Why Are We So Gullible? — How Good Thinking Goes Bad
Meeting Minutes for March 22, 2006; #204
Announcements
IT’S BEYOND BELIEF: That is the motto of Camp Quest, what the American Camping
Association calls the first summer camp in the history of the US for the children
of humanists and other freethinkers. FA member David Cleveland reminded us that
Camp Quest of Michigan is in its third year of operation and is accepting donations
to help offset fees for campers and is still accepting camper registrations but
it is filling up fast. David reported that there are currently 6 paid campers benefiting
from the generous donations of support. This year it will run from August 13–August
20. Camp Quest originated in Kentucky by Edwin Kagan, himself an Eagle Scout, who
saw the need to serve the youth of non-religious families by providing all the standard
activities of a summer camp but with an emphasis on science, natural studies and
sharpening critical thinking skills. Now it has spread to Michigan. For more information
contact via e-mail: campquest-mi@comcast.net.
CHECK YOUR CHAKRAS AT THE DOOR: The next Freethought Meditation Group meeting is
on April 2, 6PM, at Luke G’s house (1416 Wilcox Park Dr., SE, GRMI). For more
information on Mindfulness Meditation, grounded in science and reason, check the
website: www.freethoughtassociation.org/meditation
or contact coordinator, Jeremy B. at modern.dharma@gmail.com or call 706-2033. The
next upcoming FMG dates are April 9, 16, and 23.
FROM THE DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND TO THE LORD’S FIELD: This hints at just
some of the range of films shown at Jason P’s home when he hosts the Freethought
Movie Nights. The next one is April 5 at 7PM and will feature the movie At Play
in the Fields of the Lord. BYOB and a snack to share. Please RSVP to jpittman@backpacker.com
or phone (616) 634-2471 for details and/or directions.
PICKERS, POETS, PAINTERS & PENSUERS: The annual Freethought & the Arts event is
coming up! This is scheduled for our next regular meeting date on April 12. This
year it will be set up a bit more like a fair with musicians gathered by the stage,
and those who wish to will take turns on stage with a mic. Musicians who so desire
this, may play together in a more improvisational manner, sans mic, between stage
performances. Visual artists will have tables arranged along the sides of the meeting
room to display their work. Audience members will be free to stroll about table
to table, or by the stage, as their interests impel them and performers will be
open to engaging the audience for interaction, rather than the exclusive stage performances
in strict sequences and a separate question and answer period following as in past
Arts Nights. To sign up or for more information, contact this secretary and event
coordinator at: charles@freethoughtassociation.org.
WOMEN WHO KNOW THEIR PLACE—EVERYWHERE! April 15 at 10AM is the date and time
for the next Freethought Women’s Group at Jennifer and Amanda’s house.
For details contact Jennifer at musiqueforlife@gmail.com or 616-706-2029.
SOCIALEIGHTS: May 20 is when the next Dinner for Eight will take place. These are
Saturday evenings for adults to gather for drinks, dinner and good conversation.
If you’re interested, contact Jan V. via e-mail: Jabivo@aol.com.
ENVIRONMENTAL REACTIVISTS: Occasionally we have members who wish to attend meetings
but are precluded from this due to physical reactions that they have from environmental
chemicals they are sensitive to. This is known as Multiple Chemical Sensitivities
(MCS), where even ordinary products like hair sprays, deodorants, perfumes, soap,
skin powders, lotions, etc. can trigger real and significant reactions—much
like allergies—in those with this condition. There is an increasing awareness
of this condition in society much as there has been for adverse reactions to certain
food substances. Please consider this by helping to strive for the most air contaminate
free environment for our meeting space as possible.
FREETHINKERS INVADING LAKES, PARKS & FARMS! Other Freethought Association social
activities coming up include the annual Spring Fling at the Seaver Farm, hosted
by Jeff and Cathy, Freethought at the Lake, hosted by Bill and Jan at their Lake
Michigan cottage, and the annual Freethought Picnic, coordinated by yours truly;
this year held at the Rogue River Park. For more information on these and above-mentioned
happenings, check our website or calendar listings distributed at our meetings.
We also have some well-known special guest speakers lined up in coming meetings
that you will not want to miss.
Presentation
OUR TOPIC for this meeting was Why Are We So Gullible? How Good Thinking Goes Bad,
presented by Dr. Gregory Forbes, Director of the Evolution Education Institute,
Professor of Biology GRCC and Freethought Association Board member. Dr. Forbes has
a broad education in the biological sciences, earning a B.S. in Wildlife and Natural
Resources Management from California Polytechnic University, a M.S. in Biological
Sciences from CA Polytechnic and a PhD from the Department of Zoology and the Department
of Tropical Environmental Studies at James Cook University in Australia. He also
holds professional certification as a Certified Wildlife Biologist.
