So, the post that originally took up this spot was on feminist archaeology.
The original intent of the essay had not been to provide an in-depth discussion of feminist archaeology, but rather to counter some of the common media arguments made that attempt to discredit it by mis-characterizing what it is and the types of claims made by feminist archaeologists.
However, when taken out of the context of the original place where it was posted, this becomes unclear, and it does look like it's suppose to be a good summary of the subject. And, well, my blog post was not a good summary of the subject. I received a comment that pointed out, correctly, that in my post I had focused on one very narrow aspect of feminist archaeology (even defining that aspect as feminist archaeology - and somehow I didn't catch that I had done this either in the original publication or when I re-posted it here), and I failed to mention the names of major feminist archaeologists (though, yes, I have read the work of Conkey, Gero, Spector, Watson and Kennedy, Gifford Gonzalez, and many others, and I am also aware of the earlier work of Marija Gimbutas).
Basically, in writing an essay for one context, I produced something that read very differently as a blog post. And I violated my own code of ethics in producing something that was (unintentionally) misleading. In the interest of being a responsible archaeology communicator, I have taken that entry back to draft while I re-work it.
Showing posts with label Critical Thinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Critical Thinking. Show all posts
Friday, May 2, 2014
Friday, February 14, 2014
Pre-Paid Legal, Pyramid Schemes, and Religion
This post was originally written for the Skepchick website back when it was an on-line magazine rather than a blog. I twas later run on the blog. However, neither version of it still survives, and as such, I figured I would post it here. In the past I have at least attempted to contact them and let them know that I was re-posting stuff that I had originally written for them on my own blog. But as they have never actually replied to any such email, I'm not bothering this time around. If any of them read this and don't like that I re-posed it, they can contact me and let me know.
I entered the room and took my seat. I was there out of male stupidity. I had been invited by an attractive young woman, but, from what I had been told, I sincerely doubted that I would have any interest in buying the product that I had been told would be pitched. The dress of those around me – dark suits for most of the men and long skirts and pale blouses on most of the women – reinforced the notion that I was in business-land. Little did I know that I was about to be subjected to what amounted to the financial and psychological equivalent of a cult indoctrination.
The meeting was allegedly a sales pitch for the products hocked by a company called Pre-Paid Legal, a company that sells legal insurance. When I met Lucy (not her real name) at a party the previous week, she had invited me to the meeting, indicating that it would be simply an opportunity for me to hear about their products. What I discovered was that the entire “meeting” was structured as a religious gathering, geared at getting the audience to shut-off their critical faculties, and that the product that Pre-Paid Legal really wanted to sell was not legal insurance, but rather a pyramid scheme.
Pyramid schemes, Ponzi scams, and other such matters have gotten a fair amount of attention in skeptical circles. Typically, those who fall for them are labeled as greedy fools who didn’t bother to question what was really going on because they either were too stupid to get it, or else they allowed avarice to cloud their judgment. If my experience this evening was any indication, while greed plays an important role, the techniques used to hook and reel-in the unlucky participants may be just as important.
The Invitation
This had all started innocently enough. I was at a party at a friend’s house, and found myself in conversation with Lucy and her housemate. She had recently dropped out of college. When I asked why, she told me that she had found a job and no longer needed college. I then found myself in conversation with her about this, with me trying to convince her that she would find things easier in the future if she went back to college, and her insisting that she had found a company where she wanted to work the rest of her life in a manner reminiscent of a teenage bride who is convinced that nobody understands her (doomed) love.
As the evening began to come to an end, she invited me to attend a meeting at a local hotel in order to hear about her company’s products. While I wasn’t keen on buying legal insurance, I was interested in trying to meet up with Lucy again, and so I accepted the invitation and gave her my phone number. A few days later, she called to tell me the time and location of the event.
Religious Indoctrination
Upon reaching the hotel the night of the presentation, I noticed a general sense of desperate hope among the people assembled and waiting to be let into the room. I saw people who I recognized from the party as being part of the Pre-Paid Legal (PPL) team circulating and herding people into the meeting room once it was opened. At the door, a pair of other PPL folks tried to get the name and contact information for everyone entering the room (being the sort of person I am, I just walked in and ignored their pleas for me to give them my information).
I found a seat, the doors closed, and the sermon began. It quickly became apparent that we were not there to be sold legal insurance – we were there to be sold positions within PPL. Yep, this was a pyramid scheme, and as with all pyramid schemes, promises of riches were made to those who would plunk down some of their hard-earned (and in the cases of at least a few of the people in the room, desperately needed) cash in order to buy a “job.”
I did not choose the word sermon by chance or out of sarcasm, this sales pitch was, quite literally, a sermon. God was replaced by PPL, salvation by money, morality and earthly good by the material possessions that one could purchase with said money, and mother church by the pyramid scheme (AKA “Network Marketing,” AKA “Multi-level Marketing,” AKA “an absurd scam”, and so on…). Just as in many churches, the audience was encouraged to speak in unison at key moments (usually shouting words such as “opportunity,” “choice,” “money,” and so on). The origin of the company (a mythical story about the founder’s run-in with litigation) and many dramatic stories of people having the finances and often freedom saved by PPL were thrown out to an increasingly credulous audience. To add to the drama, a few different speakers approached the front, and would often begin weeping at key moments, showing the joy and overpowering emotion of having become one of the upwardly mobile (the financial equivalent of the “saved”), and having met their new friends through PPL (they would consistently indicate the troupe of grinning clones sitting on the sides). The message was cleared – join PPL and you will not only make money, but you will also be helping to save people, and you’ll gain the oh-so-bestest friends that you ever did have!
Just as in many churches, the sermon came to and end with testimonials where the faithful (those who had already made a commitment to PPL) were encouraged to tell their stories both to try to convert the heathen masses, and to reinforce the social pressure on those already involved. At the end of all of this, people were invited to come up and plunk down their money to purchase a position with PPL, just as the heathens are welcome to come up to the front of many churches after a service in order to be converted. No mention was made of the many controversies that PPL had been involved in (and talking with the “associates” later, I learned that they were woefully ignorant of these things as well), no discussion of risk/benefit analysis of putting one’s money into PPL was provided, and there was no mention made of the other players in the legal insurance industry (in fact, it was often implied, if not flat-out stated, that PPL was the only significant player, despite the fact that many larger, more stable and reliable insurance companies are in the field).
While there were many charts and figures projected on the screen at the front of the room to give the evenings activities the outward appearance of a business meeting, the structure was strictly that of an evangelical church service, and the language a mix of mythological and out-of-context business lingo, all aimed at both convincing the audience that this was a legitimate business meeting, and in getting the audience to feel well towards PPL without stopping to think critically about the financial and personal investment that they would be asked to make.
In short, this was less a business meeting than a religious indoctrination ritual that borrowed the tactics of Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Charismatic Christianity for a financial end.
Feel – Don’t Think
What bothered me most about the situation was seeing the enraptured look on the face of the people sitting around me. Listening in on conversations before we entered the room, it became clear that many of these folks were desperate. They were unhappy with their lives and their jobs (those who were lucky enough to be employed), and simply hoped for positive a change. Some had been told, as I had, that this would be a sales pitch for legal insurance, but most had been brought with the hope that they would find new employment, and they were desperate enough for a change that they wanted to believe. I do not know if PPL makes efforts to actively recruit these sorts of folks, but this was the result that I saw that evening.
Once these folks, who wanted to believe and were therefore vulnerable, were brought into the meeting room, the entire presentation, as described above, was geared at getting them to believe and not question. Watching the people in the seats around me, and listening to the chatter afterwards, it was clear that this sermon had accomplished its task, at least for the evening. Why wasn’t I also drawn in? Perhaps it’s because I have been to enough religious services at enough different types of churches to recognize the methods when I saw them. Perhaps my training as an anthropologist led to me to see the patterns behind the behaviors. Perhaps the fact that I am immediately suspicious of anyone who wants me to give them money is what tipped things. Perhaps it’s the fact that the evenings “special speaker” reminded me less of a sensible businessman and more of an especially slimy dope-peddler. Regardless, there appeared to be frighteningly few of us in the room (including many of the established PPL folks) who saw the night’s event for what it really was.
The entire structure of the evening, from the outburst of weeping on the part of the presenters, to the encouragement of people shouting back slogans and buzzwords was all geared towards a basic goal: make the audience feel that they are part of a select group, smarter than the rest, able to see an opportunity when it comes, and feel a sense of euphoria about it. Doing this in a group setting further allowed the organizers to make use of the tendency for people to become locked in a pack mentality, to not want to be the one nay-sayer in a room full of believers, to push people who might otherwise have been skeptical over the threshold into convert. That the euphoria was for a false cause and the opportunity illusory did not matter, because once they were hooked, PPL would get their money. These people were encouraged to link a good feeling about PPL to a good feeling about themselves, and critical analysis of the situation, the sort of thing that would show the situation for what it was, was discouraged.
Creation Myths and Other Confusions
In addition to the use of a religious sermon format, the PPL presentation borrowed from Protestant Christianity in another way – it used a creation myth to justify its existence and explain its mission.
The myth runs as so:
Harland Stonecipher was involved in an automobile accident in 1969. After the accident, he found himself being sued for by the other party in the accident, an unwarranted move as Stonecipher had not been at-fault. Faced with mounting legal fees and damages assessments, staring down a convoluted legal system that he did not understand, Harland felt lost and afraid. However, like any good mythological hero, he overcame and triumphed in the end.
The memory of this accident stayed with ol’ Harland, and he saw it as both a problem and a potential opportunity. Eventually he realized that he could help other people (and, it should be noted, stuff his own wallet) by offering legal insurance of the sort that he knew existed in Europe. This insurance would save the finances of those who, like him, were taken by surprise by a litigious individual. Moreover, this would help those who found themselves in trouble with the law and who might otherwise have to rely on overworked public defenders.
Now, Pre-Paid Legal is a booming business, publicly traded, well-respected by the legal community, and will probably cure cancer (okay, I made that last one up). All hail Harland Stonecipher, the great savior of mankind!
The truth of the matter was rather different. Stonecipher was indeed involved in an automobile accident. However, he was not immediately subject to an unprovoked lawsuit. Rather, he filed suit against the other party for a sum of $125,000. The other then filed suit against Stonecipher afterwards and settled for the much smaller sum of $3,000 (Cohen 2003). While Stonecipher’s suit may have been justified (I do not claim to know one way or another), the fact that he sued first and was then subject to a suit for a smaller amount of money does corrode away some of the hero-veneer with which he was laminated in the materials released by PPL.
Moreover, the product, legal insurance, is not the unique province of PPL. In fact many companies provide legal insurance, many with better coverage at better rates than what is offered by PPL. A number of employers offer legal insurance along with health insurance as part of a benefits package. When I asked an attorney who I know about PPL, they simply said “well, you can get better coverage elsewhere.” So, the wonderful and unique product of PPL is neither unique nor wonderful, it’s not even reputed to be particularly good. Our old pal Harland did not offer something new to humanity, contrary to the creation myth. He didn’t even offer something that was any better than what already existed. However, you would never know that from the legion of hard-sell masters whose methods, both as employed at PPL and elsewhere, have gotten the negative attention of many state regulators (Davis 2002).
On top of that, it has become open to debate whether or not PPL even provides the services it claims to provide. At least one court in Mississippi has decided that PPL has failed to provide the services advertised and as such was guilty of fraud (Davis 2005) (and Federal regulators have required that PPL begin reporting their profits in a more honest manner [Davis 2005]), and many folks I have encountered who have had dealings with PPL have told me horror stories concerning their inability to actually make use of legal insurance when they needed it. It is worth noting that roughly half of the folks who buy policies do not renew them at the end of the year (Davis 2002).
So, the origin is a myth. The value of the alleged product (as opposed to the one actually being sold, i.e. the “sales position”) is debatable and therefore largely mythical. Is it at least true that you can make a lot of money doing this? Well, sort of.
There are those who make a lot of money, but they are the ones who are extraordinarily successful at selling others on the idea of being a salesperson, those who actually spend their time selling the legal insurance are likely to lose money (Davis 2002; CBC News 2000). Moreover, the majority of those who recruit others into the company still don’t make much money on the deal (CBC News 2000). So, there are a few who do manage to make money at this, sometimes a fair amount of money, but they are few and far between, they do so not on the strength of their product but by pulling others into the cult of Stonecipher, and even these folks tend to have to jump from company to company (or scheme to scheme, as it were) as these schemes are not good long-term investments even if you are successful with it, the mathematics eventually causing the whole thing to fold in on itself (‘lectric Law Library N.D.).
As Cohan (2003) put it, the pitch is full of good stories, but these stories don’t stand up to scrutiny. Unfortunately, the structure and setting of the pitch is such that many in the audience shut off their critical faculties and buy into it without applying that critical scrutiny.
Quoting Scripture
The coda to my PPL experience came two days later. Lucy called me up and asked why I had not committed to PPL that night. I simply stated that I was not impressed. Lucy pressed further, asking why I was unimpressed, so I told her that if she would give me twenty minutes I would explain.
I explained the basic instability of pyramid schemes, whether they call themselves Network marketing, multi-level marketing, or by any other name. I explained that I could see three possible futures for PPL – it burns out (like most pyramid schemes) and she is left empty-handed, it finally crosses the line (or is finally found to have crossed the line) of what is legal and is taken down by the authorities, or it becomes a standard insurance company and the current crop of salespeople find themselves increasingly disadvantaged, if not quickly unemployed, in a more standard corporate hierarchy.
She disregarded all of this and simply stated that she believed that I wasn’t “seeing the opportunity” (a phrase that was often repeated throughout the sermon a few nights earlier). I responded that I did see what was happening, I suspected I could see it more clearly than her, and that I was not interested, and I was again told that I was “obviously not seeing the opportunity.”
It was at this point that Lucy began quoting scripture. No, really. PPL has produced a good deal of material aimed at keeping the faithful recruiting. These materials are filled with inspirational stories (which, given the truth behind the Stonecipher story, I am not inclined to take on face value), and logically fallacious sayings aimed at shutting down the critics and converting the heathens. The next twenty minutes were spent with her quoting what amounted to “Chicken Soup for the Pyramid Scheme Soul” at me, me pointing out why I wasn’t buying it, her becoming frustrated, and then quoting another PPL tract, clearly wanting me to see the error of my ways. In the end, I was halfway shocked that she didn’t announce that she would pray to Ponzi and his messiah Stonecipher for my deliverance.
When it became clear that I wasn’t biting, she asked to put me in touch with someone higher up the food chain who, she felt certain, would be able to get me to see what I was missing. I declined. When at last the phone call ended, I could read the heavy sense of rejection and disappointment in her voice of the sort that I often hear from frustrated evangelicals upon discovering that they are unable to answer the questions of someone they’ve marked for conversion.
Religion, Symbols, and the Stifling of Free Thought
Whether what I experienced is common to PPL or simply the hard-sell method of a particular cell of folks within PPL, I cannot claim to know. What I do know is that it is no surprise that someone attempting to sell a shaky business model with a questionable product would resort to the methodology of born-again religion to do so. After all, both use emotion to push the convert to feel that they have made a good choice and are somehow superior the masses (whether because they are “saved,” allegedly “helping people,” or “on the road to riches”) and both fall apart when an intended convert begins asking tough questions. The difference is that born-again religion may have some beneficial effects for the average convert, while some basic research into the company suggests that PPL is simply likely to drains their bank account.
Ultimately, the reason why so many people in the room that night were entranced by the PPL pitch, despite its lack of logic or legitimate evidence, was that they were sold a set of symbols. The stories, images, and promises that were made were provided in a way orchestrated to imbue them with meaning, with values, and to question the legitimacy of the stories was to question the legitimacy of the values that they seemed to exemplify.
By leaving out a few relevant details, Stonecipher’s story of the accident and legal case takes a run-of-the-mill story of litigation and imbues it with the power of what many perceive to be out-of-control litigation and the helplessness that many feel when faced with the law. It provides hope to deal with these fears in the person of Harland Stonecipher, who single-handedly re-invented the way that legal representation works to save the masses. The story becomes mythic, it is imbued with meaning, it tells of the heroics of an individual, and how you can join him. To show intelligence and inquisitiveness and question the story is to question the legitimacy of what PPL is doing and the righteousness of the PPL converts, and in turn to question the opportunity for you to be a hero (and, or course, make wads of cash while doing it).
There were many other stories told the night of the pitch, and each of them had one thing in common with the story of Stonecipher’s auto accident: they took a rather mundane story and imbued it with meaning so that the act of selling either insurance or memberships through PPL became something more than a simple occupation. One thing priests have known for centuries – it’s harder for the faithful to question a story imbued with meaning than one that is not, and it’s easy for the infidel to be impressed by the conviction of those who are energized by myth, even if the story doesn’t match up with reality.
Amen.
CBC News. 2000. Pre-Paid Legal Services: Worth the Money? Broadcast on April 11, 2000.
Cohan, Peter. 2003. Pre-Paid Legal is in Need of Better Reality, not Better Stories. OKC Business, July 28, 2003.
Davis, Melissa. 2002. Pre-Paid Legal’s Colorful Workforce. The Street.Com, available online on July 10, 2006 here. Davis, Melissa. 2005. Pre-Paid Weathers Guilty Verdict. The Street.Com.
Electric Law Library. N.D. How to Avoid Ponzi and Pyramid Schemes.
I entered the room and took my seat. I was there out of male stupidity. I had been invited by an attractive young woman, but, from what I had been told, I sincerely doubted that I would have any interest in buying the product that I had been told would be pitched. The dress of those around me – dark suits for most of the men and long skirts and pale blouses on most of the women – reinforced the notion that I was in business-land. Little did I know that I was about to be subjected to what amounted to the financial and psychological equivalent of a cult indoctrination.
