The latest Skeptics’ Circle is now up at The Lay Scientist. Among the articles there, you’ll see one by The Skeptic Dad. Dad rips apart a flawed study that purports to show that we are all born believing in God.

One of my pet peeves is people who think that aliens built the pyramids. Frankly, as a member of the human race, I’m quite insulted. We’re an amazingly ingenious lot. If there’s a problem to solve, we generally get around to figuring it out.

Vaccines? We invented those. Rocketships and submarines? We made those too. Radio, television, and satellites? We solved all of those. Ziplock bags? That was us too.

Even in the ancient world, we were masters of our domain (so to speak). Agriculture? We did that! Irrigation? Humans! Domestication of livestock? Nailed it! Gods and religion? Another human invention. (That last one probably should have stayed in the workshop a little longer, though.)

That’s why it’s so insulting to have some uneducated twat try to deny us one of our greatest achievements: The construction of massive pyramids with little more than levers, wheels, and inclined planes.

The pyramids really weren’t that difficult to build, from an engineering perspective. Sure, there were definitely a few tough problems that had to be solved. There are several pyramids in Egypt that show the earlier attempts. They weren’t so good. But the engineers learned. Once the problems were solved, it was just a matter of implementation. And that is the true marvel of the ancient world.

Managing a project on that scale with the huge workforce and supply problems they had would have been impossible if not for that other human invention: Bureaucracy. Yes, that’s one thing the Egyptians had (made possible by another invention: Writing). Contrary to popular belief, bureaucracy doesn’t guarantee inefficiency. It’s often impossible to get things done without it.

But There ARE Real Limits

I was thinking about this pyramid situation just last week. You see, there are real limits in the universe. As far as we know, you can’t go faster than light. You can’t get any colder than zero Kelvin. And you can’t convince a creationist that he’s wrong.

My recent article, “Reality Denialism and the Limits of Belief“, grew out of this situation. I realized that the reason some people think that humans couldn’t have built the pyramids is because those people have a misconception of what life was like back then. They don’t appreciate how sophisticated Egyptian society already was, and they don’t appreciate just how much work you can do without power tools. That makes a human construction of the pyramids beyond the technical limit of belief for the human-made-pyramid deniers. Since they can’t conceive of any way humans could have done it, the only other explanation that makes sense is aliens. Aliens always have advanced technology with flashing lights and cool whirring sounds. Surely, somebody who has flashing lights and cool whirring sounds can build anything.

But as I said, there are universal limits. I was confronted with this when I had to fix my iPod. You may recall my earlier article about how God works in mysterious ways, such as through iPod repair. The little Toshiba hard drive I ordered arrived last week. I knew, of course, that the thing had to be smaller than the iPod, in order to fit inside of it:

As you can see, the hard drive is a bit narrower and shorter than the iPod.

OK. So far, so good. But check out this side view:

Are you freakin’ kidding me?! That’s a god-damned hard drive, and it’s barely the thickness of a couple of quarters! I just assumed that the thing would be almost as thick as the iPod. Sure, there has to be room for the logic board, but they can make those fairly thin. In fact, the hard drive goes between two layers of foam, which they use for shock absorption. So the inside of your iPod is so spacious that they have room for the logic board, the battery, the hard drive, and two freakin’ layers of foam!

I don’t think you comprehend what’s going on here. The significance of what I’m saying. The ramifications for human society.

Do you have any idea how big a gigabyte is? Sure, it’s a billion bytes. But do you comprehend just how big a billion is?

• One billion seconds ago was the year 1976 CE. (There were still liberals in America!)
• One billion minutes ago was the year 106 CE. (John McCain wasn’t even born!)
• One billion hours ago was the year 112,147 BCE. (Humans were living in caves!)
• One billion days ago was the year 2,737,718 BCE. (Humans didn’t even exist!)

So a gigabyte is huge. And there’s thirty of them in that tiny drive!

Some things go beyond the credible.

I don’t care how ingenious we are. We can’t be that good.

This hard drive has to be alien technology. That’s the only possible explanation.

After all, it makes a cool whirring sound.

There are a few crackpots out there who think we never went to the moon. I have identified two factors at play here. I call them the Technical Limit of Belief (TLB) and the Social Limit of Belief (SLB). When you cross both lines, you have a reality denier.

Getting to the moon was a tremendous technical hurdle. Some people think we weren’t up to the task. It’s beyond their comprehension that we humans were actually clever enough to surmount the massive scientific and engineering challenges. That’s the Technical Limit of Belief that their minds can’t cross.

You also have to remember that the moon landings were right around (slightly before, actually) the time of Watergate.

