Face value

I find it fascinating, and often a little unsettling, how we fool ourselves into thinking that our responses, reactions, and thoughts are intelligent.

Now, don't get me wrong, here.  Some of them are.  My writing a blog about rationalism would be a little pointless if we were incapable of thinking rationally, after all.

On the other hand, it's worthwhile keeping in mind the awareness of how much of our behavior is on the instinctive level.  So many of our responses are based on misperception, gut reactions, and inaccurate processing that it's a wonder that we function as well as we do.

Yet another blow to our sense that our brains are making decisions based on logic came this week, when a team of psychologists at New York University published research that indicates that our judgments about whether a face is trustworthy happen within a fraction of a second of our seeing it -- far too fast for it to be a conscious decision.

Jonathan Freeman, Ryan Stoller, Zachary Ingbretsen, and Eric Hehman did a fascinating study in which subjects were placed inside a fMRI scanner, and monitored while they were shown images of human faces for only a few milliseconds, too quickly to register in the conscious mind.  The facial images were also "backward masked" -- followed by irrelevant images that had been shown to terminate the activity of the brain's facial processing systems.  Therefore, none of the facial images reached the conscious awareness of the test subjects (something confirmed by questioning after the experiment was concluded).

The researchers then looked at the response of the amygdala, a part of the brain that previous studies had found was active when people make judgments about trustworthiness, safety, and risk.

Earlier research had indicated that faces with high inner eyebrows and pronounced cheekbones are rated as more trustworthy than faces with low inner eyebrows and shallow cheekbones, so they created artificial images of human faces with a range of differences in these features.

And the flashing images made the activity in the amygdala increase.  The faces designed to be untrustworthy, especially, triggered a response in the fear and anxiety centers of the amygdala.  Freeman writes:

Our findings suggest that the brain automatically responds to a face’s trustworthiness before it is even consciously perceived. The results are consistent with an extensive body of research suggesting that we form spontaneous judgments of other people that can be largely outside awareness... These findings provide evidence that the amygdala’s processing of social cues in the absence of awareness may be more extensive than previously understood. The amygdala is able to assess how trustworthy another person’s face appears without it being consciously perceived.

Which is fascinating, and (of course) you can immediately see the evolutionary advantage of these kinds of snap judgments.  The survival cost of misassessing a person's face varies depending on the kind of mistake you make.  If you mistake an trustworthy person for an untrustworthy one, the risk is usually low; the reverse can be costly, even deadly.

Illustration from a 19th century book on physiognomy [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But of course, that means we sometimes do get it wrong.  Our brains, wired through millions of years of natural selection, manage pretty well most of the time, but that doesn't mean that it's always acting on the basis of anything... smart.  "Evolution," as Richard Dawkins put it, "is the law of whatever works."  As long as the end result is protecting us and our progeny, it doesn't really matter if it's operating in a screwy sort of fashion.

So this, of course, blows yet another hole in our sense that our responses are because of some sort of logical thought process.  Oh, no doubt we append all sorts of rationalizations afterwards.  Our immediate impressions, after all, are sometimes right, and if we find out afterwards that the guy we instantly disliked was a nasty bit of work, it reinforces our sense that we're behaving in an intelligent fashion.

But this study should make you question your snap judgments, and apply your logic centers sooner rather than later.  If, as Freeman et al. have shown, the kinds of things we're using to form our impressions of each other include the shapes of peoples eyebrows and cheekbones, it might be time to pay less attention to our "gut instincts."

A journey with the Denisovans

Every once in a while, I'll run across a piece of research that will make me think, "Ha!  How will the creationists explain that?  They'll have to admit that the evolutionary model is correct now!"

I am always wrong.

Assuming your conclusion, apparently, means never having to say you're sorry.

Take, for example, the recent study by Emilia Huerta-Sánchez et al., that showed that altitude adaptation in the Tibetan people was likely to be due to the presence of a specific gene from a group of Siberian proto-hominins called the Denisovans.  The gene, called EPAS1, protects the individuals who have it against hypoxia when the oxygen concentrations are low, is are not found in surrounding groups (the Han Chinese) but is found in the DNA of the now-extinct Denisovans.  Huerta-Sánchez et al. write:

As modern humans migrated out of Africa, they encountered many new environmental conditions, including greater temperature extremes, different pathogens and higher altitudes.  These diverse environments are likely to have acted as agents of natural selection and to have led to local adaptations.  One of the most celebrated examples in humans is the adaptation of Tibetans to the hypoxic environment of the high-altitude Tibetan plateau. A hypoxia pathway gene, EPAS1, was previously identified as having the most extreme signature of positive selection in Tibetans, and was shown to be associated with differences in haemoglobin concentration at high altitude.

