http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000140.html (Go to the site for the pictures)
April 8, 2007
SEEING THE UNSEEN, Part 2
(This is the long-overdue second part of an examination of the value of critical thinking. Part 1 is here. The final installment will deal with the issue of Global Warming)
Occam's Razor is the idea that when confronted with competing theories that explain certain data equally well, the simplest one is usually correct. It's called Occam's Razor, and not Occam's Hypothesis, or Occam's Theorem, or Occam's Bit of Useful Advice, because it is a razor -- it cuts cleanly and with great efficiency. And though it pains me to say so, this culture is in desperate need of a shave.
IT'S A CONSPIRACY!
I want to forgo the niceties of the hot towel and go straight for the jugular on this one. My goal here is not to bust any of these four conspiracy theories; that has all been done much more effectively elsewhere. What I am trying to do here is to build a chain of evidence to show a progressively deteriorating epidemic of world-wide insanity, of truly diseased thinking -- not just a misunderstanding or difference of opinion but real, diagnosable mental illness. I want to get to that disease in a minute -- and the cause of it too -- but first let's examine what some people claim to believe in and the mountains of sand one has to carry in order to bury one's head so deep.
Man on the Moon
Several years ago, I was having lunch with some co-workers and the subject of the Loch Ness Monster came up. They seemed genuinely amazed that I was so certain that it did not exist. I pointed out that an air-breathing plesiosaur would have to surface for air so often that its 'reality' would be as much in doubt as that of whales or dolphins. Also, there are essentially no fish in Loch Ness, so it has nothing to eat. The most famous photo of it is a known fake. It's a no-brainer. Not that I couldn't be convinced I was wrong, I added. But I would want to pet the damn thing, or at least stand on the carcass with my hands clasped in the air.
This shocking position got me an invitation to meet "Joe" (might be his real name; I frankly don't remember). Joe was a friend of one of my colleagues. Joe, I was told, was one of the most well-respected paranormal researchers in the world, and as it turned out, he lived a few blocks from me.
Would I be willing to debate him?
I said yes, of course -- and for a reason that I later came to regret. I said yes not because I felt some need to set this guy right, but rather because I hoped he might have something really interesting, something that might cause me to change my mind.
I met him at his apartment: the kind of musty, cluttered, book-filled room I had seen before and come to expect. There were two others in the room. We shook hands. He was a nice enough guy.
"So whatcha got?"
He pulls out a videotape. Buzz is holding the flag. Neil takes a picture. Buzz lets go of the flag pole -- and the flag waves! In the breeze! Fake! Fake! The mask slips!
You ever played golf, Joe? I ask. He has not. I tell him that the flag pole is very long, very thin, like the pin on a green. Touch that and let it go and it will wobble precisely the same way, like a giant guitar string. It's got nothing to do with air.
What else have you got?
He's got stills from the lunar surface. Where are the stars? Huh? Skeptic Boy? I thought you could see stars in space. Why don't we see any in the picture? I ask him to imagine he is on a dark road in the middle of a black night. A car is approaching with its high beams glaring. What does the grille look like?
He doesn't get the analogy. I have to explain that you can't see the grille because the lights are too bright. Your eyes (or the camera) stop down -- the iris constricts -- so that you can comfortably view the bright lights. Likewise, on the moon, the camera is exposed to see the bright lunar landscape, or the brilliant blue Earth. The stars are too dim to register. There are no stars visible in virtually any photo taken in earth orbit, either -- not behind the shuttle, or the space station.
This is a sign that it is not a fake, because while it is logical, it's also somewhat unexpected. A hoaxer would almost certainly add stars. All of the paintings that preceded the actual landing show a lunar sky ablaze with stars. This was something no one realized until we got there.
He had scores of criticisms, all of which were specious and which have been refuted in excruciating detail. I'll spare you the half-hour spent looking at lighting differences and the position of suspicious shadows and cut to the chase here.
