We recently received a quick note from R. Gomez via our contact page. Well, actually, it was two quick notes, sent within ten minutes of each other, but the second was merely a continuation of the first. Both revolved around the same point: that our easy dismissal of the paranormal was in some way "shortsighted" (or something) in light of all of the other stunning accomplishments of the human race. It's nothing we haven't heard before, but we thought we'd take the opportunity to address this argument in one place. Here are the two notes, as originally written:

If anyone would have told us only 50 years ago that people would be in street corners talking thru a small wireless device to other people in other countries...would we've belived it? So, why is it so hard to believe that some individuals (maybe not Allison!) could contact 'something' from dead people?

I wrote you before. About cell phones. Well...so far probably 90% of what human being have 'made up' ie flying artifacts, underwater vessels, etc. etc. have become reality much later. Why should we doubt ANYTHING? And I am not a great believer but...I know that there's a whole lot that we don't know. Watch StarTrek. Think of MRIs.

R. Gomez — who we'll refer to as "Gomez" and in the masculine for ease of reference — was polite in his comments, so we'll extend that same courtesy to him, as best we can (though we're all aware of what notorious potty-mouths we are around here). But his arguments are just the same old red herrings and missteps that we've heard countless times before. Frankly, it's getting a little silly, and we're looking forward to the day when such clear and simple concepts won't have to be spelled out for the general public — but for now, here we go....

First let's look at Gomez's statement that "90% of what human being [sic] have 'made up' ... have [sic] become reality" at some point. Sorry, no.

We can easily see that this statement represents an incredibly flawed premise merely by way of a quick glance over at our bookshelves. Picking books off the shelf at random and plucking some major elements out for examination: a cat that turns invisible, leaving only its smile? Nope, still not reality (despite being a brilliant visual). Superheroes? Nope, not in the way that Marvel or DC (or, technically, the ancient Greeks) have crafted them. Time travel? Sorry, not yet (and while our fingers are crossed, Douglas Adams' point that time travel must be, by definition, already invented at all points in time simultaneously — if it is invented at all — is a disheartening indication that perhaps we never will achieve it...at least, not without some major retconning of reality). Cartomancy and human possession? Not at all (but do read some Tim Powers when you get a chance). Wizards and muggles? Well, technically, muggles are a yes — but only by default, since muggles are just regular people. We haven't found any wizards, though, last we checked (let alone an entire parallel society full of them). How about a person who exists solely as an injectable drug? Haven't seen that anywhere outside of stories like Amnesia Moon. Genetically engineered anthropomorphic animals as members of society? Zip, zero, nada (though Lethem does some creative stuff with them). Tiny cartoon characters in a fairy tale land with talking bugs and giant rat monsters? Not a one (and if there were, the jokes wouldn't be written anywhere near as well as Jeff Smith does them). How about a woman who may or may not exist only as a series of postcards and letters (with gorgeous designs by Nick Bantock)? What about preternaturally graceful elves? Cave-dwelling, axe-wielding dwarves? Hobbits, dragons, magic rings, orcs and trolls? No, no, no, no, no. All of these are things that humans have conceived of but which, to date, have never, ever been shown to be real.

The point being that Gomez's statement was exceedingly vague, and hence completely useless. Humans have come up with as close to an infinite number of concepts and ideas as can be imagined, and clearly the overwhelming majority of these concepts remain firmly in the world of fiction. We sincerely doubt that Gomez meant to say...well, what he apparently did say.

(And no fair cheating and saying that these concepts were intended as fiction, rather than as predictions. Need we point out the glaringly obvious — that a great number of these are based on genuine beliefs from ancient times, and even unusual, but just as genuinely held, beliefs from more recent eras?)

Now, perhaps more to Gomez's point, humans have conceived of any number of interesting technological marvels, and we wouldn't be all that surprised if, after every hundred or thousand years or so, 90% of those technological concepts born from the feverish imagination of clever mavericks in that time actually came to be. But as our examples above showed, humans have also conceived of gods, ghosts, fairies, magic, witches, the afterlife, geocentric views of the universe, dragons, animism, and so on and so forth, and none of these concepts have been shown to have any grounding in reality. In fact, some have been firmly demonstrated as false, irrelevant, or both.