Dr. Forbes is a Professor of Biological Sciences at Grand Rapids Community College
where he also served as the Director of its Science Education Center. He served
as the Education Director for the Michigan Evolution Education Initiative, a state-wide
initiative designed to help teachers to effectively teach evolution. He now serves
as the Director of the Evolution Education Institute, an initiative that expands
the Michigan project nationally. Dr. Forbes is the National Course Director for
the National Science Foundation’s Chautaugua course on evolution and evolution
education for college and university professors. Additionally, he serves as the
Evolution Education Specialist for the 4,00 member Michigan Science Teachers Association,
which in 2004 named him College & Science Teacher of the Year. Ironically, Forbes
is also a member of the Young, Flat Earth Creationists Society...JOKE!—Just
seeing if you’re paying attention!
Since 1993, Dr. Forbes has served as an Editorial Board member for Skeptic Magazine,
an international publication promoting a scientific approach to addressing social,
philosophical and scientific issues with a significant emphasis upon evolutionary
thought, education, and inquiry. He is also a founding member and current Board
member of the Michigan Citizens for Science, a citizen’s group that works
to ensure quality science education in the public classroom. Dr. Forbes’ publications
include a regular column entitled Essays on Evolution & the Nature of Science in
the MSTA Journal. He was recently honored with the Civil Libertarian of the Year
Award by the Michigan ACLU and has had a full speaking engagement schedule focusing
on evolution advocacy issues, how science is done and how creationism, in all its
manifestations, is a different way of knowing from, but not a part of, the scientific
endeavor.
Chairman Jeff S. suggested that Dr. Forbes may wish to apprise us of current evolution
education challenges (or opportunities, as Greg is known for euphemistically terming
it) now underway before beginning his main presentation. One such situation involving
intelligent design creationism (the newest species of non-scientific creationism
to evolve, while actually only rehashing 2-century old Paley-esque meritless arguments)
fashioned to try to push its faith-based teachings into Michigan high school science
classrooms, regards the recent House Bill 5606. Having nearly identical language
and the same goals as a previous bill, HB 5251, it strives to get intelligent design
ideas to be approved by school board consensus, bypassing the National Science Education
set of standards for general curriculum study and our Establishment Clause law regarding
the separation of State and Church, so as to undermine solid scientific evolutionary
theory in high school biology instruction. He mentioned the recent Kitzmiller v
Dover court decision made by District Judge John Jones, who held in the Dover, PA
case that intelligent design is a religious view, not a scientific theory.
Turning to his presentation topic, Dr. Forbes said that the lack of critical thinking
skills that so many of us bring to issues we encounter presents great challenges
(and opportunities) but that even though we have advanced in the breadth and depth
of our knowledge base significantly over time, we are not really getting much better
at evaluating the information that comes to us, in a skeptical, rational manner.
The empirical approach to the world should be broadened to encompass the lay public
in the same way as it does the working scientist.
He discussed what he called a Gullibility Continuum, with utter credulity at one
end of the spectrum and cynicism at the other end. Dr. Forbes explored with us the
difference between skepticism and cynicism. Skepticism is an approach that employs
critical thinking in evaluation of information and requires solid evidence in order
to accept claims made. To paraphrase variations on this idea from several notable
skeptics: I will believe the most outlandish sounding claim IF there is sufficient
evidence to support it. The skeptic uses her toolbox of skills to separate unfounded
from well-supported claims and uses this information to navigate better in the world.
It is a method, not a position. The cynic, by contrast, does not use neutral critical
thinking skills in evaluation of the validity of claims and practices, but instead
is beset by a clouding of reason due to his personal bias that he sets out to show
is the correct stance. He will say: See! I KNEW it was bunk! He mines the data to
find reasons to support his distrust of ideas that he is biased against. One writer
said in a memorable, if not scientifically formulated, way: The skeptic embraces
the light while the cynic curses the darkness. As Dr. Forbes noted, we must seek
ways to move away from the gullibility end of the spectrum while not veering all
the way into the cynicism of the curmudgeon.
Dr. Forbes next showed us how college freshmen in West Michigan stack up nationally
as to their level of science literacy and degree of credulity that they labor under.
Belief in ESP (extra-sensory perception) was at 59% as opposed to 46% nationally.
For ghosts it was 44%/15%. For astrology our W. MI collegiates fared better than
the national average: 30%/52%. Witches: 26%/19% (This secretary recalls being floored
by a West Michigan resident who wrote to the Public Pulse section of the G. R. Press,
attacking the Harry Potter series of books, saying that he thought we got rid of
the witch problem in society back in old Salem!). Clairvoyance is big among this
region’s freshmen:61% as contrasted to 19% nationally. On the other hand they
are slightly lower in belief in effective communication with the dead: 32%/38% and
in a literal Atlantis existing beneath the waves: 30%/33%. Some 38% believe in mind
reading and close to a third (30%) believe in reincarnation, while a whopping 84%
believe in deja’ vu and 73% in non-clinical hypnotism. That is, Dr. Forbes
elaborated, the variety exemplified by someone under hypnotic suggestion barking
like a dog on all fours and then coming out of it without memory of this behavior.