Re-sequencing the region around EPAS1... we find that this gene has a highly unusual haplotype structure that can only be convincingly explained by introgression of DNA from Denisovan or Denisovan-related individuals into humans. Scanning a larger set of worldwide populations, we find that the selected haplotype is only found in Denisovans and in Tibetans, and at very low frequency among Han Chinese.  Furthermore, the length of the haplotype, and the fact that it is not found in any other populations, makes it unlikely that the haplotype sharing between Tibetans and Denisovans was caused by incomplete ancestral lineage sorting rather than introgression.

Put more simply, the scientists found that because of the distribution of the gene, the presence of EPAS1 in Tibetans was much more likely to be due to introgression (hybridization between two distinct species followed by repeated backcrossing to one of the parent species) rather than common ancestry followed by strong selection for phenotype.

Given that the Denisovans are otherwise genetically distinct from modern humans -- work by paleontologist Svante Pääbo supports the conclusion that the Denisovans represent a group whose ancestors left Africa, and have been separate from, both Neanderthals and modern humans for half a million years -- you'd think this would lead anyone who thinks that all humans come from a single family who miraculously survived the Great Flood less than 6,000 years ago to have some serious second thoughts.

Denisova Cave, southern Siberia [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Nope.  Should have known better.  Turns out the creationists, for some reason, love the Denisovans, although I'm still at a loss for why.  Take, for example, what they have to say about all of this over at Creation.com:

It was easy to compare the [Denisovan DNA] to modern man, but in order to make comparisons to Neanderthal they needed more and better Neanderthal DNA to be sequenced.  The results were startling, for the Neanderthals turned out to be very close relations to each other, and this includes individuals from Spain, Germany, Russia and Croatia.  They were closer as a group than any of the modern populations used in the study.  That is a very large area for a very closely related group of people to cover.  The authors used the phrase “drastic bottleneck” to describe what they believe must have happened in the early years of the Neanderthal family line.  We do not feel it is ‘drastic’ to believe the Neanderthals were one family group who spread out into western Eurasia in the years after the Flood, who intermingled with other people groups as they also spread out, and who eventually died out as many other people groups have done in history... 

As with Neanderthals (from whom these Denisovans probably were a further splitoff), the evidence from hybridization scotches any notion that these were other than post-Babel descendants of Adam.

Or if you've a taste for even more bizarre pretzel logic, there's this, over at New Discoveries & Comments About Creationism:

How could have ancient humans who lived in a Siberian cave who were considered lower than Neanderthals interbreed with modern humans?  Before the sequencing of the genome took place it would have been considered, impossible!  But in human evolution, falsifications are confirmations... 

Rather than admitting their evolutionary story had been wrong with real-time observations, it’s now a race to get to the finish line. Not only that but it is implausible that this bone contained 70% of its original DNA after 82,000 years!  Who would believe such preservation of soft tissue?  It’s a stretch to say the least.  It’s much more likely that this individual lived a few thousand years ago at most... 

While a new sequencing technique now available to researchers that can be used to discern a genome from one DNA strand rather than both is quite remarkable but trying to explain it in historical terms which is forced into a particular framework known as human evolution, is not remarkable, it’s not even science. 

We live in an exciting time, since the earth is actually thousands of years old, we are able to learn more about the past rather than loosing [sic] valuable information which comes from DNA if the earth was older!

So... because the Denisovans interbred with some human populations, they had to be modern humans, and therefore less than 6,000 years old, and therefore god and the bible and the flood and all the rest of it.

Pardon me for a moment while I recover from the headdesk I just did.

I always expect, somehow, that logic and science and rationality will reach people.  Science remains our best tool for understanding the universe, and has a proven track record of uncovering the deepest, subtlest mechanisms of the world around us.

And what's odd is that the creationists pretty much buy all of it except evolution and cosmology.  Anything else is awesome -- chemistry, medical science, atmospheric science, most of physics, much of geology, and damn near all of the technological manifestations of scientific research.  Science and the scientific method, apparently, work just fine in all of those realms.

But not in biology and paleogeology, apparently.  The same scientific method that gives right answers in chemistry gives answers in biology and paleogeology that are off by three to four orders of magnitude (six orders of magnitude if you're talking about cosmology and the Big Bang).

So I'm probably engaging in a forlorn hope to think that the recent work on the Denisovans will have any effect on that.  Call me foolish, but I keep believing that one day, this will change, that the habit of teaching Bronze-Age creation myths to children as if they were fact will be over for good.

