David Eagleman, Possibilianism, and Transcending the Boundaries of Belief and Disbelief

Rich Reynolds at the UFO Iconoclasts has written a short post encouraging people to take a look at the work of neuroscientist / author David Eagleman, in particular with respect to his ideas about memory, and his philosophy of Possibilianism, and I couldn't agree with Rich more. Eagleman is one of the most interesting thinkers of our time. His book Sum: forty tales from the afterlives, is one of my favourite novels (although to call it a novel, i.e. a work of complete fiction, isn't quite accurate).

The podcast above contains an excerpt from Sum, read by the actor Jeffrey Tambor. It also has biologist Lee Silver telling the story of a physician’s ambitious 1907 experiment to discover the weight of the soul, a discussion of when people actually die with author and researcher Gary Greenberg and John Troyer, and a conversation with neuroscientist Adrian Owen about whether or not the dead can play tennis?

Consider it an Easter gift, from me to you!

As for Possibilianism, here is Eagleman explaining it in twenty minutes:

Three quotes from Eagleman in his lecture that pretty much sum up the way I look at both science, religion, and all things about the paranormal.

After you walk the pier of everything we know in science, at some point you reach the end of the pier. And beyond the pier is everything that we don't know; it's all of the uncharted waters, the deep mysteries that we don't have insight into yet. That's the real lesson that you get from science - it's about the vastness of our ignorance.

And...

Science is really about the creativity of making up new hypotheses. Part of the scientific temperment is the tolerance for holding multiple hypotheses in mind at the same time. Now, what we actually do is we make up new stories in the laboratory every day, and then we go and we seek evidence. We gather evidence to weigh in favour of some stories over others. But it's often the case that some questions are too far out right now. They're beyond the toolbox of science, and as a result we're unable to gather evidence for them. And in that situation it's okay. Science is comfortable holding multiple hypotheses on the table. That ambiguity is accepted as part of the relationship we have with Mother Nature. It's part of the vast mysteries around us. We have to have that ambiguity.

And finally:

This is not just a plea for simple-openmindedness, but for an active exploration of new ideas... Look around the strange world you're in, and see if you can live a life that is free from dogma, and full of awe and wonder, and see if you can celebrate possibility, and praise uncertainty.

Fascinating and thought-provoking stuff, and an example of the kind of thinking that transcends the boundaries imposed by those who insist we should simply believe or disbelieve in something.

Possibilianism is exactly the approach that I'll be taking with Beyond Best Evidence, the UFO-related documentary for which we're currently trying to raise the financing, because it's the only reasonable way of looking at the UFO enigma.

Paul Kimball

The Hottel Memo

I weigh in on the ufological story du jour in a piece I was interviewed for in today's International Business Times.

The Hottel Memo: Why Some Believe It

By Jesse Emspak

April 12, 2011 11:19 PM GMT

A memo written sixty years ago has created a minor storm as some take it as proof that the government is covering up the existence of aliens. To some, it's more interesting in the way it shows why people believe things.

The saucer prop used in the 1951 film "The Day The Earth Stood Still" is pictured here. A recently publicized memo from the FBI is seen by some as proof of alien visitations.

The memo was written by Guy Hottel, special agent in charge of the Washington field office. It describes an "air force investigator" who said another person reported finding a crashed spacecraft in New Mexico. The informant (whose name is redacted) also said that alien bodies were found in it. The informant says that the craft was disabled by "high powered radar" in the area.

Paul Kimball, a Halifax, Nova Scotia-based documentary filmmaker who has done extensive research on the UFO phenomenon, calls the furor surrounding the memo - billed by news outlets such as the Daily Mail as proof of a government cover-up - as interesting to sociologists as it is to people interested in aliens.

He says one reason that such documents from the 1950s engender such interest is precisely that people were afraid at that time. "It was a fearful society," he said. "The cold war was just beginning."

Another reason people tend to believe in government conspiracies, he said, is that in the years since there have been very real instances of the U.S. government attempting to cover things up, or fool the public. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, which precipitated the Vietnam War, is just one example. The Watergate break-in and subsequent revelations only served to make such paranoia seem even more reasonable.

Kimball added that this does not mean that governments don't cover things up or engage in conspiracies - just that they are usually much less elaborate than in popular depictions.

The Hottel memo, he said, is probably the result of a hoax. The memo itself surfaced decades ago, in 1977. But the hoax began decades earlier.

