"Aliens" is a Terrible Explanation

Skeptics (or "sceptics" if you're foreign. Or Canadian.) deal with a lot of things that are more or less entirely untrue. Bigfoot (doesn't exist) and Nessie (doesn't exist, and is probably otters) and other so-called cryptids, ghosts, conspiracy theories, and aliens. That list isn't exhaustive, by the way.

There's a lot of overlap in those areas, and not simply because people who believe in one of those phenomena are likely to believe in others, but because people who espouse them as explanations tend to commit the same logical fallacies, mostly involving the fallacy pictured above.

That picture is a popular internet meme, actually. The man in the picture is Giorgio Tsoukalos, and it's from a History Channel show¹, a purported documentary about the mysteries of the past. Tsoukalos typically resorts to another incarnation of the meme.

The only real mystery in the show is why his hair looks like that.

The picture up top refers to the logical fallacy, the Argument from Ignorance, or argumentum ad ignorantium if you're wearing a top hat and monocle.

When there's no evidence, do you know what conclusions you can draw? None. Do you know what you do in response? Investigate with an open mind and see where the evidence takes you. Instead, what UFOlogists and cryptozoologists² argue is that if you can't prove it wasn't aliens, then it must have been aliens. Or if you can't prove there's no bigfoot, then obviously bigfoot exists. Similarly, creationists tend to feel that if you can't prove their religious proposition false, then it must be true. Even Lisa Simpson was able to point out how spurious that argument is. As the popular saying goes, "You can't prove a negative"³.

When we're dealing with ancient history or obscure phenomena, there usually is a paucity of evidence. What has to happen then is building models based on what little evidence there is. Unfortunately, what happens then is that "[BLANK]-hunters" tend to be anomaly-hunters. Something strange! You can't explain it, therefore I'm right! As you can see, it's the argument from ignorance again, only instead of a lack of evidence, it's the explanation for the evidence. Either way, the supposed inability to disprove a hypothesis is taken as proof of the hypothesis.

In fact, alternative explanations can be provided! Let's look at ghost-hunting; this is a field rife with anomaly-hunting. Ghost-hunters simply aren't investigators. They take all their adorable little equipments and hunt for strange things. EM field! Ghost! ... or wires in the wall. Why not investigate and see if you can't eliminate other possibilities before jumping to "ghost!"? Take photographs and what do you find? Shining dots or lines! Ghost! Except they only show up when you use a flash, and didn't show up before the advent of flash photography. The glowing dots? Dust. The glowing lines? Reflections off straps or bars. Like I said, they've never shown up without a flash, which is why "flash artifact"⁴ is a better explanation than "ghost".

What about when there's little evidence? Like aliens being the proposed explanation for a lot of phenomena, from crop circles to abductions to cattle mutilations. There are of course explanations for these phenomena. Drunk guys, nightmares, and natural decay respectively. However, alien fanatics love to pull out Occam's Razor; our ONE explanation is better than your three explanations! But that's not how Occam's Razor works. First, it's not actually proof in itself; it's a guide to better logic. Also, Occam's Razor actually supports the skeptics, not the fanboys. The alien hypothesis is singular, but that doesn't make it simple.

Once you open it up and start unpacking it, you find that the alien hypothesis actually contains a lot of assumptions, almost all of which are wildly improbable.

• First, we have only one datum for life. We can make absolutely zero assumptions about the existence of other life. Life could be common, it could be rare, for all we know, we could be unique. We simply know nothing, so the assumption that there's other life out there is unfounded, unwarranted, and decidedly not simple.
• We do know that regardless of how common life is, multicellular life must be far less common. Life on Earth spent billions of years as single-celled organisms. So the assumption of multicellular life elsewhere is another wild leap.
• We also know that intelligent life is even less common, because we have precisely one example on a planet teeming with life, so there's yet another wild leap of assumption.
• Then we start venturing into the ream of fantasy, because the example of intelligent life we have (us) can barely even make it off our planet, and certainly can't colonize, so assuming the extant, multicellular life forms out there are capable of leaving their planet is a fantastic⁵ assumption.
• And if we were to bankrupt ourselves pouring all our resources into it, we could build an interplanetary spaceship that would take many thousands of years delivering a shipload of corpses to a foreign star, so assuming that that life could travel between the stars is beyond fantastic.
• Then it has to assume that, having made the journey across the unfathomably vast gulf between the stars ... they fuck with farmers by probing them, half-eating their cows, and fiddling with their crops.