But to quote Aragorn, that day is not today.  As I said earlier, if you assume your conclusion, magic happens.  It's just that in this case, the magic has to do with insulating you from reality.

Responses to suicide

There's nothing like the tragic death of a celebrity to bring out the worst in humanity.

I'm talking about the suicide of Robin Williams, of course, and in my first statement I'm guilty of Overgeneralizing Because I'm Pissed Off.  There have been a great many beautiful tributes, both by public figures and by Williams' fans, mourning the loss of a brilliant comic and sympathizing with the heartbreak his family is experiencing.  I have seen many use this as an opportunity to make a statement about the devastating nature of depression, and encouraging those contemplating suicide to consider other options.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But man, does this kind of thing bring out the jerks.

Starting with our friends over at the Westboro Baptist Church, which I thought had more or less fallen apart after the death of Fred Phelps.  But no, they're still going strong, and sending out their edifying messages to all and sundry.  And yesterday they announced that they're planning on picketing Robin Williams' funeral because he was a "fag pimp" for creating positive portrayals of gay men in movies.

We'd expect that kind of thing from them, though.  These people are light years from anything resembling human compassion, so such a move is hardly surprising.  Equally unsurprising is the reaction of conspiracy theorists such as noted wingnut Mark Dice, who claims that Williams didn't commit suicide, but was "sacrificed by the Illuminati."

But none of that really bothers me, other than on a purely superficial level.  Wackos will be wackos, after all.  I'm bothered far more deeply by people who are coldly, callously using Williams' death to make a political or philosophical point.  Let's start with Kevin Burke, over at the anti-abortion site Life News, who is claiming that Williams' depression was caused by the fact that his girlfriend had had an abortion back in the 1970's:

Many are aware that Williams struggled for years with serious addiction issues.  However a lesser known fact is that one of those demons was an abortion that took place in the 1970’s...  Is there a relationship between Robin William’s descent into drug addiction and depression that began in the 1970’s and his past abortion?  Williams said in an interview in The Guardian in 2008, “You know, I was shameful…You do stuff that causes disgust, and that’s hard to recover from.  You can say, ‘I forgive you’ and all that stuff, but it’s not the same as recovering from it."  Williams may have been making a thinly veiled reference to what society tells us does not exist…his post abortion trauma and complicated grief.

Then there was P. Z. Myers, whose blog Pharyngula I actually used to like, who decided to use Williams' suicide to make a point about how biased media coverage is:

I’m sorry to report that comedian Robin Williams has committed suicide, an event of great import and grief to his family.  But his sacrifice has been a great boon to the the news cycle and the electoral machinery — thank God that we have a tragedy involving a wealthy white man to drag us away from the depressing news about brown people.  I mean, really: young 18 year old black man gunned down for walking in the street vs. 63 year old white comedian killing himself?  Which of those two stories gives you an excuse to play heart-warming and funny video clips non-stop on your 24 hour news channel?...  Boy, I hate to say it, but it sure was nice of Robin Williams to create such a spectacular distraction.

He's right, of course, about media bias.  But putting it this way, P. Z., doesn't make you acerbic or cutting-edge or clever, it just makes you an insensitive asshole.

But no one pissed me off worse than prominent Christian blogger Matt Walsh.  Not, of course, the first time this has happened.  And actually, he started off well enough:

The death of Robin Williams is significant not because he was famous, but because he was human, and not just because he left this world, but particularly because he apparently chose to leave it. 

Suicide. 

A terrible, monstrous atrocity.  It disturbs me in a deep, visceral, indescribable way. Of course it disturbs most people, I would assume.  Indeed, we should fear the day when we wake up and decide we aren’t disturbed by it anymore.

But take a look at how he ended the piece:

(W)e can debate medication dosages and psychotherapy treatments, but, in the end, joy is the only thing that defeats depression.  No depressed person in the history of the world has ever been in the depths of despair and at the heights of joy at the same time.  The two cannot coexist.  Joy is light, depression is darkness.  When we are depressed, we have trouble seeing joy, or feeling it, or feeling worthy of it.  I know that in my worst times, at my lowest points, it’s not that I don’t see the joy in creation, it’s just that I think myself too awful and sinful a man to share in it.

Seriously?  That's your suggestion to the depressed, that they should just "feel joyful?"  His statement "joy is the only thing that defeats depression" is like saying that "the only thing that defeats cancer is not having cancer."  He says, earlier in his blog, "(B)efore I’m accused of being someone who 'doesn’t understand,' let me assure you that I have struggled with this my entire life."

