Baloney Detection 101 — The Ideomotor Effect

Ouija boards…automatic writing…table tipping in spiritualist seances…dowsing in all its forms, including bogus bomb detectors…the Clever Hans phenomenon…applied kinesiology…New Age psychotherapy techniques that purport to query the unconscious…what do all of these things have in common?

They are all in some form or other the results of a well-understood and empirically well-established psycho-muscular phenomenon known as the Ideomotor effect.

Known mostly to psychologists, it is a phenomenon which has been repeatedly confirmed since the days of William B. Carpenter in 1852, who called it ‘Ideomotor action’ after his investigations into dowsing, and to paraphrase Dr. Ray Hyman, who after he tested this phenomenon has said that “honest and intelligent people can (and do…) unconsciously engage in muscular activity that is consistent with their expectations.”

It is a mechanism in which mental suggestiveness can produce results of unconscious or involuntary actions that may be erroneously viewed as paranormal or supernatural by those unaware of it, both body and mind influenced by the power of subtle, unconscious suggestion. The nature of the movement caused by the effect is the result of a mild dissociative state, in which the user’s conscious awareness of the motion he is performing is suspended, producing the illusion of motion seemingly caused by mysterious forces external to himself, often considered to be paranatural or otherwise mysterious in origin.

Such notables as psychologist William James, chemist Michel Chevereul, and physicist Michael Faraday have tested this phenomenon and successfully shown that many seemingly inexplicable effects or forces can be more parsimoniously explained as resulting from Ideomotor activity, such as moving a ouija board’s planchette, the rod or pendulum of a dowser, diviner or alchemist, the hands of a practitioner of Facilitated Communication, as well as some behaviors often attributed to hypnotic suggestion.

The Ideomotor effect, though most people, even quite a few scientists, are unaware of it, is a well-documented phenomenon and includes the following features:

• It amplifies the motion of a pendulum or other hand-held object, such as a divining rod in ways that the operator doesn’t consciously notice, and then…

• …The operator, completely unaware of his own agency in the motion, ascribes it to something ‘outside’ or ‘other’ than himself…

• …This ‘something outside’ is then thought to be some sort of paranormal, occult, or unknown scientific force, typically some sort of spiritual agency or ‘energy field’ in the operator’s vicinity…

• …Which then produces a powerful feeling, quickly snowballing into a full-fledged delusion, that the operator possesses some sort of unusual or special ability, power over, or sensitivity to unusual forces or influences…

• …And when thus used in attempts at divination this effect reveals no knowledge to the operator that he or she didn’t already possess, though the operator may not be aware that they know what they do on a conscious level. This is especially true when the effect is used in ‘water witching’ when the operator has unconscious knowledge of what local geological characteristics are likely to be in an area where underground water sources are to be found, and even if not, in most cases there is a fair likelihood of finding water by chance anyway.

In any case, success in this by the operator reinforces belief, failure is downplayed and forgotten, which causes…

• …the psychological reinforcement resulting from the dissociation of bodily motion and conscious awareness of it to magnify the delusional effect, setting in motion cognitive mechanisms that prevent the operator’s belief in the effect from being falsified…

…and as a result, many operators become firmly convinced of their own powers, even despite evidence to the contrary, such as a careful and patient explanation with a demonstration of the scientific understanding behind this effect.

Logical Fallacies — the False Premise

Hey, guys. This post shall attempt to address a common fallacy, though technically a premise, or factual error, rather than one of pure logical structure, the False Premise, though more often than not used in the context of a logical argument, and therefore as a component of specious reasoning.

Simply put, the false premise is a statement, claim, fact or assertion that is simply not true, and which thus renders any argument using it automatically invalid unsound or non-cogent.

A false premise can range from a simple myth or misconception that is held out of ignorance, willful or otherwise, to a claim or statement of belief resulting from a delusion, to a blatant, intentional prevarication, and this form of argument is often a common rhetorical tactic by pseudoscientists. Here are a couple of examples:

• Quantum Mechanics supports the idea that reality does not exist unless it is being looked at by a conscious observer.

• Quantum Mechanics explains telepathy as a result of the shared Entanglement of particles in separate brains.