Watch Buzz walk, I tell him. See the dust at his feet. Look at that carefully. See how it sprays like water? Very fine dust spraying like a water skier's wake? In an atmosphere -- like on a sound stage -- very fine dust is lifted by the air into a dust cloud, and we all know what a little dust cloud looks like. What you are seeing when you watch those dust trails are very small particles moving in a low-gravity vacuum. I tell him -- not that he believes me -- that it is a tougher engineering challenge to make an area the size of a movie lot into a perfect vacuum than it is to actually go to the moon.
Now it's my turn to ask some questions, and here's where it goes from the ridiculous to the sublime: I was there at Cape Kennedy for the launch of Apollo 13. Is he saying I am lying about this whole moon mission conspiracy? I and millions of others who stood there and saw those Saturn V's climb into the sky?
Of course not, says Joe. They actually launched. The astronauts just stayed in earth orbit the whole time.
I see. So we have the technical expertise to build a 40-story rocket that can produce millions of pounds of thrust. We can build capsules and lunar landers that function in zero-G. We have the means and the will to put these massive objects into Earth orbit, keep them up there for two weeks, but the additional 3-4% of the total launch energy needed to send this package to the moon is so obviously beyond our technical skill that the whole thing must be a hoax?
I'm sorry, that's the thinking of someone who is mentally ill. There is something deeper at work there.
That "something" is different than someone who "believes" in UFO's or the Loch Ness Monster. Such people may be short on critical reasoning, but the emotional force that drives them is a desire for wonder and the magical. Many have remarked that this is, indeed, almost a religious impulse. I've wanted to see a real-live flying saucer my entire life. Likewise, if Nessie really existed, what an incredible sight that would be; to look upon the last surviving dinosaur in the flesh! But a videotape of a standing wave shot from five miles away does not outweigh the whole air-breather / no fish evidence. It does not come close to outweighing it. And so I reluctantly throw Nessie back into the superstition bin from whence she came.
But these denialists -- the Moon Hoaxers and the 9/11 "Truthers" -- these are a different breed. And they are cut from precisely the same cloth. That is to say, they suffer from the same disease: an unwillingness to face reality and its consequences.
My evening with Joe was very illuminative. After the moon hoax came the following, depending on your point of view:
Alien blobs surrounding the Space Shuttle OR a negative image videotape of a blurry object at the bottom of an aquarium.
UFO squadrons flying in close formation OR distant geese at the limit of a digital zoom slowed to 5 frames per second.
A giant, manned American space station in orbit around Mars OR a still frame from NASA's 1976 Viking animation.
Otherworldly 'rods' darting invisibly through the skies of our planet OR individual frames of a large insect leaving a blurry video trail as it whizzes past the lens.
Every time I would identify one of these great mysteries, Joe had the same response: okay, but what about this! No fight, no defense -- nothing. And then we'd be on to some new blur or smudge that proved, incontrovertibly, that this "reality" we live in is a giant lie, and that we are all victims of Dark Forces moving beyond our control or even our awareness... and that while the sleepwalking sheeple go on with their corporate-controlled lives, the mysterious wheels of the Shadow Government turn inexorably onward, crushing those brave few individuals who are on to the whole horrid plot like so many ants. There is a word for this diseased mental state.
As I was leaving Joe's, he said something I'm sure he thought was very funny. He said, "Man, I'll bet a guy like you thinks Lee Harvey Oswald really shot JFK."
Of course he shot JFK, Joe. Who do you think did it? The American Beef Council? Joe looked at me the way I had been looking at him. That is to say, he simply could not process that I could hold such a belief in my head. You're serious? I'm dead serious. I recommended Case Closed, by Gerald Posner -- without question the best piece of critical reasoning, research and logic I have ever read, bar none. I suspect he did not follow my advice. Books like that are bad for his business. Man, you're out there, said Joe. You know, the sad thing is, I'm starting to believe he is right.
A quick aside...
Back around 1989 or so, I had just moved to LA and was working the night shift as a limousine driver. I had a miserable little apartment in North Hollywood. I had heard of a book that had published the autopsy pictures of President Kennedy, and how it contained compelling evidence of a conspiracy. It was called Best Evidence and I bought it.