I don't know about you, but it sure as hell sounds to me like he doesn't understand.  His shallow and thoughtless piece minimizes the anguish suffered by tens of thousands, and once again falls back on the old, horrible trope that people who are depressed "just aren't trying hard enough."

Let me be perfectly open here.  I have suffered from moderate to severe depression my entire adult life.  I have only once been in the depths to the point that I actually had the pile of sleeping pills in my hand, a glass of water on my nightstand.  I didn't follow through with it for one reason only; I was scared.

I'm glad I didn't, of course.  Because you can get through depression, you can deal with it, even though it never really is completely defeated.  Through many long years of therapy and the support of my family and friends, I'm doing okay.  But depression is a murderous bitch, no respecter of fame, fortune, or stature, that robs life of its spark and saps your energy and makes everything look gray.  I wish Robin Williams had found his way out of that dark place; his choice to end his life is especially wrenching considering the joy he gave to millions.

But I do understand it.  I've been there.  And I have nothing but empathy for what he went through, and my heart breaks for what his family is enduring.

So to the people like Matt Walsh, whose ridiculous assessments downplay the real struggles the mentally ill experience; to P. Z. Myers and Kevin Burke, who heartlessly sank their claws into Williams' suicide as a way of scoring a philosophical point; and even to wackos like Mark Dice and the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who are using the whole thing to bolster their bizarre worldviews... to them I only have one thing to say.

Shut the fuck up.

Double vision

After four years of writing this blog six times a week, you'd think I'd be inured.  You'd think I'd long ago have stopped running into weird ideas that I hadn't heard of.  You'd think it'd be impossible to surprise me any more.

You'd be wrong.

You've heard about the whole Reptilian Alien thing, right?  That prominent individuals, especially world leaders but also including a lot of entertainers, are actually aliens in human suits?  Well, just yesterday, a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link to the homepage of the Doppelgänger and Identity Research Society, which takes it one step further:

Many prominent individuals are actually cleverly-wrought doubles.  Clones.  Twins from different mothers.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But unlike ordinary twins, or even clones, in which both individuals coexist, here the duplicate has replaced the original, and the original is no more.

In other words: Brad Pitt isn't actually Brad Pitt, he's someone who looks, talks, and acts exactly like Brad Pitt.

Upon reading this, I was reminded of the quote from Spock on Star Trek: "A difference that makes no difference is no difference."  If there's only one Brad Pitt -- i.e., no one is really claiming that there are two of 'em walking around, as far as I can see -- and he is identical to Brad Pitt, doesn't that make him, um, Brad Pitt?

Apparently not.  Here's an explanation of the difference, from the site:

Human doubles are made by other humans from the DNA of a single cell, where a replica of the physical body is reproduced. That clone is only physical and has no soul, therefore, it has no God-connection. Clones can mate and reproduce clone children. A clone and a souled-human can mate and, again, only reproduce clone children. 

Humans have no means to create a soul in another human clone, therefore, human clones have no soul and no concept of right and wrong, no conscience and no compassion. They have survival instinct and are greatly concerned about their own death, but not the welfare and death of others. 

This explains why so many people today have no values, no morals, no ethics and are prone to violence. 

They are more easily programmed through our mind-control type education and military training than are souled-humans with a freewill. Clones have no freewill, only a sense of survival, and will act accordingly through conditioned behavior. 

The eye is the window of the soul. In the eye of another souled-human you can sense the Light emanating from the soul, the God Spirit within. As I said earlier, soul or God Spirit within, so there is no God-connection to the eternal Light of Creator Source. Therefore, there is no the human clone has no spiritual discernment. The eyes of a human clone may appear dull, blank, hollow, dark, vacant, lifeless, empty with no vibrancy or Light. They have no reaction to or understanding of spiritual energy, concepts or conversation.

Well, notwithstanding the fact that the last paragraph could be describing me before I've had a cup of coffee in the morning, the whole thing seems pretty... subjective.  Even the website admits that the synthetic humans are just like regular humans, down to the genetic level, even though their science seems a little shaky in other respects:

Certain tissues extracted from cattle are the starting point. (This is part of the reason for cattle mutilations.) The process is an advancement of a process discovered in the late 1950’s. This 1959 experiment was reported in a book in 1968 called The Biological Time Bomb by Gordon Rettray Taylor. Taylor describes the experiment done in France, "They had extracted DNA from the cells of the khaki Campbells and had injected it into the white Pekins, thinking that just possibly the offspring of the latter might show some character derived from khaki Campbells. To their astonishment the actual ducks they injected began to change. Their white feathers darkened, and their necks began to take on the peculiar curve which is a mark of the khaki Campbell." The scientists working under the auspices of the Rothschilds, (who are directed by Satan himself) developed this process by working at secret breakneck speed. They developed an advanced development of the process they discovered with the DNA chicken experiment. By the late 1970’s, synthetic people could be produced by the Illuminati.