The meeting was allegedly a sales pitch for the products hocked by a company called Pre-Paid Legal, a company that sells legal insurance. When I met Lucy (not her real name) at a party the previous week, she had invited me to the meeting, indicating that it would be simply an opportunity for me to hear about their products. What I discovered was that the entire “meeting” was structured as a religious gathering, geared at getting the audience to shut-off their critical faculties, and that the product that Pre-Paid Legal really wanted to sell was not legal insurance, but rather a pyramid scheme.
Pyramid schemes, Ponzi scams, and other such matters have gotten a fair amount of attention in skeptical circles. Typically, those who fall for them are labeled as greedy fools who didn’t bother to question what was really going on because they either were too stupid to get it, or else they allowed avarice to cloud their judgment. If my experience this evening was any indication, while greed plays an important role, the techniques used to hook and reel-in the unlucky participants may be just as important.
The Invitation
This had all started innocently enough. I was at a party at a friend’s house, and found myself in conversation with Lucy and her housemate. She had recently dropped out of college. When I asked why, she told me that she had found a job and no longer needed college. I then found myself in conversation with her about this, with me trying to convince her that she would find things easier in the future if she went back to college, and her insisting that she had found a company where she wanted to work the rest of her life in a manner reminiscent of a teenage bride who is convinced that nobody understands her (doomed) love.
As the evening began to come to an end, she invited me to attend a meeting at a local hotel in order to hear about her company’s products. While I wasn’t keen on buying legal insurance, I was interested in trying to meet up with Lucy again, and so I accepted the invitation and gave her my phone number. A few days later, she called to tell me the time and location of the event.
Religious Indoctrination
Upon reaching the hotel the night of the presentation, I noticed a general sense of desperate hope among the people assembled and waiting to be let into the room. I saw people who I recognized from the party as being part of the Pre-Paid Legal (PPL) team circulating and herding people into the meeting room once it was opened. At the door, a pair of other PPL folks tried to get the name and contact information for everyone entering the room (being the sort of person I am, I just walked in and ignored their pleas for me to give them my information).
I found a seat, the doors closed, and the sermon began. It quickly became apparent that we were not there to be sold legal insurance – we were there to be sold positions within PPL. Yep, this was a pyramid scheme, and as with all pyramid schemes, promises of riches were made to those who would plunk down some of their hard-earned (and in the cases of at least a few of the people in the room, desperately needed) cash in order to buy a “job.”
I did not choose the word sermon by chance or out of sarcasm, this sales pitch was, quite literally, a sermon. God was replaced by PPL, salvation by money, morality and earthly good by the material possessions that one could purchase with said money, and mother church by the pyramid scheme (AKA “Network Marketing,” AKA “Multi-level Marketing,” AKA “an absurd scam”, and so on…). Just as in many churches, the audience was encouraged to speak in unison at key moments (usually shouting words such as “opportunity,” “choice,” “money,” and so on). The origin of the company (a mythical story about the founder’s run-in with litigation) and many dramatic stories of people having the finances and often freedom saved by PPL were thrown out to an increasingly credulous audience. To add to the drama, a few different speakers approached the front, and would often begin weeping at key moments, showing the joy and overpowering emotion of having become one of the upwardly mobile (the financial equivalent of the “saved”), and having met their new friends through PPL (they would consistently indicate the troupe of grinning clones sitting on the sides). The message was cleared – join PPL and you will not only make money, but you will also be helping to save people, and you’ll gain the oh-so-bestest friends that you ever did have!
Just as in many churches, the sermon came to and end with testimonials where the faithful (those who had already made a commitment to PPL) were encouraged to tell their stories both to try to convert the heathen masses, and to reinforce the social pressure on those already involved. At the end of all of this, people were invited to come up and plunk down their money to purchase a position with PPL, just as the heathens are welcome to come up to the front of many churches after a service in order to be converted. No mention was made of the many controversies that PPL had been involved in (and talking with the “associates” later, I learned that they were woefully ignorant of these things as well), no discussion of risk/benefit analysis of putting one’s money into PPL was provided, and there was no mention made of the other players in the legal insurance industry (in fact, it was often implied, if not flat-out stated, that PPL was the only significant player, despite the fact that many larger, more stable and reliable insurance companies are in the field).
While there were many charts and figures projected on the screen at the front of the room to give the evenings activities the outward appearance of a business meeting, the structure was strictly that of an evangelical church service, and the language a mix of mythological and out-of-context business lingo, all aimed at both convincing the audience that this was a legitimate business meeting, and in getting the audience to feel well towards PPL without stopping to think critically about the financial and personal investment that they would be asked to make.
In short, this was less a business meeting than a religious indoctrination ritual that borrowed the tactics of Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Charismatic Christianity for a financial end.
Feel – Don’t Think
What bothered me most about the situation was seeing the enraptured look on the face of the people sitting around me. Listening in on conversations before we entered the room, it became clear that many of these folks were desperate. They were unhappy with their lives and their jobs (those who were lucky enough to be employed), and simply hoped for positive a change. Some had been told, as I had, that this would be a sales pitch for legal insurance, but most had been brought with the hope that they would find new employment, and they were desperate enough for a change that they wanted to believe. I do not know if PPL makes efforts to actively recruit these sorts of folks, but this was the result that I saw that evening.
Once these folks, who wanted to believe and were therefore vulnerable, were brought into the meeting room, the entire presentation, as described above, was geared at getting them to believe and not question. Watching the people in the seats around me, and listening to the chatter afterwards, it was clear that this sermon had accomplished its task, at least for the evening. Why wasn’t I also drawn in? Perhaps it’s because I have been to enough religious services at enough different types of churches to recognize the methods when I saw them. Perhaps my training as an anthropologist led to me to see the patterns behind the behaviors. Perhaps the fact that I am immediately suspicious of anyone who wants me to give them money is what tipped things. Perhaps it’s the fact that the evenings “special speaker” reminded me less of a sensible businessman and more of an especially slimy dope-peddler. Regardless, there appeared to be frighteningly few of us in the room (including many of the established PPL folks) who saw the night’s event for what it really was.
The entire structure of the evening, from the outburst of weeping on the part of the presenters, to the encouragement of people shouting back slogans and buzzwords was all geared towards a basic goal: make the audience feel that they are part of a select group, smarter than the rest, able to see an opportunity when it comes, and feel a sense of euphoria about it. Doing this in a group setting further allowed the organizers to make use of the tendency for people to become locked in a pack mentality, to not want to be the one nay-sayer in a room full of believers, to push people who might otherwise have been skeptical over the threshold into convert. That the euphoria was for a false cause and the opportunity illusory did not matter, because once they were hooked, PPL would get their money. These people were encouraged to link a good feeling about PPL to a good feeling about themselves, and critical analysis of the situation, the sort of thing that would show the situation for what it was, was discouraged.
Creation Myths and Other Confusions
In addition to the use of a religious sermon format, the PPL presentation borrowed from Protestant Christianity in another way – it used a creation myth to justify its existence and explain its mission.
The myth runs as so:
Harland Stonecipher was involved in an automobile accident in 1969. After the accident, he found himself being sued for by the other party in the accident, an unwarranted move as Stonecipher had not been at-fault. Faced with mounting legal fees and damages assessments, staring down a convoluted legal system that he did not understand, Harland felt lost and afraid. However, like any good mythological hero, he overcame and triumphed in the end.
The memory of this accident stayed with ol’ Harland, and he saw it as both a problem and a potential opportunity. Eventually he realized that he could help other people (and, it should be noted, stuff his own wallet) by offering legal insurance of the sort that he knew existed in Europe. This insurance would save the finances of those who, like him, were taken by surprise by a litigious individual. Moreover, this would help those who found themselves in trouble with the law and who might otherwise have to rely on overworked public defenders.
Now, Pre-Paid Legal is a booming business, publicly traded, well-respected by the legal community, and will probably cure cancer (okay, I made that last one up). All hail Harland Stonecipher, the great savior of mankind!
The truth of the matter was rather different. Stonecipher was indeed involved in an automobile accident. However, he was not immediately subject to an unprovoked lawsuit. Rather, he filed suit against the other party for a sum of $125,000. The other then filed suit against Stonecipher afterwards and settled for the much smaller sum of $3,000 (Cohen 2003). While Stonecipher’s suit may have been justified (I do not claim to know one way or another), the fact that he sued first and was then subject to a suit for a smaller amount of money does corrode away some of the hero-veneer with which he was laminated in the materials released by PPL.
Moreover, the product, legal insurance, is not the unique province of PPL. In fact many companies provide legal insurance, many with better coverage at better rates than what is offered by PPL. A number of employers offer legal insurance along with health insurance as part of a benefits package. When I asked an attorney who I know about PPL, they simply said “well, you can get better coverage elsewhere.” So, the wonderful and unique product of PPL is neither unique nor wonderful, it’s not even reputed to be particularly good. Our old pal Harland did not offer something new to humanity, contrary to the creation myth. He didn’t even offer something that was any better than what already existed. However, you would never know that from the legion of hard-sell masters whose methods, both as employed at PPL and elsewhere, have gotten the negative attention of many state regulators (Davis 2002).
On top of that, it has become open to debate whether or not PPL even provides the services it claims to provide. At least one court in Mississippi has decided that PPL has failed to provide the services advertised and as such was guilty of fraud (Davis 2005) (and Federal regulators have required that PPL begin reporting their profits in a more honest manner [Davis 2005]), and many folks I have encountered who have had dealings with PPL have told me horror stories concerning their inability to actually make use of legal insurance when they needed it. It is worth noting that roughly half of the folks who buy policies do not renew them at the end of the year (Davis 2002).
So, the origin is a myth. The value of the alleged product (as opposed to the one actually being sold, i.e. the “sales position”) is debatable and therefore largely mythical. Is it at least true that you can make a lot of money doing this? Well, sort of.
There are those who make a lot of money, but they are the ones who are extraordinarily successful at selling others on the idea of being a salesperson, those who actually spend their time selling the legal insurance are likely to lose money (Davis 2002; CBC News 2000). Moreover, the majority of those who recruit others into the company still don’t make much money on the deal (CBC News 2000). So, there are a few who do manage to make money at this, sometimes a fair amount of money, but they are few and far between, they do so not on the strength of their product but by pulling others into the cult of Stonecipher, and even these folks tend to have to jump from company to company (or scheme to scheme, as it were) as these schemes are not good long-term investments even if you are successful with it, the mathematics eventually causing the whole thing to fold in on itself (‘lectric Law Library N.D.).
As Cohan (2003) put it, the pitch is full of good stories, but these stories don’t stand up to scrutiny. Unfortunately, the structure and setting of the pitch is such that many in the audience shut off their critical faculties and buy into it without applying that critical scrutiny.
Quoting Scripture
The coda to my PPL experience came two days later. Lucy called me up and asked why I had not committed to PPL that night. I simply stated that I was not impressed. Lucy pressed further, asking why I was unimpressed, so I told her that if she would give me twenty minutes I would explain.
I explained the basic instability of pyramid schemes, whether they call themselves Network marketing, multi-level marketing, or by any other name. I explained that I could see three possible futures for PPL – it burns out (like most pyramid schemes) and she is left empty-handed, it finally crosses the line (or is finally found to have crossed the line) of what is legal and is taken down by the authorities, or it becomes a standard insurance company and the current crop of salespeople find themselves increasingly disadvantaged, if not quickly unemployed, in a more standard corporate hierarchy.
She disregarded all of this and simply stated that she believed that I wasn’t “seeing the opportunity” (a phrase that was often repeated throughout the sermon a few nights earlier). I responded that I did see what was happening, I suspected I could see it more clearly than her, and that I was not interested, and I was again told that I was “obviously not seeing the opportunity.”
It was at this point that Lucy began quoting scripture. No, really. PPL has produced a good deal of material aimed at keeping the faithful recruiting. These materials are filled with inspirational stories (which, given the truth behind the Stonecipher story, I am not inclined to take on face value), and logically fallacious sayings aimed at shutting down the critics and converting the heathens. The next twenty minutes were spent with her quoting what amounted to “Chicken Soup for the Pyramid Scheme Soul” at me, me pointing out why I wasn’t buying it, her becoming frustrated, and then quoting another PPL tract, clearly wanting me to see the error of my ways. In the end, I was halfway shocked that she didn’t announce that she would pray to Ponzi and his messiah Stonecipher for my deliverance.
When it became clear that I wasn’t biting, she asked to put me in touch with someone higher up the food chain who, she felt certain, would be able to get me to see what I was missing. I declined. When at last the phone call ended, I could read the heavy sense of rejection and disappointment in her voice of the sort that I often hear from frustrated evangelicals upon discovering that they are unable to answer the questions of someone they’ve marked for conversion.
Religion, Symbols, and the Stifling of Free Thought
Whether what I experienced is common to PPL or simply the hard-sell method of a particular cell of folks within PPL, I cannot claim to know. What I do know is that it is no surprise that someone attempting to sell a shaky business model with a questionable product would resort to the methodology of born-again religion to do so. After all, both use emotion to push the convert to feel that they have made a good choice and are somehow superior the masses (whether because they are “saved,” allegedly “helping people,” or “on the road to riches”) and both fall apart when an intended convert begins asking tough questions. The difference is that born-again religion may have some beneficial effects for the average convert, while some basic research into the company suggests that PPL is simply likely to drains their bank account.
Ultimately, the reason why so many people in the room that night were entranced by the PPL pitch, despite its lack of logic or legitimate evidence, was that they were sold a set of symbols. The stories, images, and promises that were made were provided in a way orchestrated to imbue them with meaning, with values, and to question the legitimacy of the stories was to question the legitimacy of the values that they seemed to exemplify.
By leaving out a few relevant details, Stonecipher’s story of the accident and legal case takes a run-of-the-mill story of litigation and imbues it with the power of what many perceive to be out-of-control litigation and the helplessness that many feel when faced with the law. It provides hope to deal with these fears in the person of Harland Stonecipher, who single-handedly re-invented the way that legal representation works to save the masses. The story becomes mythic, it is imbued with meaning, it tells of the heroics of an individual, and how you can join him. To show intelligence and inquisitiveness and question the story is to question the legitimacy of what PPL is doing and the righteousness of the PPL converts, and in turn to question the opportunity for you to be a hero (and, or course, make wads of cash while doing it).
There were many other stories told the night of the pitch, and each of them had one thing in common with the story of Stonecipher’s auto accident: they took a rather mundane story and imbued it with meaning so that the act of selling either insurance or memberships through PPL became something more than a simple occupation. One thing priests have known for centuries – it’s harder for the faithful to question a story imbued with meaning than one that is not, and it’s easy for the infidel to be impressed by the conviction of those who are energized by myth, even if the story doesn’t match up with reality.
Amen.
CBC News. 2000. Pre-Paid Legal Services: Worth the Money? Broadcast on April 11, 2000.
Cohan, Peter. 2003. Pre-Paid Legal is in Need of Better Reality, not Better Stories. OKC Business, July 28, 2003.
Davis, Melissa. 2002. Pre-Paid Legal’s Colorful Workforce. The Street.Com, available online on July 10, 2006 here. Davis, Melissa. 2005. Pre-Paid Weathers Guilty Verdict. The Street.Com.
Electric Law Library. N.D. How to Avoid Ponzi and Pyramid Schemes.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Trying to Do Something New With It?
It seems that, whenever I encounter someone who is an advocate of some form of pseudo-archaeology, after I have exhaustively pointed out the flaws, inconsistencies, and made-up-shit that goes into their pet hypothesis, I am told something along the lines of "well, at least I (or the person who they are quoting) am trying to do something different with this information! THAT has value!"
If you are genuinely trying to do something new and innovative with old information, and trying to do it in such a way that you are not engaging in fabricating information, using special pleading to make your case, or in some other way being a dishonest bastard, then yes, trying to do something new has value.
The people who use this as the last-line defense for their pet hypothesis, though? Well, A) they are almost always just trying to maintain an older, stupid idea ("ancient astronauts," Biblical literalism, etc.) and aren't actually trying anything new, and B) they are pretty much always conflating "trying something new" with playing fast-and-loose with evidence and ignoring anything even vaguely approaching logic or honesty.
If you think I'm being overly harsh, then let's consider the fact that this explanation is pretty much only used in pseudo-science, and is not present in any other realm where people try to arrive at some sort of coherent explanation of events.
For example, in criminal investigations, you would rightfully dismiss someone as a nut if they insisted that a theft was committed by aliens, and then proceeded to "prove" this by making references to out-of-context information from unrelated crimes, pulling bits and pieces of conspiracy beliefs from pop culture, making up "facts", and ignoring relevant information from the actual crime scene. They would certainly be "doing something new" with the information...but that something new would not only not get you anywhere closer to solving the crime, it would, in fact, move you farther and farther away from the real solution. A person doing this would be immediately drummed out of the investigation and replaced with someone who was, you know, actually mentally competent.
And yet this same basic procedure - pulling out-of-context information from unrelated sites, pulling "facts" out of pop culture rather than data, making false claims about relevant sites, and often just making shit up - is the norm in pseudo-archaeology, and even people who are not directly involved in it often defend these practices by claiming that the pseudo-scholar is "trying to do something new" with the information.
Often, perhaps typically, implied under all of this is the notion that real archaeologists (or, as the pseudo-archaeologists often label us "establishment archaeologists - booo, hisssss, bad establishment!") aren't trying to find anything new. Sometimes it is flat out stated - there are many claims from the pseudo scholars that actual scholars are just trying to maintain some sort of "status quo", which reveals the true depth of the ignorance of the pseudo scholars - but at least as often it's just sort of implied, clearly there as an accusation, but covered up enough that the accuser can deny it if called on it.
The truth, however, is that we are working far harder than any of these twits. We are routinely trying to test and verify our methods and our results (see here for a summarized history of how archaeology has changed, or read this for a more thorough discussion). I have opened myself up to criticism by my professional colleagues for presenting papers that were not in-line with established models of past cultures, I have also found and publicized artifacts that are out-of-keeping with established cultural chronologies, and I have long supported archaeologists who work on the frontiers of what we think we know (for example, those working on pre-Clovis archaeology in North America). And I am not alone, some solitary warrior fighting against the "establishment" - every archaeologist that I know who presents papers or publishes their findings does similar things. Trying to "do something new" is what archaeologists do.