Assumption piled on assumption piled on assumption, with an argument from ignorance as the cherry on top. Similarly, which is more likely, that thousands of people hunting the woods have failed to find an elusive species of apeman, or that the apeman doesn't exist?

It's not so much that skeptics want to come along and shit in the apple pie and spoil your fun... it's that you're wrong and you keep saying you're not.



1 - We need to take that name away from them. They suck now. I don't think they deserve "The Mystery Channel" either. Maybe "The Mysteriousnessosity Channel".

2 - Some people think that if you put "-ologist" at the end of something, then that gives you authority and credibility. Unfortunately, when it comes to the general public, they're usually right.

3 - Actually, you can, but its usually a long and exhaustive process. As in you have to exhaust various possibilities until you're left with a single, plausible hypothesis. It's called abductive reasoning. It's what scientists and Sherlock Holmes do. Well, what Sherlock Holmes does when written well.

4 - In science, an artifact is something you avoid if at all possible, and account for and ignore if you can't. If your equipment always records a sudden spike at a certain point in the experiment, it could be something happening to the experiment or it could be something happening to the equipment. The latter always has to be ruled out before the former can be adduced.

5 - As in it's a fantasy.

Children as Natural Scientists

Carl Sagan was a devoted educator who spoke to children of all age groups. His observation was that children are intensely curious, spontaneous with their questions, and infectious in their desire to learn. They're unafraid of looking ignorant and leap at the chance to explore. Teens, on the other hand, introverted, afraid of looking stupid, anti-intellectual, and have been beaten down by a culture and system that doesn't value scientific exploration or education in general. His opinion was that children are born natural scientists and have their intellects bored out of them.

On the other hand you have the view that children are extremely magical thinkers, natural teleologists, and incredibly gullible. Children will leap to any explanation that seems, to them, plausible. Ask a child and you'll learn that clouds are for raining, rocks are for animals to scratch themselves. Tell a child anything and you will be believed.

So which is it? Are children natural scientists or natural theologists? Will they explore and learn or will they make crap up and stick to it regardless?

Neither extreme is true.

Children are natural explorers and they're driven to learn. Just put them in any new and interesting environment and watch as they explore the shit out of it. Part of the problem of childhood gullibility, in my opinion, arises from this. They're built to take in new information and put it into a comprehensive worldview. That's an aspect of scientific exploration.

Children can be natural theologians, as well. They don't just explore and discover; they're willing to make shit up at the drop of a hat. They develop and explore wild fantasies just as easily and happily as they'll explore a natural history museum. They're also thoroughgoing teleologists¹ from an early age. Show a non-speaking infant a video of a square and a triangle moving across a screen, one after the other, and the infant will register surprise when the one "stops following" the other. These are aspects of theology.

But children aren't full scientists or theologians. Leaving aside theology as a useless practice not worth exploring, science isn't just curiosity. It's hard work. It's a systematic approach to asking and answering questions, to collecting and analyzing data, to questioning your own assumptions. As Einstein said, science is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. Childhood provides inspiration in abundance, but the discipline and hard work simply isn't there.


1 - Teleology, ascribing purpose to things. Like how the appendix in other animals is used to break down plant-matter and in humans to cause death.

Weak-Willed? There's Hope!

Aristotle and the ancient Greeks wondered about how to achieve eudaimonia, the happy life. A better way of translating it would be "human flourishing". Not just simple happiness or base pleasure, but a full, satisfied, aesthetically and philosophically complete state of being. One of the things they recognized as a stumbling block was akrasia, lack of self-control, acting against your better judgement, lack of willpower. For example, going to the gym and working out will improve your overall health and fitness, but eating a 500-calorie cupcake will make you happy right now without having to sweat for 45 minutes. Which one takes willpower to achieve?