So you have to mutilate cattle to get tissue samples instead of just buying a package of ground beef at the grocery store, ducks are the same thing as chickens, the Rothschilds are directed by Satan, and therefore there are bunches of synthetic soulless people walking around.  Got it.

Apparently, though, that's not all.  Not only do we have fake people walking around, some of them are actually robots.  Jimmy Carter, for example:

Organic robotoids: This is an "artificial life" form that is created through processes that are totally different than cloning or synthetics. Organic robotoid technology is being made to make exact as possible copies of important people such as Presidents and some of their staff. For instance, the Jimmy Carter who came to Portland a few years ago who I stood two feet away from and examined visually was not the Jimmy Carter that had run for President. On Easter, 1979 the first robotoid model of Jimmy Carter replaced the man Jimmy Carter. By the time "Carter" was seen by me, they must have been on at least robotoid no. 100.

Myself, I'm surprised that anyone who visually examined a former president of the United States from two feet away wasn't immediately escorted from the premises by men in dark suits and sunglasses.  But I guess he was lucky.  Or maybe it was just because the Dark Suits knew that if something happened to Jimmy Carter Version 100, they could always replace him with Version 101.

The site provides hours of bizarre exploration, wherein we find out that not only are Brad Pitt and Jimmy Carter synthetic humans, or clones, or robotoids, or something, so are:

• Cameron Diaz
• Bob Dylan
• Angelina Jolie (figures, since Brad is, right?)
• Christina Aguilera
• Beyonce (I thought she was an Illuminatus herself?  C'mon, people, get your story straight)
• Eddie Murphy
• Courteney Cox
• David Icke

The last one made me sit up and take notice, because David Icke is one of the people who is always supposedly blowing the whistle on the Illuminati and the New World Order and the Bilderburg Group and what-have-you, and now we learn that he's not really David Icke, he's someone else who not only looks just like David Icke, but also has David Icke's rather tenuous grasp on reality?  Evidently so:

David Icke got replaced 2007 by a synthetic clone. We... did a lot of mathematic facial geometry analysis and other stuff. Also we found out that the new David Icke has no birthmarks anymore in his face, a lot bigger shoulders and his hands have a different geometry. Also the way he use his muscles of the face, shoulders and hands, even the fingers and mostly the eyes and the bigger nose with its different form is a proof. Also the different color of his skin. Its a very fine difference of the color. Also the distance between body and head is now different. Also his psychology while talking. We did a very deep analysis of a lot famous people and we are experts for doing this. We work all together and are as objective as possible.

Well, there you are, then.  If they say they're being objective, I'm convinced.

So, anyway, that's today's dip in the deep end of the pool.  Me, I'm going to get a second cup of coffee, so I can appear less blank and hollow-eyed, and hopefully fool more people into thinking I'm actually Gordon.  Well, I am Gordon, but not the real Gordon.  I'm the Gordon who looks like Gordon.

Never mind.  You know what I mean.

Wrongness

I get a lot of negative comments.

It comes with the territory, I suppose, and I knew when I started writing this blog four years ago that I would have to develop a thick skin.  Given the subject matter, there's hardly a post I do that won't piss someone off.  Here's a sampling of comments, and a brief description of the topic that elicited them:

• You are either ignorant or just stupid.  I'm putting my bet on the latter.  (after a post on machines that are supposed to "alkalinize" water to make it more healthful)
• Narrow-minded people like you are the worst problem this society faces.  (after a post on "crystal healing")
• I am honestly offended by what you wrote.  (after a post on alternative medicine)
• I can't say I warm to your tone.  (after a post on ghost hunting)
• That is the most ignorant thing I have ever read.  (after a post in which I made a statement indicating that I think recent climate change is anthropogenic in origin)
• I hate smug dilettantes like you.  (after a post on mysticism vs. rationalism)
• You are a worthless wanker, and I hope you rot in hell.  (from a young-earth creationist)

My skin isn't thick enough that some of these don't sting.  For example, the one that called me a "smug dilettante" has a grain of truth to it; I'm not a scientist, just a science teacher, and if my educational background has a flaw it's that it's a light year across and an inch deep.  Notwithstanding that in a previous century people like me were called "polymaths," not "dabblers" or "dilettantes," the commenter scored a point, whether he knew it or not.  I'm well-read, and have a decent background in a lot of things, but I'm not truly an expert in anything.