For you young saplings out there, you probably can’t comprehend just how demoralized the country was at that point. That also coincided with our humiliating defeat in Iraq Vietnam (sorry, I sometimes type the wrong synonym). Inflation was raging. There was an Arab oil embargo, so you couldn’t buy gas. Being an American at that point just didn’t have the same uplifting feeling that it did at the end of WWII or the 1950s. People had had all of the optimism and hope beaten out of them. In that climate, being able to do something amazing like going to the freakin’ moon!! might have seemed out of place when measured against all of the other failures that were the Nixon era.

It was very easy to believe in a government conspiracy. After all, Watergate was a real conspiracy, and it was a big one. Nothing was as it seemed back then. You couldn’t trust the government, so believing the government when it said we went to the moon was beyond the Social Limit of Belief for some people.

When you cross somebody’s TLB and SLB, you create a denier of reality.

Global Warming

But what about deniers of other realities? I’m guessing that in every case, you’ll find both a TLB and an SLB at work. Interestingly, as I look at some of these cases, it’s the Social Limit of Belief that’s driving the denialism, and they’re merely using their Technical Limit of Belief as the excuse.

Take global warming for example. There are at least two types of deniers here, with a fair amount of overlap. In one camp are the economic and political conservatives. They like things to remain the same, because they’ve benefitted financially or politically. If society changes its behavior to fight global warming, their gravy train is threatened. They have a stake in global warming not being true. That stake is their SLB. Also, it is mostly liberals who are campaigning for aggressive measures against global warming. This also puts off conservatives, so that’s a second SLB for them. I was in the audience when staunch libertarian Penn Jillette said that he doubted global warming because Al Gore claimed it was real. Penn announced to the world what his SLB is.

Another camp is the religious and social conservatives. I’ve been having difficulty figuring out why these people insist that global warming isn’t real. The only explanation I have is that if the liberals say it’s true, then it must be false! I think by conceding global warming, they will have to go along with the liberal programs to combat it. They can’t let the liberals have that power. They might use it to push their other agendas as well. So for these people, giving in to the liberals is their SLB.

For both camps, then, the TLB is a mere afterthought. The social ramifications of global warming being real are too awful to contemplate, so the science must be wrong. It has to be. They can’t cross that SLB, so they paint a TLB line on the ground and refuse to cross it.

Evolution

The evolution deniers are all in one camp. They’re religious ultra-conservatives. They believe that the Bible is true. They don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t fit that blueprint. They pretend that this is a Christian country founded upon the Ten Commandments. They pretend that morality is externally defined by a deity and handed down from on high. Living in a world where those things aren’t true is way too scary for them. That is their Social Limit of Belief. In order to make the SLB hold up, they decide that the science must be wrong. It doesn’t matter how much evidence you show them or how much you try to educate them. They cannot allow that information into their brain. They cannot cross that TLB, because that would make their SLB, and their whole safe worldview, collapse.

Woo Hoo!

What about believers of “woo”, or all of the crazy anti-science things like astrology, homeopathy, dowsing, ESP, etc.? There’s probably a variety of explanations here.

For some, poor scientific knowledge and critical thinking skills mean that their Technical Limit of Belief is very close indeed.

Other people make decisions intuitively or emotionally, and don’t consider the logical side of things so much. There is nothing wrong with this! That’s just the way their brains are wired. But the result is that their TLB will be fairly close. It’s not so much a limit of belief so much as a place they just don’t visit often.

On the social side of things, consider medical scams (such as anything that uses the word “detoxification”!). Some people have had bad experiences with real medicine. As a result, they’ll say things such as “doctors don’t know anything” or “everything is controlled by the drug companies”. They don’t like the medical establishment and refuse to go there. That’s their SLB.

Or for another example, think of the paranormal. Ghosts, angels, “spirit guides”, etc. are appealing to many folks. They like the idea of a world that has those things in it. You can’t debunk a ghost photograph to those people. They want ghostly realms to be real, so crossing into the skeptical realm isn’t a place they’re willing to go. That is their SLB.

Conclusion

I suspect that if we explore this idea further, we’ll find that in every case of reality denialism, there are both Technical and Social Limits of Belief. One might weigh heavier than the other, and in some cases one is just there as a convenient rationalization for the other, but I think that you will always find both.

If you want to combat a particular reality denialism, you need to identify both the Technical Limit of Belief and the Social Limit of Belief that are at play. Find out which is dominant and focus your tactics against that one. If both are equally responsible for the belief, then you need to have tactics to fight both.

I found a great website, The Skeptic Report. In addition to covering the usual frauds—such as psychics, UFOs, homeopathy, etc.—it has a section on creationism, which I have added to my sidebar. It also has a more general section on religion. In there, I found an article on the Ten Commandments that I was planning to write. Theirs is at least as good as mine would have been, so just go read that.

The article asks:

Is American law based upon the 10 Commandments? Let us examine them.