The Hottel memo was the end of a long chain of tale-telling. The memo repeats a story from the Wyandotte Echo, a legal newspaper in Kansas City, Kansas in January of 1950. An Air Force investigator read the story (and pasted into a memo himself. Such practices were common in the days before scanning documents was possible and memos had to be typed out). He then sent it on to Hottel.

The news story draws from the account of a Rudy Fick, a local used car dealer. Fick got the story from a two men, I. J. Van Horn and Jack Murphy, who said they got the story from a man named "Coulter" -- actually a radio station advertising manager named George Koehler. Koehler got the story from Silas Newton. Kimball said that a combination of his own research and others has established pretty well that the unnamed informant is Newton himself.

Silas Newton was a con man, who had a partner, Leo A. Gebauer. Newton and Gebauer were peddling "doodlebugs" -- devices that could supposedly find oil, gas, gold, or anything else that the target of the con was interested in finding. The two claimed that their doodlebugs were based on alien technology.

Ben Bradford, a New Mexico-based researcher who writes for the Skeptical Inquirer, also said the informant was probably Newton, who told his story to as many people as he could. He said the big question that arises, assuming the alien story was true, is where the spaceships or alien bodies are. "A conspiracy theorist will always say they covered it up," he said. "But you have to figure out what to do with three 50-foot long spaceships."

When the original scam was hatched, Newton and Gebauer went to someone who was predisposed to believe the story, a gossip columnist named Frank Scully. "You wouldn't go to Edward R. Murrow with something like this," Kimball said. Kimball studied Scully's background, and found he was a man with a strong distrust of government generally. A conspiracy story would naturally attract him - and it did, resulting in a book.

Kimball adds that there really are UFO cases worth investigating. But they are often drowned out by hoaxes like the one that resulted in the Hottel memo.

Kimball notes that the combination of a fearful society, and the need for an ordered world, is partly what drives both believers and non-believers. (He says he is neither). Conspiracy theorists, he said, need to have some way of ordering the world. He likens it to the 9/11 truth movement, which posits conspiracies that would require thousands of people to all keep silent. "They are the kind of folks who can't believe that bad things happen to good people," he said. "So there has to be a conspiracy."

The Aztec hoax - Ufology's Dracula.

If there is an afterlife, I have no doubt that Silas Newton is having a good laugh at it all.

Paul Kimball

The Myth of the ETH as ETFact

The last column I wrote for Alien Worlds before it folded.

Paul Kimball

Above and Beyond
The Myth of the ETH as ETFact

Of all the non-terrestrial theories that have been offered to explain the UFO phenomenon, the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) has always seemed the most plausible one to me. I don't think it's been proved, but I think it's a better bet than the others on offer when one looks at the evidence, and the science.

The evidence seems to indicate that at least some UFO cases represent a non-human intelligence at work. The science now tells us that there are almost certainly other intelligent beings in the galaxy, and if they are more advanced than us, there's a reasonably good chance that they could make their way here.

However, it’s critical to remember that the key letter in ETH is the "H" - it's still just a hypothesis, and anyone who tells you that they can prove that aliens have visited Earth beyond a reasonable doubt, or even on the balance of probabilities, is putting the cart well before the horse.

Beyond that, however, I think the biggest problem with the ETH supporters within ufology is that they're so... "limited" in their outlook. They are convinced that aliens have visited Earth, and in many cases they are convinced that they are still visiting Earth, and interacting with humans in all sorts of ways, some good and some bad. They are of the "nuts and bolts" school of thought, i.e. Joe Alien made his way to Earth in a flying saucer, in much the same way that Captain Kirk and all of our other science fiction icons make their way about the galaxy.

This is what I call "Keyhoe-ian" ufology, because it is based directly on the way of thinking that Major Donald Keyhoe first put forward in the 1950s. It is out-of-date, and badly out-of-touch with modern science. It presumes that aliens are only a few decades, or maybe one or two hundred years or so more advanced than us, which is highly unlikely. It presumes that the aliens are preoccupied with us, and that we are somehow important to them, which is also highly unlikely. In short, it is a point of view that is based on what people who grew up in the pioneering days of sci-fi and the space race expect of their aliens, and not the point-of-view that modern physicists and astrobiologists take.

The pro-ETH as ETFact stance of people like Keyhoe and his successors, the most prominent of which has been the flying saucer physicist, Stanton Friedman, is a relic of a different time and place, which is ironic when one considers that these people often criticize scientists for not being open-minded about the UFO phenomenon, and for being stuck in the past.