Other disagreements on this list have been resolved by discussion, which is honestly what I prefer to do.  The comments that came from the posts on alternative medicine and ghost hunting generated fruitful discussion, and understanding (if not necessarily agreement) on both sides.

Most of the time, though, I just don't engage with people who choose to use the "Comments" section (or email) as a venue for snark.  You're not going to get very far by calling me ignorant, for example.  I make a practice of not writing about subjects on which I am ignorant (e.g. politics), so even if I make an offhand comment about something, I try to make sure that I could back it up with facts if I needed to.  (Cf. this site, apropos of the individual who thinks I am ignorant for accepting the anthropogenic nature of recent climate change.)

That said, what a lot of people don't seem to recognize about me is the extent to which my understanding of the world is up for grabs.  Like anyone, I do have my biases, and my baseline assumptions -- the latter including the idea that the universe is best understood through the dual lenses of logic and evidence.

But everything else?  My attitude is, if you want to try to convince me about Bigfoot or chakras or crystals or astrology or anything else, knock yourself out.  But you'd better have the evidence on your side, because even if I am a dilettante, I have read up on the topics on which I write.

I am as prone as the next guy, though, to getting it wrong sometimes.  And I am well aware of the fact that we can slide into error without realizing it.  As journalist Kathryn Schulz said, in her phenomenal lecture "On Being Wrong" (which you should all take ten minutes and watch as soon as you're done reading this):

How does it feel to be wrong?  Dreadful, thumbs down, embarrassing.  Those are great answers.  But they're answers to a different question.  (Those are) the answers to the question, "How does it feel to realize you're wrong?"  Realizing you're wrong can feel like all of that, and a lot of other things.  It can be devastating.  It can be revelatory.  It can actually be quite funny...  But just being wrong?  It doesn't feel like anything...  We're already wrong, we're already in trouble, but we still feel like we're on solid ground.  So I should actually correct something I said a moment ago: it does feel like something to be wrong.  It feels like being right.

To those who are provoked, even pissed off by what I write: good.  We never discover our errors -- and I'm including myself in this assessment -- without being knocked askew once in a while.  Let yourself be challenged without having a knee-jerk kick in response, and you have my word that I'll do the same.  And while I don't like having my erroneous thinking uncovered any more than anyone else, I will own up when I screw up.  I've published retractions in Skeptophilia more than once, which has been a profoundly humbling but entirely necessary experience.

So keep those cards and letters coming.  Even the negative ones.  I'm not going to promise you I'll change my mind on every topic I'm challenged on, but I do promise that I'll consider what you've said.

On the other hand, calling me a "worthless wanker" didn't accomplish much but making me choke-snort a mouthful of coffee all over my computer.  So I suppose that the commenter even got his revenge there, if only in a small way.

The haunted PC

There's a lot of misunderstanding out there about the definition of the word "skeptic."

"Skeptic" is not synonymous with "disbeliever."  "Climate-change skeptics," for example, aren't skeptics, since skeptics are swayed by evidence, and the vast preponderance of evidence is in favor of anthropogenic climate change.  Those "skeptics" are better termed "deniers."

So if that's what a skeptic isn't, how can we define what a skeptic is?  The bottom line is that to a skeptic, natural explanations always trump supernatural ones.  You follow the evidence where it leads, and then either settle on the conclusion that best fits all of the evidence -- or else hold conclusion in abeyance, indefinitely if need be, until more evidence arises.

The dictum of always looking for a natural solution is a sticking point, for some folks.  The end result  of accepting a supernatural explanation, though, is often the lazy way out -- you arrive at "it's magic" or "it's god" and then stop.  No further comprehension of the world is necessary at that point, or perhaps even possible.

I find that an unsatisfactory protocol for understanding how the universe works.  I want to know what's really going on -- what the actual mechanism is.  And once we decide that magic works, that anything is possible even if it contravenes the known, tested laws of science, then the door shuts.

Take, for example, the case of Ken Webster, Thomas Harden, and the haunted computer.

The bare bones of the story can be found at the site Instrumental TransCommunication, but there is a much more exhaustive telling in the book The Dead Roam the Earth: True Stories of the Paranormal From Around the World by Alasdair Wickham.  Here is the basic idea of the claim:

In 1984, a young man named Ken Webster moved with his girlfriend to an unnamed village in north Wales.  They report that poltergeist activity was already happening in the house even before what was to become the main event started -- canned food being moved around and rearranged in cabinets, newspapers levitating from the table, and six-toed footprints appearing from nowhere in cement dust during a renovation.  But the real trouble started when Ken brought home what was, at the time, cutting-edge technology -- a BBC personal computer with a disc drive and 32 KB of RAM.