Of course, through the usual idiot's special rose-colored glasses, these details we're picking are supposed to be after-the-fact stories — descriptive rather than predictive — so it's not necessary for them to "come true." They are assumed to have already been true by those describing them — either fictitiously so (by writers and artists) or quite seriously (by religiosos and woos).

But anybody with a fully-functioning brain knows that these "magical" concepts are just exactly the same as wishing for "flying artifacts" or "underwater vessels" — they're just ideas that somebody thought up.

There is a pretty significant reason why all of the "tech" stuff seems to come true relatively quickly, while the "woo" stuff doesn't come true (ever). It's because, when it comes to technology, we can fucking do it, if we study hard and put in the time and effort. It doesn't even take "much later" to get there, either; we've only been working with particularly advanced technology for about a century, now, and we've already expanded our presence far beyond our one tiny planet, and nearly doubled the typical life expectancy in much of the world! As the only spacefaring species we know of, with an incredible amount of knowledge of and control over our own lives, we should be proud of ourselves, and it didn't take very long to go from dream to fruition (on the historical scale).

In contrast, "much later" for the bullshit ideas has come and gone, repeatedly. The believers have been pushing this shit for fucking millennia, and it still hasn't come to be. The bullshit just doesn't come true — in large part because we can't "create" it, even with study and hard work, because the basic principles just haven't been fucking demonstrated to exist in the first place.

And, of course, that's where Gomez's whole ridiculous argument breaks down, because he wonders why we can't believe that Allison can communicate with the dead. Note that he doesn't ask us our opinion on the status of the existence of the dead — a very vital foundation on which to base any hypotheses of Allison's abilities.

Why can't Allison communicate with the dead? Easy — because the dead are dead, boys and girls. They're dead, they're deceased, they have ceased to be and are no more (shuffled off this mortal coil, you know the rest...). No one has ever remotely come close to demonstrating otherwise, and we're quite confident in our assertion, based on the data so far in evidence. Allison can't fucking communicate with the dead because nobody can communicate with them — because there's nothing there with which to communicate. Wondering along these lines is like asking us why, given the high price of gas, we haven't ridden our unicorns to work this week.

Starting from a false premise and assuming that this might substantiate your argument is, frankly, getting very, very old. We're getting a little fed up with this kind of thing — even if the challenger is doing a good job of being polite. If you've got something to say, by all means, say it; but if this is the tired old shit you trot out, don't expect us to turn cartwheels at your insightful and powerful observations.

Gomez's other major stumbling block is that he relies on a false analogy. On the one hand, he's taking concepts that no one claims are true at the time the idea is conceived, and pointing generations down the road at the eventual physical realization of those concepts — as an example, a person saying in the 1780s that someday man will fly through the sky. While that's fair enough as a prediction of future developments, that's not where Gomez stops. Instead, he goes on to compare that 1780s prediction with a modern day psychic claiming that they can communicate telepathically right now at this very moment. Put simply (in deference, as always, to Kent), that is not even close to the same thing. (Note that we've shifted from mediumship to telepathy only in order to effectively avoid Gomez's erroneous assumption that the dead are around to communicate with in the first place — the principle, of course, remains the same.) Today's psychics aren't like the Eighteenth Century Man predicting the advent of air travel coming about at some time in the distant future — today's psychics are like the Eighteenth Century Man claiming that he already has a machine that allows him to fly through the air...but then refusing to produce that machine, or to show us that he can fly.

In addition, Gomez's "50 years" time frame is remarkably short, and hinders what little remains of his point. Fifty years ago, cell phones were not all that hard a concept to wrap our minds around. We're talking 1957, man: we had radio; we had satellites, for fuck's sake! (Well, just the one actually in orbit, but we were onto the technology involved.) Sure, our grandmas may not have seen it coming, but the scientists and electrical engineers, among other forward-thinking folks, surely had more than an inkling of the possibilities. Don't limit yourself to "what people might believe would happen" — most individuals living today couldn't begin to explain how a cell phone works. Does that mean the damn things don't work? Does that mean they're magic?