Now, it could be said that we should be better at communicating this to the general public. That is a valid criticism, and certainly one that I, and others try to address by keeping blogs, giving public lectures, appearing on podcasts, and so on. Some of us are lucky enough to be able to participate in radio and television, which is where most people get their information.
However, while we might do a better job of communicating our work and our findings, that in no way absolves the pseudo-archaeologists who distort, lie, and obfuscate. And, if you are someone who is going to claim that real archaeologists aren't "doing something new" then I offer you a challenge: When is the last time that you read an issue of National Geographic? Smithsonian Magazine? Or looked at professional journals such as American Antiquity? If you haven't done so lately, then you don't know what archaeologists are up to, and you sound as ignorant as you truly are when you imply that we aren't doing anything, or are simply supporting the "status quo."
If you are genuinely trying to do something new and innovative with old information, and trying to do it in such a way that you are not engaging in fabricating information, using special pleading to make your case, or in some other way being a dishonest bastard, then yes, trying to do something new has value.
The people who use this as the last-line defense for their pet hypothesis, though? Well, A) they are almost always just trying to maintain an older, stupid idea ("ancient astronauts," Biblical literalism, etc.) and aren't actually trying anything new, and B) they are pretty much always conflating "trying something new" with playing fast-and-loose with evidence and ignoring anything even vaguely approaching logic or honesty.
If you think I'm being overly harsh, then let's consider the fact that this explanation is pretty much only used in pseudo-science, and is not present in any other realm where people try to arrive at some sort of coherent explanation of events.
For example, in criminal investigations, you would rightfully dismiss someone as a nut if they insisted that a theft was committed by aliens, and then proceeded to "prove" this by making references to out-of-context information from unrelated crimes, pulling bits and pieces of conspiracy beliefs from pop culture, making up "facts", and ignoring relevant information from the actual crime scene. They would certainly be "doing something new" with the information...but that something new would not only not get you anywhere closer to solving the crime, it would, in fact, move you farther and farther away from the real solution. A person doing this would be immediately drummed out of the investigation and replaced with someone who was, you know, actually mentally competent.
And yet this same basic procedure - pulling out-of-context information from unrelated sites, pulling "facts" out of pop culture rather than data, making false claims about relevant sites, and often just making shit up - is the norm in pseudo-archaeology, and even people who are not directly involved in it often defend these practices by claiming that the pseudo-scholar is "trying to do something new" with the information.
Often, perhaps typically, implied under all of this is the notion that real archaeologists (or, as the pseudo-archaeologists often label us "establishment archaeologists - booo, hisssss, bad establishment!") aren't trying to find anything new. Sometimes it is flat out stated - there are many claims from the pseudo scholars that actual scholars are just trying to maintain some sort of "status quo", which reveals the true depth of the ignorance of the pseudo scholars - but at least as often it's just sort of implied, clearly there as an accusation, but covered up enough that the accuser can deny it if called on it.
The truth, however, is that we are working far harder than any of these twits. We are routinely trying to test and verify our methods and our results (see here for a summarized history of how archaeology has changed, or read this for a more thorough discussion). I have opened myself up to criticism by my professional colleagues for presenting papers that were not in-line with established models of past cultures, I have also found and publicized artifacts that are out-of-keeping with established cultural chronologies, and I have long supported archaeologists who work on the frontiers of what we think we know (for example, those working on pre-Clovis archaeology in North America). And I am not alone, some solitary warrior fighting against the "establishment" - every archaeologist that I know who presents papers or publishes their findings does similar things. Trying to "do something new" is what archaeologists do.
Now, it could be said that we should be better at communicating this to the general public. That is a valid criticism, and certainly one that I, and others try to address by keeping blogs, giving public lectures, appearing on podcasts, and so on. Some of us are lucky enough to be able to participate in radio and television, which is where most people get their information.
However, while we might do a better job of communicating our work and our findings, that in no way absolves the pseudo-archaeologists who distort, lie, and obfuscate. And, if you are someone who is going to claim that real archaeologists aren't "doing something new" then I offer you a challenge: When is the last time that you read an issue of National Geographic? Smithsonian Magazine? Or looked at professional journals such as American Antiquity? If you haven't done so lately, then you don't know what archaeologists are up to, and you sound as ignorant as you truly are when you imply that we aren't doing anything, or are simply supporting the "status quo."
Monday, October 29, 2012
What's in a Name? Or, Why You Should be Cautious in Comparing Languages...
While driving out the the field the other day, one of the archaeologists with whom I am working asked what the linguistic connection was between Cachuma - a place name from Santa Barbara County - and Kuuchamaa - a similar-sounding place name from San Diego County.
I didn't know the origin of Kuuchamaa, but it is the native name for Tecate Peak, an important sacred mountain that is the spiritual center for the Kumeyaay peoples of southern California and northern Mexico. Having read up on it, I still haven't a clue as to what the word means, but it is the name of both the place, and of a culture hero - a wise and powerful shaman - said to have once lived in that place*. The translation of the word appears to be hard to come by, so I am at a bit of a loss.
Cachuma, however, is a bit easier. Cachuma is the English bastardization of the Spanish bastardization of the Inezeno Chumash word Aqitsumu, meaning "constant signal", which was the name of a village located in the Santa Ynez Valley, near the current location of Lake Cachuma.
So, while Cachuma and Kuuchamaa seem similar at first glance, one appears to be the actual Kumeyaay word, while the other is a rather tortured telephone game version of an Inezeno word. Now, there could still be some linguistic connection between them, but that seems somewhat unlikely, as Aqitsumu fits in perfectly well with the Chumash language family**, and Kuuchamaa, as far as I have been able to tell (though I am a bit shaky on this) seems to fit in well with the Kumeyaay language, a dialect of Diegeno, part of the Yuman language family. So, there is no reason to assume a connection, despite superficial similarities.
The words, though similar, refer to different types of things (a sacred mountain/person's name and a village), and there is no reason to assume that they would have similar meanings. What's more, the version of Aqitsumu that bears the most resemblance to the Kumeyaay word, Cachuma, is also the version that is most divorced from native pronunciation. Further, the names come from two unconnected languages.
There is, in short, no reason to think that these words are in any way connected, and some reason to think that they are not.
What is interesting about this is that there is no reason to assume a linguistic connection between two groups of people who were separated by only a few hundred miles of space for centuries. Pseudoscientific language comparisons are often employed by people who wish to show a connection between two completely unrelated groups of people. It is a favorite approach of those who see the ancient Isrealites landing int he Americas, the Celts taking over parts of the midwest, Medieval Japanese explorers settling Mexico, or Egyptians colonizing South America (yes, there are people who believe every one of these things).
The method is as follows:
Step 1: Find a few words (or sometimes even one) from two languages that have even a superficial similarity
Step 2: Claim that the link between these two populations is proven
Step 3: Ignore everyone who actually knows what they are talking about when they point out that you are a fool.
But, as illustrated, even in a case where two words are both used as placenames, sound extremely similar, and are from groups separated by only a few hundred miles, there is still reason to doubt a connection. Keep this in mind whenever your wacky neighbor claims that some vague language similarities prove that the native people of New Jersey were actually descended from a clan of Bavarian sausage-makers.
*Kuuchamaa appears to be a manifestation of a messianic religious concept that appeared throughout southern California either shortly before or around the time that the Spanish arrived. Whether the Kuuchamaa version of the story is the origin for the others, represents a merger of the messianic story with another older religious tradition, or else a spontaneous manifestation of a similar story, I do not know...nor does anyone else as far as I have been able to tell. It's neat that even after well over a century of research, we still have some mysteries like this to explore in California.
**Chumashan languages were, until recently, thought to be part of the Hokan language family, but that view has now been largely discredited. As a result, Chumash is an oddity in that it has no known related languages (similar in this respect to the Basque language of Spain) and exists as a linguistic island alone on the California coast. While this is speculative, some researchers have posited that Chumash may be the last version of the original Native Californian language family, as the other languages in California appear to have come in from elsewhere. While intriguing, this idea remains speculation until such time as physical or paleolinguistic evidence can be found to back it up.
I didn't know the origin of Kuuchamaa, but it is the native name for Tecate Peak, an important sacred mountain that is the spiritual center for the Kumeyaay peoples of southern California and northern Mexico. Having read up on it, I still haven't a clue as to what the word means, but it is the name of both the place, and of a culture hero - a wise and powerful shaman - said to have once lived in that place*. The translation of the word appears to be hard to come by, so I am at a bit of a loss.
Cachuma, however, is a bit easier. Cachuma is the English bastardization of the Spanish bastardization of the Inezeno Chumash word Aqitsumu, meaning "constant signal", which was the name of a village located in the Santa Ynez Valley, near the current location of Lake Cachuma.
So, while Cachuma and Kuuchamaa seem similar at first glance, one appears to be the actual Kumeyaay word, while the other is a rather tortured telephone game version of an Inezeno word. Now, there could still be some linguistic connection between them, but that seems somewhat unlikely, as Aqitsumu fits in perfectly well with the Chumash language family**, and Kuuchamaa, as far as I have been able to tell (though I am a bit shaky on this) seems to fit in well with the Kumeyaay language, a dialect of Diegeno, part of the Yuman language family. So, there is no reason to assume a connection, despite superficial similarities.
The words, though similar, refer to different types of things (a sacred mountain/person's name and a village), and there is no reason to assume that they would have similar meanings. What's more, the version of Aqitsumu that bears the most resemblance to the Kumeyaay word, Cachuma, is also the version that is most divorced from native pronunciation. Further, the names come from two unconnected languages.
There is, in short, no reason to think that these words are in any way connected, and some reason to think that they are not.
What is interesting about this is that there is no reason to assume a linguistic connection between two groups of people who were separated by only a few hundred miles of space for centuries. Pseudoscientific language comparisons are often employed by people who wish to show a connection between two completely unrelated groups of people. It is a favorite approach of those who see the ancient Isrealites landing int he Americas, the Celts taking over parts of the midwest, Medieval Japanese explorers settling Mexico, or Egyptians colonizing South America (yes, there are people who believe every one of these things).
The method is as follows:
Step 1: Find a few words (or sometimes even one) from two languages that have even a superficial similarity
Step 2: Claim that the link between these two populations is proven
Step 3: Ignore everyone who actually knows what they are talking about when they point out that you are a fool.
But, as illustrated, even in a case where two words are both used as placenames, sound extremely similar, and are from groups separated by only a few hundred miles, there is still reason to doubt a connection. Keep this in mind whenever your wacky neighbor claims that some vague language similarities prove that the native people of New Jersey were actually descended from a clan of Bavarian sausage-makers.
*Kuuchamaa appears to be a manifestation of a messianic religious concept that appeared throughout southern California either shortly before or around the time that the Spanish arrived. Whether the Kuuchamaa version of the story is the origin for the others, represents a merger of the messianic story with another older religious tradition, or else a spontaneous manifestation of a similar story, I do not know...nor does anyone else as far as I have been able to tell. It's neat that even after well over a century of research, we still have some mysteries like this to explore in California.
**Chumashan languages were, until recently, thought to be part of the Hokan language family, but that view has now been largely discredited. As a result, Chumash is an oddity in that it has no known related languages (similar in this respect to the Basque language of Spain) and exists as a linguistic island alone on the California coast. While this is speculative, some researchers have posited that Chumash may be the last version of the original Native Californian language family, as the other languages in California appear to have come in from elsewhere. While intriguing, this idea remains speculation until such time as physical or paleolinguistic evidence can be found to back it up.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Thinking About Guns
So, after the recent shootings, we have people once again screaming at each other over the legality of firearms. While debate over issues such as this are healthy, much of what gets thrown about is hyperbole and vitriol, and as such it is just typical stupid politics. As there is alot of shouting and many people whop think that they have well-thought out positions, when they are actually just having knee-jerk reactions covered up by barely coherent figleaf justifications, this annoys me...and if it were likely to lead to any real policy changes, they would probably be bad policy cased on emotional over-reaction and vitriol more than on actual facts.
Before I get into the meat of this entry, I want to tell you where I stand on this issue, so that you will understand my own interests and biases:
As a legal matter, the 2nd amendment is vague regarding actual gun rights. Yes, I know, you are certain that it states flat-out that the right to keep and bear arms must not be infrigned, or perhaps you are certain that it states that only a well-regulated militia should keep arms. Go read the damn thing - see the placement of that comma? That actually makes the phrasing vague. And in legal terms, the phrasing being vague means that the law itself is vague. Grow up and deal with the fact that interpreting the amendment is not a clear-cut matter. If you believe otherwise, then you are reading what you want the text to say, but not what it actually says.
However, I am one of those people who thinks that, in cases where phrasing is vague, the law should be interpreted in the way that people are given a greater degree of freedom vis-a-vis the law. So, I am of the opinion that the 2nd amendment should be read as allowing relatively broad gun ownership rights to the average citizen.
However, whatever my view of the law, I am myself not a lover of guns. I do not own guns. I do not like guns. I will not have a gun brought into my home. Unlike many people involved in this shouting match, I am mature enough to understand that people can have a legal right to something without me personally wanting to exercise that right.
While I strongly dislike guns, I do like many people who themselves like guns. I have known enough gun owners to realize that the notion of the "gun nut" is mostly fiction. Yeah, there are a few scary firearm owners out there, but my experience is that they are abnormalities and, frankly, the gun owners that I know do not scare me. They are generally responsible, safety-minded, and not a threat to me or anyone else.
So, my position: I dislike guns, but they should be legal, most gun owners don't bother me and I even really respect the safety-mindedness of most of them, and I am of the mind that most of the vitriol regarding gun control is political nonsense either pushing or opposing an agenda that is calculated to motivate voters rather than forward policy.
Okay, on with the entry...
Much of what the people in favor of weapon bans worry about is dubious or just plain wrong (in other words, it's bullshit): firearm violence is actually much less common than it was even as recently as the 1990s, despite a growing population, and most of what is committed is gang-related and not likely amenable to control using standard gun control measures; most gun violence is committed not with "assault weapons*" but with hand guns; when one compares rates of gun ownership to number of gun homicides, while there is a relationship between the number of firearms and the number of homicides, it isn't exactly the tightest correlation around; events in Europe have demonstrated that mass-killings are not unique to the United States; and when one looks at the numbers and the spread of firearm violence around the world, the inescapable conclusion is that these massacre shootings are both abberations away from trends involving firearms and are not unique to the U.S., though that goes against much popular opinion.
At the same time, people who are opposed to gun control measures are known to spew their own particular brand of bullshit. While there are incidents where the possession of firearms by the general public has assisted in ending violent attacks, there are many cases where the use of a gun against an assailant is most likely to have increased the body count (consider the logistics of people firing back at the Aurora, Colorado gunman in a crowded theater - the body count can only have gone up if people fired back), so the usual claim of "more guns = less deaths" isn't necessarilly true; while the precise ratio is open to debate, the data does show that firearms in the home are far more likely to result in death or injury due to mis-use or accident than to be successfully used in self defense (indeed, I myself once had a gun pulled on me by a family member who mistakenly thought that I was a burgular - and for the record, I was in a bedroom with the door closed and a light on light on and not skulking about a dark house sneaking up on people); and comparisons often used in rhetoric championed by the NRA is often completely absurd; for example, comparing gun deaths to automobile deaths - an automobile is built for transportation, and as dangerous as it can be, its principle purpose is to transport people and goods; a gun is a weapon, it is designed specifically to kill or injure either a human or an animal [in the case of hunting rifles] - these are not at all the same things and comparing them is mind-bendingly stupid. Similarly, the phrase "guns don't kill, people do" is as sophomoric and half-witted a slogan as one can have - the tools available influence people's decisions, and that guns make killing easier and more prone to quick impulses can not be ignored. The tools influence the people just as people use the tools.
But here's the rub. Both sides are partially wrong, but tend to act as if they are entirely right. The end result, both have taken up office space in a house of cards. Most people probably don't have a particularly strong view on this subject, but of those who do, there is a polarization into increasingly irrational camps, and advocation of positions that often make little sense.
If there is going to be any meaningful steps taken towards curbing gun violence, they will need to account for the legal realities of gun ownership within the United States, they will have to account for the culture of gun ownership, they will have to account for the real facts of self defense vs. accidental gun deaths, and they will have to be based on the real nature of gun violence - both the truth regarding it's prevalence (ignoring media panic) and regarding how guns play into it (ignoring the NRA's slogans).
Until and unless we are able to ignore the noise, admit that "my side" can by wrong, and look at the truth of the matter, we shouldn't expect to make any progress regarding gun violence.
*The more time I spend around people who are into guns, the more I come to realize that the term "assault rifle" or "assault weapon" means very little in a technical sense, and as such isn't very useful in actually understanding the issues.
Before I get into the meat of this entry, I want to tell you where I stand on this issue, so that you will understand my own interests and biases:
As a legal matter, the 2nd amendment is vague regarding actual gun rights. Yes, I know, you are certain that it states flat-out that the right to keep and bear arms must not be infrigned, or perhaps you are certain that it states that only a well-regulated militia should keep arms. Go read the damn thing - see the placement of that comma? That actually makes the phrasing vague. And in legal terms, the phrasing being vague means that the law itself is vague. Grow up and deal with the fact that interpreting the amendment is not a clear-cut matter. If you believe otherwise, then you are reading what you want the text to say, but not what it actually says.
However, I am one of those people who thinks that, in cases where phrasing is vague, the law should be interpreted in the way that people are given a greater degree of freedom vis-a-vis the law. So, I am of the opinion that the 2nd amendment should be read as allowing relatively broad gun ownership rights to the average citizen.
However, whatever my view of the law, I am myself not a lover of guns. I do not own guns. I do not like guns. I will not have a gun brought into my home. Unlike many people involved in this shouting match, I am mature enough to understand that people can have a legal right to something without me personally wanting to exercise that right.
