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Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Proof
2007-06-01 01:40:00
Skeptics place great emphasis on arguing techniques. Ostensibly, their motive is to expose the false arguing techniques used by their opponents but the fact is, many of them place greatly more emphasis on arguing than they do on understanding. In my personal experience, I would say this applies to the vast majority of skeptics.One of the arguing techniques that seems to raise its head frequently is that Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Proof . The basic proposition here is that science has established some rules for how the universe works. These rules appear to work, they are useful in that we can build on them to, for example, produce computer chips or send rockets into space. If a claim comes along that appears to go against the established way of seeing the world then we can’t apply the same rules of proof to it as we would to a claim that goes along with our current way of seeing the world. For instance, an investigator trying to determine why an aeroplane crashed woul...

Hypnosis
2007-05-20 16:47:00
In the web site The Skeptic’s Dictionary the author - Robert Todd Carroll – attempts to debunk a wide range of philosophies that he disapproves of. Some are outlandish and probably deserving of his treatment. Others he debunks with apparently little knowledge of his subject, but simply relies on the fact that the philosophy does not meet with some pre-defined criteria that he has set for himself. The criteria often seem to be that they are not recognised, at least at the moment, by the body of conventional scientists.The article that particularly caught my attention, mainly because it is referenced so often as being, as it were, the definitive view, is this one on hypnosis.In this article the author disputes that hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness. He also (either due to confusion or as a deliberate ploy) mixes up the concept an altered state of consciousness with states of consciousness that are ‘occult’. The two things are, of course, completely different and t...
More About: Hypnosis

The God Part of the Brain
2007-04-13 01:28:00
I was recently sent a copy of The God Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper for review. It is not a book I would normally read or recommend. Matthew Alper is an Atheist and attempts to answer the question many atheists ask: “If God does not exist then why do so many people believe in Him?” The book attempts to answer not just that question but also a number of related questions, for instance ‘what is the spiritual experience?’ and ‘why is America so religious?’Matthew Alper is undoubtedly a very intelligent person, and has done his research. The book delves into psychology, philosophy, theology and neuroscience. Early on in the book he describes the scientific method as the best we have for understanding the world and claims that science and religion are contradictory. Today we know better than to believe that rain is produced by the whims of the gods. Today, we know that rain is caused by a series of physical causes and effects. In this way science has emasculated the old ...
More About: The Brain

Hypnosis and Altered States
2007-04-12 06:00:00
Derren Brown is an illusionist and amazes people with his apparent ability to read minds and predict what people will do. Some of his tricks are based on hypnosis. In his book ”Tricks of the Mind” he makes a rather startling assertion. He says that when people are operated on, there is very little pain. He implies that this is true of dental procedures as well. I’m sure people who have woken up in the middle of surgery or who have had a dental operation without anaesthetic would be very surprised at this. So why does Derren Brown, an obviously intelligent person, make such an assertion? The answer lies in the same reason as why otherwise intelligent people will tell you that the Earth is only 4000 years old: it is a view based on dogma rather than logic. To explain why this we have to look at some background.Derren Brown is an affirmed Atheist and Skeptic. He is convinced there is no God and that all claims of mystic or otherwise scientifically unexplainable phenomena are mist...
More About: Hypnosis , States

