Seriously Spooky Stuff: Psedoscience At Its Best (Or Worst, Perhaps)

It's one of my little guilty pleasures, but for the sake of all things gloriously TOK-related, I'll share; I absolutely delight in watching those paranormal investigation shows. From 'Ghost Lab' to 'A Haunting' to 'Fact or Faked', I've seen most of what the Syfy channel has to offer. Here's the truth, no matter how much it may disagree with my Saturday morning viewing habits: What I've seen has been pretty scary. Not in the creepy-crawly, nightmare-inducing way, but in a way which, strangely enough, reminds me of TOK. (What doesn't eventually lead back to TOK? It's rather like finding the philosophy page on Wikipedia.)

'Ghost Adventures' is one of those shows. It's not amazing or surprising in any way, really. It doesn't deviate from this particular genre's usual style. It simply features three men, two 'investigators' and one 'technical consultant'. Together, they travel to reportedly haunted locations and gather 'data' overnight in order to back up the claims of those who have experienced the hauntings. Overall, they seem fairly convincing, but a bit of further inspection on the viewer's part reveals that there seems to be a fair bit of pseudoscience going on.

On the surface, the explanations offered up by the crew seem appealing in their simplicity; any sort of sound, temperature fluctuation, or equipment failure can easily be explained as a manifestation of the haunting. The problem is that their so-called evidence hardly seems to support the conclusions they make. Between their findings and their final reports, there exists no bridge of logic, instead, assumptions and unsupported assertions are the basis of their reasoning. They offer up what seems to be valid, properly gathered information at first, noting and reporting fluctuations in temperature, oddities found while recording, and variations in the local electromagnetic field. However, even this information, which seems to be the most scientifically sound part of their investigation, is reported with no frame of reference or context, making it impossible to tell whether the data is actually significant or not.

After the actual information is taken in, however, things go from bad to worse. The crew as a whole tends to make leaps which can't be accounted for by logic, assuming a settling sound or a clunky noise in an older building must be a spirit. Additionally, they offer the temperature and EMF fluctuations as conclusive evidence of ghostly encounters, citing these two factors as known indicators of otherworldly involvement. There is, however, no standard for the detection of spirits, if they even exist. Their misguided logic is more of a logical fallacy, an appeal to an authority or standard which does not, in reality exist.

It's easy to see the appeal of what the investigators claim to find. After all, beliefs regarding the existence of some sort of afterlife are common, both in the traditionally religious and in those that are of other beliefs / persuasions. The idea of a continued existence is comforting, at a basic level, and thus, it is a preferable belief to hold. On top of this, the simplicity of the explanation, as well as the seeming-confidence of the investigators, could easily lead to wide-spread belief in what is supposedly being shown.

A Penny For Your Paradigm: A Short Ramble About A Personal Paradigm Problem

Throughout middle school, I secretly dreaded the end of eighth grade, and graduation in particular. It meant moving on to bigger (and not so much better) things, and I was absolutely worried silly over what high school would be like. A mixture of the media and horror stories from older, high school-attending friends had me quaking in my tiny eighth-grader boots. Everything I knew told me that I could look forward to such pleasantries as being shoved into lockers, stuffed into trash cans, and pranked mercilessly. All of the information handed to me pointed toward a rather horrible 'truth' regarding high school: my ninth through twelfth grade years would be the worst of my life.

Looking back, I can still see why I had that impression, but I can also see why it changed. My paradigm, that high school was going to be awful, was immediately put under suspicion when I arrived on the first day. Everyone seemed friendly, if a bit shy. The only screams or shouts were ones of joy or laughter. No one was shoved into a locker (though a few people climbed into them by choice). All of this new information clashed with my previous paradigm, and there was simply no way to repair the damage done to that particular lens.

It was, I suppose, more of a change altogether than a simply shift, but I was thankful for it all the same. With my adjusted paradigm in use, the incoming information regarding day-to-day life in high school made more sense, and thus my confidence in my paradigm, as well as my future happiness, grew.