If aliens are here, it is probable that they are far more advanced than we are, by an order of thousands of years, not hundreds. We would be to them as ants are to us - beneath their notice. This might well explain the inherent weirdness of many UFO sightings - things that appear to us almost as magic, or something that in a different era would have been framed in religious terms. As physicist Michio Kaku has noted, there may well be a galactic conversation going on, but in a "language" that we are thousands of years from being able to truly comprehend.

Of course, ETFact ufologists would quickly point out that there are at least a few humans who do indeed study ants - entomologists, which is true enough. But for them I have the following question: How many entomologists spend 60 years - or longer, if you are a proponent of the notion that ET has been coming here for centuries - studying the exact same ant hill?

That idea strikes me as ridiculous. It's a desperate attempt to force fit our own way of thinking onto potential life forms that would be far more advanced than we are - and they would have to be much more advanced in order to get here from there (ignore someone like Friedman, who will try to tell you about how it's actually relatively easy to get to our local galactic neighbours, if only we would try harder, and spend more money).

Again, I'm not saying that the ETH isn't a good hypothesis... indeed, as I noted before, I think it's the most plausible one amongst the various paranormal hypotheses on offer. It's the claim by nuts-and-bolts ufologists like Friedman and Keyhoe - and hucksters like Billy Meier - that ET is making his way here aboard flying saucers and acting like we do that I take issue with, because that contention is far more science fiction than science fact.

ETFacters Friedman and Keyhoe who try to convince you that aliens are basically just like us are no different from religious fundamentalists who portray God as a kindly, white-haired anglo saxon. Such portrayals tell you a great deal about the people who put those images and beliefs forward, but absolutely nothing about the possible entity or entities under discussion. The ETFacters are flying saucer fundamentalists, and in their own way they have done as much damage to the serious scientific study of the UFO phenomenon as people like Dr. Edward Condon, Dr. Donald Menzel, or Philip J. Klass.

By focusing on the idea that little green / grey men have been coming here in nuts and bolts spaceships, ETFacters have done a grave disservice to the search for truth about the UFO phenomenon, and its possible alien origins, in the same way that thousands of years of religious leaders have undermined the search for the true nature of God by force-fitting it into a limited paradigm that simply served to reinforce their own worldview. They have not sought wisdom, nor understanding - they have simply proclaimed an "answer" which has been no answer at all.

The reductionist approach that has been adopted by the ETFacters, which seeks to make potential alien life over unto our own image, lacks vision. It is more concerned with what they see as the destination, and their need to get there now, when what we should really be focusing on is the journey, and the wonders we may discover along the way. That's the real signal in all of this. Everything else is just noise.

The worst thing about all of this, however, is the hypocrisy that you find with many of the supposedly more serious members of the “ETFact group”. They are convinced that aliens are here, and interacting with humanity, but they are vocal critics of “exopolitics”, which simply takes the ETFact position to its logical conclusion.
Exopolitics, according to Dr. Michael Salla, one of its best known proponents, is:
“is the study of the key individuals, political institutions and processes associated with extraterrestrial life... exopolitics focus[es] on the political implications of an extraterrestrial presence known to clandestine quasi-governmental entities that keep knowledge of this presence secret from the general public, elected political officials & even senior military officials. The supporting evidence is overwhelming in scope and shows that decision making is restricted on a strict 'need to know' basis.”

Take the word "exopolitics" out of the equation, and that sounds like something Friedman would say. Indeed, if you've heard Friedman speak as many times as I have, you'll note the similarity in the main themes - aliens are here, government is covering up the knowledge of that fact, and we the people have a right to know the truth. At Salla's website for his "exopols courses", he even uses the motto "preparing for our cosmic graduation", which directly echoes Friedman's decades-old mantra that perhaps someday we will be ready to qualify for the cosmic kindergarten.

Friedman's biggest issue with exopolitics, at least in public, seems to be the fact that they are not terribly fussy about vetting their so-called witnesses and whistleblowers. In that respect, he's quite right. However, as more than one exopol has pointed out to me, Friedman has a history of touting his own very flawed witnesses (Gerald Anderson pops to mind right off the bat, followed closely by Glenn Dennis), and cases (Aztec, Flatwoods, flying saucer air wars in the 1950s, perhaps even Roswell).

Frankly, while I disagree with the very premise that underlies the exopolitical belief system (that at least some UFOs have been proved to be alien spacecraft), the more I think about it, the more I find the exopols to be more intellectually honest than people like Friedman, who agree with them on the big picture, but have done little or nothing to try and effect actual political change. The exopols have it right - if you believe aliens are here, and the government is covering it up, then that is a political issue of the highest order, and no longer a scientific one.