An Exercise
2007-03-15 01:50:00
For those who really would like a glimpse into a different way of looking at the world there is an exercise you can do. To perform this you have to be prepared to suspend disbelief. Now many people may think that this will somehow infect them, as if this will lock them into becoming gullible ‘believers’. Others may think it is impossible to suspend disbelief. You may like to consider that when you watch a movie or a TV program you always have to suspend disbelief for a period. Most movies adopt a premise that would be difficult to accept in reality, and even with the most realistic movies you have to prevent yourself asking why the couple who are getting so intimate with each other don’t tell the cameraman to get out! Suspending disbelief for the period of the movie seems to do people no harm. It may actually stretch their imagination.Now, consider this. When we dream everything in the dream was created by our own imagination. So if you are in a room talking to some people, t...
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The Polarisation of Opposing Views
2007-03-12 23:39:00
Whether one is talking about skeptics verses non-skeptics, supporters of the US invasion of Iraq verses those who opposed it, environmentalists verses the environmentalist skeptics or just about any cause and those who oppose it, one theme constantly crops up: the polarisation of views and the feelings about those in the opposite camp. For instance, it would be rare to find someone who opposed the war in Iraq to say of those who support it that they have good motives but made the wrong decision; or for environmentalist ‘greenies’ to say of their detractors that their views had merit.This polarisation is almost the hallmark of twenty-first century thinking. One view I’ve heard from many different circles is ‘the argument is so stupid, I can’t even understand what they mean’. If you can’t understand what someone means than how can you say it is stupid? It is important when discussing anything to get into the other person’s shoes – to try to understand how they look a...
More About: Views

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)
2007-02-19 14:13:00
NLP is a set of techniques and ideas that, in essence, aid self-development and enable people to relate better to other people around them. Some ideas that NLP practitioners teach are:Understanding body languageUsing particular word constructs in order to influence other peopleUnderstanding our own use of language in order to get a better understanding of our state of mindThese techniques undoubtedly work. Had the author taken the trouble to practice some NLP techniques he would have found this out.Skeptics dismiss NLP as hocus-pocus, which is not surprising as they also dismiss hypnosis. I’ll deal with hypnosis later, but the skeptic dictionary entry for NLP is interesting as it encapsulates all the fuzzy thinking and devious arguing techniques that skeptics employ, so I’m going to give a blow-by-blow account of the entry.In the first paragraph, he points out what he supposes is a dispute among NLP practitioners. The intention is to set up a feeling that these are people with n...
More About: Programming , Linguistic

Discussions with Skeptics
2007-02-09 14:20:00
I used to have email discussions with skeptics. When I started doing this I worked on the assumption that I was dealing with intelligent, if misguided, people who would at least acknowledge that their simplistic views were just that – simplistic. I realised I was wrong when I was having a discussion with a member of the Australian Skeptics who was quite prominently featured on their web site. He stated that science must be correct because peer review guaranteed it. Stunned by what I assumed to be his simplistic view of the world I returned with a long a detailed email pointing out the logical error in this and then referring him to a number of web sites where scientists themselves discussed the flaws in the peer review system. What I got back was a terse email pointing out a spelling mistake and then launching into another, totally different, supposed flaw in the reasoning of those who supported clairvoyants and similar mystic ideas. I realised that the person was not in the least...

Belief and Assumptions
2007-02-07 23:34:00
Skeptics frequently talk about belief. Their view is that people who subscribe to a worldview that is not completely scientific do so because they have unsubstantiated (and unverifiable) beliefs, whereas those who subscribe to a scientific worldview do not have unsubstantiated beliefs.I’ve pointed out previously (More on Assumptions ) that science is actually based on more assumptions then most religions. Personally, I do not use the word belief in this context. This is not just some politically correct name change, but because the two concepts are different. If someone says they believe there is a tiger in the room, you would expect them to exhibit certain behaviour patterns, for instance fear and anxiety, and they would attempt to get out of the way. If they don’t do this you may wonder what the nature of their belief is. On the other hand, an assumption is a view that is taken to be true without verification. Science makes many assumptions, some of what I’ve written about pr...
More About: Belief

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof
2007-01-31 14:19:00
Skeptics often refer to what they call Occam's Razor. They interpret this as ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof’. In other words, if someone does an experiment that seems to prove mind reading ability this would require much more stringent verification then, say, an experiment designed to show the feeding habits of ants in a particular environment. Put another way this dictum says ‘never question your existing worldview’. It has also been interpreted as ‘having made up your mind, don’t be dissuaded by facts’. It is obvious, for example, that something similar to clairvoyance can be performed by what is called cold reading. In cold reading, the practitioner makes some general statements and watches the response. Then, by making more statements and maybe asking some very general questions the practitioner can home in on some points that make him appear to the naive person as having supernatural powers. The fact that cold reading (sometimes) works does not...
More About: Proof , Claims