One evening, Ken was idling on the computer when he found a file on a disc named "KDN."  He didn't recognize it as anything that belonged to him or his girlfriend, so he opened it, and found the following message:

Ken Deb ni c
True A re The NIGHTmares
Of a pErson t hat FEARs
Safe A re The BODIES Of tHe
Silent WORLD
Turn Pr etty FlowER tuRn
TOWARDS The SUN
For Y o u S HalL GroW
AND SOW
But T he FLOWer Reaches
TOo high and witHERS in
The B urning Light
G E T OU T YOU
R BR ICKs
PuSsy Ca t PUSSy Cat
Went TO LonDOn TO
Seek
FamE aND FORTUNE
Faith Must NOT Be
LOst
For ThiS Shall
Be YouR REDEEMER.

Understandably creeped out by this, he and his girlfriend decided to approach the whole thing scientifically.  If there was a spirit who liked to communicate via PC, they'd give him/her/it the opportunity.  So they left the computer on, all the time, to see if any further communiqués from the Other World appeared.

And appear they did.

The first morning after the computer had been left on all night, the following file was found on the disc drive:

I WRYTE ON BEHALTHE OF MANYE -- WOT STRANGE WORDES THOU SPEKE

THOU ART GOODLY MAN WHO HATH FANCIFUL WOMAN WHO DWEL IN MYNE HOME... WITH LYTES WHICHE DEVYLL MAKETH... 'TWAS A GREATE CRYME TO HATH BRIBED MYNE HOUSE -- L.W. 

Besides the fact that you'd think the Spirit World would have figured out about caps locks by now, the voice in the new message seemed light years from the random weirdness in the first.  The spirit had even signed its initials.  So Ken asked the spirit who it was, and to give more information about its history.

And the spirit obliged.  Over the next few weeks, Ken found out that the spirit was one Lukas Wainman, who had lived in the first half of the sixteenth century and had been a fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford University.  He had lived in the very cottage that Ken and his girlfriend now occupied, he said.  And Lukas -- the live Lukas, back in the 1500s -- was aware that he was communicating with them, five-hundred-odd years later.  Because of his communications, he said, he was in danger of being arrested for witchcraft.  Ken cites one message, a little on the cryptic side, that said:

WHEN THY BOYSTE DIDST COME THER WERT A VERS ON'T THAT SAID ME WERE NOT TO AXE OF YOUR UNKYND KNOWINGS FOR THY LEEMS BOYSTE WILT BE NAMORE.

Which isn't particularly helpful.  But things took a turn for the (even more) surreal a few months later, when a second (or perhaps third) personality started talking through the computer, one who just called himself "2109:"

WE SHALL ANSEWER AS YOU WISH IT IN TERMS OF PHYSICS THEN IT SHALL BE SO BUT REMMEMBER THAT OUR LIMITS ARE SET BY YOUR ABILITIES.

"2109" said he belonged to an incorporeal race that was watching humanity, and was responsible for a lot of the supernatural silliness that abounds around the world.  But "2109's" appearance didn't stop Lukas, who still came through now and again.  He finally owned up that his name wasn't actually Lukas Wainman, but Thomas Harden or Hawarden, and that he wasn't going to be tried for witchcraft but was still under suspicion.

So Ken decided to do a little digging in the local library, and found that there had been a fellow of Brasenose College in the 1500s named Thomas Harden, who had been expelled for failing to remove the pope's name from religious documents after Henry VIII did his power grab and founded the Anglican Church.

But evidently, Ken's inquiries alarmed the Spirit World, and his finding out about Thomas Harden effectively shut down the communication lines.  Neither Thomas/Lukas nor "2109" ever contacted him again.

So, let's see about explaining all of this.  There are two explanations I can see:

1. Ken Webster actually was communicating with spirits of various sorts -- a poltergeist, a living man from the past, and a member of an "incorporeal race" -- all of whom decided to speak through a PC.  People who favor this explanation usually claim Ken's discovery of the real Thomas Harden, and the fact of Lukas/Thomas's use of archaic English, as points in favor.
2. Either Ken, or his girlfriend, or both, made the whole thing up.  They wrote the files, and looked up the name of a disgraced Oxford don when they realized that sooner or later, people were going to figure out that there was no one named "Lukas Wainman" at Brasenose in the sixteenth century.

