When I was a kid, like most everyone, I loved stories about ghosts, vampires, werewolves, spirits, ouija boards, precognition, telepathy, telekinesis, demons, haunted houses, Nazis living on the moon and time travel. You name the unusual, and I probably had an interest. I camped overnight once in a local haunted house and was even set up on a fictitious “snipe hunt” by older Boy Scouts who were supposedly monitoring our Webelos pack. I have always enjoyed the supernatural and the whacky, as long as they are not held up as ideals that fully grown logic abiding adults should be expected to take seriously.
Over the past several years, I have witnessed the rise of a number of political conspiracy theories and alternative realities that seem to have beguiled a notable minority. A failure to confront these honestly and head-on can unfortunately lead to circumstances down the road that are just as tragic as those that occurred during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692 and 1693 when many good people were sure that Satan had turned numerous women in the community to witchcraft, leading to at least twenty five deaths.
Equally poisonous is the spread of misinformation about known and repeatedly tested scientific fact. This includes everything from the age of the Earth to the efficacy of vaccinations, … subjects of research that have been independently tested and verified in labs across the world. As of 2021 according to some surveys, roughly 2.3% of United States citizens and 1.6% of Europeans believe that the Earth is flat! … A claim debunked over 2500 years ago by Pythagoras, followed by Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Aristarchus, Archimedes and Eratosthenes.
To combat this, I am very much a fan of the scientific method and the Laplacian minimum (later repeated by Marcello Truzzi, Carl Sagan and many others, and sometimes now called the Sagan standard). It says simply,
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
or ECREE (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence)
It means that if you go around claiming you were anally probed by a UFO, you better have torn off a metal fitting from the alien torture rack or snagged one of their ray guns on the jump out of the saucer and into the forest canopy. If you have no extraordinary evidence that everyone can examine independently and test repeatedly, then you can’t expect to be taken seriously. That “test repeatedly” part is extremely important, … as it allows all to perform multiple experiments from different angles in their own labs and come to an independent verification or refutation.
Are there gray areas where it is hard to know the truth? Surely, … take as an example the EM Drive:
The drive is a radio frequency resonant cavity thruster where microwaves purportedly generate thrust by being reflected internally. The only problem? … It violates the conservation of momentum (and several other laws of physics). It’s an awesome claim but in the few prototypes built to exacting standards so far, the thrust generated is equal to or less than the margin of error (statistician speak for, “It’s probably bullshit.”) The EM Drive is an extraordinary claim but without the extraordinary evidence to back it up (at least so far).
Take as another example, … climate change. Roughly 13% of U.S. citizens and 7% of Europeans believe that mankind’s activities have had no effect on the Earth. It’s easy to see how someone might suppose that at first. Changes to the climate don’t usually occur in a direct manner that humans can easily notice with the naked eye. So there is a claim (I don’t consider man made climate change to be an extraordinary claim) and yet the supporting evidence, unlike with the EM Drive, does seem to support the idea that many indicators are trending in the wrong direction. Even more convincing, … that central tenant of repeatability. Labs measuring global atmospheric CO2 levels find the same result whether they are run by scientists in South Africa or those in Japan. Of course some would say that all environmental scientists are liberal tree huggers out to foil private business and progress. Australian climate scientists though don’t really concern themselves with the opinions of politicians in Bolivia. They simply follow where the science leads them. Like the implication of Einstein’s general relativity from 1915 to roughly the 1960s, climate science has slowly accumulated more and more evidence to the point that it is now undeniable.
At the core of all conspiracy theories and pseudoscience is mankind’s limitless aptitude for apophenia. Take a look below, … how many constellations do you see in this set of stars? …
Some people can imagine one set of lines connecting various stars while others complete palimpsects (not to be confused with palimpsests). The central conundrum of pattern matching is deviation of initial condition (and assuming invariances where none are present). At its core is the likely thought space topology of the frontal cortex. Where one person sees a bit of fog, another sees a ghost.
There are thousands of conspiracy theories and whacky pseudoscience beliefs floating around, … too many for me to list here. That said, I feel it is important to address some of the most dangerous, … almost as a civic duty. It is a bit like the old aphorism; All that it takes for evil to thrive is that good men do nothing. In the same vein, All that it takes for conspiracy theories, alternative scientific facts and urban legends to take firm root is for educated men and women to remain quiet. Therefore:
The Earth is not ~ 6300 years old. Set down one kilogram of pure Uranium 238 and come back 4.4683 billion years later and you will still have a one kilogram mass, but only half of it will be Uranium 238 atoms. By this radiometric decay, we have a very good clue as to the Earth’s real age (~ 4.54 billion years). Also, light from stars in the Scutum-Centaurus Arm of the Milky Way has on average been traveling for ~ 13,000 years to reach your eyes. With your naked eye on a clear night (in the northern hemisphere), you can see the Andromeda galaxy that is ~ 2,537,000 light years away.