Having a Worldview
2007-01-30 08:17:00
Most people form their worldview of life at an early age. This used to be at around 18 years old, but nowadays it is getting younger and younger. Once a worldview has been formed it is very rarely changed. What happens is that when people read literature or see a TV program they filter the contents through their ‘worldview filter’. This filter prevents other views coming into consciousness that could contaminate the existing view. We see this for example in politics. If you have a left-wing view of the world, you will read a speech by a right-wing politician with some skepticism. Conversely, a speech by a politician with whom you are sympathetic will be taken at face value. Many people have an aversion to hard physical work. In fact this aversion is so common that it feeds a plethora of labour-saving devices: TV remote controls mean we don’t have to get up from the couch to change channels; escalators mean we don’t have to traipse up and down stairs; cars mean we don’t hav...

Living in the Now
2007-01-24 03:36:00
I’ve written previously about time. In one sense time is an illusion. Both the future and the fast don’t exist except in our imagination. There is no reality except the present, but the past and future mould us. Our previous experiences largely dictate how we act now due to preconceptions, habits and conditioned behaviour. The future moulds us due to our expectations, hopes and fears. All these are fantasies.In reality there is just the present. In every quantum* the whole universe is destroyed and a new one created. How the new universe differs from the previous one is an aspect of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which I’ve also discussed here.Advanced mystics have a consciousness that exists only in the present. This consciousness is like a point that has no dimensions. They can travel to any time, past or future and to any place whether in this universe or in the countless parallel universes. This mode of reality is available to everyone. It is living in the now, tot...
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Intuition
2007-01-21 23:23:00
Intuition is the aspect of the mind that gets information from beyond the physical realm. This information may be in the form of pictures, voices or even smells or tastes. Intuition is connected to daydreaming but daydreaming is an uncontrolled process. You get a jumble of pictures and images but you are unable to sift the useful information from the chaotic mess. Intuition works best in what scientists call the Alpha state. This is when the minute electrical brain signals slow down to around 8 – 13 Hz. It is the half-awake, half-asleep state that you can be in on waking up in the morning or before going to sleep at night. There is a dichotomy here. On the one hand the mind has to be in a relaxed state and on the other there has to be an element of control.In Greek mythology, Theseus had to slay the Minotaur, who lived in a labyrinth. All previous attempts had failed because once in the labyrinth it was impossible to find the way out. Theseus had been given a ball of thread and us...
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Intellectual Thinking
2007-01-20 19:52:00
We live in an age where words are considered to have power. In a recent UK version of ‘Big Brother’ a contestant, Jade Goody, was accused of racism when she made remarks to a well-known Indian Bollywood actress that referred to her race. Apparently Jade Goody has made a career out of being thick and of saying things without thinking, but this was considered so outrageous that it reached the highest levels of government.When I was at school in the UK many years ago I was often called such names as ‘four-eyes’ and ‘Jew Boy’. I never interpreted these as racist (or spectacle-ist) – I simply saw them as childish remarks. At schools in Australia, if you are tall you are likely to be called shorty or if red-haired, bluey. People don’t (usually) find these remarks offensive, so why do people find remarks that pick up on a prominent aspect of a person’s character to be so derogatory? If you were walking down the road and some kids ran passed and shouted out to you “big ...
More About: Intellectual , Thinking

Programming Ourselves to Fail
2007-01-19 22:38:00
People often limit themselves by their own expectations. Certainly up to 10 or 15 years ago, in England the class system meant that large sections of the population were programmed to limit their expectations in life. If you came from a working class home, your lot in life was to get a menial job and look forward to holidays and retirement. A friend of mine from a very working class background bought his mother a present from Harrods (the upmarket London department store). She returned it as she said “People like us don’t shop at Harrods”. She limited herself by her preconceptions. These preconceptions are so built into us that we are not aware of them. Although still present, the old class system is decaying in the UK. One of the reasons why Australians tend to be successful in the UK is that they are not limited by ideas about what their ‘class’ can do. Certainly in the past, a working class English person would have found it difficult to do business with someone from th...
More About: Programming