Others included palm reading (20%), the productivity of seances (22%), psychokinesis—that
is, moving objects by some mysterious force of mind (24%); healing by touch= 40%;
the Noachian Flood (72%—as opposed to 65% nationally); UFOs at 54%/22%, etc.
We were reminded that those polled were not Billy Bob whittling away on the porch
of his back woods shack, but were college students in our region of Michigan. The
national figures are not especially heartening either, however.
The always enthusiastic and dynamic Dr. Forbes was especially entertaining and active
in this presentation as he performed several acts of wonder. He was able to show
that even the skeptics and non-blind faith types that so much of our membership
is composed of were not immune to being taken in at some point or at least left
with a head-scratching: how-did-he DO-that (!?) amazement. It was expected that
different people would figure out different tricks but that most of us would be
fooled by one or more of them. Citations of these performances will be scattered
throughout this summary.
His first act involved a series of mental arithmetic problems where they seemed
unconnected and not leading to any predictable outcome. Part of it had one create
an animal out of the corresponding numbers that emerging from our mental math (such
as A=1, 2= B and so on) and think of a country that begins with another corresponding
letter to another problem. In the end he said something along the lines of: How
silly! There are no kangaroos in Denmark! This is what most people came up with.
Before the next performance, we examined errors in reasoning by types. The Type
I Error involves accepting a falsehood. The example Dr. Forbes gave was someone
telling another that quicksand was safe to cross and in committing this type of
error, the recipient of that claim blindly accepts that erroneous claim to his/her
detriment. The Type II Error initially seems to be much the same as Type I but there
are shades of difference. The Type II reasoning error is where one rejects a truth
presented. The example given, using the quicksand-crossing scenario again, was one
where someone informs you that quicksand is not actually safe to cross and you cross
it anyway, having rejected the truth of the claim presented.
Much of our false reasoning stems from heeding our gut feelings. Many things simply
FEEL right even though no rational logic backs it up. In choosing lottery numbers,
people generally follow some system that they feel will give them the edge or have
some innate luck embedded in it. But in actuality, whether one selects one’s
social security number, the birth dates of one’s children, or any other personally
significant combination, there is no more chance of success than if one had simply
chosen the sequence 1,2,3,4,5,6... both have the same success outcome probability.
We also discussed how, in sporting events, there are many who go through the same
rituals as they had on a winning day, feeling that will increase their chances for
a repeat victory. In another presentation he gave, Dr. Forbes spoke of how this
sort of errant reasoning could be seen in the lab with other species. Pigeons that
had food pellets introduced in a tray randomly would come to repeat a certain stance
or wing movement, or head cocking that they had done just prior to the food pellet
being released. The resulting combination of movements was quite elaborate but no
less logical than wearing the same underpants before the big game, for instance.
This sort of reasoning fallacy is often rendered in Latin as post hoc, ergo propter
hoc, or, after this, because of this. A certain action coming before a specific
result is not always necessarily an example of direct causation.
Belief in the power of crystals or the Ouiji board; or what phrenology or the creases
on one’s palms can tell about a person’s character or what fate may
befall the bearer of such creases or head bumps; what a pattern of stars portends,
etc. is not only not empirical but is not even logical. There is no natural mechanism
involved in producing the effects claimed. Empiricism is knowledge gained through
observation, the senses, or experience. Such knowledge does not necessarily have
to be derived from one’s own direct observation. We have knowledge that our
planet is part of a heliocentric system (not a geocentric one) without having to,
ourselves, travel in a vessel into space and observe that Earth travels around the
sun, rather than the other way around. However, empirically gained knowledge always
links up, under natural laws, to all other bodies of knowledge. In another talk,
Dr. Forbes noted that since evolutionary theory is fed and feeds back into a vast
number of other scientific fields (chemistry, geology, paleontology, zoology, etc.,
etc., etc.) and that this in itself ids the measure used to determine its robustness,
that should this theory be shown wrong, all the other fields would have to crumble
as well.
Dogmaticism, Dr. Forbes explained, is where the truth of a claim is based on the
assumed expertise of an expert or unquestioned source (whether this is an individual
or a sacred text, etc.). He gave an example of how this can benefit the unquestioning
believer in the authoritative claim, or, conversely, lead one down false paths.
An example he gave was when he spoke of the child who reaches for a flame on the
household stove top. If his mom warns him that he will burn himself, he will obediently
abide by her command to stop. He is not reasoning in this case, at least not beyond
figuring that this is MOM telling him that fire will hurt him—the ultimate
authority figure in his life up to that point. He may later test this claim empirically
and find the warning to be based on correct information. However, this same authority
figure may also tell her child about the reality of Santa Claus. When this is learned
to be a false claim it does not undermine her correct admonitions but she is not
to be seen as infallible in all claims made just based on blind obedience to authority.
One may see such dogmatism in statements such as: because I told you to, that’s
why, or: because the Bible says so).