Fast forward a few thousand years, and science steps in to help fill out the picture. It turns out that we actually have a limited supply of willpower. You can only resist temptation for so long before you give in and indulge. That's why it actually is a good idea to empty your home of all the temptations you're trying to avoid. When the temptation is staring you in the face, it's slowly emptying your willpower-tank of fuel. Then it's empty and you give in. And lots of things empty the tank, all of them the things we'd like to do. Saying no to a drink (or another drink). Saying no to food. Saying no to sex. Good lord... Fortunately, there are ways to help!

First, one of the things fueling willpower is glucose, sugar. A little bit of candy will provide you with the boost you need to tell your ex where to shove it when he shows up drunk and horny. But what if you need willpower to say no to sweets? You're kind of screwed. This explains why dieting is hard; you need sugar to say no to sugar. Catch 22.

Except! That it turns out Aristotle was right about something for once! Willpower actually is like a muscle. Use it or lose it, and in using it, improve it! By making it a point to expose yourself to temptation and resist it, you'll make it easier to resist temptation in the future. Sure, you can wear yourself out just like at the gym, but a smart workout plan will let you build up strength without wearing yourself down in the process. So if you need to be better at dieting, then change your route to work so that every morning you walk by that awesome bakery, and stop, and stare, and smell that delicious, wonderful smell... then keep on walking. It's probably better to have a different route home, though, because at the end of the day you'll be tired, your blood sugar will be lower, and it'll be harder to resist those donuts. Do this when you're not dieting and it'll make dieting that much easier.

So what's your Achilles heel? What do you need to learn to say "No!" to? Find a way to expose yourself to it in small doses and controlled circumstances and say "No!" to that. Then increase the dose to improve your control.

Something that's really good for everyone is that exercise improves willpower. The link between the two hasn't been elucidated, but who cares? Going to the gym and getting fit improves both body and mind; hop to it! This might explain why it gets easier to work out the more you work out.

Here's another strange thing; using your non-dominant hand¹ to perform tasks will help. You don't have to learn to write with your off-hand or play the violin; even simple tasks will help you with this, like eating with your off-hand. My guess is that Just switching to a different hand forces you to concentrate on what are normally mindless tasks, meaning you bring willpower to bear. But that's kinda just making stuff up. The important point is that it works.

Bad news for atheists, polytheists, and secularists; being a believing, practicing member of a monotheistic faith helps your willpower. Because they spend their lives saying no to everything worthwhile in life.

And there's a website for you: http://www.stickk.com/ . Essentially you make a bet, get a friend to keep an eye on you, and use the site to keep track of everything. If you lose, you pay, and adding a concrete, immediate cost can make a nebulous, abstract goal immediate and easy to stick to. You don't need the website for this; just make the bet with a friend and make sure he's unscrupulous.

And Apps! There are apps you can download that will check if you're doing what you want to do. There's one that uses GPS to make sure you're actually going to the gym, and if you don't go for a long enough period of time... it takes money off your credit card and either sends it to people who are doing well, or to an organization you hate. Imagine knowing you're putting on weight and sending $100 to the Tea Party. Sure takes the jam outta that donut.


Now for some bad news. Your beliefs about your willpower can affect your willpower. So meta. But if you think your willpower can be depleted, you're more likely to give in to temptation. Of course, if you believe your willpower can be strengthened with practice, you're less likely to give into temptation. Oh, wheels within wheels. Also, any sort of work that tires you out will decrease your willpower, too. That's why it's easy to quit smoking every morning and buy another pack of cigarettes on your way home.


Now I'm going to have some fun: This is why Granny Weatherwax and Commander Vimes are so awesome. They want to be bad, but require themselves to be good. All day, every day they're resisting the temptations of their darker natures, thus after a lifetime of watching their behavior every moment, they're each living avatars of willpower. Death himself takes a respectful step back when Granny walks by, and Sam Vimes can fight a 10,000 year old quasi-demonic thing of pure vengeance to a standstill².

Don't know what I'm talking about? Shame on you! Go spend money.

1 - The left hand, for the most of us.

2 - THAT! IS! NOT! MY! COW!