Knowledge Issues In The Modern World

Coming back to school is always rough; the first few weeks of classes inevitably feel rushed, assignments pile up in terrifying proportions, and sleep deprivation settles back in. This year was no exception; I'm already up to my ears in work, college paperwork, and other assorted tasks which I must complete, and I'm averaging five hours of sleep a night. Long gone are the summer nights of 10 luxurious hours of rest; they have been replaced by their less effective and less kind counterpart, caffeine.

The thing is, this year is flying by much quicker than any year before it. Already, this is the third week of school, and we're well into our coursework for the year. Everything feels rushed, not just class periods, but lunch and home-time as well. Time is flying, but not only when I'm having fun; it's ticking by with a seemingly increasing rate even as I type this blog post. I know, of course, that time cannot be truly increasing in speed; one minute is still composed of 60 seconds, and those seconds remain the same length, but all the same, time feels compressed.

When I try to assess my problem, I find that it certainly ties in with the Ways of Knowledge; Emotion, Perception, and Reason in particular. Emotion in the sense that stress and worrying seem to influence the speed which I feel time is passing at, and Reason because logically thinking out the problem does seem to sway time's passage in my favor, if only temporarily and on a minor scale. Perception is involved ore obviously; it is with my skills (or perhaps, lack thereof) of perception that I notice the slowing or quickening of the passage of time.

Looking into the situation further, a few questions come up. Primarily, we must ask, does time always pass at the same objective speed? The scientific definitions of each component of a day, an hour, a minute, or a second indicate that yes, time is a stable quantity in this particular equation, and thus, the flaw is not within the machinery of my watch, but within the machinery of my brain.

In the end, the questions are reduced to these:

To what degree do one's emotions affect one's perception of the passage of time?

To what extent do reason and emotion moderate each other in their influence the perception of time's passage?

Things I Think Know, Things I Think I Don't Think I Know, And Other Stuff

As we've already discussed in class, knowledge, and consequently, knowing things, is one finicky concept that has been playing mind games with us since we were tiny little nerdlings. I don't resent knowledge for that. If I could trick people into thinking I existed (I probably do), or make them think they knew everything about me, I probably would. To prove there aren't any hard feelings over my being fooled and deceived as a child, here's an anecdote.

When I was just about knee-high to a grasshopper (in other words, around fourth grade), I was convinced, due to a number of factors, that a house about a block from me was genuinely haunted. I'll admit, I was a pretty gullible little kid, but I was wholeheartedly positive that a family of normal ghosts lived in that house. A family of normal, Girl Scout cookie-buying ghosts. Yes, it sounds silly now, but I thought I had proof. I had, afterall, sold cookies to a young couple and their child while they were sitting outside of the house, enjoying the day. And I had indeed returned, cookies in hand, only to be informed by a neighbor that no one had lived in the house for years. From my perspective, those two key facts and a few other, smaller clues were all it took to serve as evidence of an otherworldly, pastry-purchasing presence in that house. When I informed my mother of my discovery, however, my fragile illusion of knowing was shattered. She called the number which the couple had provided, and later told me that the couple had been hoping to rent the house, but had been unable to afford the rent. Like that, my secret knowledge and paranormal visitors were reduced to a pile of lies and two lower-middle class folks with an infant. I was pretty shocked.

At the moment, I'm pretty confident about the likely easily shattered piece of 'knowledge' which I'm clinging to. I simply believe that I know what I believe. To some minimal extent, at least. I don't plan on masquerading behind some likely false evidence, nor do I plan on saying that I'm certain. But I think I believe that statement is true, and it's the truest knowledge which I can think of at this moment. I figure it must be true, because logic would seem to indicate that I, of all people, would at least know my own beliefs and thoughts best. But who knows, maybe not. I won't say I'm sure, though I feel like maybe, I might believe that I think that I believe that. But no, I won't say I'm certain. It'd just give Knowledge too much satisfaction to prove me wrong, and that'd be a bit of a downer.