The first is false, for one thing, because quantum observation has nothing to do with consciousness or even the possession of any other sort of function commonly associated with a living mind at all, it simply involves the effects on quantum entities by interaction through the physical act of measurement.

It is also false because Quantum Mechanics, as a widely-accepted and evidentially well-supported scientific theory, depends on the existence of reality in order to be true, no matter who is using it, when or where. QM makes the posting of this blog entry on the computer servers that you are not looking at (and are therefore not ‘consciously observing’…) possible.

The second is also false for two reasons: First, it’s pointless to explain something before it’s even convincingly established to scientifically adequate standards that the phenomenon even exists to be explained to begin with, and second, there is as yet no evidence of any quantum effects, especially entanglement, in the thus-far detectable activity of the human brain.

Three common variations of the false premise are listed and described below.

The first, the Big Lie is a false statement so huge that it is difficult, interestingly enough, for people to think that it would be told if it were not true. This is especially the case when it is told with genuine sincerity, as part of a personal misconception or even a delusion. Three examples follow:

• This starship is constructed out of corbomite. If you fire upon us, the explosion will destroy both our vessels.

• I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I’m a mirant. I can kill you just by looking at you funny.

• The scientific evidence for psi is compelling, just Google “evidence for psi” to see for yourself.

Note that that last example, slightly paraphrased, has been used on yours truly on this blog at least once, and was, though false and boldly stated, probably not an intentional falsehood on the part of the one making it.

Anyhoo…

Next, the Multiple Untruth, also known as the Gish Gallop when used by creationists.

This is the use of so many specious arguments at once that they are almost impossible to keep in mind, and though the opponent of the one using this fallacy may have the time to refute a few of them, only those most skilled in debate find the opportunity in the time they have to give a rebuttal to all of them.

This is often effective because since only a small number of misconceptions is refuted when this is employed, it conveys the impression of victory in the debate to the user’s audience.

I notice this one a lot on blogs by psi proponents, who ingeniously cram so many factual misconceptions and other fallacies into their arguments that even this evil skeptophrenic blogger finds it impossible at present to deconstruct even a single complete argument in the space of only a single rebuttal. Several such posts in a series are usually needed to deal with them in as much detail as I would like. I tip my Evil Pseudoskeptic™ hat to them, for now…

Thirdly, the Noble Lie: Plato is often credited with inventing this one, and he may indeed have. This is a fairly common debating tactic, a falsehood told for its rhetorical effect, and often for the supposed result of believing the premise.

This variant operates on the working assumption that those it is told to are intellectually incapable of handling the truth and/or so imbecilic that they cannot possibly see through it on their own.

Those thusly treated like imbeciles by being told the lie, should they already know or discover the truth, often have an emotional reaction to it and summarily dismiss out of hand anything said by that source from then on.

Plato’s work, the Republic, describes what he proposed as the ideal society, in which the complicity of its citizens to the social order was maintained by the Noble Lie.

I’ve found that if your aim is to engage in intellectually honest, truly constructive discussions, it’s a good idea to put forth the effort not to commit this fallacy, both by avoiding intentional falsehoods, and alleviating the use of unintentional misconceptions by looking up on and knowing what you’re talking about, however tentative and subject to future correction and revision that may be. Nobody can be right about everything, especially my Troythuluness. Fnord.

SGU does the Monster Mash

via Phil Plait – Monster Sunspots!

This is a short one, but cool…

TNQ | Troythulu’s Noontide Query

I try to avoid being too loud about my politics, and on this blog, I generally try to shy away from making much in the way of overt political statements — mostly.

Nonetheless, I do have political views, and I’ve noticed that most people aren’t very objective about their views regarding this, including, I suspect, Troythulu.

Politics is like sports — we pick a team, or party, that we really like and root for them. When they win the competition, we feel great, when they lose, we feel angry.

For some, politics is everything, and while it can lead to a crass expounding upon of said views, putting a political spin on things can also reveal interesting insights.

So this day I ask:

Is being part of a political cause one way in which you personally find meaning in life?
How good a source of meaning is that compared to other sources?