Arthur C. Clarke is credited with suggesting that any sufficiently advanced technology seems indistinguishable from magic, to those to whom that technology is so advanced. But there are two important things to keep in mind, here.

One: technology can be beyond an individual for a variety of reasons, not just the time period in which he or she lives — for instance, a number of geographical, financial, intellectual, political, educational, and sociocultural reasons spring to mind. (Do you think that the natives of central Africa or the jungles of South America are just stupid to have not achieved all that Western civilization managed to come up with? Or, perhaps, was it a question of the random dispersal of natural resources, the random nature of historical happenstance, and the not-so-random nature of human conflict and competition?)

Two: to those of us who actually think about things, as opposed to those of us who, sorry to say it, just don't, that advanced technology may seem like magic, but we'll be very, very interested in examining the technology to determine what it is and how it works. We're simply not content to leave it at: "Oh, oh, oh — it's magic!" (You know.) Apparently, some folks are — but their refusal to look beyond the "magic" doesn't validate the magic itself.

Do you think Leonardo Da Vinci, transported 500 years into his future — our present — would be utterly blown away by the sight of modern airplanes? Honestly, we tend to doubt it. He'd be impressed, sure; he'd be amazed at the specific technology involved, absolutely. But even 500 years ago, Leo was working on the assumption that flying machines were possible, and trying to figure out the method to accomplish their design.

And that's one of the primary differences between the stuff we'll "buy" and the stuff we won't. We'll accept a prediction about a method for realizing a particular concept (or even just a prediction that a method may be found). We'll be highly skeptical, however, of a claim of a concept that both: a) suggests that the phenomenon already exists, without providing any supporting evidence; and b) doesn't provide any way of ascertaining the method behind the scenes.

You see, Gomez has set up a straw man for us. If someone said, today, that some day in the future, humans will be able to communicate telepathically, we wouldn't dismiss the possibility or laugh it off as bullshit. That statement is entirely plausible as a prediction of future developments. Science is an incredible thing, and our human grasp of it grows by leaps and bounds every century — hell, every decade. Perhaps through study and hard work, we will discover a way to faciliate direct mind-to-mind communication; but today, claiming to be able to do this (with absolutely no evidentiary basis to back up your claim) is nothing but bullshit.

But let's shift back from the plausible to the paranormal once again. Can we prove beyond all doubt that telepathy doesn't exist? No, we can't. Nor can we prove that the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist, or unicorns, or our favorite little suckers, those lovable ass gnomes. The reason for this is that it just isn't possible to prove the universal non-existence of anything — beyond any doubt — because it's physically and realistically impossible to personally search every nook and cranny of the entire universe to rule out every figurative hiding spot. We've written about this many, many times before, most notably in a Rant entitled "Only God Can Prove a Negative, and There Is No God." So instead of relying on exhaustive and ultimately futile searches for elusive phenomena, we rely on examining specific and testable claims. By testing the claims of so-called psychics over many generations, the scientific method has shown that not one claim has been proven to be true. That's a pretty incredible rate of failure, one would think. As such, critical thinking demands that we simply set such claims aside until such time as these results are somehow overturned. Operating in any other way is a surefire road to utter insanity.

So, Gomez, why is it so hard to believe that some people can talk to the dead? First off, as we said, the dead are dead. They're gone. They're just not there. A corpse is a corpse, of course, of course — and no one can talk to a corpse, of course. That's what being dead is all about. Nobody has ever reasonably demonstrated that the dead continue to exist in any way, shape, or form at all — you want us to skip that step and get right to proving that we can communicate with them? Even if we grant you that, man, despite thousands of years of claims to be able to communicate with the "other side," and at least a few hundred years of sometimes passable "research" on the subject, not one person has ever actually achieved success under controlled conditions. That, Gomez, is why it's so "hard" (read: laughably ridiculous) to believe claims like Allison's.