While I strongly dislike guns, I do like many people who themselves like guns. I have known enough gun owners to realize that the notion of the "gun nut" is mostly fiction. Yeah, there are a few scary firearm owners out there, but my experience is that they are abnormalities and, frankly, the gun owners that I know do not scare me. They are generally responsible, safety-minded, and not a threat to me or anyone else.
So, my position: I dislike guns, but they should be legal, most gun owners don't bother me and I even really respect the safety-mindedness of most of them, and I am of the mind that most of the vitriol regarding gun control is political nonsense either pushing or opposing an agenda that is calculated to motivate voters rather than forward policy.
Okay, on with the entry...
Much of what the people in favor of weapon bans worry about is dubious or just plain wrong (in other words, it's bullshit): firearm violence is actually much less common than it was even as recently as the 1990s, despite a growing population, and most of what is committed is gang-related and not likely amenable to control using standard gun control measures; most gun violence is committed not with "assault weapons*" but with hand guns; when one compares rates of gun ownership to number of gun homicides, while there is a relationship between the number of firearms and the number of homicides, it isn't exactly the tightest correlation around; events in Europe have demonstrated that mass-killings are not unique to the United States; and when one looks at the numbers and the spread of firearm violence around the world, the inescapable conclusion is that these massacre shootings are both abberations away from trends involving firearms and are not unique to the U.S., though that goes against much popular opinion.
At the same time, people who are opposed to gun control measures are known to spew their own particular brand of bullshit. While there are incidents where the possession of firearms by the general public has assisted in ending violent attacks, there are many cases where the use of a gun against an assailant is most likely to have increased the body count (consider the logistics of people firing back at the Aurora, Colorado gunman in a crowded theater - the body count can only have gone up if people fired back), so the usual claim of "more guns = less deaths" isn't necessarilly true; while the precise ratio is open to debate, the data does show that firearms in the home are far more likely to result in death or injury due to mis-use or accident than to be successfully used in self defense (indeed, I myself once had a gun pulled on me by a family member who mistakenly thought that I was a burgular - and for the record, I was in a bedroom with the door closed and a light on light on and not skulking about a dark house sneaking up on people); and comparisons often used in rhetoric championed by the NRA is often completely absurd; for example, comparing gun deaths to automobile deaths - an automobile is built for transportation, and as dangerous as it can be, its principle purpose is to transport people and goods; a gun is a weapon, it is designed specifically to kill or injure either a human or an animal [in the case of hunting rifles] - these are not at all the same things and comparing them is mind-bendingly stupid. Similarly, the phrase "guns don't kill, people do" is as sophomoric and half-witted a slogan as one can have - the tools available influence people's decisions, and that guns make killing easier and more prone to quick impulses can not be ignored. The tools influence the people just as people use the tools.
But here's the rub. Both sides are partially wrong, but tend to act as if they are entirely right. The end result, both have taken up office space in a house of cards. Most people probably don't have a particularly strong view on this subject, but of those who do, there is a polarization into increasingly irrational camps, and advocation of positions that often make little sense.
If there is going to be any meaningful steps taken towards curbing gun violence, they will need to account for the legal realities of gun ownership within the United States, they will have to account for the culture of gun ownership, they will have to account for the real facts of self defense vs. accidental gun deaths, and they will have to be based on the real nature of gun violence - both the truth regarding it's prevalence (ignoring media panic) and regarding how guns play into it (ignoring the NRA's slogans).
Until and unless we are able to ignore the noise, admit that "my side" can by wrong, and look at the truth of the matter, we shouldn't expect to make any progress regarding gun violence.
*The more time I spend around people who are into guns, the more I come to realize that the term "assault rifle" or "assault weapon" means very little in a technical sense, and as such isn't very useful in actually understanding the issues.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Science Process and Scientific Literacy
A common theme on this blog is irritation with the scientific illiteracy of much of the public. This is, it needs to be noted, different from a lack of educational achievement. While it is popular to divide the world into uneducated cretins and enlightened college graduates, this is complete bullshit. While certain forms of anti-scientific thinking are popular among those without degrees, things such as vaccine denial, hysteria over GMOs, and belief in bogus "energy healing" are extremely common among people with degrees.
In fact, my own experience is that those with degrees tend to be far more intractable in their false beliefs in large part because they have degrees. I have lost count of the number of times that I have had a conversation with someone who was spouting pseudo-scientific nonsense and had them respond finally with "well, I earned a degree from Stanford [or another major university], so clearly I'm smart enough to understand this!"
A degree from Stanford, or anywhere else, in literature or history does not make one knowledgeable about biology, medicine, or physics. Certainly, someone with such a degree can become knowledgeable about these subjects, but to rely on the fact that you have a degree and not on training on the subject in question is a sign of sloppy thinking.
Most of the time, people are simply accepting whatever is convenient for their social and political views, and ignoring any disconfirming data. So, people on the political right are perfectly willing to accept marginal and poorly done studies that conclude that there is doubt about climate change contrary to the general scientific consensus, but people on the political left are willing to accept equally dubious studies that allege harm from GMO crops; people on the social right are willing to buy all manner of nonsense about the alleged harms that homosexuals do to their families, but people on the social left are only too ready to accept dubious studies concerning the role of self esteem in crime.
Part of the problem is, I think, that there is a tendency to equate scientific literacy with acceptance of certain conclusions, a scientifically literate person is one who accepts that evolution occurred, to use one example. In truth, scientific literacy is about having a knowledge of the methods of science. Importantly, it is about knowing the parameters under which scientific knowledge is generated.
Let's take the example of the study by Andrew Wakefield that is used to make claims about a link between vaccines and autism. Many people either accepted it because it gelled with their social and political views (medicine bad, big pharma evil) or rejected it because it clashed with their views (vaccines are part of the progress of mankind!). Very few people who hold a strong view on it have actually read it.
I did read it. When I read it, I, like everyone else, was unaware that Wakefield had falsified data or tweaked his results. But I was struck by two things: 1) the causal mechanism that he suggested, wherein the thimerisol in the vaccine caused inflamation int he digestive tract that allowed infection leading to autism, didn't sound plausible. However, I am not a medical doctor and am aware that there may be something to this that I simply didn't understand (this recognizing of one's own limits in knowledge is an important part of scientific literacy). 2) The sample size was small, totaling 12 children. A small sample size is useful in trying to prove the plausibility of a basic concept, but is insufficient for actually proving anything medical because of the high odds of random chance interfering with a sample size that small.
So, after reading it, I went away thinking that it sounded implausible, but that I didn't know enough about the subject to judge that too strongly, and that the sample size was small and larger scale studies would be needed to find a link between vaccines and autism with any confidence. In other words, my own scientific literacy pointed to the problems with the study, but prevented me from ignoring it outright until such time as further data was generated. I continued to get vaccinations myself, and encouraged people with children to get them, as the general scientific consensus was still in favor of them, but I was open to the possibility that this might be wrong.
In time, large scale studies were performed, and they showed that there is no link between vaccines and autism, and Wakefield has since been revealed as an outright fraud. However, by that time, numerous people had jumped on the bandwagon of a hypothesis supported by a dubious small-scale study, leading to the resurgence of numerous nearly eradicated (and in some cases deadly) illnesses. A greater degree of scientific literacy would have cautioned people early on, and they would have considered the possibility of the study being accurate alongside the need for further study to test the hypothesis. Considering that children have been injured and killed because of vaccine denial, this is a case where a lack of scientific literacy resulted in very serious consequences.
Recently, studies have been published arguing that organic farming leads to healthier soil and that acupuncture is effective in dealing with pain. In both cases, people either jumped on board or rejected the claims based on their pre-existing beliefs, without ever actually looking into the contents of the studies themselves. The acupuncture study was riddled with problems (for a summary of it and similar studies, look here) that effectively eliminate it from consideration, while the organic farm studies are interesting and seem plausible, but tend to have small sample sizes and some methodological problems that decrease their ability to elucidate the issue. However, you would only know these things if you read the papers themselves and read the scientific discussions and criticisms of the papers, which most people don't. Most people go to Fox News or the Huffington Post and accept the summary from whichever source aligns with their social and political views without ever questioning the actual science itself. And, importantly, this is extremely common amongst educated people with degrees from well-respected universities.
Acceptance and rejection of many scientific claims often falls along political lines. Left-leaning individuals are more likely to accept that acupuncture is great, that organic farming improves soil, and that vaccines cause autism, all without seriously considering problems with and criticisms of the research; right-leaning individuals are more likely to embrace climate change denial and notions like intelligent design. Those with college degrees are most likely to be able to convince themselves that they are too smart to have been fooled and to be able to rationalize their conclusions, no matter whether they are debatable but possible (organic farming improves soil) or flat-out false (intelligent design). All are scientifically illiterate, and yet all think that they alone understand the world.
In sum: scientific literacy isn't about having the right knowledge, it's about having an understanding of how science works, which means knowing that one study doesn't "prove" anything, that multiple studies are necessary, the larger the scale the better, and that the criticisms of the studies are important - having certain base knowledge (the Earth orbits the sun, DNA codes many of our traits, etc.) is necessary and important but is no literacy in of itself. It's about knowing that you are not knowledgeable about any but a narrow range of topics, and that you have to accept that you may be wrong and that people ideologically opposed to you may be right on any given topic. It's about knowing that your educational background prepares you to evaluate information and ideas within the field that you studied, and does not make you more likely to be able to evaluate information outside of that field. And, importantly, being scientifically literate means understanding that the things that you wish to be true or that align with your beliefs may be false, and that you have to listen to criticism of ideas that you hold dear, for those criticisms might be correct.
In fact, my own experience is that those with degrees tend to be far more intractable in their false beliefs in large part because they have degrees. I have lost count of the number of times that I have had a conversation with someone who was spouting pseudo-scientific nonsense and had them respond finally with "well, I earned a degree from Stanford [or another major university], so clearly I'm smart enough to understand this!"
A degree from Stanford, or anywhere else, in literature or history does not make one knowledgeable about biology, medicine, or physics. Certainly, someone with such a degree can become knowledgeable about these subjects, but to rely on the fact that you have a degree and not on training on the subject in question is a sign of sloppy thinking.
Most of the time, people are simply accepting whatever is convenient for their social and political views, and ignoring any disconfirming data. So, people on the political right are perfectly willing to accept marginal and poorly done studies that conclude that there is doubt about climate change contrary to the general scientific consensus, but people on the political left are willing to accept equally dubious studies that allege harm from GMO crops; people on the social right are willing to buy all manner of nonsense about the alleged harms that homosexuals do to their families, but people on the social left are only too ready to accept dubious studies concerning the role of self esteem in crime.
Part of the problem is, I think, that there is a tendency to equate scientific literacy with acceptance of certain conclusions, a scientifically literate person is one who accepts that evolution occurred, to use one example. In truth, scientific literacy is about having a knowledge of the methods of science. Importantly, it is about knowing the parameters under which scientific knowledge is generated.
Let's take the example of the study by Andrew Wakefield that is used to make claims about a link between vaccines and autism. Many people either accepted it because it gelled with their social and political views (medicine bad, big pharma evil) or rejected it because it clashed with their views (vaccines are part of the progress of mankind!). Very few people who hold a strong view on it have actually read it.
I did read it. When I read it, I, like everyone else, was unaware that Wakefield had falsified data or tweaked his results. But I was struck by two things: 1) the causal mechanism that he suggested, wherein the thimerisol in the vaccine caused inflamation int he digestive tract that allowed infection leading to autism, didn't sound plausible. However, I am not a medical doctor and am aware that there may be something to this that I simply didn't understand (this recognizing of one's own limits in knowledge is an important part of scientific literacy). 2) The sample size was small, totaling 12 children. A small sample size is useful in trying to prove the plausibility of a basic concept, but is insufficient for actually proving anything medical because of the high odds of random chance interfering with a sample size that small.
So, after reading it, I went away thinking that it sounded implausible, but that I didn't know enough about the subject to judge that too strongly, and that the sample size was small and larger scale studies would be needed to find a link between vaccines and autism with any confidence. In other words, my own scientific literacy pointed to the problems with the study, but prevented me from ignoring it outright until such time as further data was generated. I continued to get vaccinations myself, and encouraged people with children to get them, as the general scientific consensus was still in favor of them, but I was open to the possibility that this might be wrong.
In time, large scale studies were performed, and they showed that there is no link between vaccines and autism, and Wakefield has since been revealed as an outright fraud. However, by that time, numerous people had jumped on the bandwagon of a hypothesis supported by a dubious small-scale study, leading to the resurgence of numerous nearly eradicated (and in some cases deadly) illnesses. A greater degree of scientific literacy would have cautioned people early on, and they would have considered the possibility of the study being accurate alongside the need for further study to test the hypothesis. Considering that children have been injured and killed because of vaccine denial, this is a case where a lack of scientific literacy resulted in very serious consequences.
Recently, studies have been published arguing that organic farming leads to healthier soil and that acupuncture is effective in dealing with pain. In both cases, people either jumped on board or rejected the claims based on their pre-existing beliefs, without ever actually looking into the contents of the studies themselves. The acupuncture study was riddled with problems (for a summary of it and similar studies, look here) that effectively eliminate it from consideration, while the organic farm studies are interesting and seem plausible, but tend to have small sample sizes and some methodological problems that decrease their ability to elucidate the issue. However, you would only know these things if you read the papers themselves and read the scientific discussions and criticisms of the papers, which most people don't. Most people go to Fox News or the Huffington Post and accept the summary from whichever source aligns with their social and political views without ever questioning the actual science itself. And, importantly, this is extremely common amongst educated people with degrees from well-respected universities.
Acceptance and rejection of many scientific claims often falls along political lines. Left-leaning individuals are more likely to accept that acupuncture is great, that organic farming improves soil, and that vaccines cause autism, all without seriously considering problems with and criticisms of the research; right-leaning individuals are more likely to embrace climate change denial and notions like intelligent design. Those with college degrees are most likely to be able to convince themselves that they are too smart to have been fooled and to be able to rationalize their conclusions, no matter whether they are debatable but possible (organic farming improves soil) or flat-out false (intelligent design). All are scientifically illiterate, and yet all think that they alone understand the world.
In sum: scientific literacy isn't about having the right knowledge, it's about having an understanding of how science works, which means knowing that one study doesn't "prove" anything, that multiple studies are necessary, the larger the scale the better, and that the criticisms of the studies are important - having certain base knowledge (the Earth orbits the sun, DNA codes many of our traits, etc.) is necessary and important but is no literacy in of itself. It's about knowing that you are not knowledgeable about any but a narrow range of topics, and that you have to accept that you may be wrong and that people ideologically opposed to you may be right on any given topic. It's about knowing that your educational background prepares you to evaluate information and ideas within the field that you studied, and does not make you more likely to be able to evaluate information outside of that field. And, importantly, being scientifically literate means understanding that the things that you wish to be true or that align with your beliefs may be false, and that you have to listen to criticism of ideas that you hold dear, for those criticisms might be correct.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Romanticizing the Egalitarians
As a graduate student, I worked as a teaching assistant as well as a lab instructor, and taught many a student the rudimentaries of anthropology and archaeology. A necessary part of the instruction is explaining the different types of social organization one is likely to encounter in the ethnographic and archaeological records.
And when you are dealing with alot of idealistic young college students, they tend to become quite enamored with "egalitarian" cultures...pretty much always without having a real understanding of what the term means.
And egalitarian culture is one where everybody is at about the same social level most of the time - someone may become a leader for a short time when their particular expertise or confidence is useful in a situation, only to give way to another leader under different circumstances. People follow not because someone is a chief or king or any other fixed hierarchical leader, but because that person is able to persuade others to follow them.
There are, of course, many different variations on egalitarian societies. In some, there may be some degree of formalized leadership, but it tends to be fluid and open to anyone who meets certain requirements (all men past the age of puberty, for example), in others there really are no recognition of leaders, just people who can persuade you to do things.
Naturally, my students would romanticize people who live(d) in these societies. There was a pervasive notion amongst the undergrads that people who lived in egalitarian societies were inherently more peaceful and led idyllic lives. One student even informed me that she felt moved to write a paper for another class that compared the (as she saw them) egalitarian and peaceful !Kung San of Africa with our current status-obsessed violent culture, and found us to be quite lacking.
I pointed out to this student that, according to the ethnography on which she was basing her views of the !Kung San, domestic violence was fairly common, and abject poverty the norm. In other words, there ain't no such thing as Utopia.
What my students never seemed to pick up on is that social organization tends to evolve in place (with the exception of those relatively unusual instances where it is successfully imposed from the outside...even in which cases it tends to e warped to fit local conditions and traditions). Egalitarian societies are not the product of gentle, enlightened souls who see a better way of organizing, they are the product of a system of resource procurement and use coupled with a low population density that allows such societies to exist without descending into chaos. Importantly, they only seem to work when you have a society in which there are a small enough number of people that everyone can both keep tabs on each other (to ensure that you are engaged in no wrong doing, and to make sure that you are not aggrandizing yourself) and equally share in the available resources. As soon as you have a large enough number of people packed into a small enough area, and accompanying resource stress, there is a need for organization in order to distribute what is needed to where it is needed. In other words, hierarchies, if they haven't formed already, will begin to form.
Now, with our ancestors, it's not clear which came first: did the population density/resource stress require hierarchies to develop, or did hierarchies develop and allow larger population densities to grow? It's an interesting question, but one that is rather beside the point as far as making judgements go. Once you have the number of people in the volume of space that occur in modern industrial and post-industrial nations, hierarchies are necessary.
That's not to say that the hierarchies always work well (they can be inefficient and ineffective) or that they are always nice to live in (ask a 19th century factory work about how much they enjoy life), but they are necessary to allow life to continue past a certain point in human cultural development. And we're not going to go back without killing off a huge portion of the global population.