TNQ is a daily question that I pose to you, my readers, and please, do feel free to comment — I’m not an ogre. As per the title, TNQ is published each weekday at 12:00 PM

TNQ | Troythulu’s Noontide Query

One of the things important to me as a skeptic is to add to and arrange my mental toolkit to allow me to be as sure as I humanly can about the real world, to permit myself to know certain facts about reality as certainly as can be known given my cognitive and perceptual limits as a member of species Homo sapiens, even then conceding that I cannot know anything absolutely.

I try to keep what I subjectively would like to be from overcoming my understanding of what is, while still acknowledging that my subjectivity is my window to the world as I see it.

Perfect objectivity is not possible, even for the most healthy skeptic, but objectivity is still a worthy goal nonetheless.

I concede to a reality which like it or not, has elements of both the objective and the subjective, a reality in which what is determines what we can know, and in which what we can know defines the limits of our understanding of what is.

The objective and subjective, the existence of the world, and the lens of self through which we see it are both important to me.

So this day, I’ll ask you all:

Which has priority to you, objectivity or subjectivity?

TNQ is a daily question that I pose to you, my readers, and please, do feel free to comment — I’m not an ogre. As per the title, TNQ is published each weekday at 12:00 PM

Science Fiction & ‘Psionic’ Abilities

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a big science fiction fan. After all, it’s what got me interested in science, and later, modern scientific skepticism.

As a science fiction fan, I’ve always thought that weird mental powers — known as ‘psionics,’ a sciency term for what we in the real world refer to as alleged psychic abilities — are just way cool, and my old concept (now long since outdated) of my science fiction setting Terra M (henceforth renamed Gods of Terra)used the idea as one of the major plot elements in the story lines.

So much for that for now…

I’m in the process of majorly rethinking my fictional universe, and as well as redoing the iconic characters of the setting, and also come up with the idea of brain-implanted alien artifacts called ‘hypershards’ to explain the powers of the setting’s evolved superhumans, hominids called Mirants.

These powers in so many fictional settings are so unlike the unproven abilities of real world psychics in that while sometimes subtle, they can also be unambiguously provable, sometimes ridiculously so. I suppose that this is one reason some of the real-world psychics who truly believe in their abilities take issue with being compared to the X-Men. After all, Professor X has to my knowledge never had any trouble using his telepathic abilities even under the most stringent conditions, no matter if a skeptic or believer was running the test, and few people in most comic book universes doubt the existence of such abilities precisely because they are so demonstrably provable.

Hmmm, sounds like sour grapes syndrome to me.

I think that SF psionics is cool because it has a strange sort of existential status, a superposition of being simultaneously both high-technology and low-technology. I’ll explain:

The low-tech aspect of SF psionics is the fact that you don’t always need advanced gadgetry to use it — You just concentrate, and stuff happens — depending on the setting of course. Some SF universes require their psionicists, or psions (SF psychics) to have some sort of material focus to help them center their concentration, ranging all the way from simple items like amulets or headbands made of crystal or weird metallic alloys (platinum-group metals are popular) to hyper-advanced ‘psychotronic’ machinery, often using reverse-engineered alien technology (I used a similar but modified idea for my hypershard-granted powers, which I call myria or myrionics).

The high-tech aspect, in addition to the some of the aforementioned gadgetry used to employ these abilities in some settings, is the fact that in many SF universes, these powers are relatively well-understood in terms of how they work and why, even if only according to the science of the setting. In these universes, psi is science, not pseudoscience.

Yes, it may be pseudoscience, but even as a skeptic it’s still fun to imagine. I’m a skeptic largely because I want to know the real explanations for what seems to be paranormal, not just accept on faith whatever psychics and believers assert without substantiation.

Trust me, I have looked at what passes for evidence of psi, and it’s curious, perhaps even suspicious, that the only supporting sources I could find are those entities dedicated to promoting it, like right here, and here. In my experience, the normal and natural have been tested countless times and always come up positive, and just the opposite has happened whenever the paranatural has been tested — It has consistently come up zero at best.

In an SF universe where the understanding of the laws of physics actually allows for it, there is usually a broad scientific consensus in those fields dealing with psi on a coherent theoretical basis for what it does and how it works, a situation most unlike the real world, where the paraphysical community still has nothing close to a general agreement on a workable, testable, evidentially supported theory of psi, despite a disappointing 130+years of investigation. The original pioneers of the field would not be pleased if they could see what passes for its ‘progress’ today.

