Name: Shaun Robinson
Age: 25
Occupation: Web Designer / Developer
Location: Ipswich, United Kingdom
Living with: My partner Andrew, and two kids Elliot and Oliver.
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A common admission from those who claim to have supernatural powers (and something that is illustrated well in Derren Brown’s new show) is that their supernatural abilities dry up whenever there is a skeptic in the room.
This is the thing that stops them getting thoroughly debunked when they meet someone willing to do a scientific test on their “gift” - be it reading minds, talking to the dead, or X-Ray vision - they simply explain their failure in any tests (or refuse to do any such tests at all) by claiming that “skeptical energy” is inhibiting their power.
This is a perfect way of making sure they can continue making extraordinary claims whilst at the same time avoiding any opportunity for doubt.
Or maybe I am being too harsh here - maybe there is some truth in this…
In the (now cancelled) hit US TV show Heroes, many seemingly ordinary citizens have amazing gifts. Some can read minds, others can move objects telepathically. But one person - known as “the Haitian” - has something very similar to the skeptical energy. Whenever he comes near someone with an ability, he drains them of their power. He is a skeptic.
Believe what you will about the supernatural, but I sleep safe at night knowing that if there are people out there who can move objects with their minds or shoot lightning from their fingers, all it takes is a bit of reason and a basic understanding of the scientific method to render them powerless.
“A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage”
Suppose (I’m following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
“Show me,” you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle—but no dragon.
“Where’s the dragon?” you ask.
“Oh, she’s right here,” I reply, waving vaguely. “I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.”
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.
“Good idea,” I say, “but this dragon floates in the air.”
Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
“Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.”
You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
“Good idea, but she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.”
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.
Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.
The only thing you’ve really learned from my insistence that there’s a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You’d wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I’ve seriously underestimated human fallibility.
Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don’t outright reject the notion that there’s a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you’re prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it’s unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative— merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of “not proved.”
Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons—to say nothing about invisible ones—you must now acknowledge that there’s something here, and that in a preliminary way it’s consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.
Now another scenario: Suppose it’s not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you’re pretty sure don’t know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages—but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we’re disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I’d rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren’t myths at all.
Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they’re never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon’s fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such “evidence”—no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it—is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.
ReBlogged from ageofreason
ReBlogged from cocknbull
Conspiracy theorists have used the internet to co-ordinate increasingly slick attacks on the accepted versions of events, but now a group of scientists and sceptics has decided it’s time to organise and fight back.
This is an absolute goldmine of common misconceptions — many of which I already knew but some I had taken for granted. Fantastic!
via david
ReBlogged from david
Just because you believe something, that doesn’t make it true. Just because you don’t believe something, that doesn’t make it false.
Penn and Teller made this point in an amusing way: they voted on the gender of a rabbit. After voting, they concluded “Voting on the sex of the rabbit will not change the sex of the rabbit.” Facts are facts, and cannot be changed by public opinion.
ReBlogged from ruminator
The Amazing Meeting sounds… well, amazing. Wish I could have gone.
There is nothing more powerful than an idea, and nothing more potentially harmful than a false idea that everyone “knows” is true and therefore does not question. “Natural” remedies are now a…
Name: Shaun Robinson
Age: 25
Occupation: Web Designer / Developer
Location: Ipswich, United Kingdom
Living with: My partner Andrew, and two kids Elliot and Oliver.