Later, Dr. Forbes, in responding to a question from the audience, noted that humanity
evolved in an environment where survival took up the vast majority of one’s
time. Life was short, so one’s experts were not wizened sages who had the
luxury of the time-taking testing of claims empirically, but were themselves young
and busy working to stay alive. Humans therefore had to believe what was told to
them dogmatically, rather than by empirically-based reasoning. In another presentation
to us, Dr. Forbes talked about the classic phobias people have—such as fear
of lightning and snakes for examples—that were wise to fear in our environment
of evolutionary adaptedness, but became preserved in us even though we now live
in a manner that makes these innate fears misguided. Meanwhile we, ironically, have
no problem hurtling around at high speeds in two ton metal conveyances as these
things and this mode of travel had not been part of our past.
We also looked at other influences that promote an uncritical acceptance of beliefs.
One of which is how the antiquity of beliefs fosters adherence to them. Copernicus
was bucking a very long tradition of belief when he found evidence for a heliocentric
system and he met with opposition in direct proportion to the antiquity of the belief
that he was shattering of an Earth centered system. Another factor that may come
into play is the prestige of the professor or the age of the claimant. While credentials
matter and with age comes experience, these are not fixed and perfect criteria on
which to base one’s blind faith upon.
People also tend to want to be on the bandwagon. It is a more comfortable and attractive
place to be. No one wants to be left behind (just ask Tim LaHaye) when it appears
that everyone else is experiencing positive results going along with the herd. While
it was not discussed specifically at this meeting, this too may be—in part
at least—a result of influences from our ancestral conditions. The lone animal
that does not follow the herd in flight, even though only one or two of the herd
may have actually observed the predator lurking in the grasses, will be picked off
going its own way and carefully scrutinizing the matter for itself. All throughout
the animal kingdom, including our closest genetic relatives, we see that following
the lead of others, free of independent examination of the matter, leads to success
for the individuals in the group.
In another talk, we looked at how belief in terrifying invisible beings (ghosts,
demons, etc.) may have originated and grown in the gene pool. Our ancestors who
had the greatest flight response from an unseen predator detected only from a rustling
of foliage or strange sound may have avoided danger~the greater the terror was in
their minds—the greater the response. Those individuals that would have rationally
examined the circumstances behind the sounds and rustlings would not have survived
long and left fewer descendants behind with similarly skeptical thinking methods,
while those that envisioned strange and extra-naturally terrible beings would live
to breed another day.
At this time Professor Forbes showed us a famous and often reprinted pyramid of
learning that purports to show how people learn best. It depicts lectures as being
the least helpful, followed by reading (about 10%); the next band being represented
by audiovisual input (20%). Demonstration was further down in the wider based band
coming in at 30%, while discussion drew in larger numbers of learners, etc. This
seems fine; it feels right. The problem was that it turns out that there had never
actually been any research done to base the pyramid upon! It looked good and was
mindlessly copied and accepted, over and over and over.
The late Stephen Jay Gould dealt with how certain icons—what his sometime-nemesis
Dawkins might have termed memes—come to be the standard for representation
of a larger concept in the minds of the masses, while never really being critically
examined. His favorite example was the human evolution grouping showing a very simian
looking being at the left walking in profile, followed by a more upright brutish
chap, then a hirsute man, and finally a modern suburban SUV driving (we imagine)
male probably heading off to the office, at the terminating point at the right.
Of course evolution is not a linear process and not strictly progressive with ourselves
being what was longed for/striven for by Nature as the pinnacle of creation. But
there is immediate, almost universal, recognition anytime some version of this graphic
example is shown in anything from ads to textbooks. It is probably the most well-known
example of progress through change. Its famous antecedent was The Great Chain of
Being, and later, the Ladder of Creation, and has caused some uniformed people to
think that evolution means that humans came from (rather than being genetically
and evolutionarily related to) apes.
The old saw goes: seeing is believing, but a different way of saying this that perhaps
captures it better may be: We see what we believe we are supposed to see. And while
eyewitness accounts of occurrences are highly regarded in the collective mind of
the public, they are notoriously unreliable. Being highly visual beings with large
and complex brains, we take in the greatest amount of all of our information through
our eyes and the processing of our visual experience is formed from various streams,
all contributing to the resulting gestalt that is our personal interpretation of
reality. Visual cues that lead to specific conclusions in our interpretation of
the environment leads to successful results often enough to become part of our species’
collective frame of reference. Converging lines and more blues cause us to see distance,
for instance. In a famous structural optical illusion, two people appear to be standing
in the same spatial distance from us in a room but one is very large while the other
person is tiny. The floor is a checkerboard one painted in such a way that the perspective
is forced and the linear cues (including structural ones) are distorted. One person
is actually much closer than the other, making one appear to dwarf the other. Professor
Forbes showed us a number of other optical illusions that fool us in this same way~taking
advantage of how we interpret visual data to produce one way of looking at something
with inherent cues—which leads to an outcome that seems to fly in the face
of that natural interpretation. We can be caused to see motion in static images,
lines converging or diverging that are actually parallel, and so on.