We'll close by addressing what, to us, is the most absurd question of the entire comment:

Why should we doubt ANYTHING?

Why should we doubt that the Tooth Fairy exists? Or that small gnomes live in our asses only to come out and mess up our computer desks at night (dirtying up our mouse balls, those sick freaks)? Why should we doubt that the holocaust is a fiction made up to generate sympathy for the Jews? Why should we doubt that a magical sky daddy created the earth in just under a week about 6,000 years ago? Or that the world was sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arkleseizure....?

Well, here's a thought: maybe we should doubt all of these things because they simply aren't true. Can we "disprove" any of them beyond any sliver of doubt? No, we (by which we mean everyone, including you) can't prove a universal negative in any meaningful way. But the nonexistence of these things is as close to given, at this point in time, as it's practicably possible to be; and, as such, any sane person must concede that they are, for any real purposes, completely untrue.

Science, reason, and logic are powerful tools, and they have taken the human race far. Asking why we should doubt anything at all is spitting in the face of that progress, and longing for the good old days of ignorance, fear, disease and darkness. Join us in the Twenty-First Century, Gomez — it's a pretty exciting time to be alive...if you can see fit to trade in your credulity for curiosity.

But first, you need to make sure you know the difference.

About time you guys started posting again. I was starting to get withdrawl symptons.

Wow, the movie "Real Genius", the 70's pop band Pilot, "Mr. Ed", and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" all in one post! I love it! You guys manage to make a point and entertain at the same time!

Back with a vengeance! Bravo on a great post.

Interestingly at the time Jules Verne was writting about underwater ships and cannons able to shoot projectiles to the moon, he was writting about time machines. There was a huge interest in the occult and parnaormal during this period of time, with many attempts made to build machines to communicate with the deceased (none of which were successful). Without actually living in these times it can't be stated with 100% certainty that these people were actually thinking along the same lines as those of us living in this modern age. But the person living in modern times can fall into the trap of looking back on these and earlier 'writtings' (da Vinci's sketches, Nostradamus' drugged induced ramblings, the myths surrounding Archemedes) and proclaim that these things have come to pass; much in the same way that the propents of EVP & spirit photography can hear and see 'evidence' of the afterlife.

We had walkie-talkies 50 years ago. OK, it took a while for the Dick Tracy wrist version to show up, but that really wasn't much of a leap, even 50 years ago. (I'm still waiting patiently for my damn jet pack, though.)

I doubt it will be too much longer before we figure out how to implant cell phones and wire them directly to our neurons, a la the visual and hearing-aid implants that already exist. Then we will actually have telepathy, though perhaps not in the way most people envision.

I read a science fiction short story about 30 years ago in which some group of engineers wired 8-bit registers and transceivers into their brains. With a bit of practice at bit-flipping, they could communicate well enough to cheat at the casinos. Of course, that would be fairly easy for the casinos to detect, but I thought it was a reasonable scenario. Except for the part about learning to speak in ASCII. Everybody knows EBCDIC will win in the end.

A corpse is a corpse, of course, of course — and no one can talk to a corpse, of course.

Just one of several times in which I laughed out loud over the course of this post. Good to see that you haven't gotten rusty in your absence. Fantastic, fantastic post.

Incidentally, I wonder what the ass gnomes do now that I've switched to an optical mouse. I imagine they must get pretty bored.

Dude, are you kidding? Lasers, man. The ass gnomes get to play with lasers.

Mine appears to be some sort of infra-red. Unless the ass-gnomes see in a different spectrum, they won't be too entertained by that.

Mine appears to be some sort of infra-red. Unless the ass-gnomes see in a different spectrum, they won't be too entertained by that.

Oh, they do. And also in ultraviolet. And they see radio waves, too. And microwaves. Hey, electricity is invisible, but we can see that, right? Or did I fuck that up?