It's a general rule that the explanation that requires you to make the fewest ad hoc assumptions is the most likely to be true.  So which is it?  Especially given that anyone who is educated in the British public school system has read Shakespeare, and therefore could probably do a decent job at mimicking archaic English if they were going to pull a prank?

Even given that this story has all the hallmarks of a hoax, it's still cited as one of the best pieces of evidence out there for trans-temporal communication -- communication between two people from different time periods.

So, in conclusion: it's not that I think that what is conventionally called "paranormal" is impossible; it's more that I haven't run into any examples of alleged paranormal activity that weren't explainable far more easily from completely natural occurrences.  And human nature being what it is, the likelihood of being fooled by our own superstitiousness, fallibility, and gullibility, not to mention our capacity for lies, frauds, and hoaxes, makes me gravitate toward those explanations.

As usual, Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence.  And in the case of Ken Webster and the haunted computer, I'm just not buying what's being offered as proof.

The cat people

I find myself wondering, sometimes, how people can hear claims without the "Oh, come on, now" reaction kicking in.

The thought occurs to me pretty much any time I turn on the History or Discovery channels, these days, what with their dubious editorial decision to jettison actual history and science in favor of Ancient Aliens, Squatch-Chasing, and the Prophecies of Nostradamus.  In fact, I want to say, "Oh, come on, now," to Giorgio Tsoukalos before he even opens his mouth.

But evidently, that reaction doesn't occur in everyone.  I'm not certain why the World of Woo-Woo, with its pseudoscience and crazy claims and superstition, appeals so strongly to some folks.  I've always preferred science over guesswork and wishful thinking, but I appear to be amongst the minority.

Take, for example, the bizarre little story that appeared in the West African Daily Post, which claimed -- with all apparent seriousness -- that a local warlock was changing children into cats.

[image courtesy of photographer Nicolas Suzor and the Wikimedia Commons]

"Detectives at the Rumuolumeni Divisional Police Station in Port Harcourt, Rivers State are investigating a case involving three persons who allegedly transformed to cats," the story begins, which at least made me glad about the fact that they used the word "allegedly."

The police at Rumuolumeni Station apparently noticed that a particular cat kept running in front of the police station, as cats are wont to do.  But for some reason, they thought this was odd, so they "lay in ambush" for the cat.

Must have been a slow crime day, there at Rumuolumeni Station.

Be that as it may, they caught the cat and decided to kill it, but before they could do so, "it mysteriously transformed into... a twelve-year-old boy."

The remainder of the story is best told in the words of the reporter who wrote the article:

The twelve year old boy later confessed that he was initiated by one aged man named Womadi, adding that there are many of his kind in Port Harcourt, and their mission was to suck human blood and inflict their victims with diseases. 

The paramount ruler of Rumuolumeni in Oibio-Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State, Eze Ndubueze Wobo confirmed the transformation of three members of his community into cats. 

Eze Wobo told the Daily Post that one of the men, who is popularly called Papa, confessed to him at the police station that he initiated the people to suck human blood and inflict their victims with diseases. 

Wobo said the victim listed some items which would be used to cleanse initiated children, some which include native alligator pepper, Local gin, Local kola nut and so on.

"Papa" later told police that he had initiated the children using a "packaged beef roll."  About which initiation I was glad the article gave no further details.

I find it amazing, and troubling, that people could read this without their thinking at some point, "This can't be true."  (For me, it happened halfway through the first sentence.)  But they don't, for some reason.

And the darker side of all of this is the rise of a violent strain of Pentecostalism in this part of the world, which was already home to one of the most viciously fanatical religious groups in the world, the Boko Haram movement of Islam.  So we can laugh at these superstitious folks, over here in our safe homes in the industrialized world, but over there, an accusation of witchcraft is a life-or-death matter.

Poster for a Pentecostal revival meeting in Nigeria two years ago [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I sometimes get asked why I rant about what seem like "harmless superstitions," and why I'm so insistent that rationalism and evidence-based understanding are the best ways of approaching the world.

My answer is that superstitions are seldom harmless.  They teach you that the world is a fearful place, behaving by rules that are fluid and mystical, with competing powers that are dangerous, perhaps deadly.  Superstitions lead some people to give their money to charlatans, which on one level falls under the rule of caveat emptor; but worse than that, it causes people to cede their personal power and responsibility to individuals and causes that have little regard for human life and dignity.

On that basis alone, there is no reason to tolerate superstitious belief.  And that includes its being given serious reporting in a national newspaper.