It then looks at each commandment in turn to determine if it’s something we built our laws on. The article concludes with [slightly reformatted for emphasis]:

Out of the ten commandments:

• Four (1, 2, 3, 10) are counter to American laws.
• Three (6, 8, 9) are part of our legal system, but are part of just about every legal system in history. [and predate the 10 Commandments]
• Two (4, 5) are not a part of our laws.
• One (7) may or may not be a part of state or local laws.

Even in a state that has laws concerning #7, that still means less than half of the 10 commandments carry any legal weight, and an equal number are illegal to enforce.

Those that claim the 10 commandments are our basis for law apparently do not know the law very well. The only thing funnier is those that want it posted illegally in schools “to teach children respect for the law”.

Go over to Skeptic Report and read the whole article. Save it to your hard drive. The next time one of your fundie relatives sends you an email about how U.S. law is based on the Ten Commandments, send them a copy of this.

As you all should know by now, I went to the Amazing Meeting 6 in Las Vegas last weekend. Here are a few thoughts and reactions.

The best reason to go is to meet all the different folks. Some of the highlights were connecting or reconnecting with PZ Myers, Phil Plait, Hal Bidlack, and Adam Savage.

If I have a complaint, it’s that it’s actually very difficult to connect with most of the speakers. Attendance this year was a record-breaking 900. With that many people, it’s hard to get more than a few minutes with any of them.

Of the many ordinary attendees I ran into, I did get a chance to converse with Robert Lancaster, who runs the Stop Sylvia Browne website. I also got to talk to Comedy Jesus.

The Presentations

Here’s a brief rundown of my reactions to some of the presenters:

Neil deGrasse Tyson. Once he got rolling, he was very good. He talked about a variety of things that tick him off. My only complaint with him is that he scooted out pretty fast after his talk was over. All of the other speakers stuck around for most of the weekend, so you could talk to them if you wanted to.

Richard Saunders talked about a variety of things, but the best part was his demonstration for teachers in how to use a dowsing demonstrations to engage their students in science and critical thinking.

Penn and Teller are valuable members of the skeptical community, but their contribution to TAM 6 was low key. They just took a few questions from the audience. The more I hear Penn speak, the less I like him. His abrasive personality and extreme Libertarianism are best in (very) small doses. It’s interesting that Libertarianism is so disproportionately over-represented in the skeptical population compared with the general population. I haven’t completely figured out why.

P.Z. Myers talked about evo-devo. Although I enjoyed the talk, I would have preferred it if it had been more directly related to skepticism.

Michael Shermer talked about some ideas he has for his next book. I remember it was a very good talk; I just can’t remember any of it. I guess I’ll have to wait for the book.

Sharon Begley, Senior Editor for Newsweek, told us that we shouldn’t expect the news media to educate the general public in science and skepticism. The better ones try, but there is only so much they can do.

Steve Novella was brilliant. He’s a neurologist, host of The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, and a contributing editor to Quackwatch. He told us about some great brain research.

Phil Plait gave an excellent talk about how the universe is so darn cool, you don’t have to make up crazy things about it.

Adam Savage gave us two vivid examples of just how compulsive he is. He went to great lengths to create a complete dodo skeleton model and the world’s most accurate Maltese Falcon replica.

Psychologist Richard Wiseman is a hoot. I think he enjoyed his talk more than we did, and we enjoyed it immensely. He talked about this YouTube video of a card trick he made:

(YouTube page is here)

Then he passed out spoons, and we all participated in the world’s largest spoon-bending.

Other Stuff

During lunch on Saturday, they showed the pilot episode of The Skeptologists. It was pretty good. They investigated ghost hunting and wheat grass. If you want to know how those investigations turned out, you’ll just have to hope that the show gets picked up by one of the cable networks. My only complaint about the show is that it only has one woman among its seven hosts. Girls are very heavily socialized away from math and science in our society, and the casting of this show isn’t helping matters any.

TAM 7 will be July 9-12, 2009. I’m telling you now, so you won’t have any excuse for not going next year. (OK, Las Vegas in July is almost a good excuse.)

Creatards frequently like to drop by this site for a friendly chat. If you are inclined to extend the classic BoF hospitality to them, you might find yourself in a light discussion of trivial matters.

To assist in your enjoyment, the Watcher recently posted an article about debating tactics. It’s an excellent introduction that is worth reading. He also links to a good discussion of logical fallacies.

The Amazing Meeting 6 is now less than two weeks away. Is anyone out there planning to attend? Speak up here! Is anybody interested in getting together for a BoF meetup at some point during that weekend? My time there is limited to Thursday night through Saturday night. I won’t be attending any of the optional shows, so my evenings will be open. Maybe if there are other blog groups that are getting together, we can merge our parties into a group of four!

The latest Skeptics’ Circle is up over at Andrea’s Buzzing About. There are a lot of good articles on a variety of topics.

One that I found enlightening was Seth Manapio’s analysis of Mein Kampf, in which he looks for evidence that Hitler was taking his marching orders directly from Darwin. Scandalous!