Reality Cracking
Bashing the paranormal crap
by Furtim ~ furtim(at)usa(dot)net
20 January 1999
Courtesy of fravia's pages of reverse engineering
I know I will have some 'hard' reactions, but I'll tell you what I think
nevertheless: paranormal experiences (like religious experiences) are total
crap (with few exceptions that CONFIRM this rule).
There's a r/c essay 'in preparation' about religion, and we'll discuss the
religious cracking there (some religious aspects deserve indeed a
very careful and serious thorough approach).
But paranormal experiences... jeez... hey? We can pull the trigger without even aiming exactly
here... it's much too easy actually, like shooting the red cross... Let's
begin stating that obviously a
good reverser will NEVER even be able to believe such bogus matters.
Yeah,
come to me and tell me
that you've seen an UFO and I'll put you on my email killfile... chances are
that you actually did not see any ufo over your oncle's farm in
Arkansas, you see... :-)
This crap seems most of the times like just another (and quite
obvious) whip for the gullible slaves... they slurp TV, they read books (if
ever they read) written
with the electronic feet of some ignorant dick writer from the States, they eat
at MacDonald... they might as well believe in paranormal UFOs or whatever...
So let's read and enjoy Furtim's first
"paranormal debunking" essay... but take note: a lot of works
await us... at your desks, +friends! Awaiting your essays!
Esteemed Fravia+,
I have read most of the articles on your site with
great interest; I
think it's of utmost importance that people know what
tricks are used to
influence, convince, and seduce them. In this
perspective, I found it
really surprising that nobody has taken up the
challenge of doing some
reversing on paranormal activity yet. In the following
piece I'd like to
put some momentum into this subject.
--8<----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
For ages now, man has been obsessed by the
unexplainable, and many
theories about the hidden truth behind Life, the
Universe and Everything
have succeeded each other in rapid procession. After
evidence - not proof! -
of invariants of nature (laws, constants, etc.) became
more and more
available, some reality models (or Paradigms or Meme
Complexes, whichever
you prefer) were dropped, and some were adapted to the
new ideas. But
whichever reality model was prevalent, there have
always been things that
could not be explained, causing people to adhere to
belief in the occult.
The Truth is Out There, Yet Not As Apparent As It
Seems
-------------------------------------------------------
Before I go into more detail about reversing the Truth
about paranormal
events, I'd like to give some examples (or "beef", as
Fravia+ calls it) of
how paranormal or occult activity has been proven a
hoax or misconception time
and time again, while objective evidence for the
existence has been scarse (to
say the least). For more examples, see for instance:
"An Encyclopedia of
Claims, Frauds and Hoaxes of the Occult and
Supernatural", James Randi's very
enlightening work on the subject.
In the times of the cavemen, there were Nature Gods
representing Thunder,
Wind, Sun and Water; now that we know what these
forces are, these Gods are
no more.
In old Egyptian times, the Pharaos were believed to
be Gods, too; their
mummified remains are now displayed as artifacts in
musea.
In the Middle Ages, Alchemists were looking for
Philopher's Stone, a mineral
holding mythical powers (such as the ability to turn
base metals into gold,
and various healing powers); activity on the alchemy
front has been low since
the discovery of the Periodic System, at least
concerning the gold-producing
qualities.
Again in the Middle Ages, mystics thought they could
predict events in the
future by a certain re-ordering of the characters in
the Holy Scriptures;
statistics shows that you can find just about anything
in the Ancient Hebrew
Texts (partly thanks to the lack of vowels in Hebrew,
which makes for short
words, and a high probability of finding a certain
word in a random sequence).
Through the centuries, numerous Gurus have stood up,
gathered believers,
failed to make good on their promises (end of the
world and what have you) and
died (see Joa's essay about Sects).
Dowsing rods (Y-shaped branches that supposedly
detect water) have been shown
in experiments to perform no better than chance in
finding moisture (see for
instance the Kassel Dowsing Test, in the German
journal "Der Skeptiker" of
January, 1991).
UFO corn circles have been shown to have been made
by pranksters. UFO
'experts' refused to believe the patterns were a hoax
even after the pranksters
showed how they did it. Strictly speaking, UFOs don't
fall under the category
of occult or supernatural, but I think there are many
similarities in how and
by whom these ideas are spread.