Sigh…Yes, I know, there’s quantum mechanics, the most abused and misunderstood physical theory ever appropriated to support belief in woo, used for everything from ‘explaining’ telepathy to using science to ‘debunk’ reality. Sorry, but I still exist to write this post, even when you’re not looking at me. It’s curious that those who understand QM best, the majority of quantum physicists themselves, don’t advocate its validity in explaining psi. I wonder why…

Despite any wishes on my part, until psi can be demonstrated in independently replicated tests regardless of the attitudes or beliefs of the experimenters, it is likely to remain marginalized, even ridiculed, ever on the borderlands of science, and remain unlikely to ever ‘subvert the dominant paradigm.’

TardisCam — By AronRa

TNQ | Troythulu’s Noontide Query

I have the distressing, and to some of my readership with less time available to keep up with multiple entries per day, annoying, habit of coming up with ideas for blog posts from some random word or phrase that just pops into me noggin in the wee hours of the morning.

I’ll bet there’s probably some interesting neurological phenomenon at work with that. Maybe I’ll ask brain-meister Steve Novella about it sometime…

In any case, while this propensity for ideas can sometimes irritate the crap out of me as well, since it’s difficult to get much sleep while it’s going on, it’s something I wouldn’t give up for the world, and hope I shall retain it for a great many more years to come.

But enough of my Troythuluness’ typically incessant rambling…

Just off the top of your head, think of one word or short phrase right now.

What is it?

TNQ is a daily question that I pose to you, my readers, and please, do feel free to comment — I’m not an ogre. As per the title, TNQ is published each weekday at 12:00 PM

TNQ | Troythulu’s Noontide Query

When I was a kid, I hated my name…probably like a lot of kids, but felt like I should do something about it when I got old enough…

At first, I was considering legally changing my name back to an earlier surname, but eventually got over it as I got older. This is to be expected as one grows up. One day at a local gaming shop, out of the blue, a friend I was talking with noted my interest (at the time) in things Lovecraftian, and my now notorious nom de blog was born. Here’s hoping for even more notoriety to come…Bwa ha ha ha ha!

I still get a huge kick out of people calling me Troythulu in person, and I do what I can to live up to my online Evil Debunking Pseudoskeptic™ image. It’s made posting on this site just so much fun, so things is goin’ well for this skeptophrenic blogger.

Well, having effectively crafted my online persona from scratch, starting with a single name and building up from that, I suppose that sometimes a name can and does make the persona, at least the beginning of it. So sez my Troythuluness…

So, I’ll ask you this noontide:

If you could rename yourself what name would you choose?

TNQ is a daily question that I pose to you, my readers, and please, do feel free to comment — I’m not an ogre. As per the title, TNQ is published each weekday at 12:00 PM

A Night at the Conference

The Mirus was having a grand time at the 2015 Annual World Skeptics’ Conference, chatting it up with some of the most brilliant clear thinkers in the world, including several of the skeptics who had just a year ago tested and validated him as the only proven supernormal being on the planet. Needless to say, the ten million dollar prize money he won in the final test came in handy: He used it to fund his own professional organization, both to try to find others like himself through testing, and to expose those who merely pretended to possess unusual powers by the same means. A skeptic with paranormal abilities…who would’a thunk it?

So far, he had been unsuccessful in the former, though some of the latter had been tested and found wanting, and most just never took the bait. He could easily speculate as to why.

The Mirus’ abilities stemmed from a bizarre alien artifact in his brain, a piece of technology stemming from an application of higher-order physics millions of years beyond humanity’s current achievements…a hypershard — a construct whose existence extended into eleven dimensions of spacetime — which would have had some…interesting effects had he been a normal human. Fully meshed with his own brain, the implant’s advanced nature alone qualified it as paranormal, since no one on Earth would understand its workings for millions of years to come…

He had no idea how it had gotten there…

Instead, he suspected that he belonged to a hominid species of which he was the only known member, characterized by variations in human brain architecture that allowed him to harbor his hypershard without going mad from the cognitive and perceptual feedback the implant might have produced in a Homo sapiens. He had hoped to confirm or confute that hypothesis with actual data some day.