If my students had recognized this, then they may have been able to start working towards what they really seemed to want: a society in which there is some degree of social equality even if organizational inequality is necessary - indeed, during the 19th and 20th centuries, progress was even made on this front. But as long as they romanticized these other cultures without recognizing both what allowed them to work, and the shortcomings of these societies, they were going to be dreamers without a viable cause.
And when you are dealing with alot of idealistic young college students, they tend to become quite enamored with "egalitarian" cultures...pretty much always without having a real understanding of what the term means.
And egalitarian culture is one where everybody is at about the same social level most of the time - someone may become a leader for a short time when their particular expertise or confidence is useful in a situation, only to give way to another leader under different circumstances. People follow not because someone is a chief or king or any other fixed hierarchical leader, but because that person is able to persuade others to follow them.
There are, of course, many different variations on egalitarian societies. In some, there may be some degree of formalized leadership, but it tends to be fluid and open to anyone who meets certain requirements (all men past the age of puberty, for example), in others there really are no recognition of leaders, just people who can persuade you to do things.
Naturally, my students would romanticize people who live(d) in these societies. There was a pervasive notion amongst the undergrads that people who lived in egalitarian societies were inherently more peaceful and led idyllic lives. One student even informed me that she felt moved to write a paper for another class that compared the (as she saw them) egalitarian and peaceful !Kung San of Africa with our current status-obsessed violent culture, and found us to be quite lacking.
I pointed out to this student that, according to the ethnography on which she was basing her views of the !Kung San, domestic violence was fairly common, and abject poverty the norm. In other words, there ain't no such thing as Utopia.
What my students never seemed to pick up on is that social organization tends to evolve in place (with the exception of those relatively unusual instances where it is successfully imposed from the outside...even in which cases it tends to e warped to fit local conditions and traditions). Egalitarian societies are not the product of gentle, enlightened souls who see a better way of organizing, they are the product of a system of resource procurement and use coupled with a low population density that allows such societies to exist without descending into chaos. Importantly, they only seem to work when you have a society in which there are a small enough number of people that everyone can both keep tabs on each other (to ensure that you are engaged in no wrong doing, and to make sure that you are not aggrandizing yourself) and equally share in the available resources. As soon as you have a large enough number of people packed into a small enough area, and accompanying resource stress, there is a need for organization in order to distribute what is needed to where it is needed. In other words, hierarchies, if they haven't formed already, will begin to form.
Now, with our ancestors, it's not clear which came first: did the population density/resource stress require hierarchies to develop, or did hierarchies develop and allow larger population densities to grow? It's an interesting question, but one that is rather beside the point as far as making judgements go. Once you have the number of people in the volume of space that occur in modern industrial and post-industrial nations, hierarchies are necessary.
That's not to say that the hierarchies always work well (they can be inefficient and ineffective) or that they are always nice to live in (ask a 19th century factory work about how much they enjoy life), but they are necessary to allow life to continue past a certain point in human cultural development. And we're not going to go back without killing off a huge portion of the global population.
If my students had recognized this, then they may have been able to start working towards what they really seemed to want: a society in which there is some degree of social equality even if organizational inequality is necessary - indeed, during the 19th and 20th centuries, progress was even made on this front. But as long as they romanticized these other cultures without recognizing both what allowed them to work, and the shortcomings of these societies, they were going to be dreamers without a viable cause.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Movement Rock, Blandness, and Acceptance
I grew up in a neighborhood where a number of the other kids were only allowed to listen to "Christian Rock". As a kid, I was rather unimpressed with the music, but, then, I was also unimpressed with most of the pop music that I heard*, so I didn't think much of it. Years later, I worked with a woman whose music of choice was Christian Rock, and I listened again, and was further unimpressed. I didn't comment on my dislike until she asked me what I thought of it, and then I simply expressed that it wasn't to my taste. Her response was that I disliked it because of the "Christian message."
This wasn't true.
You see, I enjoy blues, I enjoy some jazz, I even enjoy some gospel music, and all of these (especially, and obviously, gospel music) have numerous entries that clearly espouse a Christian message. I may not be overly-fond of the message, and yet I often enjoy the music anyway. Why? Because it is good. The Christian messages in these songs are either expressions of the actual beliefs of the musicians or else expressions of ideas and concepts in play in the culture of the musicians. In other words, they were an inherent part of the musician's artistic intentions, and the music itself is often quite good - driven by the interests, emotions, and passions of the artists.
The Christian Rock that this woman and the kids in my childhood neighborhood listened to? It was essentially just over-produced pablum made to provide parents and teens with the means to listen to something that sounds vaguely like what was popular in the world at large without leaving their bubble and being challenged by outside ideas. It was the musical equivalent of religious Velveeta. What I had heard was less "Christian" music than the soundtrack to a niche marketing campaign.
I would, as time went on, encounter other music that gets grouped in with Christian Rock but which is produced by musicians who were trying to create their own music in their own voice, and was often quite good a result, regardless of my view of the "message". This sort of rock is solid music at worst and legitimate art at best. And yet it is rarely what people play when they play Christian rock, which I always found rather odd.
In the book Rapture Ready, Daniel Raddosh observes that while there is legitmately good art, in the form of music, fiction, visual art, etc., produced by evangelical Christians, much of what floods the Christian niche market (which is itself largely comprised of Evangelical Christians with a particular right-wing political bent) is of poor quality and of bland taste. He attributes this to the fact that much music, fiction, film, etc. is accepted based on its "message" rather than its merit, and as such, the producers who are able to produce the most simplistic, straightforward message are the ones who are easiest to spot as "safe."
More recently, I began to notice this same tendency in the atheist/skeptic communities. While these communities lack the financial backing to produce the sorts of market-friendly artists that the Evangelical Christian community possesses, and therefore the works produced in and for this community tend to remain quirkier and less "mainstream", there is nonetheless a definite tendency for people to grasp on to the message, rather than the work itself.
For example, I have often, both in person and online, been asked my opinion of George Hrab's music. Hrab is a professional funk drummer who also produces a wide range of music in many different styles, all of it with his own quirky, oddball twist. I have heard a few of his albums, and while I don't object to his music, with the exception of a few particular songs, it is not to my tastes. When I explain this, I typically receive a response of "but he's providing a good, skeptical message in his song lyrics!" Yes, yes he is...but that I agree with his message doesn't mean that I enjoy the music itself. In fact, there are times when the message actually hurts the music by using it as a ham-fisted vehicle for delivering a secular sermon.
Now, there are many people that I have met who legitimately like his music, and I say more power to them. But there is a definite undercurrent of people in these movements who listen to him because of "the message" rather than because they like his music.
Similarly, horror and science-fiction writer Scott Siegler writes stories based, as much as possible, and either real current science and technology, or on reasonable extrapolations thereof. As a result, he has gained a following amongst the skeptic/atheist community for his "realistic horror" stories (that is, stories that gain horror from potential real events, and not from supernatural nonsense). I have read one of his novels, and tried to read two others. While I can see the pulpy appeal of them, they are not for me. But, again, he is someone who is often held up for promoting a secular, materialist worldview in his writing. But, if I am reading a horror novel, I am doing so for entertainment, and if I am not entertained, I don't care what worldview the author is promoting.
And yet, people with whom I communicate in these communities routinely express disbelief that I would "fail to support a secular author."
Evangelical Christianity and the atheist and skeptic communities are, of course, not unique in this regard. I have encountered similar types of emphasis on message-over-substance amongst every group that could be considered a "movement" - from Libertarians to Greens, from hunters to vegans, etc. etc.
This shouldn't surprise us. That music, writing, visual art, and so on grow up out of these movements is to be expected. Given that these things have, since at least the early 20th century (even earlier depending on the art form) been essentially commercialized and badges of belonging, it makes sense that many producers would be accepted because they "send the right message" rather than because of their individual merits.
But damn, it is annoying.
*Yeah, I've always been a contrarian.
This wasn't true.
You see, I enjoy blues, I enjoy some jazz, I even enjoy some gospel music, and all of these (especially, and obviously, gospel music) have numerous entries that clearly espouse a Christian message. I may not be overly-fond of the message, and yet I often enjoy the music anyway. Why? Because it is good. The Christian messages in these songs are either expressions of the actual beliefs of the musicians or else expressions of ideas and concepts in play in the culture of the musicians. In other words, they were an inherent part of the musician's artistic intentions, and the music itself is often quite good - driven by the interests, emotions, and passions of the artists.
The Christian Rock that this woman and the kids in my childhood neighborhood listened to? It was essentially just over-produced pablum made to provide parents and teens with the means to listen to something that sounds vaguely like what was popular in the world at large without leaving their bubble and being challenged by outside ideas. It was the musical equivalent of religious Velveeta. What I had heard was less "Christian" music than the soundtrack to a niche marketing campaign.
I would, as time went on, encounter other music that gets grouped in with Christian Rock but which is produced by musicians who were trying to create their own music in their own voice, and was often quite good a result, regardless of my view of the "message". This sort of rock is solid music at worst and legitimate art at best. And yet it is rarely what people play when they play Christian rock, which I always found rather odd.
In the book Rapture Ready, Daniel Raddosh observes that while there is legitmately good art, in the form of music, fiction, visual art, etc., produced by evangelical Christians, much of what floods the Christian niche market (which is itself largely comprised of Evangelical Christians with a particular right-wing political bent) is of poor quality and of bland taste. He attributes this to the fact that much music, fiction, film, etc. is accepted based on its "message" rather than its merit, and as such, the producers who are able to produce the most simplistic, straightforward message are the ones who are easiest to spot as "safe."
More recently, I began to notice this same tendency in the atheist/skeptic communities. While these communities lack the financial backing to produce the sorts of market-friendly artists that the Evangelical Christian community possesses, and therefore the works produced in and for this community tend to remain quirkier and less "mainstream", there is nonetheless a definite tendency for people to grasp on to the message, rather than the work itself.
For example, I have often, both in person and online, been asked my opinion of George Hrab's music. Hrab is a professional funk drummer who also produces a wide range of music in many different styles, all of it with his own quirky, oddball twist. I have heard a few of his albums, and while I don't object to his music, with the exception of a few particular songs, it is not to my tastes. When I explain this, I typically receive a response of "but he's providing a good, skeptical message in his song lyrics!" Yes, yes he is...but that I agree with his message doesn't mean that I enjoy the music itself. In fact, there are times when the message actually hurts the music by using it as a ham-fisted vehicle for delivering a secular sermon.
Now, there are many people that I have met who legitimately like his music, and I say more power to them. But there is a definite undercurrent of people in these movements who listen to him because of "the message" rather than because they like his music.
Similarly, horror and science-fiction writer Scott Siegler writes stories based, as much as possible, and either real current science and technology, or on reasonable extrapolations thereof. As a result, he has gained a following amongst the skeptic/atheist community for his "realistic horror" stories (that is, stories that gain horror from potential real events, and not from supernatural nonsense). I have read one of his novels, and tried to read two others. While I can see the pulpy appeal of them, they are not for me. But, again, he is someone who is often held up for promoting a secular, materialist worldview in his writing. But, if I am reading a horror novel, I am doing so for entertainment, and if I am not entertained, I don't care what worldview the author is promoting.
And yet, people with whom I communicate in these communities routinely express disbelief that I would "fail to support a secular author."
Evangelical Christianity and the atheist and skeptic communities are, of course, not unique in this regard. I have encountered similar types of emphasis on message-over-substance amongst every group that could be considered a "movement" - from Libertarians to Greens, from hunters to vegans, etc. etc.
This shouldn't surprise us. That music, writing, visual art, and so on grow up out of these movements is to be expected. Given that these things have, since at least the early 20th century (even earlier depending on the art form) been essentially commercialized and badges of belonging, it makes sense that many producers would be accepted because they "send the right message" rather than because of their individual merits.
But damn, it is annoying.
*Yeah, I've always been a contrarian.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
So You Want to be a Paranormal Investigator, Part 3
This is the third part of a series of posts geared towards how to think about research if you are someone who wants to be a paranormal investigator. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.
I had previously discussed issues with equipment and data-gathering. But there is a deeper problem, which I discussed briefly in the previous entries: Even if you get truly and clearly anomolous readings or weird sightings that shouldn't be there, what do they mean? Claims that temperature changes, eerie feelings, EMF fields, strange sounds, ionizing radiation, etc. are related to ghosts is always, without exception, based on assertions that are not backed up with any sort of bridging arguments linking the data to the conclusion. Unless you have a clear idea of what you are looking for and, even more importantly, why you are looking for it, any information gathered is absolutely meaningless. You need theory. Without theory, whatever it is that you are doing, it isn't research.
We need to be clear, though, and what, precisely, theory is. Contrary to what most of the public believes, theory is not synonymous with "wild ass guess", and contrary to what your elementary school teach taught you, it doesn't mean "a tested hypothesis that hasn't yet become a law."
Wikipedia actually has a pretty good definition in it's entry on the word:
In other words, theory is the set of observations, concepts, laws, and bridging arguments that provide a framework for exploring a concept. The germ theory of disease, for example, is the based around the concept that many illnesses are caused by microbiological agents, such as bacteria or viruses. Gravitational theory incorporates our observational data regarding gravity, and also provides testable hypotheses concerning what gravity actually is and precisely what causes it to work.
An important aspect of theory is that it changes over time. Gravitational theory was once limited to discussions of how gravity worked to make large objects attract each other. It was descriptive, and sought to describe things such as the motions of the planets, as well as objects falling to Earth. Over time, however, it grew, and now incorporates Einstein's general relativity, elements of particle physics, and so on. It began with observations of objects on Earth as well as the movement of objects through the sky. As more information was gathered, observations refined, and other physics questions probed and discoveries made, more and more information was added to gravitational theory. It grew from being descriptive (telling us how things behaved) to being predictive (telling us how they should behave under different conditions), and is increasingly explanatory (telling us not only how things have been observed to behave, and how we should anticipate them to behave, but also why they behave that way - what is gravity, exactly, anyway?).
All legitimately scientific fields build theory in this way: phenomenon are observed, the way in which they occur is more closely scrutinized and data gathered, the new data allows predictions to be made (that is, allows you to formulate hypotheses), which in turn allows you to further refine observations, ideas, and explanations. Theory allows you to keep track of the various parts of a field of study, keep them coherent, and keep them from getting lost or confused. Without theory, any attempt at research is dead in the water.
Within paranormal research, there is very little in the way of theory-building. This is due, in part, to the fact that there is little in the way of coherent data gathering. All of the ghost hunters running around with all of the infrared cameras and EMF meters available isn't going to produce anything worthwhile if there isn't some sort of structure to the matter. Why are EMF meters used? Why are infrared thermometers used? What are you really capturing on your digital voice recorder? Who knows? There's no reason to use any of this equipment, outside of "well, it's what those guys on TV do!" or "it's what the Shadowlands website says investigators should do."
Consider that physicists don't just run around with whatever pieces of equipment they can come up with and declare that their readings are indicative of, say, proton decay. No, they work out what a proton actually is based on a variety of different lines of evidence, how it's structured, and what the necessary results of its decay would be. THEN they use specific pieces of equipment that detect the particular things for which they are searching to see if their basic hypothesis is correct. Similarly, if you wish to do real, legitimate paranormal research, you must first choose the phenomenon that you wish to look into, then you must start collecting basic data, then you form research questions based on those observations, and then, and only then, do you start to work out which specialized tools are appropriate for what you are trying to discover.
So, if the paranormal phenomenon that you are interested in is ghosts (my own go-to, as shown by the fact that I have essentially geared this entire discussion towards it), you must first determine if there is even a phenomenon to be studied by collecting information from both accounts of alleged hauntings and from research on related fields - and you have to be very, very cautious in accounting for as many potential fields as possible. In the case of allegedly haunted places, you are looking at claims based on perceptions and people's memories of events, so you have to make sure that you are accounting for current work in the fields of perception and memory. Once you have used these fields to analyze the information that you have, you look for anomalies. You then set about trying to make some sort of sense of these anomalies - is there a pattern to them? Can they be explained by known phenomenon (for example, most "shadow people" sightings can be easily explained by a knowledge of how the eyes function)? If they can not be explained cleanly by known phenomenon, is there a known phenomenon that kind-of fits it, and if so, is the observation in question better explained by altering the explanations of the known phenomenon in a reasonable way (say, by appealing to other known phenomenon that may influence the first), or is it really something new? If it is something new, you once again gather information, looking for patterns, and seeing if there is anything that connects the data together. Over time, you will start to see links, you will start to piece things together. But it takes a long time, and it take alot of work, and it is something that is never going to be achieved by running around old houses using whatever random piece of equipment is in vogue with the ghost hunters this year. And, importantly, if you do this, while you may discover something new and interesting, if you are doing real research, then you absolutely must be open to the fact that you may find that exotic-seeming events may in fact be best explained through mundane phenomenon. If you discover that ghost sightings are best explained by neurology, or bad reactions to certain chemicals, or pet allergies...well, then, that is what you discovered, and a real researcher accepts this.
Rather than this, however, the current fields of paranormal investigation in general, and ghost hunting in particular, is a weird, cobbled-together Frankenstein's monster of unsubstantiated claims, faddish devotion to particular tools, and concepts borrowed from fantasy stories dressed up to sound scientific (psychokinetic energies, quantum energies leading to psychic phenomenon, inter-dimensional beings, etc.), but always essentially being assertions or suppositions without evidential backing, or even a real line of logic leading to them.
But it was not always this way. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, real researchers began to look into questions regarding whether or not there is something more to us than our living bodies, whether or not there are things such as psychic powers, and whether reports of hauntings indicate and actual paranormal phenomenon or were simply quirks of human perception.
This ended for a number of reasons - some social, but many scientific. Initial tests on precognition and clairvoyance, for example, often seemed to show something, only to have later results demonstrate a regression to the mean, indicating that it was random chance at work. In other realms of paranromal research, investigation often revealed fraud or simple mistakes. Over time, without clear, favorable results, enthusiasm fizzled. After a time, the only people willing to engage in this work were the people who were perfectly willing to ignore negative results, and to focus instead on what looked like positive results when taken out of the broader context of the total results.