Psychics talking to spirits and/or God(s) have often
been shown to be frauds,
relying on information that has been gathered before
the psychic event
('hot reading'), or that rely on the willingness of
people to find connections
between themselves and certain facts that were simply
guessed by the psychic
('cold reading').
The list goes on and on... Humans are not really hard
to fool, apparently.
We have seen this in other reality cracking essays.
Truth?
I'm using words as 'true' and 'truth' here, but what
is truth anyway?
I don't agree with some of the writers here at
Fravia's site, that there
is no such thing as THE truth; there must be, by
definition. Things cannot
be two conflicting things simultaneously. Sure, an
event or law can have
statistical behavior, but that doesn't invalidate the
truth of the law
itself. Mind you, I am not saying that we, as humans,
will be able to under-
stand the Truth completely (to put it in cryptography
terms, our perception
of reality might be the output of a one-way hash). But
we can still determine
which things happen under certain circumstances, and
particularly which don't
happen. So at least we will be able to tell what is
NOT truth, making the
list of possible truths smaller and smaller as we go
along.
The Science of Paranormal Activity
How has science dealt with paranormal activity so far?
Several research
groups exist that work in the area; they have not been
terribly successful,
however, results being not much better than
statistical average shifts
of some percents, and their methods often attacked by
peers. On the other hand,
sceptical societies provide evidence of non-existence
of paranormal activity
in specific instances on a regular basis. One of them,
the James Randi
Educational Foundation, even has a 2 million dollar
reward out for anyone
that can prove paranormal activity in a controlled
laboratory environment
(agreed upon by BOTH parties). Claimants abound, but
no-one has won the
prize so far. Supporters of the occult claim greed and
lack of fair play
on the part of Randi; Randi's defence is that in all
cases, the claimants
agreed on the conditions beforehand, and only started
having objections
when their powers failed them.
So, should we just discard any ideas that do not fall
in the realm of today's
views? By no means! Those views can't be proved
either; as Popper stated,
proving a claim true is impossible; one can at best
find evidence supporting
the claim, or prove the claim false. In order to have
optimal progress,
theories should be stated in such a way that they may
be proved false by
experiment. Discussion between supporters of opposing
theories should be
stimulated; once the differences have been clearly
stated, performing falsi-
fication experiments should yield the wrong theory
(and maybe all theories
are proved wrong!).
Now we finally come to how we may separate the wheat
from the chaff: we should
not accept ANY models which are not falsifiable. So,
if a certain person claims
to have paranormal abilities, sie should be able to
indicate which experiments
can be performed that invalidate their claims. For
instance, sie should be
able to predict the outcome of a certain experiment
("I will move this cup
around the table, without directly or indirectly
touching the table or
the cup. I will not use magnets, static charges, air
flow or any other form
of force known in physics, but only my telekinetic
abilities"). Of course,
in these experiments all possible forms of trickery
must be eliminated.
Unfortunately, the requirement of falisification
disqualifies most religions,
which ultimately falls back to Divine Intervention,
which is unfalsifiable.
An interesting fact of (non-genuine) mediums is that
they don't agree
about the most fundamental things. Look up the
horoscopes in a couple
of magazines, and compare them - they will differ
(unless maybe, the
magazines are part of the same organization which
decided to save some
money by printing the same horoscope twice). You may
say: "Hey, you just
stated that discussion between opposing parties should
be stimulated, so
what's wrong?", but note well, there is no discussion
between the occultists,
just disagreement, because they are usually dogmatic
and have unfalsifiable
theories.
Why do people believe?
Let's now turn our attention to grasping people's
apparent eagerness to
believe in the supernatural. We might say that
believing starts with an open-
mindedness towards the (as yet) unexplained; a
curiosity for things that cannot
be perceived as easily as a table or a sound. The
belief develops when
'evidence' is presented that support the occult
reality model.
But is it really curiosity from which these occult
theories originate,
or something else? If people wanted to know about
invisible powers, they could
put some effort in learning basic physics. So maybe
it's something else.
We know the three modes of persuasion from Kuririn's
essay: authority, emotion,
and (slanted) truths. Fear is one of the emotions: in
my eyes the one with the
biggest impact, whilst being the most easy to affect.