Even our stereoscopic vision, which aids us so well in the world usually, can give
us a false impression of what we are seeing. The wallpaper effect is one example
of this. A flat plane with a repeated pattern of uniform shapes may appear to be
a wall with the designs floating slightly over the surface or to have strong three-dimensionality
introduced into their flat shapes. This is caused by our brains getting feedback
from our eye muscles telling us that, correctly, that our eyes are not converging
on a singular point. This is interpreted as viewing distance. However, when we see
a split identical image, this occurs from a hyperconverged single image (as when
you make your finger come closer to your eyes and it breaks into two optically)
that is read as being very close. Our brains interpret the visual data of two identical
shapes close to each other as a single split one, yet we are also led to experience
simultaneous distance, so the reconciled result is three dimensionality made from
what is actually a flat design. Three D glasses capitalize on this as well. Each
eye sees a slightly shifted image, which the brain interprets as stereoscopically
viewed distance and therefore perspective from this parallax is heaped on those
flat images as well.
Dr. Forbes also gave examples of how we see sunrises and sunsets even though we
modern folk know better. One does not know where to begin with the flaws in the
biblical story where God stops the sun from traversing around the Earth to aid a
favored human in battle. In presentations at other times/to other audiences, Professor
Forbes has discussed how some people assume that males have one fewer rib in their
skeletal makeup than females are equipped with, due to the Genesis accounts (yes
plural~there are more than one, and they differ significantly from each other) of
Creation; one of which tells of the first woman being formed out of the rib of the
first man. Even when shown a skeleton they will stubbornly persist in their belief,
assuming that the skeleton was specially constructed (probably by one of those godless
evolutionary biologists).
In this presentation, he talked about how even college students he encounters as
a professor believe they have blue blood since that is how it appears to them and
not knowing about the interactions of light traversing through semi-translucent
dermis and the changes in hue that result. Asked how it is that people bleed red
blood they will quickly reply that when Smurf blood meets with oxygen, it transforms
into a red color. And vacu-container blood draws that become filled with red blood?
Hmmm.
Data Interpretation Errors were next discussed. Numbers are impressive to people.
Much goes by without scrutiny, such as a statement like half of Americans are below
average IQ. No thought istypically given to the impossibility of 50% being below
average. It just seems to have a certain internal sense to it. Yogi Berra was good
at making flawed statements that still rang true on some level: No one goes there
anymore because it’s too crowded. In some instances of fallacious reasoning
when one regards statistics, the problem arises when one does not take into account
the sample size differences. One real life example made it seem that teens are involved
in far more car crashes than senior citizens, and since it plays into conventional
wisdom, few dig deeper into the matter. However, once adjusted for the relative
population sizes used, the outcome actually reverses.
It used to be just the tabloids such as the Weekly World News (this was the example
Dr. Forbes showed us, complete with a bat boy emblazoning the garish cover page)
that gave us seeing-is-believing type photos of two-headed Elvis-Martian hybrids
and other reality-challenged improbablilities. Now however with so much digital
image-enhancing equipment available to more regular people, Photoshop programs that
can be readily installed, etc., it is far more commonplace to find the most bizarre
chimeras and distortions of what can be manipulated to appear to be photographic
reality. Some rather amusing ones that our presenter, the operator of Natural Selections
Natural History Expeditions never saw in the wild with his tour groups, included
cows that appeared to be leaping from the ocean waters in near perfect mimicry of
dolphin finesse, and other such examples.
This brings in the very question of reality as it comes to us via our senses. Artists
who strive to replicate reality in a trompe l’oeil fashion are actually reproducing,
in a sufficiently successful manner, the same visual cues that the outside world
provides. It is not so much copying the objects as it is mimicking cues that leads
to those amazing images. The artist (those who work in a hyper-realistic fashion)
must learn to over-ride their mental computations and instead reproduce an uninterpreted
sensory experience. When we see a red barn there is actually no red to be found
in it, yet we take in the mauves, salmons, grays and soft blues and mentally reassemble
it according to context cues and expectations. The result is that we see a red barn.
If one isolated any particular spot of the barn, however, without foreknowledge
of what the object is and without other contextual cues~one would be at a loss as
to what it is they are seeing and would never label any random spot they saw barn-red.
I had often heard, growing up, the term photo-real as being the epitome of the perfect
representation of reality. However, the camera distorts and takes in the world in
a different way from how we do. It is a different, rather than better or closer,
reality from what we see unaided. Artists like Chuck Close and some from the photo-realist
and magic realist school strove to paint reality not as WE see it, but instead as
faithful copies of camera reality. Our eyes adjust to depth of field swiftly but
a camera image has a fixed one, so regions outside of it become distorted in the
varying depths of modular perspective. A protruding nose in a C. Close painting
may be a sharply defined network of capillaries and pores while the ears would be
ill-defined blurred out forms. We see greenish flesh tones and perceive it as a
beige-pink, whether interpreting reality or a photo but the photo holds the image
long enough to view it unfiltered if one has that mental skill. A camera representation
of a yawing canyon scene is rather disappointing, but we gasp in wonder when we
see it with our eyes (really with our brains), as we are forming a gestalt and mentally
enhancing the cues that come to us. When I would take a picture of something that
I wanted to re-create as a painting in my studio, I could seldom see what it was
that drew me to the objects/scene until I made a drawing from the photo, which would
restore the original excitement. I would then work from the drawing that captured
my own mental representation of the scene, rather than the photographic one. I have
worked in a painterly pixelated fashion to represent lower resolution digital imagery,
again, painting the cue or effect rather than the scene.