In other words, most of the people who stayed in the game were unwilling to follow where their results led, and would instead falsify or ignore data. In that sort of environment, it didn't take long for every claim to be considered at least viable, no matter how absurd. And so it is that we have paranormal researchers yammering on about "stone tapes" and "quantum potentiation leading to life after death" and "everyone having psychic abilities" despite the fact that none of these claims have been demonstrated, and many (basically, any claim involving the words "quantum" or "dimension") being so divorced from the actual, legitimate scientific uses of the key words that they are, literally, gibberish.
So, if you really want to do real paranormal research, this needs to change. There needs to be a concerted and honest effort to build up theory. Data needs to be recorded honestly and cleanly, negative results need to be acknowledged as being just as valuable as positive results, and you have to abandon all great edifices of pseudo-scientific gobbly-gook and start from basics.
And understand - when you approach professional scientific researchers, you will likely have to fight back their preconceptions about what you are doing. It's not that they are "closed-minded fools", it's that they have encountered many would-be paranormal investigators in the past, and none of them have ever been willing to do the hard work of real research, and have instead insisted that unsupported assertions be taken as fact, that an ignorance of data gathering methods was somehow superior to a clear and thought-out research methodology, and that data should be accepted only when it is favorable. In short, they will have crossed paths with people who are closed-minded and not willing to hear constructive criticism, and then been accused of being that themselves (I have encountered this myself, as has every researcher that I know). It may not be fair for them to view you with the cynicism that decades of this have earned, but it is human nature, and you have to be ready for it.
Also, understand, criticism is an important part of real research. Whenever I present results, I expect to be criticized, because there will always be something that I didn't think of but that should have been considered, or some piece of data of which I was unaware, or some other way to think of the results that never occurred to me. If you spend time reading the work of various paranormal investigators, you will hear that the "mainstream" scientist are criticizing them out of fear, or loathing, or a desire to "shut out undesired voices." Bullshit. Criticism is an important part of science. We criticize each other's work, because that is how we keep ourselves honest, and how we ensure that the best ideas, explanations, and data will eventually rise to the top (admittedly, sometimes it takes a while, but it gets there eventually). If you are being criticized, it means that you are being treated like a scientist, not that you are being shut down.
It will be difficult, it often won't be fun. But if you are serious about being a researcher/investigator, and not just being some goofy person who runs about with equipment that they don't actually understand, then you absolutely have to do this. And if you do this, then any positive results that you may get will be meaningful, and will be real contributions. If you don't do this, then your work will continue to be pseudo-science at best.
Good luck. P.S., if you are reading this and insisting that paranormal research has developed good, solid, theory, then I would point out that such theory regarding the sorts of things implied would allow for working applications of the concepts and powers studied. To that end, I will simply point you to this:
I had previously discussed issues with equipment and data-gathering. But there is a deeper problem, which I discussed briefly in the previous entries: Even if you get truly and clearly anomolous readings or weird sightings that shouldn't be there, what do they mean? Claims that temperature changes, eerie feelings, EMF fields, strange sounds, ionizing radiation, etc. are related to ghosts is always, without exception, based on assertions that are not backed up with any sort of bridging arguments linking the data to the conclusion. Unless you have a clear idea of what you are looking for and, even more importantly, why you are looking for it, any information gathered is absolutely meaningless. You need theory. Without theory, whatever it is that you are doing, it isn't research.
We need to be clear, though, and what, precisely, theory is. Contrary to what most of the public believes, theory is not synonymous with "wild ass guess", and contrary to what your elementary school teach taught you, it doesn't mean "a tested hypothesis that hasn't yet become a law."
Wikipedia actually has a pretty good definition in it's entry on the word:
In modern science, the term "theory" refers to scientific theories, a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature, made in a way consistent with scientific method, and fulfilling the criteria required by modern science. Such theories are described in such a way that any scientist in the field is in a position to understand and either provide empirical support ("verify") or empirically contradict ("falsify") it. Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge,[2] in contrast to more common uses of the word "theory" that imply that something is unproven or speculative.[3]Scientific theories are also distinguished from hypotheses, which are individual empirically testable conjectures, and scientific laws, which are descriptive accounts of how nature will behave under certain conditions
In other words, theory is the set of observations, concepts, laws, and bridging arguments that provide a framework for exploring a concept. The germ theory of disease, for example, is the based around the concept that many illnesses are caused by microbiological agents, such as bacteria or viruses. Gravitational theory incorporates our observational data regarding gravity, and also provides testable hypotheses concerning what gravity actually is and precisely what causes it to work.
An important aspect of theory is that it changes over time. Gravitational theory was once limited to discussions of how gravity worked to make large objects attract each other. It was descriptive, and sought to describe things such as the motions of the planets, as well as objects falling to Earth. Over time, however, it grew, and now incorporates Einstein's general relativity, elements of particle physics, and so on. It began with observations of objects on Earth as well as the movement of objects through the sky. As more information was gathered, observations refined, and other physics questions probed and discoveries made, more and more information was added to gravitational theory. It grew from being descriptive (telling us how things behaved) to being predictive (telling us how they should behave under different conditions), and is increasingly explanatory (telling us not only how things have been observed to behave, and how we should anticipate them to behave, but also why they behave that way - what is gravity, exactly, anyway?).
All legitimately scientific fields build theory in this way: phenomenon are observed, the way in which they occur is more closely scrutinized and data gathered, the new data allows predictions to be made (that is, allows you to formulate hypotheses), which in turn allows you to further refine observations, ideas, and explanations. Theory allows you to keep track of the various parts of a field of study, keep them coherent, and keep them from getting lost or confused. Without theory, any attempt at research is dead in the water.
Within paranormal research, there is very little in the way of theory-building. This is due, in part, to the fact that there is little in the way of coherent data gathering. All of the ghost hunters running around with all of the infrared cameras and EMF meters available isn't going to produce anything worthwhile if there isn't some sort of structure to the matter. Why are EMF meters used? Why are infrared thermometers used? What are you really capturing on your digital voice recorder? Who knows? There's no reason to use any of this equipment, outside of "well, it's what those guys on TV do!" or "it's what the Shadowlands website says investigators should do."
Consider that physicists don't just run around with whatever pieces of equipment they can come up with and declare that their readings are indicative of, say, proton decay. No, they work out what a proton actually is based on a variety of different lines of evidence, how it's structured, and what the necessary results of its decay would be. THEN they use specific pieces of equipment that detect the particular things for which they are searching to see if their basic hypothesis is correct. Similarly, if you wish to do real, legitimate paranormal research, you must first choose the phenomenon that you wish to look into, then you must start collecting basic data, then you form research questions based on those observations, and then, and only then, do you start to work out which specialized tools are appropriate for what you are trying to discover.
So, if the paranormal phenomenon that you are interested in is ghosts (my own go-to, as shown by the fact that I have essentially geared this entire discussion towards it), you must first determine if there is even a phenomenon to be studied by collecting information from both accounts of alleged hauntings and from research on related fields - and you have to be very, very cautious in accounting for as many potential fields as possible. In the case of allegedly haunted places, you are looking at claims based on perceptions and people's memories of events, so you have to make sure that you are accounting for current work in the fields of perception and memory. Once you have used these fields to analyze the information that you have, you look for anomalies. You then set about trying to make some sort of sense of these anomalies - is there a pattern to them? Can they be explained by known phenomenon (for example, most "shadow people" sightings can be easily explained by a knowledge of how the eyes function)? If they can not be explained cleanly by known phenomenon, is there a known phenomenon that kind-of fits it, and if so, is the observation in question better explained by altering the explanations of the known phenomenon in a reasonable way (say, by appealing to other known phenomenon that may influence the first), or is it really something new? If it is something new, you once again gather information, looking for patterns, and seeing if there is anything that connects the data together. Over time, you will start to see links, you will start to piece things together. But it takes a long time, and it take alot of work, and it is something that is never going to be achieved by running around old houses using whatever random piece of equipment is in vogue with the ghost hunters this year. And, importantly, if you do this, while you may discover something new and interesting, if you are doing real research, then you absolutely must be open to the fact that you may find that exotic-seeming events may in fact be best explained through mundane phenomenon. If you discover that ghost sightings are best explained by neurology, or bad reactions to certain chemicals, or pet allergies...well, then, that is what you discovered, and a real researcher accepts this.
Rather than this, however, the current fields of paranormal investigation in general, and ghost hunting in particular, is a weird, cobbled-together Frankenstein's monster of unsubstantiated claims, faddish devotion to particular tools, and concepts borrowed from fantasy stories dressed up to sound scientific (psychokinetic energies, quantum energies leading to psychic phenomenon, inter-dimensional beings, etc.), but always essentially being assertions or suppositions without evidential backing, or even a real line of logic leading to them.
But it was not always this way. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, real researchers began to look into questions regarding whether or not there is something more to us than our living bodies, whether or not there are things such as psychic powers, and whether reports of hauntings indicate and actual paranormal phenomenon or were simply quirks of human perception.
This ended for a number of reasons - some social, but many scientific. Initial tests on precognition and clairvoyance, for example, often seemed to show something, only to have later results demonstrate a regression to the mean, indicating that it was random chance at work. In other realms of paranromal research, investigation often revealed fraud or simple mistakes. Over time, without clear, favorable results, enthusiasm fizzled. After a time, the only people willing to engage in this work were the people who were perfectly willing to ignore negative results, and to focus instead on what looked like positive results when taken out of the broader context of the total results.
In other words, most of the people who stayed in the game were unwilling to follow where their results led, and would instead falsify or ignore data. In that sort of environment, it didn't take long for every claim to be considered at least viable, no matter how absurd. And so it is that we have paranormal researchers yammering on about "stone tapes" and "quantum potentiation leading to life after death" and "everyone having psychic abilities" despite the fact that none of these claims have been demonstrated, and many (basically, any claim involving the words "quantum" or "dimension") being so divorced from the actual, legitimate scientific uses of the key words that they are, literally, gibberish.
So, if you really want to do real paranormal research, this needs to change. There needs to be a concerted and honest effort to build up theory. Data needs to be recorded honestly and cleanly, negative results need to be acknowledged as being just as valuable as positive results, and you have to abandon all great edifices of pseudo-scientific gobbly-gook and start from basics.
And understand - when you approach professional scientific researchers, you will likely have to fight back their preconceptions about what you are doing. It's not that they are "closed-minded fools", it's that they have encountered many would-be paranormal investigators in the past, and none of them have ever been willing to do the hard work of real research, and have instead insisted that unsupported assertions be taken as fact, that an ignorance of data gathering methods was somehow superior to a clear and thought-out research methodology, and that data should be accepted only when it is favorable. In short, they will have crossed paths with people who are closed-minded and not willing to hear constructive criticism, and then been accused of being that themselves (I have encountered this myself, as has every researcher that I know). It may not be fair for them to view you with the cynicism that decades of this have earned, but it is human nature, and you have to be ready for it.
Also, understand, criticism is an important part of real research. Whenever I present results, I expect to be criticized, because there will always be something that I didn't think of but that should have been considered, or some piece of data of which I was unaware, or some other way to think of the results that never occurred to me. If you spend time reading the work of various paranormal investigators, you will hear that the "mainstream" scientist are criticizing them out of fear, or loathing, or a desire to "shut out undesired voices." Bullshit. Criticism is an important part of science. We criticize each other's work, because that is how we keep ourselves honest, and how we ensure that the best ideas, explanations, and data will eventually rise to the top (admittedly, sometimes it takes a while, but it gets there eventually). If you are being criticized, it means that you are being treated like a scientist, not that you are being shut down.
It will be difficult, it often won't be fun. But if you are serious about being a researcher/investigator, and not just being some goofy person who runs about with equipment that they don't actually understand, then you absolutely have to do this. And if you do this, then any positive results that you may get will be meaningful, and will be real contributions. If you don't do this, then your work will continue to be pseudo-science at best.
Good luck. P.S., if you are reading this and insisting that paranormal research has developed good, solid, theory, then I would point out that such theory regarding the sorts of things implied would allow for working applications of the concepts and powers studied. To that end, I will simply point you to this:
Friday, August 3, 2012
The Difference Between Criticism and Oppression
Since there seems to be some confusion on these points:
You are free to believe whatever you like. this includes, but is not limited to, the notion that there is a powerful deity answering your prayers, that members of some groups are irredeemably evil or astoundingly good, that there is no god and we are alone in the universe, that fairies exist and will help those who help them, and so on. How you develop and maintain these beliefs are entirely your business, provided that you do not infringe upon the rights of others in the process.
You are free to say whatever you like, provided that it is not slander or a threat. This means that you can announce any of the beliefs you may have, including, but not limited to, those above. Again, you may do as you will, provided that you do not infringe upon the rights of others in the process.
You are free to spend or not spend money on any legal item and at any legal business that you like. This means that you may support a business that is ideologically in-line with you.
You are free to do all of these things. No question.
However, you are not free to be exempt from criticism. No matter what you do or believe, there is someone else who disagrees. They may express that disagreement in any legal manner they choose - be it stating their criticisms (sometimes in a vulgar manner, sometimes eloquently), engaging in debate, engaging in legal protest, boycotting businesses, or choosing to patronize particular businesses.
And criticism is not the same thing as oppression. It is oppression when you use the force of law to make someone behave in a manner that your beliefs require, whether or not they share those beliefs. It is oppression when violence is used to enforce a particular arbitrary ideology. It is oppression when policies or laws require you to try to hide who you are for fear of reprisal.
But being told that you are delusional, a dick, a bigot, or some other such thing? Seeing the business that you support being boycotted by those who disagree with its policies? Having people argue against your ideas openly in the public sphere? That's criticism.
There are a few topics that we have grown accustomed to going unquestioned and uncriticized - religion is the big one, but certain ideas in politics, personal philosophies and the like also fall into this category. But the fact that criticism has long been suppressed and frowned upon does not make it invalid, nor does it destroy the right of others to criticize these matters.
I often meet Christians (both of the right wing and left wing varieties) who assure me that they are uniquely under attack and oppressed. Their evidence? Well, people criticize their beliefs, there are public figures who advocate atheism, and now they may have to live in a society where gay people have rights!
Let me give you some fucking perspective.
I am an atheist. In the city in which I live, there are multiple billboards and a number of signs which are extraordinarily insulting and state that someone who lacks a belief in a god, such as myself, is inherently bad, evil, untrustworthy, or just a sad little figure. There are not, and have not been, equivalent signs pointed towards Christians. Every time the local news runs a story about any topic that might have a religious angle, they call on a local pastor who is particularly out-of-touch with reality, and who blames all the ills of the world on people like me...oh, and on the gays. When I am around town, it is not unheard of for people to try to make me pray with them, and then to become angry when I refuse.
I do not believe myself to be oppressed. I am receiving criticism - all of it baseless, most of it stupid - but I am not being forced to do anything against my will, nor are my rights being denied to me.
I have yet to meet a Christian who has to put up with the same level of routine criticism that I do, and yet I know many who claim that what criticism they do receive is somehow a form of oppression, and is somehow worse than what everyone else receives, even though the plainly and objectively have it much, much better than the rest. They are simply whining that they are increasingly having to accept the same type of criticism that all of the rest of us have been dealing with for decades.
Let me give you a bit more perspective. In countries such as Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanastan, there are many places where Christians are legitimately opressed. They are murdered, their churches are bombed, they are attacked in the streets. Here in the United States, these things don't happen. Yeah, yeah, I know, your pastor has some story about a guy who knows a guy that was beat up for being Christian - but if you actually look up what occurred, you quickly discover that these stories are routinely either unverifiable (that is, made up) or are gross distortions of a very different set of circumstances. What's more, nobody, but nobody, makes it to high elected office without making a point of trying to appease Christians - even if the religious right claims otherwise.
Or, to put it another way:
Christian "oppression" in the United states: You are allowed to live, believe, and worship as you please. However, you aren't allowed to force my children to recite prayers to your god in a public school and state-funded time. You have to deal with the fact that I am allowed to disagree with you in public, so long as I do so in a legal manner. You are increasingly unable to force people who are not members of your church to live as if they are.
Christian oppression in parts of the Middle East: You have to hide who you are, there is a fair chance that you will be the victim of a bombing, stabbing, or shooting, and there are those within the government who wouldn't mind outlawing your existence, if they haven't already.
See the difference? When an American Christian claims to be oppressed, they are not only factually wrong, they are demeaning and insulting to those who really are oppressed.
Similarly, we hear many a member of the religious right (which, of course, does not represent all, or even most, Christians, but it a sizable political force that has largely hijacked Christianity as a label) claim that gay rights is oppression of Christians. As has been pointed out before, just as there are white supremacist churches that are allowed to spew their bile, so too will homophobic churches be allowed to spew their own. Just as KKK members are allowed to teach their children delusional things about non-whites, so too will people be allowed to teach their children delusional things about non-straights. Your right to be a bigot is not being taken away, but the cover that you have long used - that you aren't a bigot, that you are a "person of faith" who "believes in the biblical definition of marriage*" - is being questioned, criticized, and taken apart by those who see through it. You can still claim it, just as white supremacists claim that they aren't racists, they just believe in the separation of races as taught in the Bible (Tower of Babel or Israelite conquest of Canaan, anyone?), but people are beginning to see through the obvious falsehood of it.
You are not oppressed when someone else gets the same rights that you have. Men were not oppressed when women were finally granted the ability to vote. Segregationists were not oppressed when the Jim Crow laws were struck down. And Christians are not oppressed when non-Christian schoolchildren are not forced to recite Christian prayers, nor are any straight people oppressed when gay people are given their due rights.
You absolutely have the right to hold whatever beliefs you wish, to state them as you please, and to attend churches, patronize businesses, and associate with those with whom you agree.
But when you push for laws that would penalize others who do you no harm for being something that you dislike, you are the one engaging in oppression. That you may soon have to accept that same-sex couples can marry no more oppresses you than the fact that mixed-race couples can marry oppresses white supremacists. That it may soon be illegal across the nation to fire someone for being gay no more oppresses you than a chauvinist is oppressed by not being able to fire a woman without cause. You are not being oppressed, you are simply not being allowed to oppress others. Grow up and deal with it.