Everything Happens for a Reason
2007-01-16 14:38:00
It is sometimes said that “Everything happens for a reason”. The cynic would remark that you could always find a reason afterwards. Even if that were true, it is the difference between the optimist and the pessimist. An optimistic outlook is to see the bright side of everything. So, if an apparently ‘bad’ event happens, the optimist says that good will come out of it. Conversely, the pessimist sees the bad in everything and if an apparently ‘bad’ event happens, the pessimist says ‘told you so’. It makes them happy to be proved right.If this were the only reason for having an attitude that “Everything happens for a reason” then this would be a good enough reason. After all, optimists live longer than pessimists and lead healthier lives.However, there is more to it than this. Having the attitude that “Everything happens for a reason” means that there are no regrets and recriminations and no getting annoyed with people. For instance, if you get held up in traf...
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Video Surveillance and ID Cards
2007-01-15 13:23:00
I often hear the argument in favour of video surveillance, ID cards etc as being “If you are not doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear”. This is far from the truth.There are many cases of innocent people being accused of crimes because an automated system has identified them incorrectly. One story concerns A Teenage Boy Faces Decades in Prison For Visiting Sexually Explicit Web Sites but didn’t actually do what he was accused of. If you are accused of, for example rape through DNA testing and a prosecution lawyer tells the jury that there is a 50 million to one chance of it not being you, what jury is not going to convict? Even if the DNA was processed incorrectly and you have an alibi. Of course far more innocent people are cleared through DNA evidence but the problem is not with the technology, it is with the mechanical application of the technology without proper human intelligent intervention.You may be innocent now but laws change. For example, in Australia it is ...
More About: Video , Surveillance , Cards , Video Surveillance

Feminisation of Society
2007-01-12 14:03:00
There’s a trend in many countries towards a feminisation of society. More explicitly, a better term would be ‘womanisation’. The trend is not towards things that would usually be called feminine but towards a belittlement of men and men’s status in society. Of course, some people would argue that this is merely a healthy compensation to men’s predominant place in society. A symptom of this is television programs, for example in The Simpsons the men are a bit dumb whilst it is the women who really run the show. In one episode we are told that the reason is a deficient Y chromosome. The problem is that many children grow up without a strong male role model. In boys this means that they become unable to relate to the masculine side of their psyche. Sometimes if they have no respect for their father, who may be weak rather than abusive, they identify more with their feminine side and become transvestites. If the father is violent and abusive then they carry this role model ove...
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The Quintessential Element
2007-01-11 01:03:00
Some years ago in the UK, at the time of the general election there was an advert for a television current affairs program. It had a picture of Margaret Thatcher as the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz with the caption “If only I had a heart”, with the then leader of the opposition (I think James Callaghan) as the scarecrow and the caption “I only I had a brain”. This is a common view: left-wing people work from the emotions, right-wing people work from the intellect. One could add that instinctual people would be considered even more right-wing (“blast them to pieces”), and intuitive people even more left wing (“let’s relax and contact the spirits”). These generalisations have some truth but only in people who are not balanced. If people are predominantly emotional then certainly, decisions will be made on an emotional basis overriding rationally. Similarly, if people are predominantly rational then they will be cold and cut off from the emotional impact of their dec...
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Advanced Technology and Magic
2007-01-10 15:34:00
Arthur C Clark, the science fiction writer said that Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.In the book Sorcerer’s Apprentice Tahir Shah went on travels around India to find out the methods of cunning and deceit used by fakirs and other ‘gurus’. He mentions a showdown between two fakirs, I think from memory one was male and one female, which was a close run thing until the man brought out an innocent-looking pen, spoke to it and then, magically, the pen played back his command – in his own voice! This won the day. The technology appeared at that time to Indians who probably had never even seen a television, to be magic.If we examine some of the practices that are on, or beyond, the fringe of scientific respectability such as mind reading, telekinesis, spirits or prophesy it is apparent that they appear to be magic (which is why science is highly distrustful about them). In fact, they operate on a technology that is largely unknown to present da...
More About: Technology , Magic