Take one drop of blood from a chimpanzee and one drop from a human, and then compare the base pairs of the DNA strands (the A, T, C and G’s). They are 99.1% identical, clearly indicating we both diverged from the same progenitor species. If Darwinian evolution by natural selection were wrong, the ability of modern science to bioengineer drugs that have saved countless lives utilizing molecular biology would not be possible. Also, life did not suddenly arise on Earth. By way of catalytic reactions on the early Earth, life likely took more than one hundred million years to develop to monera. And it remained as monera for roughly 2.5 billion years before progression to eukaryia. There is an in-built Shannon entropy limit to a too sudden aggregation of biological complexity that simply cannot be skipped past. If you wish to see some of the most rapid large scale macro-evolution, you can look to the Cambrian Explosion. Evolution by natural selection is an extraordinary claim (well, … it isn’t to me, but …) with an extraordinary amount of evidence in its favor.
Volcanos both above sea level and below do not release more CO2 in one year than humans do. In 1991, the explosion of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines released ~ 43 million tons of CO2. In that same year, human industry and vehicles released roughly 29 billion tons of CO2. … Not even close. The total natural CO2 emissions of planet Earth amount to 280 to 350 million tons per year. In 2019, human beings put roughly ~ 37 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. That is more than a hundred times as much. That is the reason the planet is f#$%#$! heating up. The same type of statistics bear out when examining the amount of hydrocarbons (oil) emitted from seafloor vents.
The world is not flat. (I can’t even believe I am typing these words 2500 years after the Ancient Greeks discovered this.) Watch the attached cameras at the base of any NASA or Space X rocket as they lift off, and you can clearly see the Earth begin to round to a sphere. You can do this yourself with advanced model rocketry skills for less than $5000. Every March 21st, high rise buildings in Quito, Ecuador cast no shadow while those in Oslo, Norway do. The map application on your cellphone would not work without GPS made possible by correctly applying general relativistic allowances for the space-time deformation (Riemannian gravitational curvature) resulting from a spherical planet.
Since Andrew Wakefield’s claim in 1998 that vaccines may cause autism, 217 different research studies have been conducted in 34 different nations over 21 years to see if they can provide evidence for that link. So far, … none have.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States were not an inside job. The paperwork and digital footprint that the Al-Qaeda and Taliban plotters left behind was massive. The intelligence communities of not just the U.S. but eleven different nations have all concluded that the attacks were genuine.
Nuclear energy is a very safe and available method for powering the planet until solar, wind and fusion gradually overtake it. The amount of environmental pollution and human death/injury would immediately drop to 1/20th of its current level if (fission) nuclear power plants were widely adopted in comparison to continued fossil fuel usage.
There has never been an indicative associative index shown for any claim made by supporters of QAnon. No believer in the conspiracy has ever shown any convincing evidence that a cabal of liberal Satan worshipping pedophiles secretly run the U.S. government at its highest levels. Its an extraordinary claim without any supporting evidence that can stand up to neutral inspection. Even typing these words reminds me of how absolutely bat shit crazy this conspiracy theory is. Are we living in 1020 AD or 2020 AD? Should I check in my chimney for goblins or look under the bushes for fairies?
There is no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud leading to George W. Bush winning in 2000, Trump winning in 2016 or Biden beating Trump in 2020. … None. There are instances (in the low hundreds) of ballots lost, a mail truck being involved in a car crash, etc … out of more than 130 million votes cast, … no surprise. But there has never been a credible incident where hundreds or thousands of ballots were secretly manipulated in any U.S. presidential election in the 21st century.
Supercomputer simulations of viral particles released when someone coughs show clearly that masks offer a measure of protection that is better than no mask at all. Many otolaryngologists have commented that there is no such thing as a medical condition which prevents one from wearing a mask in the ambulatory.
The idea that alien technology or bodies are being held at secret military bases (Wright-Patterson AFB, etc …) is the supreme case of an extraordinary claim with no repeatable and testable evidence. Americans can’t wait to film their next hang nail and post it all over Youtube and Twitter, and yet thousands of ex-servicemen are able to stay completely silent about the green bodies from Roswell? … for 70 years?! …. 🙂 No one managed to sneak out a tissue sample or a piece of an alien communicator? I love the X-Files as much as any sci-fi fan but no credible and openly available evidence has ever emerged. It is equivalent to the Ark of the Covenant from Indiana Jones.
Considering all this craziness, I was recently reminded (in a good article by Megan Kang) of this elegant sentence in the Constitution of UNESCO,
That since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that peace must be constructed.
Likewise, it is the minds of men that misaligned pattern matching results in seeing ghosts when only fog is present. The best prevention for incorrect association has and always will be the scientific method and continued education. It is only by constant reading, examination and experimentation that the natural tendencies of the human mind can be pre-empted.
Does that mean everyone should model themselves an emotionless Vulcan? The only antidote to unintended apophenia the reductionist base of mathematics and physics? … Not at all. Most healthy humans have the mentality to experience phenomena that defy precise scientific explanation, … sacrifice, numinosity (a numinous reverence), empathy, hope and love. While we may someday reduce these to series of neural network equations, it very much remains an open question as to whether we will truly understand the epiphenomena of hard consciousness from which they likely manifest. And failure to ever do so does not lessen the sublime nature of their qualia nor act as call to never indulge the mysterious and unusual in our spirit.
It is for these reasons, paradoxically, above all others, that preservation of known fact and critical scientific checks and balances be preserved. Wherever you find misinformation or conspiracy theories passed off as known fact or good public policy , step up, … say something, … intervene. Not in a haughty arrogant manner intended to belittle others as to your learned superiority. … No, … never in that manner, … but at the same time, not sitting down while wild ideas with no basis in fact or science go unchallenged.