Past artists such as Degas delighted in representing scenes in his pastels and paintings
as cameras might capture them, such as having large expanses of emptiness and figures
almost off the canvas; scenes and figures cropped incorrectly by painterly standards,
but just as one sees in candid photographs of non-static scenes. Cezanne was masterful
in using his intuitive knowledge of how we perceive the world, sometimes breaking
an ellipse into two parts just as our eyes actually see them before being reconstituted
seamlessly in the mind, or would put a green stripe down the middle of a face as
an intentionally over-emphasized but well seen version of how a face with a light
from the side and a bounced light from the opposite side appears; Monet was called
only an eye because of his stunning virtuosity at stripping scenes of all the automatic
cue-interpretation we do. This is actually a very brainy, rather than optical exercise.
The more light that is put on an object, the more distorted it becomes. But lowering
illumination also distorts. What is the precise illumination quantity for true reality?
This becomes especially thorny when we realize that when the edges of an object
we know from context are lost in darkness, we do not merely assume that the edge
continues in a predictable fashion but we actually SEE this invisible line. Objects
close to each other take on each other’s colors and we realize that there
really are no object boundaries, except for those we visually construct, again,
out of the cues given. There are no outlines in nature but our minds are especially
adept at adding falsely enhanced contrasts and edges. We look at a TV screen showing
areas that we read as containing the deepest black, but when one thinks a moment,
one realizes that what we perceive is the color of the screen itself. This effect
worked just fine in those dim greenish grey screens of older sets too. So again,
with sufficient mimicry of visual cues whether in a painting or a PhotoShop digital
image or CGI in films, we believe that what we are seeing is real. To turn a common
phrase on its head, it is not so much that what you see is what you get, as much
as it is what you get (your cognitive interpretation) is not what you see (a precise
analogue of what passes through the cornea and strikes the retina).
Dr. Forbes performed examples of cold readings, much as other skeptics have done,
to show that the putative extra sensory, occult or supernatural powers claimed by
many hucksters is really just knowing how to play the game, knowing the tricks and
knowing what fallacious reasoning people are especially prone to. Dr. Shermer (Skeptics
Society)and others have expressed the belief that not all psychics, spiritualists,
mentalists, etc. are operating with the intention of deluding others. Some probably
believe in their own powers as genuine and many really feel they are helping others
with their gift, rather than taking advantage of others’ gullibility. Randi
spoke of dowsers and how he thinks nearly all of them genuinely believe in their
ability to detect tings with a stick held in their hands.
Professor Forbes used a system to randomly select audience members to assist him
in his performances. He appeared to do a remote viewing of the contents of a randomly
selected page of a randomly selected book; stiffen one individual into a board -like
rigidity sufficient to allow another to tread upon this hypnotized subject, appear
to thrust a long needle through his own arm and cause another individual to mentally
weld his fingers to his own forehead so that others could not pull them off; and
correctly identified which closed envelope held contents belonging to various people
in the audience, among other amazing displays.
In some cases, we tend to go from small logical assessments to large leaps that
are not justified. As mentioned earlier, therapeutic hypnosis has merit, but making
someone bark on all fours through suggestion is bogus. Sometimes we misapply the
effective agency of a therapy in relation to other natural world effects. A person
left alone in a hospital with cursory checks and doctors glancing more at the charts
than the patient may not fare as well as another who is talked to, comforted, touched
and engaged by a non-medically trained person who is using alternative medicine
in trying to help him. But should the latter example be used as evidence that the
healer aligned the patient’s energy streams correctly by expert use of her
aura (as an example) and that this is what worked? Another example is the classic
one of the alternative medicine cure taking three days to work. A majority of people
who have colds or other minor ailments will come to be restored to health in that
span of time anyway, but credit may be given to the alternative medicine. A person
may to be told to get bed rest, eat nutritionally, and—oh yes—wear a
crystal amulet. What effect did the amulet have in the individual’s recovery?
Both magicians and paranormalists use misdirection but we assist them further by
our tendency to recall the hits and forget the misses. The spiritualist medium may
do a great deal of fishing and observe unspoken reactions or say very general things
that elicit an affirmation. Sometimes subjects (marks?) go out of their way to help
the struggling medium. The psychic may say he is seeing a uniform and if this does
not get a vigorous nod but he persists in his assertion, the subject may try to
find some way for the bit of information to fit, and come up with something useful
for the psychic. It then looks as though the psychic was correct. When a subject
is being told that grandma is looking down from the other side, loving him and wanting
him to know how beautiful heaven is and how happy she is now, the subject wants
to do everything he can to (often unconsciously) to help him, being favorably disposed
to the person giving all this comforting news.