On Learning
2007-01-09 13:53:00
It has been said that half the solution to understanding a problem is to define it. If we are plunged into trying to understand a completely new situation it is sometimes difficult to know what questions to ask. We may be given a number of facts but unless we understand the context it can be difficult to see how these facts relate to each other or to how we do our job. What we need is an overview. Eventually experience and assimilation gives us a context and then we can start asking the right questions. However, most learning is not done intellectually. There is a growing tendency in the West to teach all skills at university. The assumption is that all learning is intellectual, even though a common sense examination of this shows this to be wrong. For instance, when we fist learnt a language we didn’t do it at college learning grammar and pronunciation. We did it by imitation and trial and error. It takes most people far longer to learn a second language than it did the first and...
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Global Warming and Climate Change
2007-01-08 14:24:00
Global warming is in the media so much you would have to have come from Mars to not be aware that it is seen almost universally as a big issue. Almost. The nature of the problem is seen as follows:There are fluctuations in temperature across the Earth. Places are experiencing record high and low temperatures and unseasonable climate effects.These fluctuations are caused by a small increase in average temperature.The increase in temperature is caused by an increase in carbon dioxide, which causes a ‘greenhouse effect’.The increase in carbon dioxide is caused by man-made factors.All the media reports on global warming report factors that affect (1) – that is, that there is climate change across the world. As an example An Inconvenient Truth reports:The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level.The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has mor...
More About: Global Warming , Climate Change , Climate , Change , Global

The Authentic Self
2007-01-07 13:53:00
Dr Phil talks about what he calls ‘The Authentic Self’. Most people act according to what is required of them. In fact, most people are so cut off from their own true selves that they are unable to decide for themselves what their preferences are in such things as food or movies. The modern trend of following fashion exacerbates this tendency for people to get cut off from their own feelings and to replace these by the opinions of the group.For example, in schools there is considerable peer pressure for people to conform to a group. The group may be one of the many tribes that seem to populate schools: the ‘nerds’, the ‘Goths’, the cheerleaders etc. Entry to these groups is at a price: you have to sell your soul. But people are not aware of the value of their soul, so they sell it for the price of a compliment or even less. If you are in such a group and they rave about a new movie it is difficult to stand back from this and admit to yourself that you found it rather bor...

More on Assumptions
2007-01-06 16:21:00
One of my criticisms about scientists is that often they do not have an understanding of what science really is. I’ve heard it said that if something is accepted by scientists it must be correct as peer review guarantees this! This document here implies this (although it is really no more than an advertising brochure, devoid of facts). Many studies have been done which show that peer review is not objective (eg here and here). Peer review simply ensures that ideas that do not conform to the consensus are not published.Another myth is that science ‘proves’ things to be true. Not only does science not prove things – it simply indicates that in certain controlled situations we can expect certain results – but also it raises the question of what we mean by proof. Proof is simply what convinces us. But the issue I want to raise here is that of assumptions. I previously wrote that science makes a number of assumptions even in the course of a simple experiment. I got a number of ...
More About: Assumptions

Science and Randomness
2007-01-05 15:03:00
Randomness is a common idea in modern science. For example, Darwinism postulates that evolution takes place through random mutations and quantum theory postulates that the movement of particles follows a ‘probability wave’. On average the movement will follow predictable, defined rules but any individual particle has a movement that is random. It must have been frustrating for early scientists (most of whom were real scientists in that they formed theories based on experimentation) who were up against the established church hierarchy. Church leaders had their own criteria for determining how things worked and for deciding the truth or falsehood of new ideas. These criteria were based on their preconceived notions of how things worked. Reference could also be made to the Bible or previous edicts. One important point was that the authority of the church could not be undermined. Scientists found they could answer many questions that had previously been attributed simply to the will...
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