Still, I have to admit that I was surprised, which is probably just a reflection of my own biases. I'd always thought that the woo-woo state of mind came with quasi-medieval accoutrements -- things like crystal balls, dowsing rods, decks of Tarot cards, and so on.
So I was fairly stunned to find that the Android/SmartPhone platform has a bunch of apps for conducting paranormal "research." Here are a few of the apps you can purchase, if you want to go on your own ghost hunt:
The Ghost EVP Analyzer. EVP stands for "Electronic Voice Phenomena" and refers to the common practice by devotees of haunted houses, of leaving a tape recorder running in an empty house, and analyzing the tape for voices. Now, you can use the app to analyze your digital recordings, and hear what the dead have to say. You can save files, in case the dead say something memorable; play the recordings half speed, in case the dead have been drinking too much coffee; and play them backwards, in case the dead are listening to songs by Styx.
Then, there's the Entity Sensor Pro-EMF Detector. The description for this one says that "this works just like special purpose EMF Detectors that cost up to several hundred dollars, and are used on the paranormal TV shows to find ghosts." EMF, by the way, stands for "electromagnetic field" -- a perfectly measurable phenomenon, well known to scientists and anyone who has ever used a compass. Ghosts supposedly "disturb the electromagnetic field" in some unexplained way, so this app allegedly allows you to detect these disturbances. It's uncertain why an old-fashioned compass wouldn't work just as well, but I guess I'm to be expected to say that, given that I'm a bit of a Luddite. It's also a little perplexing why, if ghosts disturb the electromagnetic field, no controlled experiment has ever detected one, because EMF detectors have been around for a long time, and are standard equipment in many scientific research facilities.
How about Ghost Radar? The tagline for this one says, "Ghost Radar® analyzes nearby energies. This application does NOT detect EMF nor gravity. Interpretations of the sensor readings are displayed using numeric, textual, and graphical readouts." My question, predictably, is "energies?" What kind of "energies?" This hearkens back to the tired old "psychic energy fields" so often bandied about by people who claim to be telepathic or clairvoyant. At least the makers of this app follow it up by saying "results may vary." I'll just bet they may.
Then, we have the DarkHaunts Haunted Site Locator, which will tell you the nearest "true haunted sites" to your location. It then gives you the latitude and longitude of the site, and "what to look for." I can only imagine this app as a sort of high-tech scavenger hunt for woo-woos. "4.2 miles NE of your present location you will find the ghost of an OLD LADY WEARING BUNNY SLIPPERS. Once you have collected the OLD LADY WEARING BUNNY SLIPPERS proceed 2.8 miles west to the HEADLESS MAN CHOPPING FIREWOOD."
Last, we have Paranormal Apptivity, which gives overviews of some famous hauntings, including the Enfield poltergeist, the Hampton Crown Court skeleton, and hundreds of others. If I actually understood technology well enough to merit owning a SmartPhone, which I don't, I might actually purchase this app. It sounds like it could provide some excellent material for future blog posts.
I know that by describing all of these apps, I'm giving publicity to the woo-woos (and the software developers who are trying to take advantage of them to turn a profit). I guess that's the risk you take by calling attention to purveyors of the paranormal. And I have to admit that the attitude that goofy ideas should simply be ignored into oblivion has its merits. The flip side, however, is that many of these ideas are reluctant to go into oblivion -- they just seem to keep on coming. On the one hand, it's kind of sad that we still have such a long way to go in terms of the public's general understanding of logic and the scientific method.
On the other hand, it's what keeps Skeptophilia in business.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
... and in today's World News...
It's been a busy morning, here at Skeptophilia.
First, we have a report of a giant hole in the ground in Bernards, New Jersey. (See a photograph here.) The crater, reported from an unidentified resident's front yard on May 6, sprayed debris over a hundred-foot radius. My first hypothesis, which I probably thought of from 24 years of working with teenage boys, was that some kid got a hold of a stick of dynamite. Teenage boys love to blow things up. Many grown men, present company included, still do. But I had to rule out this explanation when I found out that no one in the neighborhood heard a thing -- and an explosive device capable of creating a crater that size would have rattled a few windows.