John Edwards, of Crossing Over fame, was mentioned. Edwards’ televised program
is sometimes edited in the studio to mismatch responses and questions to make it
appear that there were more hits. Also stage assistants linger nearby before guests
go on, no doubt absorbing useful information to share with Edwards. Often during
the performance, names, initials, suggestions, clues, etc. are cast out. Something
eventually will get a bite. When a name is incorrectly psychically divined, guests
often helpfully supply the correct one. In one case the name Celia got no nibble
but the guest said there was a Zia. Close enough! The audience sees a hit! Other
times if—no matter what—the cold reading gets no positive responses
as the putative psychic doggedly ventures down the same path but then finally there
is a hit, all the preceding misses and unproductive mining are simply swept away
and ignored while the new information is plundered. Amazingly this is seldom noticed.
Often statements are formed as questions so that when they are hits, even when only
vaguely and obliquely correct, people feel that this was asserted. A good working
knowledge of life expectancy, war years, what medical conditions are to be expected
to crop up in different decades of life, etc. are useful to the psychic reader.
When a loved one has died (or crossed over, in the medium parlance) everything said
by the psychic is then fair game, since it cannot be tested. If he says that he
sees that the departed one has auburn hair and the deceased was a brunette~well,
in Heaven it is now auburn.! Similarly, obese people may be slim, the short are
now tall, etc.
The psychic may say he or she is seeing a Daniel... There may well be a Daniel or
Dan or Danny in the family~or even a good friend of the family who crossed over
by that name. The psychic may state s/he is seeing a uniform. Someone in the entire
family who is dead is likely to have served in the military. Or s/he may claim s/he
is seeing the chest area... something about the chest... and a hospital... Well
many people die in hospitals and most have something go wrong where the majority
of vital organs are located... and in all cases of death the heart and lungs stop
working!
In one excerpt of a reading that I came across, a Doris Stokes (the psychic) pulled
out all the stops to derive maximum emotion (when thinking emotionally one has a
harder time getting one’s skeptic cap to fit properly) by saying that the
dead boy they had been discussing was looking for flowers. He wanted to give flowers
to his mother. Lots of dreamy sighs were evoked by this Hallmark moment. Stokes
believed the woman she was revealing this to was the mother. Unfortunately, the
woman stated that she was not the boy’s mom. This should have closed down
belief in the so-called psychic’s abilities, but instead Stokes merely said:
No... but YOU know his mother? To which she replied Yes. The no was stated as if
this was a foregone conclusion by Stokes. Further she recovered by noting that she
(Stokes) had never said the woman before her was the mother and added to the dead
lad’s narrative by saying that he wanted to get flowers to his mom because
otherwise she wouldn’t believe he was there (Heaven). She also offered that
Daniel is a beautiful child. There is no way to be wrong in this. Most people would
not contradict her saying that no, the child was a wretched beast of a lad—and
anyway~even if he HAD been appearance-challenged—in Heaven, of course, he
has the countenance of an angel.
Edwards uses the approach of working with larger audiences often. When he experiences
misses, as he often does, he merely explains it away by that ubiquitous woo-woo
catch word: energies. He is, you see, picking up energies from others in the audience
and with a large enough number of people more will stick. He asks IF, rather than
states THAT, a person has crossed over. He begins to fish and he reads the nod or
head shake and quickly lunges in before the subject verbalizes—before it can
appear he has erred, or to capitalize on locating fertile ground. If a nod is begun,
he will act as if his question was a statement by seeming to continue, seamlessly,
into a statement about what the deceased is now saying to him.
Even those who have developed sharp critical thinking skills sometimes let down
their skeptical guard. Sometimes we just want to. Although this was not mentioned,
I thought of how we all enjoy telling scary stories around a campfire, and this
is entertaining and emotion provoking even when one is a thoroughgoing skeptic.
Sometimes, Professor Forbes noted, we want to beat the conspiracy and so we suspend
better judgment in order to make it happen. Many readers will be familiar with the
Mrs. Fields cookie urban legend where the secret recipe was given out online to
get back at this big bad company for supposedly doing some lady wrong somewhere.
Dr. Forbes spoke of Kevin Trudeau, the entrepreneur who wrote Natural Cures They
Don’t Want You To Know About. He has been called a confidence trickster, a
deceptive marketer, a snake oil salesman and charlatan. He claims that the FDC and
other agencies and big companies do not want you to know about the cures he shares
because it would cut into their profits... but HE will tell us the truth... HE will
help us beat the system and stick it to the large corporations! Our hero!