Being faced ultimately
with the certainty of death, yet having no evidence
about what happens next,
man tries to quench the fear for what's Beyond by
embracing ideas that give
peace of mind. The existence of spirits implies that
death is not the end,
therefore the idea of spirits or God(s) settles
easily. As Terry Goodkind
put it, "Wizard's First Rule: People Believe What They
Want To Believe".
It is interesting to see the modes of persuasion for
most of the paranormal
mediums. They rely on authority, being a charismatic
person with an established
entourage. Also, they play on your emotions by
promising to cure a disease,
mediate to a lost loved one. Once the experiment
proves them wrong (and I
submit many of the mediums are not confidence
tricksters, but genuinely believe
in their own powers), they revert to bending the truth
to make up for
their failure. All three modes are used!
Conclusion
Looking at history doesn't really stimulate confidence
in the occult for me,
but I cannot dismiss paranormal activity as a whole,
because this would be
breaking my own principles about finding the Truth. I
can, however, dismiss
a great deal of particular instances of
self-proclaimed mediums, psychics,
or whatever they call themselves, based on their fear
or lack of falsifiable
experiments.
I am not saying that this method for getting at the
Truth is the best method,
or that the things we find using this method are (part
of) the Truth! I am
saying however, that we may at least invalidate
non-Truths by performing
experiments.
References
www.randi.org James Randi Educational
Foundation
Finally, here's some comments on other articles on
your site:
------
'Reality coefficient'
I would like to make a remark concerning the 'reality
coefficient'
(if you will) of some of the articles. Especially the
supposed subliminal
messages in the Windows Bootup Bitmap are a bit
far-fetched if you ask me.
Cloud-watching's a nice children's game to cultivate
creativity, but let's not lose contact with reality
here. Mind you,
I don't dismiss the idea of subliminal influences, and
I CERTAINLY don't
dismiss the idea of Micro$oft taking a long shot and
actually trying to
influence me this way, but if my subconscious would be
influenced by
these EXTREMELY subtle patterns in clouds, I'd be
lying on my back in
the fields all day, fealing sexy and free.
I think I can be quite sure in saying that I DON'T
start Windows when I
feel a sudden urge for sex, freedom, or individuality.
Quite the contrary,
I'd say 8-). So, M$ either HASN'T introduced these
pictures on purpose,
or they did a really bad job.
------
Pantheon's article, "Heisenberg's Uncertainty
Principle and Softice".
Without wanting to go into attacks ad hominem, I think
that Pantheon's
knowledge about physics may be a bit lacking. I'm not
quite sure, but
I think he tried to prove some point about not being
able to depend
too much on your previous knowledge by saying that the
Doppler effect is
inconsistent with relativity? Well, it isn't of
course. The Doppler
effect for light is caused by the frequency of the
emitter changing
due to the time dilation that occurs as a result of
the speed difference
between the emitter and the observer. In other words,
time goes slower
for the emitter than for the observer, causing the
'vibrational speed'
of the emitter as observed by the observer to be
lower, lowering the
frequency (again, in the observer's frame of
reference). (Hence the
term Red Shift because red is at the lower end of the
visual spectrum).
This is quite different from the Doppler effect for
sound waves, in
which it really is the relative speed itself that
contracts or elongates
the wavelength; the emitter 'squashes' the sound waves
that travel in
the same direction as the emitter is travelling.
So far for physics 8-).
------
Deep Dt's article, "Altruism and charity".
I would like to know why Deep Dt is so scared of the
human as a trader?
I think that many of us are, but so what? I rather
like the idea of not
owing nobody anything, and nobody owing me anything.
This may seem like
a really egotistical point of view, but I think that
it's the only way
in which people can deal openly and honestly with one
another: there are
no master-slave dependency relationships, just people
trading with each
other on an equal level. So when I give something to
someone else, I do
it because I WANT to and not out of some culturally
inbedded idea, that
poor people have a right to my possessions. Note that
this implies that
the receiver does not have to feel obliged to return
something (because
if I wanted it, I would have asked for it). Now there
is true altruism!
The person I give something may keep his dignity,
because I have my own
reasons.
Reality Cracking
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