So scientists from the Raritan Valley Community College Planetarium came out and surveyed the area, thinking it could be a meteorite, and found no trace of one. Exit theory number two.
Then, I thought about the creepy vanishing meteorite in H. P. Lovecraft's story The Colour Out of Space. But there was no report of local residents and their pets turning gray and having important body parts fall off, so out the window that idea went.
So, reluctantly, I turned to the prosaic idea of ice buildup falling from an airplane. This periodically happens -- usually because of leaks in the waste tanks from the airplane's lavatories. There have been 27 documented incidents of this rather disgusting form of hail falling from a plane, including one in 2007 in Leicester, England in which a huge chunk of ice took out a large section of a building's roof. Since the ice would melt shortly after impact, it could well leave little trace afterwards. So that one, it seems, has a possible explanation other than the Enormous Man-Eating Mole hypothesis, which is where I was going next.
Then, from Australia, we have a report of a couple who claim to be Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Alan John Miller and Mary Suzanne Luck, of Wilkesdale, in Queensland, have drawn in about forty devotees after publicly stating that they are deities. "Just a little over 2000 years ago, we arrived on the Earth for the first time," Miller says on his website. "Because of my personal desire and passion for God, as I grew, I recognized not only that I was the Messiah that was foretold by ancient prophets, but also that I was in a process designed by God that all humans could follow, if they so desired."
The Anglican and Catholic churches of Wilkesdale are understandably perturbed, rather in the fashion of Mafia bosses when a rival crime family intrudes into their territory. With no apparent trace of irony, their official statement on the matter expressed concern that Miller and Luck were being given support financially by the naive, gullible, and emotionally needy.
Miller himself seems regretful about the stir he's creating. "I don't want to be Jesus," he told reporters. "Who wants to be Jesus? But I love divine truth."
Authorities are said to be "keeping an eye" on the couple, which seems justifiable. I know I'd want to watch them from a safe distance.
Then, we have a report of exploding watermelons in Jiangsu Province, China. It is unclear how violent these explosions are, but I have to admit that I rather like the mental image of farmers and other local residents running for cover as tasty pieces of pink shrapnel fly through the air. But for this one, I didn't even have the chance to run through some hypotheses (teenage Chinese boys with dynamite?) because Chinese scientists have already stated that the phenomenon was the result of a combination of a chemical fruit growth stimulator and a period of very rainy weather. Which is a satisfying, if boring, explanation.
But then I read that the farmers are taking the ruined fruit, which is obviously unfit for human consumption, and feeding it to pigs. Is it just me, or does this seem like a really bad idea? The last thing these people need is a bunch of pigs running around, squealing madly, and finally exploding, showering the area with pork chops. So far, there's no sign of the pigs blowing up, which is a good thing, because I suspect it'd be a good bit messier than a bunch of bursting watermelons.
The next story comes from the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation in New York State. A resident, Adrian McDonald, reported to police that his car had been damaged, and in fact the entire side panel above the passenger side front wheel had been shredded. There was blood on the jagged edges of the panel, which of course opened up the possibility of DNA testing. The testing was done, and the blood turned out to be from...
... a rabbit. I am not making this up. So what we apparently have here is the Bunny from Hell eating people's cars. Get out the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!
Police, sadly, have come up with an alternate, and not nearly so fun, explanation -- that a rabbit was being chased by a large dog, and took shelter in the wheel well of McDonald's car. The dog then basically destroyed the side of the car trying to get at the rabbit. This may seem as far-fetched as the Killer Rabbit of Caer Bannog theory, but I have a dog named Grendel whose jaws seem to be made of spring-loaded titanium, and who given sufficient motivation could destroy a Sherman tank, all the while wagging happily. So I suspect that the police are right, and like the exploding watermelons, this one has a perfectly ordinary explanation.
And of course, no wrap-up of world news would be complete without a Bigfoot sighting. On May 14, near O'Brien, Oregon, a hiker saw a seven-foot white Sasquatch. The "white" part surprised me some, because almost all reports of the hairy hominid describe him as brownish in color, and if it had been closer to the Christmas season I would have wondered if the eyewitness had been watching Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer while swigging tequila straight from the bottle. But apparently, there are periodic reports of what are presumably albino Sasquatches, and a few that are piebald like a Jersey cow.