He was in the midst of talking with the former magician who had hosted this meeting of minds, when his hypershard alerted him to the acoustic signature, complete with a diagram displayed by a superimposed visual overlay, of several…things…approaching the dinner hall he and several hundred others where in.

Hmmm. One of them seems familiar…awfully big though, I’d say around half a metric ton in mass. The rest are little guys, armored — as if that will do them any good against me — and armed as well. They don’t seem to have injured or killed anyone…yet. This is going to be interesting.

With this thought, he rolled his eyes and sighed as the beings strode into the room, the big one standing around three meters tall and built like a brick sh*thouse. This one, a reptilian being looking like something out of a Japanese kaiju flick, swayed its tail from side to side while looking around the room as if searching for something, its massive armored body striding forward with each foot step making a heavy *thump* as it walked.

The others, apparently of the same species, but less than a meter and a half tall, were likewise armored, and armed with what the Mirus immediately recognized as gauss weaponry, small magnetic railguns designed to be carried by a single soldier and capable of sustained and automatic fire.

The humans in the room cleared a path as one of the creatures brandished its weapon and fired a warning shot, the hypersonic rounds making a loud *crack* as they passed over the humans’ heads. The Mirus stood where he was.

One of the small ones pointed in his direction, and the giant, apparently the leader, strode over and stopped in front of him. It seemed to bow its head as if greeting him, and a series of guttural, staccato sounds, apparently spoken in several tones at once, issued forth. The Mirus responded in kind, and this exchange went on for several seconds until the giant said in perfect but multiple-toned English, “You speak our language well for a human, but your pronunciation is atrocious due to your vocal limits. We shall converse in your language instead.”

A smile crossed the Mirus’ face as he looked the towering being in the eyes and said, “Bazrikoss Gurao of Rhiljitar, what brings you to my humble little world? Have you forgotten that this planet is off limits?” The smaller beings, Bazrikoss’ bodyguards, aimed their gauss weapons in his direction as he continued, “And what’s with the toys?” Before a shot could be fired, he gestured, and the weapons were jerked out of the grip of the alien warriors as if by unseen hands, and like an exploded view diagram in a technical manual, immediately flew apart, the now disassembled pieces falling to the floor in a heap. “I hope your mooks know how to reassemble their equipment. They’ll need to.”

“Now then…” he continued, “where were we? Oh, yes, this is where I send you on your way…or else.” Bazrikoss’ left hand, now obviously artificial, began to flow like liquid, into something looking for all the world like some sort of ornate barreled weapon, its nanotech construction reconfiguring it into something nasty. The tip of the barrel leveled at the Mirus, glowing with a radiance so dark that it was almost black, and indigo lightning shot forth, rather than striking him, arcing and twisting around him before finally dying out, apparently absorbed harmlessly by nothingness. The hypershard again. Hmmm. Particle strike. Bad move on his part.

Bazrikoss screamed as the Mirus looked at him with a cold gleam in his eye, and then, starting outwardly, the giant alien began to dissolve, also into nothingness, until the dissolution reached the very center of what was left of his body, which then winked out of existence, something that had been on his right middle finger falling to the floor with an audible *plink!*

Our hero looked at the floor where the object had fallen, a transparent metal circlet, sized for the fingers of someone of Bazrikoss’ measurements. He strode over, and picked it up, walked over to one of the smaller beings and said, “I know what this is and what it does. Tell your master when this brings him back that if he ever sets foot on this planet again, he dies. In fact, tell him that I will kill him if he even enters this system. He had his one chance from me, and that’s all he gets. Next time, I’ll destroy his means of resurrection as well. Now go.” He placed the ring in the hand of the leading alien, and closed its fingers upon it, as the alien gate crashers turned around and left.

He turned and gestured at the pile of gauss rifle parts strewn on the floor, and they faded away as he said, “Wow. I must have set off the detection elements of every neutrino telescope on the planet with that. So, tell me people…what did you think of my little magic act?”