But you do not have a right to not be criticized. and criticism is not oppression. If you don't want to be labeled a bigot, then don't be a bigot. But act like an adult and stop whining when you get called on your bullshit.
*This routine statement pretty much proves that most of these people have never read the Bible. Otherwise they would relaize just what a mess it is as regards the rules surrounding marriage.
You are free to believe whatever you like. this includes, but is not limited to, the notion that there is a powerful deity answering your prayers, that members of some groups are irredeemably evil or astoundingly good, that there is no god and we are alone in the universe, that fairies exist and will help those who help them, and so on. How you develop and maintain these beliefs are entirely your business, provided that you do not infringe upon the rights of others in the process.
You are free to say whatever you like, provided that it is not slander or a threat. This means that you can announce any of the beliefs you may have, including, but not limited to, those above. Again, you may do as you will, provided that you do not infringe upon the rights of others in the process.
You are free to spend or not spend money on any legal item and at any legal business that you like. This means that you may support a business that is ideologically in-line with you.
You are free to do all of these things. No question.
However, you are not free to be exempt from criticism. No matter what you do or believe, there is someone else who disagrees. They may express that disagreement in any legal manner they choose - be it stating their criticisms (sometimes in a vulgar manner, sometimes eloquently), engaging in debate, engaging in legal protest, boycotting businesses, or choosing to patronize particular businesses.
And criticism is not the same thing as oppression. It is oppression when you use the force of law to make someone behave in a manner that your beliefs require, whether or not they share those beliefs. It is oppression when violence is used to enforce a particular arbitrary ideology. It is oppression when policies or laws require you to try to hide who you are for fear of reprisal.
But being told that you are delusional, a dick, a bigot, or some other such thing? Seeing the business that you support being boycotted by those who disagree with its policies? Having people argue against your ideas openly in the public sphere? That's criticism.
There are a few topics that we have grown accustomed to going unquestioned and uncriticized - religion is the big one, but certain ideas in politics, personal philosophies and the like also fall into this category. But the fact that criticism has long been suppressed and frowned upon does not make it invalid, nor does it destroy the right of others to criticize these matters.
I often meet Christians (both of the right wing and left wing varieties) who assure me that they are uniquely under attack and oppressed. Their evidence? Well, people criticize their beliefs, there are public figures who advocate atheism, and now they may have to live in a society where gay people have rights!
Let me give you some fucking perspective.
I am an atheist. In the city in which I live, there are multiple billboards and a number of signs which are extraordinarily insulting and state that someone who lacks a belief in a god, such as myself, is inherently bad, evil, untrustworthy, or just a sad little figure. There are not, and have not been, equivalent signs pointed towards Christians. Every time the local news runs a story about any topic that might have a religious angle, they call on a local pastor who is particularly out-of-touch with reality, and who blames all the ills of the world on people like me...oh, and on the gays. When I am around town, it is not unheard of for people to try to make me pray with them, and then to become angry when I refuse.
I do not believe myself to be oppressed. I am receiving criticism - all of it baseless, most of it stupid - but I am not being forced to do anything against my will, nor are my rights being denied to me.
I have yet to meet a Christian who has to put up with the same level of routine criticism that I do, and yet I know many who claim that what criticism they do receive is somehow a form of oppression, and is somehow worse than what everyone else receives, even though the plainly and objectively have it much, much better than the rest. They are simply whining that they are increasingly having to accept the same type of criticism that all of the rest of us have been dealing with for decades.
Let me give you a bit more perspective. In countries such as Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanastan, there are many places where Christians are legitimately opressed. They are murdered, their churches are bombed, they are attacked in the streets. Here in the United States, these things don't happen. Yeah, yeah, I know, your pastor has some story about a guy who knows a guy that was beat up for being Christian - but if you actually look up what occurred, you quickly discover that these stories are routinely either unverifiable (that is, made up) or are gross distortions of a very different set of circumstances. What's more, nobody, but nobody, makes it to high elected office without making a point of trying to appease Christians - even if the religious right claims otherwise.
Or, to put it another way:
Christian "oppression" in the United states: You are allowed to live, believe, and worship as you please. However, you aren't allowed to force my children to recite prayers to your god in a public school and state-funded time. You have to deal with the fact that I am allowed to disagree with you in public, so long as I do so in a legal manner. You are increasingly unable to force people who are not members of your church to live as if they are.
Christian oppression in parts of the Middle East: You have to hide who you are, there is a fair chance that you will be the victim of a bombing, stabbing, or shooting, and there are those within the government who wouldn't mind outlawing your existence, if they haven't already.
See the difference? When an American Christian claims to be oppressed, they are not only factually wrong, they are demeaning and insulting to those who really are oppressed.
Similarly, we hear many a member of the religious right (which, of course, does not represent all, or even most, Christians, but it a sizable political force that has largely hijacked Christianity as a label) claim that gay rights is oppression of Christians. As has been pointed out before, just as there are white supremacist churches that are allowed to spew their bile, so too will homophobic churches be allowed to spew their own. Just as KKK members are allowed to teach their children delusional things about non-whites, so too will people be allowed to teach their children delusional things about non-straights. Your right to be a bigot is not being taken away, but the cover that you have long used - that you aren't a bigot, that you are a "person of faith" who "believes in the biblical definition of marriage*" - is being questioned, criticized, and taken apart by those who see through it. You can still claim it, just as white supremacists claim that they aren't racists, they just believe in the separation of races as taught in the Bible (Tower of Babel or Israelite conquest of Canaan, anyone?), but people are beginning to see through the obvious falsehood of it.
You are not oppressed when someone else gets the same rights that you have. Men were not oppressed when women were finally granted the ability to vote. Segregationists were not oppressed when the Jim Crow laws were struck down. And Christians are not oppressed when non-Christian schoolchildren are not forced to recite Christian prayers, nor are any straight people oppressed when gay people are given their due rights.
You absolutely have the right to hold whatever beliefs you wish, to state them as you please, and to attend churches, patronize businesses, and associate with those with whom you agree.
But when you push for laws that would penalize others who do you no harm for being something that you dislike, you are the one engaging in oppression. That you may soon have to accept that same-sex couples can marry no more oppresses you than the fact that mixed-race couples can marry oppresses white supremacists. That it may soon be illegal across the nation to fire someone for being gay no more oppresses you than a chauvinist is oppressed by not being able to fire a woman without cause. You are not being oppressed, you are simply not being allowed to oppress others. Grow up and deal with it.
But you do not have a right to not be criticized. and criticism is not oppression. If you don't want to be labeled a bigot, then don't be a bigot. But act like an adult and stop whining when you get called on your bullshit.
*This routine statement pretty much proves that most of these people have never read the Bible. Otherwise they would relaize just what a mess it is as regards the rules surrounding marriage.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
So, You Want to be a Paranormal Investigator, Part 2
It's been a little while since I posted part 1 of this, but here I am with Part 2 (edit to add: part 3 is here). A quick re-iteration: there are many people who engage in activities that could be labelled "ghost hunting" or "paranormal investigations." This set of entries is directed at the sub-set of them who are genuinely interested in trying to do good, robust work, and not those who simply want to hang out in creepy places (which, it must be said, is something that I enjoy doing, so I see nothing wrong with it). So, here we go...
In the last entry in this series, I discussed the problems inherent in basic data gathering. Although I focused on eye-witness testimony, and specifically all that is wrong with it, the basic concepts (know what type of data you are collecting, what [if anything] it actually means, and why you are collecting it) apply to any situation in which you are attempting to gather information.
So, the last entry focused on some of the basic ways to think your way through data gathering, this one is aimed at saving you time and money by looking at the different tools of the trade. I am going to be focused on actual tools that measure actual things - not on the use of "psychic devices" ranging from a medium's impressions to dowsing rods (which certainly have their own problems, but other have explained the issues there more clearly than I ever could). I will briefly discuss some of the more "exotic" tools amongst the ghost-hunter's cache, but will spend a bit more time on two types of equipment that I have more direct personal knowledge of: cameras and audio equipment.
Now, many a ghost-hunting enthusiast will say "ha! Well, this guy admits that his experience with this equipment is limited, so why should you listen to him and not us, us who use this equipment all the time?" Simple: Unlike them, I actually bothered to read up on what the equipment actually does and does not do, and while my direct experience is limited, I have been able to find enough to figure out that they are either lying or else know even less than I do about these devices.
So, for starters, here's a run-down of some of the more common equipment, what it gets used for, and what it actually does (Much of this information is well-summarized here, for the curious):
For starters, the ghost hunters seem to have a love affair with everything infra-red, which is odd. Infra-red devices read heat signatures. That's it. They do different things with these signatures (create images, measure temperatures, etc.), but their purpose is, simply to read heat signatures. What's more, each type of infra-red device reads heat signatures in a specific way, and usually (though I can't swear that this is always the case), they read SURFACE heat signatures. So, for example, an infra-red thermometer reads the temperature of a surface - not the air, not gases, not ectoplasm, but a surface. So, if you point an infrared thermometer through a room, you will get the temperature of whatever object happens to be on the other side oh the room (most likely the wall), but not something insubstantial, such as gasses, smoke, or a ghost. What's more, depending on what the object that you hit is made of, and what is connected to it, you may get radical-seeming variations from fairly common things. Infra-red motion detectors do a similar thing, detecting either major changes in temperature or the movement of objects with heat signatures different from whatever the background field is. Even if one is claiming that there is a "cold spot", it would need to be of sufficient temperature difference and size to trigger the motion detector.
Also, there tends to be a bit of an inconsistency with how these objects are used by ersatz investigators - I have seen shows, and had conversations with people, wherein images from infrared camera showing warm, human-shaped areas were held up as evidence of ghosts, while "cold spots" were also used simultaneously. So what is it? Is the ghost cold or warm? The fact that both tend to get used depending on what the equipment is picking up indicates that these people are detecting randomness, not ghosts - in any sort of field of measurement, there will be natural "clumpings" of readings due to basic random distribution (remember, random does not mean "evenly distributed", it means "without pattern", and "clumps" will appear whenever a pattern is lacking). Whenever you see these clumps, they can seem striking, if you don't understand the nature of random distribution (one thing I have learned about ghost hunters - they are, to a person - very, very bad at understanding statistics). So, finding areas that appear hot or cold with an infrared device is not really useful information unless you can demonstrate a reason for it to be a different temperature (the common trope of "we can't explain these readings, therefore- GHOST!" grows out of a basic mis-understanding of how this works - there is always the possibility of seeming anomalies in randomness, the odd readings only mean something if you have good reason to expect them to be something other than what they actually are - and area that remains cold after being hit with a blow-torch, for example).
Anyway, unlike some other critics of paranormal investigation, I will not say that infrared equipment is useless. I will, however, say that it is only useful if you have a clear reason to be using it, and you have a sufficient understanding of both how the equipment works and of the environment in which you are deploying it to be able to know with some degree of reliability whether or not you should be getting one set of reading and not another - and knowing that tends to require alot of background knowledge of both the place where you are, and of the basic engineering that went into building it and selecting the materials to build it. If you haven't done this minimal research, then your readings are essentially meaningless.
Similarly, electromagnetic field meters are often abused in the name of parapsychology. What an EMF meter does is measure the electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic fields are all around us - the Earth generates a giant one, and out bodies generate them as well, as do all electronics. These tools are useful in the hands of people who work with electrical equipment for a living, but tend not to produce meaningful results in the hands of anyone else. Why? Simple: there are many possible sources for EMFs, and someone who is accustomed to dealing with them will have an idea of what EMFs are anomalous, and which are to be expected. Moreover, when they find an anomalous one, someone with a background in electrical work is going to have an idea of what to look for as regards its source*. Moreover, the readings that one gets with an EMF meter depend in large part in the specifics of how one uses it. Many commercially available meters require multiple readings to be taken in a few different ways in order to find anything meaningful (so, someone walking into a room, taking one reading, and announcing that they have found something is a sign that the person in question hasn't a clue as to how to use their equipment). Similarly, the way one handles the meter may create anomalous readings: for example, my fiance and I once did a ghost walk during which we were all handed EMF meters, and she and I quickly discovered that we could make these particular models spike by flicking our wrists slightly while holding them - doing little to the electromagnetic field, but screwing with the sensors - it was fun watching the other tour members try to figure out why the ghosts wanted to play with her and I, and not any of them.
Similarly, people tend to like to use ion detectors and Geiger counters (although the Geiger counters are usually given another name). Ion detectors detect ions, atoms in which the total number of electrons are not equal tot the total number of protons and therefore have an electrical charge (positive or negative). Ions are both naturally occurring and can be created by a variety of different pieces of equipment. Geiger counters identify ionizing radiation from nuclear decay (alpha particles, beta particles or gamma rays), which, again, can be (in fact, usually is) naturally occurring, or can be the result of human activity. As with EMF fields and heat signatures, readings on these pieces of equipment are essentially meaningless unless you have a good reason to expect one type of reading over another.
In all of these cases, the infrared devices, the EMF detectors, the Geiger counters, and the ion detectors, the devices are not measuring something mystical, something weird, or something abnormal. They are not measuring paranormal energy, ghosts, or the Force. They are measuring properties that exist in the world, all around us, at all times. And all of them can only produce meaningful measurements if you know what should and/or should not be in a given location, which requires a whole heaping load of background research. Hell, in the case of things such as radiation and ions, a basic knowledge of local geology and weather is necessary to know what should or should not be present, and I rarely see a paranormal researcher consult a geology or meteorology textbook.
Okay, so now onto the items with which I have a bit more direct experience and a bit more to say.
While in college, I trained to be a radio DJ, but found that I had a much greater affinity for the recording and manipulation of audio than for the on-air hijinks that accompanied DJ-dom. I became pretty good at making the various audio devices to which I had access make all manner of weird sounds, manipulate signals in odd ways, and create audio effects unintended by the equipment's manufacturers. What's more, I learned of the many ways that audio equipment can pick up unexpected noise, and I learned that following a basic train of cause-and-effect, I could invariably find the source of the sound (which, often, was very different from what it initially sounded like on the recording). Now, mind you, I could track down the sources in a controlled studio environment - if the same sorts of things had occurred with a tape recorder out on the town, I'd have had a much harder time tracking down the source - it likely would often be impossible - but my experience in the studio had taught me that unlikely sources can create odd noise and effects in recordings.
Most commercially available audio equipment is different from the professional-grade stuio equipment in that it is usually more compact, and gives the operator less control - but it has all of the same basic parts and features, it just either pre-sets them to "typical" conditions, or else automates them into a few pre-sets. The point is, this equipment has pretty much the same ability to create anomalous sounds as the studio equipment that I used, but fewer ways for the operator to minimize interference or alter the sound produced to create a cleaner recording. What's more, outside of a controlled studio environment, things such as tape recorders picking up faint radio signals, as well as the re-use of old tapes creating "bleed through" is common.
Digital recorders avoid some problems (such as bleed through), but still have some of the same issues, and several new ones unique to digital audio.
To make matters worse, most enthusiasts of electronic voice phenomenon (EVP - the alleged voices of spirits captured on electronic equipment) advocate the use of white noise int he background when you make recordings. This is dumb. Dumb, stupid, foolish, and asinine. As you may recall from Part 1, the human brain looks for patterns in randomness, and in laboratory experiments it has been shown to be very, very common for people to swear that they have heard human voices saying specific, coherent things in randomly generated noise. So, if you create white noise and then sit and listen to it for voices, you are very likely to hear voices whether or not there is anything there.
So, when someone plays spooky noises that they recorded at the local cemetery, it probably goes without saying that I am singularly unimpressed. Even when they are sure that they hear a human voice answering questions, it is really, really unimpressive.
Now, am I not saying that audio equipment is useless. If you can routinely replicate certain types of phenomenon, and you are able to successfully rule out all common sources of interference, then you may have something. Now, what you have may be an uncommon problem with your equipment, or it may be something truly strange, and you will have to find different ways to further explore it, but you might (and note, I say "might" not "are") be on to something. In a more pedestrian sense, audio equipment, especially a good, simple tape recorder or digital voice recorder, is an excellent way to take quick, on-the-fly notes to help you out later. These things are useful pieces of equipment for any researcher, but as with everything else discussed here, you have to understand what they are and how they work, and how your brain interprets sound in order to get any real use out of them.
And now, onto cameras. I am a hobbyist photographer and have been for many years, so while I am not a professional photographer, I do know a thing or two about the subject. And when I see photographic "evidence" of hauntings, I am consistently underwhelmed.
First off, there's the fact that many of the things that are currently held up as evidence of ghosts - streaks, "orbs", etc. - are actually pretty well understood properties of how cameras function. A camera operates by bringing light in, and turning that light into an image, either on a photographic paper or through electronic sensors. Anything that reflects light will effect the image, and as cameras bring in light in a manner a bit different than how the human eye does, this means that objects may appear on film or in digital images that are not visible to the naked eye. Small objects that can reflect light (raindrops, motes of dust, insects, etc.) tend to reflect it in a spherical pattern that is not visible to the human eye, but does show up on camera. If the object is caught in a particular way or is moving quickly enough, this may show up as a "streak" rather than a sphere. Likewise, small light sources, maybe dim enough to not be noticeable to the naked eye, may show up on film as streaks if the camera or the object emitting the light is moving, even slightly, when the shot is taken. This is especially true in low-light conditions. Now, some people will say "well, this orb is translucent, that one is solid, therefore we know that this one is an artifact of light, BUT the other is a ghost!" Nope, sorry, both are artifacts of light, and anyone who tells you different is either completely ignorant of photography, or is lying to you.