Then I noticed that the eyewitness was Thomas Graham, of the State of Jefferson Sasquatch Research Organization (see their Facebook page here). So the story doesn't carry the same kind of weight as it would if, say, Michael Shermer or Richard Dawkins were to see a seven-foot-tall white Bigfoot. Graham is not what you might call an unbiased observer. With nothing but his account to go by, we'll have to file this story in the "Don't Think So" drawer.
So we seem to be striking out this week, in the paranormal explanation department. Dreadfully disappointing, I know. But of course, we have the Rapture to look forward to this weekend, so all is not lost. I'm hoping to get in some serious pillage and looting on the 22nd -- won't you join me?
First, we have a report of a giant hole in the ground in Bernards, New Jersey. (See a photograph here.) The crater, reported from an unidentified resident's front yard on May 6, sprayed debris over a hundred-foot radius. My first hypothesis, which I probably thought of from 24 years of working with teenage boys, was that some kid got a hold of a stick of dynamite. Teenage boys love to blow things up. Many grown men, present company included, still do. But I had to rule out this explanation when I found out that no one in the neighborhood heard a thing -- and an explosive device capable of creating a crater that size would have rattled a few windows.
So scientists from the Raritan Valley Community College Planetarium came out and surveyed the area, thinking it could be a meteorite, and found no trace of one. Exit theory number two.
Then, I thought about the creepy vanishing meteorite in H. P. Lovecraft's story The Colour Out of Space. But there was no report of local residents and their pets turning gray and having important body parts fall off, so out the window that idea went.
So, reluctantly, I turned to the prosaic idea of ice buildup falling from an airplane. This periodically happens -- usually because of leaks in the waste tanks from the airplane's lavatories. There have been 27 documented incidents of this rather disgusting form of hail falling from a plane, including one in 2007 in Leicester, England in which a huge chunk of ice took out a large section of a building's roof. Since the ice would melt shortly after impact, it could well leave little trace afterwards. So that one, it seems, has a possible explanation other than the Enormous Man-Eating Mole hypothesis, which is where I was going next.
Then, from Australia, we have a report of a couple who claim to be Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Alan John Miller and Mary Suzanne Luck, of Wilkesdale, in Queensland, have drawn in about forty devotees after publicly stating that they are deities. "Just a little over 2000 years ago, we arrived on the Earth for the first time," Miller says on his website. "Because of my personal desire and passion for God, as I grew, I recognized not only that I was the Messiah that was foretold by ancient prophets, but also that I was in a process designed by God that all humans could follow, if they so desired."
The Anglican and Catholic churches of Wilkesdale are understandably perturbed, rather in the fashion of Mafia bosses when a rival crime family intrudes into their territory. With no apparent trace of irony, their official statement on the matter expressed concern that Miller and Luck were being given support financially by the naive, gullible, and emotionally needy.
Miller himself seems regretful about the stir he's creating. "I don't want to be Jesus," he told reporters. "Who wants to be Jesus? But I love divine truth."
Authorities are said to be "keeping an eye" on the couple, which seems justifiable. I know I'd want to watch them from a safe distance.
Then, we have a report of exploding watermelons in Jiangsu Province, China. It is unclear how violent these explosions are, but I have to admit that I rather like the mental image of farmers and other local residents running for cover as tasty pieces of pink shrapnel fly through the air. But for this one, I didn't even have the chance to run through some hypotheses (teenage Chinese boys with dynamite?) because Chinese scientists have already stated that the phenomenon was the result of a combination of a chemical fruit growth stimulator and a period of very rainy weather. Which is a satisfying, if boring, explanation.
But then I read that the farmers are taking the ruined fruit, which is obviously unfit for human consumption, and feeding it to pigs. Is it just me, or does this seem like a really bad idea? The last thing these people need is a bunch of pigs running around, squealing madly, and finally exploding, showering the area with pork chops. So far, there's no sign of the pigs blowing up, which is a good thing, because I suspect it'd be a good bit messier than a bunch of bursting watermelons.
The next story comes from the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation in New York State. A resident, Adrian McDonald, reported to police that his car had been damaged, and in fact the entire side panel above the passenger side front wheel had been shredded. There was blood on the jagged edges of the panel, which of course opened up the possibility of DNA testing. The testing was done, and the blood turned out to be from...