Another tactic used to deceive people is to try to legitimize claims by misusing
science. Science is known for its success, so when hucksters are not using mysterious
supernatural energies or crystal power, they will invoke something that sounds like
science to bolster their claims. We must keep vigilant and be ready to pull back
the curtain and reveal the truth hiding behind science-y sounding claims. One product
Dr. Forbes mentioned in this regard was Hair Max; a hair restoration treatment that
involves lasers. Hair, according to the promoters of this product, like all living
things, responds to light. The treatment allegedly rejuvenates hair cells and promotes
growth. These claims leave out the fact that hair is composed of dead shafts of
protein, not living cells. This is why all those B sci fi movies have it wrong when
someone is cloned from a clipped strand of hair. When used for DNA analysis, the
forensic scientist must have hair plucked out of the scalp with the bulb of cells
at the end, to analyze it by that method. But people do not want to be left out
or miss some opportunity that others have seized, as mentioned earlier. So they
will more eagerly accept the statements about something special, that there is some
conspiracy behind to quash, that will get them a leg up.
Professor Forbes warned us against thinking that causation and correlation are the
same thing. An amusing approach he used to demonstrate this was in discussing bread
consumption in regards to other things. Crimes are committed typically within 24
hours of consuming bread; bread is a known gateways substance, leading to the consumption
of fatty or sugary foods like butter, peanut butter, jelly, etc.; the amount of
bread eaten in the 18th century led to a lower life expectancy; bread eaters make
up the largest percentage of the prison population, etc.. This reminded me of what
the creators of the Flying Spaghetti Monster put together. The FSM was postulated
to confound those who wish to promote Intelligent Design and therefore a Designer.
They pushed, tongue in cheek, to get their soaring pasta creature put alongside
Intelligent Design as another alternative to scientific biological evolution, since
both the Intelligent Designer (read the God of the Bible) and the FSM have an equal
degree of merit, based on evidence or explanatory power for natural world phenomena.
As to correlation and causation, they also postulated, again satirically, the correlation
between the number of pirates and global warming. When there were more pirates there
was lower global warming; as global warming increased, the pirate population decreased.
There MUST be a connection, right? Another example is the special talisman that
protects its bearer from stampeding rhinos. Does it work? Well, you don’t
see any stampeding rhinos do you!?
There is also the Fallacy of False Alternatives that Dr. Forbes spoke of. An example
he gave was that of something that barks, wags its tail and has four legs. Is it
A) a bird? Or B) a fish?or C)? One naturally assumes it to be C). But then this
alternative is revealed to be a whale, for instance. The take home lesson is that
if it is not one thing, this does NOT mean that it has to be some other specific
option only. Professor Forbes uses this discussion of the FFA in his talks on the
creation/evolution debate. Supporters of creationism will often commit this category
of fallacy when they say that since science cannot explain something then it MUST
be explainable via a supernatural Creator!
We also discussed how tautologies can interfere with critical thinking, where circular
reasoning leads to redundancy. He also talked to us about the fallacy of appealing
to ignorance. This is where an argument is made for or against a proposition on
the basis of a lack of evidence against or for it. A lack of evidence by itself
is not evidence. And we talked about intellectual apathy. Thinking is hard work.
Uncritical, unevaluated acceptance of ideas, on the other hand, is much easier.
Training the mind to think critically is much like training the body (which of course
is also training the mind) to do an exercise routine well. It takes practice, discipline
and sustained effort. We need to teach people HOW to think rather than WHAT to think.
Instead of teaching for a test or to pass class requirements, we should instruct
in how to evaluate information effectively, how to use baloney detectors and how
to do one’s own research or investigation on claims. Intelligence is one thing,
but knowing how to employ it is key.
Dr. Forbes talked about deductive and inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning goes
from the more general to the more specific, such as a general theoretical construct
leading to hypotheses, going to observation, which is then either confirmed or denied.
Inductive goes about it in opposite fashion, starting with specific questions, using
observation, detecting patterns, creating a tentative hypothesis from this, and
eventually formulating a theory. Critical/logical thinking involves the approach
of going from small to large; from separate facts that are then joined together
to create larger theory; from general principles to greater application.
A problem that arises typically in the evolution/creation debate is that there is
a different understanding of the word theory in the lay vernacular use and in the
scientific community. Those who are not aware of the distinction often contrast
facts with theories thinking that theory regards a hunch or guess. This allows them
to get away with calling Intelligent Design a Theory (IDT)—and therefore,
they claim, it should be taught as an alternative theory to evolution, even though
it completely falls outside of what constitutes a scientific theory. Facts are observations
that are repeatedly confirmed. Theory explains facts and laws to the best of current
knowledge. IDT, by contrast, has no explanatory value, links no set of facts with
any other, produces nothing fruitful or useful in gaining further knowledge, does
not generate further questions that may be eagerly investigated, takes into account
no natural laws and no testable observations, among other things that exclude it
from the designation of a theory in the scientific sense.
The Cartesian statement rendered as I think therefore I am was turned upside down
and reconstituted by the Skeptics Society as: I am... therefore I think.
Secretary: Charles LaRue.
The Freethought Association of West
Michigan provides a community for freethinkers to explore ideas from a rational,
critical and non-theistic perspective.
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