Indeed, it is a sad fact that the reason why we have these obvious artifacts being held up as ghostly images is because most of us are familiar enough with special effects that we will no longer uncritically accept a modified image. As a result, those who wish to capture ghosts on film have tried to find ways to use unmodified images to support their claims. The problem there, of course, being that, to anyone who knows the ins-and-outs of camera functionality, these images are pretty clearly mundane. The fact that there are some photographers who are only to ready to jump on the spooky bandwagon (usually to make money off of selling either their services or their photographs) doesn't change the fact that these really are pretty damn mundane.
On a related note, it is common for people to take other types of photographs from other people as evidence of ghostly activity. Typically, the line goes something like this: a photograph appears to show something strange, it was taken to a photography expert who states that there are no signs of tampering with the image, and therefore the image really does show something strange!
Leaving aside the images created via pariedolia, there is another problem here. All of the images below are analogous to types used as evidence for paranormal phenomenon. None of them have been tampered with, and therefore would show no signs of tampering if examined:
Every one of them shows a vague human outline, or a human form that is insubstantial, or a face that seems somehow wrong. In some of them you will have to look closely, but these sorts of ghostly images are present in every one of them. Several have strange streaks of light or "orbs".
Those human shapes in the ghostly images are myself, and my friends Robin, Michael, and Robert. None of the images were created using photo manipulation software, studio editing, or any other form of image manipulation. In other words, not a single one was tampered with, and none of them would show signs of tampering if examined.
Which doesn't mean that there was no trickery involved. I used a variety of techniques to create these images: pinhole apertures, slow shutter speeds in low-light conditions, and a mix of digital and film cameras, utilizing properties unique to each of them. In some of the images, I intentionally used non-optimal settings (making the exposure to bright or too dark, putting the image slightly out-of-focus, etc.) to make the image look just slightly not-right before inserting the spooky element (this serves to prep the viewer to see the image as spookier than it really is). I used cameras with light leakage, or used flashes, to create the streaks and orbs. I created the images intentionally, knowing full well what I was doing, and what I was going to get when I was done. So, just because a photo has not been edited or altered doesn't mean that it is real, and this should be kept in mind whenever you are presented with a photograph as evidence.
But this also brings us to another issue: that, like the audio equipment, lower-end cameras (especially digital point-and-click cameras, but also many non-professional film cameras) have the same parts as higher-end cameras (lenses, film or sensors, apertures, etc.), but generally automate those parts or have them at pre-sets, limiting the ability for the user to manipulate them in order to cut out interference, creating numerous anomalies that may seem odd or even spooky to someone not familiar with how to intentionally create the same sorts of images. Moreover, an unwary user of a film camera is likely to end up with double-exposures, which can result in "a person who wasn't there appearing in the image!", and most people using these cameras on ghost hunts do not keep accurate photo logs in order to recall the precise conditions under which images were created.
Like audio equipment, cameras are useful tools. They can allow you to document conditions, act as a supplement to your field notes, and there is a small but real chance that you may even catch something in the image that might prompt further investigation.
While the IF devices and EMF meters, etc. are probably best left at home, cameras and audio equipment are legitimately useful, and should accompany someone who is trying to do real investigation. But you should always be aware of the limits of your equipment, the nature of your equipment, and of the fact that many of the things taken as evidence of ghosts are, in fact, easily explainable by someone who knows what the equipment is and how it works. So, bear all of this in mind when using it.
Okay, the next part, which I hope to post in the not-too-distant future, will focus on the basica problems inherent in the lack of theory and testable hypotheses in paranormal research, and what you can do to make things better.
* Fun fact: on occasion, a television show will bring someone in who is said to have the correct background to make sense of EMF readings. Assuming that they do (and given the way that paranormal television shows often play fast-and-loose with the qualifications of people who I have actually know the background of, I have little hope that they get anyone else's qualifications correct), the devices are almost always shown being used in a manner inconsistent with what is needed to get reliable readings. So, even in these cases, the devices are being mis-used.
In the last entry in this series, I discussed the problems inherent in basic data gathering. Although I focused on eye-witness testimony, and specifically all that is wrong with it, the basic concepts (know what type of data you are collecting, what [if anything] it actually means, and why you are collecting it) apply to any situation in which you are attempting to gather information.
So, the last entry focused on some of the basic ways to think your way through data gathering, this one is aimed at saving you time and money by looking at the different tools of the trade. I am going to be focused on actual tools that measure actual things - not on the use of "psychic devices" ranging from a medium's impressions to dowsing rods (which certainly have their own problems, but other have explained the issues there more clearly than I ever could). I will briefly discuss some of the more "exotic" tools amongst the ghost-hunter's cache, but will spend a bit more time on two types of equipment that I have more direct personal knowledge of: cameras and audio equipment.
Now, many a ghost-hunting enthusiast will say "ha! Well, this guy admits that his experience with this equipment is limited, so why should you listen to him and not us, us who use this equipment all the time?" Simple: Unlike them, I actually bothered to read up on what the equipment actually does and does not do, and while my direct experience is limited, I have been able to find enough to figure out that they are either lying or else know even less than I do about these devices.
So, for starters, here's a run-down of some of the more common equipment, what it gets used for, and what it actually does (Much of this information is well-summarized here, for the curious):
For starters, the ghost hunters seem to have a love affair with everything infra-red, which is odd. Infra-red devices read heat signatures. That's it. They do different things with these signatures (create images, measure temperatures, etc.), but their purpose is, simply to read heat signatures. What's more, each type of infra-red device reads heat signatures in a specific way, and usually (though I can't swear that this is always the case), they read SURFACE heat signatures. So, for example, an infra-red thermometer reads the temperature of a surface - not the air, not gases, not ectoplasm, but a surface. So, if you point an infrared thermometer through a room, you will get the temperature of whatever object happens to be on the other side oh the room (most likely the wall), but not something insubstantial, such as gasses, smoke, or a ghost. What's more, depending on what the object that you hit is made of, and what is connected to it, you may get radical-seeming variations from fairly common things. Infra-red motion detectors do a similar thing, detecting either major changes in temperature or the movement of objects with heat signatures different from whatever the background field is. Even if one is claiming that there is a "cold spot", it would need to be of sufficient temperature difference and size to trigger the motion detector.
Also, there tends to be a bit of an inconsistency with how these objects are used by ersatz investigators - I have seen shows, and had conversations with people, wherein images from infrared camera showing warm, human-shaped areas were held up as evidence of ghosts, while "cold spots" were also used simultaneously. So what is it? Is the ghost cold or warm? The fact that both tend to get used depending on what the equipment is picking up indicates that these people are detecting randomness, not ghosts - in any sort of field of measurement, there will be natural "clumpings" of readings due to basic random distribution (remember, random does not mean "evenly distributed", it means "without pattern", and "clumps" will appear whenever a pattern is lacking). Whenever you see these clumps, they can seem striking, if you don't understand the nature of random distribution (one thing I have learned about ghost hunters - they are, to a person - very, very bad at understanding statistics). So, finding areas that appear hot or cold with an infrared device is not really useful information unless you can demonstrate a reason for it to be a different temperature (the common trope of "we can't explain these readings, therefore- GHOST!" grows out of a basic mis-understanding of how this works - there is always the possibility of seeming anomalies in randomness, the odd readings only mean something if you have good reason to expect them to be something other than what they actually are - and area that remains cold after being hit with a blow-torch, for example).
Anyway, unlike some other critics of paranormal investigation, I will not say that infrared equipment is useless. I will, however, say that it is only useful if you have a clear reason to be using it, and you have a sufficient understanding of both how the equipment works and of the environment in which you are deploying it to be able to know with some degree of reliability whether or not you should be getting one set of reading and not another - and knowing that tends to require alot of background knowledge of both the place where you are, and of the basic engineering that went into building it and selecting the materials to build it. If you haven't done this minimal research, then your readings are essentially meaningless.
Similarly, electromagnetic field meters are often abused in the name of parapsychology. What an EMF meter does is measure the electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic fields are all around us - the Earth generates a giant one, and out bodies generate them as well, as do all electronics. These tools are useful in the hands of people who work with electrical equipment for a living, but tend not to produce meaningful results in the hands of anyone else. Why? Simple: there are many possible sources for EMFs, and someone who is accustomed to dealing with them will have an idea of what EMFs are anomalous, and which are to be expected. Moreover, when they find an anomalous one, someone with a background in electrical work is going to have an idea of what to look for as regards its source*. Moreover, the readings that one gets with an EMF meter depend in large part in the specifics of how one uses it. Many commercially available meters require multiple readings to be taken in a few different ways in order to find anything meaningful (so, someone walking into a room, taking one reading, and announcing that they have found something is a sign that the person in question hasn't a clue as to how to use their equipment). Similarly, the way one handles the meter may create anomalous readings: for example, my fiance and I once did a ghost walk during which we were all handed EMF meters, and she and I quickly discovered that we could make these particular models spike by flicking our wrists slightly while holding them - doing little to the electromagnetic field, but screwing with the sensors - it was fun watching the other tour members try to figure out why the ghosts wanted to play with her and I, and not any of them.
Similarly, people tend to like to use ion detectors and Geiger counters (although the Geiger counters are usually given another name). Ion detectors detect ions, atoms in which the total number of electrons are not equal tot the total number of protons and therefore have an electrical charge (positive or negative). Ions are both naturally occurring and can be created by a variety of different pieces of equipment. Geiger counters identify ionizing radiation from nuclear decay (alpha particles, beta particles or gamma rays), which, again, can be (in fact, usually is) naturally occurring, or can be the result of human activity. As with EMF fields and heat signatures, readings on these pieces of equipment are essentially meaningless unless you have a good reason to expect one type of reading over another.
In all of these cases, the infrared devices, the EMF detectors, the Geiger counters, and the ion detectors, the devices are not measuring something mystical, something weird, or something abnormal. They are not measuring paranormal energy, ghosts, or the Force. They are measuring properties that exist in the world, all around us, at all times. And all of them can only produce meaningful measurements if you know what should and/or should not be in a given location, which requires a whole heaping load of background research. Hell, in the case of things such as radiation and ions, a basic knowledge of local geology and weather is necessary to know what should or should not be present, and I rarely see a paranormal researcher consult a geology or meteorology textbook.
Okay, so now onto the items with which I have a bit more direct experience and a bit more to say.
While in college, I trained to be a radio DJ, but found that I had a much greater affinity for the recording and manipulation of audio than for the on-air hijinks that accompanied DJ-dom. I became pretty good at making the various audio devices to which I had access make all manner of weird sounds, manipulate signals in odd ways, and create audio effects unintended by the equipment's manufacturers. What's more, I learned of the many ways that audio equipment can pick up unexpected noise, and I learned that following a basic train of cause-and-effect, I could invariably find the source of the sound (which, often, was very different from what it initially sounded like on the recording). Now, mind you, I could track down the sources in a controlled studio environment - if the same sorts of things had occurred with a tape recorder out on the town, I'd have had a much harder time tracking down the source - it likely would often be impossible - but my experience in the studio had taught me that unlikely sources can create odd noise and effects in recordings.
Most commercially available audio equipment is different from the professional-grade stuio equipment in that it is usually more compact, and gives the operator less control - but it has all of the same basic parts and features, it just either pre-sets them to "typical" conditions, or else automates them into a few pre-sets. The point is, this equipment has pretty much the same ability to create anomalous sounds as the studio equipment that I used, but fewer ways for the operator to minimize interference or alter the sound produced to create a cleaner recording. What's more, outside of a controlled studio environment, things such as tape recorders picking up faint radio signals, as well as the re-use of old tapes creating "bleed through" is common.
Digital recorders avoid some problems (such as bleed through), but still have some of the same issues, and several new ones unique to digital audio.
To make matters worse, most enthusiasts of electronic voice phenomenon (EVP - the alleged voices of spirits captured on electronic equipment) advocate the use of white noise int he background when you make recordings. This is dumb. Dumb, stupid, foolish, and asinine. As you may recall from Part 1, the human brain looks for patterns in randomness, and in laboratory experiments it has been shown to be very, very common for people to swear that they have heard human voices saying specific, coherent things in randomly generated noise. So, if you create white noise and then sit and listen to it for voices, you are very likely to hear voices whether or not there is anything there.
So, when someone plays spooky noises that they recorded at the local cemetery, it probably goes without saying that I am singularly unimpressed. Even when they are sure that they hear a human voice answering questions, it is really, really unimpressive.
Now, am I not saying that audio equipment is useless. If you can routinely replicate certain types of phenomenon, and you are able to successfully rule out all common sources of interference, then you may have something. Now, what you have may be an uncommon problem with your equipment, or it may be something truly strange, and you will have to find different ways to further explore it, but you might (and note, I say "might" not "are") be on to something. In a more pedestrian sense, audio equipment, especially a good, simple tape recorder or digital voice recorder, is an excellent way to take quick, on-the-fly notes to help you out later. These things are useful pieces of equipment for any researcher, but as with everything else discussed here, you have to understand what they are and how they work, and how your brain interprets sound in order to get any real use out of them.
And now, onto cameras. I am a hobbyist photographer and have been for many years, so while I am not a professional photographer, I do know a thing or two about the subject. And when I see photographic "evidence" of hauntings, I am consistently underwhelmed.
First off, there's the fact that many of the things that are currently held up as evidence of ghosts - streaks, "orbs", etc. - are actually pretty well understood properties of how cameras function. A camera operates by bringing light in, and turning that light into an image, either on a photographic paper or through electronic sensors. Anything that reflects light will effect the image, and as cameras bring in light in a manner a bit different than how the human eye does, this means that objects may appear on film or in digital images that are not visible to the naked eye. Small objects that can reflect light (raindrops, motes of dust, insects, etc.) tend to reflect it in a spherical pattern that is not visible to the human eye, but does show up on camera. If the object is caught in a particular way or is moving quickly enough, this may show up as a "streak" rather than a sphere. Likewise, small light sources, maybe dim enough to not be noticeable to the naked eye, may show up on film as streaks if the camera or the object emitting the light is moving, even slightly, when the shot is taken. This is especially true in low-light conditions. Now, some people will say "well, this orb is translucent, that one is solid, therefore we know that this one is an artifact of light, BUT the other is a ghost!" Nope, sorry, both are artifacts of light, and anyone who tells you different is either completely ignorant of photography, or is lying to you.
Indeed, it is a sad fact that the reason why we have these obvious artifacts being held up as ghostly images is because most of us are familiar enough with special effects that we will no longer uncritically accept a modified image. As a result, those who wish to capture ghosts on film have tried to find ways to use unmodified images to support their claims. The problem there, of course, being that, to anyone who knows the ins-and-outs of camera functionality, these images are pretty clearly mundane. The fact that there are some photographers who are only to ready to jump on the spooky bandwagon (usually to make money off of selling either their services or their photographs) doesn't change the fact that these really are pretty damn mundane.
On a related note, it is common for people to take other types of photographs from other people as evidence of ghostly activity. Typically, the line goes something like this: a photograph appears to show something strange, it was taken to a photography expert who states that there are no signs of tampering with the image, and therefore the image really does show something strange!
Leaving aside the images created via pariedolia, there is another problem here. All of the images below are analogous to types used as evidence for paranormal phenomenon. None of them have been tampered with, and therefore would show no signs of tampering if examined:
Every one of them shows a vague human outline, or a human form that is insubstantial, or a face that seems somehow wrong. In some of them you will have to look closely, but these sorts of ghostly images are present in every one of them. Several have strange streaks of light or "orbs".
Those human shapes in the ghostly images are myself, and my friends Robin, Michael, and Robert. None of the images were created using photo manipulation software, studio editing, or any other form of image manipulation. In other words, not a single one was tampered with, and none of them would show signs of tampering if examined.
Which doesn't mean that there was no trickery involved. I used a variety of techniques to create these images: pinhole apertures, slow shutter speeds in low-light conditions, and a mix of digital and film cameras, utilizing properties unique to each of them. In some of the images, I intentionally used non-optimal settings (making the exposure to bright or too dark, putting the image slightly out-of-focus, etc.) to make the image look just slightly not-right before inserting the spooky element (this serves to prep the viewer to see the image as spookier than it really is). I used cameras with light leakage, or used flashes, to create the streaks and orbs. I created the images intentionally, knowing full well what I was doing, and what I was going to get when I was done. So, just because a photo has not been edited or altered doesn't mean that it is real, and this should be kept in mind whenever you are presented with a photograph as evidence.
But this also brings us to another issue: that, like the audio equipment, lower-end cameras (especially digital point-and-click cameras, but also many non-professional film cameras) have the same parts as higher-end cameras (lenses, film or sensors, apertures, etc.), but generally automate those parts or have them at pre-sets, limiting the ability for the user to manipulate them in order to cut out interference, creating numerous anomalies that may seem odd or even spooky to someone not familiar with how to intentionally create the same sorts of images. Moreover, an unwary user of a film camera is likely to end up with double-exposures, which can result in "a person who wasn't there appearing in the image!", and most people using these cameras on ghost hunts do not keep accurate photo logs in order to recall the precise conditions under which images were created.
Like audio equipment, cameras are useful tools. They can allow you to document conditions, act as a supplement to your field notes, and there is a small but real chance that you may even catch something in the image that might prompt further investigation.
While the IF devices and EMF meters, etc. are probably best left at home, cameras and audio equipment are legitimately useful, and should accompany someone who is trying to do real investigation. But you should always be aware of the limits of your equipment, the nature of your equipment, and of the fact that many of the things taken as evidence of ghosts are, in fact, easily explainable by someone who knows what the equipment is and how it works. So, bear all of this in mind when using it.
Okay, the next part, which I hope to post in the not-too-distant future, will focus on the basica problems inherent in the lack of theory and testable hypotheses in paranormal research, and what you can do to make things better.
* Fun fact: on occasion, a television show will bring someone in who is said to have the correct background to make sense of EMF readings. Assuming that they do (and given the way that paranormal television shows often play fast-and-loose with the qualifications of people who I have actually know the background of, I have little hope that they get anyone else's qualifications correct), the devices are almost always shown being used in a manner inconsistent with what is needed to get reliable readings. So, even in these cases, the devices are being mis-used.
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