Joel Levine: Why we need to go back to Mars

TNQ | Troythulu’s Noontide Query

I don’t think of myself as a particularly outstanding or moral individual, and I tend to let others think of me as they will.

For good or ill…

While I don’t really have any heroes per se, there are a lot of people whose views and thinking I admire, even though I may not see things exactly as they on all matters. That comes with being human, and disagreement without being contrarian is rational.

Some of those people I know personally, others I’ve read books by, still more were long dead before I was born. Others whom I’ve read I know more remotely but I’m on their radar, and this is just awesome. None, however, are placed upon a pedestal, nor enshrined in a chapel. They don’t need such shallow and empty honors.

I’ve thought often of what I value, what attitudes and behaviors I find most admirable. One trait consistently stands out in the behavior of most skeptics and other proponents of clear thought that I’ve read or listened to: honesty, particularly intellectual honesty, along with other values pertaining to that oft-expounded upon thing we call the truth.

Maybe that’s why I find skeptics in general to be such cool people. They, by and large the best of them, have shown a gift for saying, “You know what? I was mistaken. But I’ve just revised my old views and now I’ll move on.”

I have rarely seen that attitude with regard to proponents of pseudoscience, and I think the reasons why are completely different with each one. There is no single, simplistic explanation that will apply to every case. This pronounced tendency for honesty, tested time and again, is one major reason I find skeptics to be as credible as I do.

But I’ve rambled enough, so todays question is…

To you, what is the highest virtue of all?

TNQ is a daily question that I pose to you, my readers, and please, do feel free to comment — I’m not an ogre. As per the title, TNQ is published each weekday at 12:00 PM

Mr. Deity and the Science Advisor

Human Evolution and Population Genetics

An argument sometimes trotted out by evolution deniers is the claim that humans and modern apes cannot be descended from a common ancestor because humans have so many more genetic defects (read: mutations) than do apes. A while back, I got this one, not from a garden variety creationist, but from a New Ager who believes that humans were genetically manipulated by ancient astronaut ‘space gods’ into our current form. He also buys into a number of other…interesting claims, but I say to each his own.

Anyhoo…

First, this argument is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of primate genetics: Humans do have more genetic variation than do apes, NOT more defects.

Here’s a little secret, from me to you — Everybody is a mutant, and even identical twins have slight genetic variations between them. Most mutations, contrary to popular belief, are simply useless, not necessarily harmful, happening because of extremely minor errors in DNA replication in the cell so inconsequential that the majority have no effect on the survivability of the organism.

Generally speaking, there are some harmful mutations, and these are selected against, but some benefit the organism if selection criteria in its environment are favorable, and these enhance its ability to perpetuate those same traits by out-producing its competitors in successful offspring, which then, if conditions remain favorable, themselves produce offspring, and so on. Hence natural selection.

Yes, the old cliché of evolution being summed up as the tautology “the survival of the fittest & the fittest are those who survive” is a classic straw man misrepresentation, oversimplified to the point of falsity. Evolution really has more to do with differential reproductive success than it does with any simple and direct survival fitness of the individual organism.

Second, this argument completely ignores what is known about population genetics. It ignores the fact that over time and with favorable circumstances, populations can and will increase, increasing the number of individuals and thus the number of chances for variation in the gene-pool by simple genetic drift.

And given the chance, these variations will happen. We know they will, because they have.

For humans, the major factors for this have been advances in medicine, agriculture and other applications of science and technology which favor the growth and maintenance of large populations in those nations with access to them.

Humans have, at least H. sapiens, started out about 100,000 or so years ago with a relatively sparse population growing to the billions now on Earth over time. The great apes, on the other hand have never had these factors involved at any point in their prehistory, even at the known height of their population. Thus they have never been very numerous compared with humans, except in early prehistory when there were only several thousand Homo sapiens in existence. Thus do modern apes have fewer variations in their genomes in comparison with humans.

This is no real mystery at all, and certainly doesn’t call into question the fact of human descent alongside modern apes from a presumably ape-like common ancestor. While the details of human evolution have yet to be completely filled in, they will be added, and it is one of the most evidently well-supported ideas in science. And no…there is no plausible evidence that we were bio-engineered by aliens. Fnord.