It doesn't rain often in Los Angeles, but it rained the night I read that book. Its author, David Lifton, claimed that Kennedy was shot from the front, but then the body was secretly taken from Air Force One to Walter Reed Army Hospital where extensive surgery 'reversed' the trajectory of the wounds to make it look like poor patsy Oswald was the real assassin.
When I finally got to the payoff a shot of electricity went through me. I realized that I was now in possession of such history-changing information that I distinctly recall getting up, opening the door and peering out into the rain to see if I was being watched. I felt, truly, for one half-hour that my life might be in danger. I wish I could say I am making this up.
That sense of uncovering deep layers of ancient cover-ups is what drove the sales of The DaVinci Code. There, too, a web of truths, half-truths and outright fabrication spun a story that left the reader with a palpable sense of awe. It made you feel important, like you knew something absolutely essential that very few others ever were privileged to know.
Now most normal people do not look at life from within a pit of failure and despair. Our lives are measured by small successes -- like raising children, serving in the military, doing volunteer work at your church -- or just doing the right thing in a thousand small but important ways, like returning money if someone makes you too much change.
These are simply the small, ordinary milestones of a life of value. They give you a sense of identity.
But if I didn't have that sense of identity rooted in my own small achievements, I wonder how likely it would have been for me to grab onto that sense of sudden empowerment, of being an initiate in some arcane club of hidden wisdom. I wonder what might have happened to me if being the Holder of Secret Knowledge had been my only source of self-esteem; the one redeeming landmark in a life of isolation and failure. Indeed, I wonder what power such a worldview would have over me if I could believe that behind the scenes lurked vast and unknowable dark forces -- forces that could topple a president and perhaps even explain why a person of my deep, vast and bountiful talents was not doing a whole lot better in life?
I wonder what might have happened to me then.
Because I did not need to believe in Giant Wheels of Conspiracy grinding John F. Kennedy to dust, I was relieved and not a little embarrassed when I finally read Case Closed. It was -- quite vividly -- like opening a window in a musty, cluttered, book-filled room and feeling the cool breeze of reason and logic air out the mind.
This is not the place for me to debate whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin that day. That would take an entire book, exhaustively researched, with extensive footnoting and reference to primary sources. There is such a book, it is called Case Closed, and as I said, it performs its function better than any book I have ever read.
I am more interested in the psychology of someone who believes in these conspiracy theories. I exempt people who have only heard one side of the story, as I did. Sadly, skepticism doesn't sell as well as hysteria. With regards to The View, ABC and Disney would rather count their ad money than waste potential revenues placing the truth for sale. If this offends you as much as it does me, you may make your purchases and plan your vacations accordingly.
Intellectually honest people, people without a deep, vested emotional need to believe the worst, are usually relieved to hear the facts that demolish superstitions like the Bermuda Triangle and the Loch Ness Monster. While there may be disappointment at the loss of an unseen world, people who have chosen to live in reality find comfort in the fact that reality is, in fact, made up of the real and not the wished for.
No, what fascinates me is the emotional motive of people who, presented with overwhelming evidence that the events that transpired on November 22nd, 1963 or September 11th, 2001 really happened exactly the way it appeared, continue to spin ever more elaborate webs in order to get to a place they need to be emotionally. Who are you going to believe: them or your own lying eyes?
All of this conspiracy nonsense comes after the fact. What we saw on those days was clear and vital and unmistakably obvious. In the case of the Kennedy assassination we are asked to believe -- against all physical evidence to the contrary -- what a few professional witnesses recall for pay ten or twenty or thirty years after the fact. Some guy who claims to see a puff of smoke on the grassy knoll is now a world-wide celebrity and not just some dude with time on his hands on a November afternoon. (And don't be deterred by the fact that a musket firing black powder was the last firearm that emitted "a puff of smoke;" perhaps Kennedy was murdered by a re-animated Stonewall Jackson. Prove it didn't happen!)