... a rabbit. I am not making this up. So what we apparently have here is the Bunny from Hell eating people's cars. Get out the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!
Police, sadly, have come up with an alternate, and not nearly so fun, explanation -- that a rabbit was being chased by a large dog, and took shelter in the wheel well of McDonald's car. The dog then basically destroyed the side of the car trying to get at the rabbit. This may seem as far-fetched as the Killer Rabbit of Caer Bannog theory, but I have a dog named Grendel whose jaws seem to be made of spring-loaded titanium, and who given sufficient motivation could destroy a Sherman tank, all the while wagging happily. So I suspect that the police are right, and like the exploding watermelons, this one has a perfectly ordinary explanation.
And of course, no wrap-up of world news would be complete without a Bigfoot sighting. On May 14, near O'Brien, Oregon, a hiker saw a seven-foot white Sasquatch. The "white" part surprised me some, because almost all reports of the hairy hominid describe him as brownish in color, and if it had been closer to the Christmas season I would have wondered if the eyewitness had been watching Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer while swigging tequila straight from the bottle. But apparently, there are periodic reports of what are presumably albino Sasquatches, and a few that are piebald like a Jersey cow.
Then I noticed that the eyewitness was Thomas Graham, of the State of Jefferson Sasquatch Research Organization (see their Facebook page here). So the story doesn't carry the same kind of weight as it would if, say, Michael Shermer or Richard Dawkins were to see a seven-foot-tall white Bigfoot. Graham is not what you might call an unbiased observer. With nothing but his account to go by, we'll have to file this story in the "Don't Think So" drawer.
So we seem to be striking out this week, in the paranormal explanation department. Dreadfully disappointing, I know. But of course, we have the Rapture to look forward to this weekend, so all is not lost. I'm hoping to get in some serious pillage and looting on the 22nd -- won't you join me?
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Come as you were
Last weekend was the Reincarnation Conference in New York City, and I missed it.
Of course, tickets were $139 a pop, and I suspect Carol would have had words with me if I'd blown that kind of money on such a thing. But still. It featured talks, workshops, and opportunities for hypnosis sessions in which you were guided through "Past Life Regression." One woman found out she drowned in the sinking of the Titanic. Another remembered a life in which she saw Jesus deliver the Sermon on the Mount. I'd bet we also had some Babylonian princesses in there. There always seem to be Babylonian princesses.
A recent poll indicated that one in five Americans believes in reincarnation. One in ten claims actually to recall a past life. This is grist to the mill of Dr. Brian Weiss, organizer of the conference. "I define [reincarnation] as when we die physically, a part of us goes on," he said, "and that we have lessons to learn here. And that if you haven't learned all of these lessons, then that soul, that consciousness, that spirit comes back into a baby's body."
Well, that all sounds just nifty. But the difficulty, of course, is the usual one; there's no evidence whatsoever that this actually happens. The human mind, as I've mentioned before, is a remarkably plastic, and scarily unreliable, processing device. Experiments have conclusively shown that given enough emotional charge, an imagined scene can actually become a memory, and thereafter be "remembered" as if it had actually happened. In a context where a subject was being hypnotized by a professional-looking individual with "Dr." in front of his/her name, and perhaps was even being given subtle suggestions of what to "recall," that impression, and its retention as a memory afterwards, would become even more powerful.
And then, there's just the statistical argument, that because there are more people alive today than at any time in the past, not all of us can be reincarnated. Some believers solve this problem by allowing reincarnation from "lower animals." In that case, it's funny how no one seems to remember being, say, a bug. "Boy, life sure was boring, as a bug," is something I'd bet you rarely hear anyone say in a Past-Life Regression.
Not only does no one remember being a bug, few of them, it seems, were even just ordinary humans. "The skeptical part of me about the past life thing is that, just statistically, the odds are that in my past life, I was a Chinese peasant, right?" says Dr. Stephen Prothero, a professor of theology at Boston University. "But hardly anybody ever is a Chinese peasant. Everybody is Cleopatra or Mark Antony or Jesus, you know?"
Dr. Weiss, however, continues to believe, probably largely because at $139 a ticket, he's making a lot of money by believing. "We're not going to be able to extract a blood sample and get DNA and say, 'Oh, I see you were alive in the 11th century,' no," he stated. "It's people remembering it, so it's clinical proof."
So, once again, we have someone whose definition of "proof" differs considerably from mine. And I'd be willing to say, "Well, what harm if these people believe that they were once Eleanor of Aquitaine?" except that people like Weiss are bilking the gullible out of large quantities of money. On one level, perhaps people who are that credulous deserve bilking, but the compassionate side of my personality feels like it's just wrong to take advantage.
In any case, I rather regret missing last weekend's "Come As You Were" party. It could have been fun. I would have loved to see what they'd have made out of trying to do a Past-Life Regression with me. I think I'd have said... "I'm... I'm flying through the air. Free. Wild. I'm... crap, I just got splatted on a windshield."
So it's kind of a pity I didn't get to go. Oh, well, as the reincarnated are wont to say, I suppose there's always next time.
Of course, tickets were $139 a pop, and I suspect Carol would have had words with me if I'd blown that kind of money on such a thing. But still. It featured talks, workshops, and opportunities for hypnosis sessions in which you were guided through "Past Life Regression." One woman found out she drowned in the sinking of the Titanic. Another remembered a life in which she saw Jesus deliver the Sermon on the Mount. I'd bet we also had some Babylonian princesses in there. There always seem to be Babylonian princesses.
A recent poll indicated that one in five Americans believes in reincarnation. One in ten claims actually to recall a past life. This is grist to the mill of Dr. Brian Weiss, organizer of the conference. "I define [reincarnation] as when we die physically, a part of us goes on," he said, "and that we have lessons to learn here. And that if you haven't learned all of these lessons, then that soul, that consciousness, that spirit comes back into a baby's body."
Well, that all sounds just nifty. But the difficulty, of course, is the usual one; there's no evidence whatsoever that this actually happens. The human mind, as I've mentioned before, is a remarkably plastic, and scarily unreliable, processing device. Experiments have conclusively shown that given enough emotional charge, an imagined scene can actually become a memory, and thereafter be "remembered" as if it had actually happened. In a context where a subject was being hypnotized by a professional-looking individual with "Dr." in front of his/her name, and perhaps was even being given subtle suggestions of what to "recall," that impression, and its retention as a memory afterwards, would become even more powerful.
And then, there's just the statistical argument, that because there are more people alive today than at any time in the past, not all of us can be reincarnated. Some believers solve this problem by allowing reincarnation from "lower animals." In that case, it's funny how no one seems to remember being, say, a bug. "Boy, life sure was boring, as a bug," is something I'd bet you rarely hear anyone say in a Past-Life Regression.
Not only does no one remember being a bug, few of them, it seems, were even just ordinary humans. "The skeptical part of me about the past life thing is that, just statistically, the odds are that in my past life, I was a Chinese peasant, right?" says Dr. Stephen Prothero, a professor of theology at Boston University. "But hardly anybody ever is a Chinese peasant. Everybody is Cleopatra or Mark Antony or Jesus, you know?"
Dr. Weiss, however, continues to believe, probably largely because at $139 a ticket, he's making a lot of money by believing. "We're not going to be able to extract a blood sample and get DNA and say, 'Oh, I see you were alive in the 11th century,' no," he stated. "It's people remembering it, so it's clinical proof."
So, once again, we have someone whose definition of "proof" differs considerably from mine. And I'd be willing to say, "Well, what harm if these people believe that they were once Eleanor of Aquitaine?" except that people like Weiss are bilking the gullible out of large quantities of money. On one level, perhaps people who are that credulous deserve bilking, but the compassionate side of my personality feels like it's just wrong to take advantage.
In any case, I rather regret missing last weekend's "Come As You Were" party. It could have been fun. I would have loved to see what they'd have made out of trying to do a Past-Life Regression with me. I think I'd have said... "I'm... I'm flying through the air. Free. Wild. I'm... crap, I just got splatted on a windshield."
So it's kind of a pity I didn't get to go. Oh, well, as the reincarnated are wont to say, I suppose there's always next time.
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