Friedman is the de facto Godfathers of Exopolitics - in large part, he created the "family" that is modern ETFact, "Cosmic Watergate" ufology, but like Vito Corleone, he is incapable of taking what he has created and moving it into its next logical phase. Indeed, like the Don, it is a phase that he wants nothing to do with, even as others around him, whom he has inspired, recognize the logical and inevitable implications of what he has been saying all of these years, and are prepared to act on it, no matter how much he protests.

The real scandal, however, is that Friedman, like other serious ETFacters, employs a double standard with absolutely no sense of irony when they run into people who question their position. Anyone they favour who is subjected to critical examination is a victim of “character assassination”, while people the ETFacters don't like, or whom they don't support, like Bob Lazar, or Philip Corso, or even Dr. J. Allen Hynek, are fair game (in Friedman’s universe, Hynek is "an apologist ufologist"). When you mention Dr. Jacques Vallee to them, they become even more desperate in their attacks. Anything that threatens to undermine the belief system they have constructed results in the ufological equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition.

People looking for the real scientific approach to the UFO phenomenon, the kind that was championed over the years by Hynek, Vallee, and Dr. James McDonald, should look elsewhere. Why? Because Hynek, McDonald and Vallee left us with myriad case investigations, new theories and ways of looking at the UFO phenomenon, sighting classification systems, and other important legacies. Even people like Friedman’s old classmate, Dr. Carl Sagan, left us with a sense of wonder about the prospect of ET life, even though he was no proponent of the ETH. On the other side, the ETFacters have left us with Roswell, MJ-12, Aztec, tales of massive flying saucer wars between the USAF and UFOs, and other stories that belong in a science fiction anthology, not a serious discussion of what the UFO phenomenon might or might not represent.

The shame is that someone like Friedman could have done so much more – if only he, like his ETFact fellow travelers, had not let their will to believe overwhelm their critical faculties. Those people who want the old time flying saucer / conspiracy gospel will feel right at home with them, because what they offer is comfortable, and provides a sense of continuity and familiarity, and even fraternity. What it does not offer, however, is an honest search for the truth about the UFO phenomenon.

It never did.

The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Fundamentalist Debunkery and Died-in-the-Wool Believerism

The creative scientist, eternally curious, keeps an open mind toward strange phenomena and novel ideas, knowing that we have only begun to understand the universe we live in. He remembers, too, that Biot's discovery that meteorites were "stones from the sky" was at first greeted with disbelief, and he hopes never to be guilty of similar obtuseness. But an open mind does not mean credulity or a suspension of the logical faculties that are man's most valuable asset.

The above is a quote made in reference to science in general, but also the UFO phenomenon in particular, and it is one that I agree with, at least in principle... even though it was written by arch-debunkers Donald H. Menzel and Lyle G. Boyd, in The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age, who clearly had no understanding of irony (how can one purport to embark on an objective scientific examination of something when one has already concluded that it is a "myth").

In their book, Menzel and Boyd dismissed the idea that some UFOs might be alien spacecraft. They also scoffed at the notion that there might be a UFO-related conspiracy, despite the fact that in their introduction they wrote that if aliens were ever to visit Earth:

All governments would feel their responsibility to protect the human race if necessary, and to establish diplomatic relations with the alien race if possible. The scientists would want to study, analyze, and try to understand the nature of both the ship and its occupants.

As with the first passage quoted above, this makes perfect sense. But to Menzel and Boyd, this would obviously be done in public-view, after an acknowledgement of our alien visitors by government:

If a spaceship from another planet should ever visit the earth, no one would be more eager to acknowledge it than our government officials and our scientists.

So, as no such acknowledgement has been forthcoming, there are, ergo, no alien visitors. As to a cover-up, the government would never do that, eevn though, as Menzel and Boyd indicate, they would want to study and analyze whatever they might find.

This is either breathtakingly naive, or monumentally stupid, and demonstrates in full measure the intellectual bankruptcy of Menzel and Boyd's debunkery. The government has covered up a great many things, and continues to do so, of far less potential import than alien visitation (or, even more significant perhaps, a recovered alien spacecraft), particularly during the Cold War when Menzel and Boyd were writing, and when the West was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the Soviet empire during which they did many things, more than a few not according to the "rules", in order to protect their citizens.

If the United States, or any other country, had recovered a crashed alien spacecraft (and I am not convinced that they did), I have little doubt that they would have kept it secret, simply because they kept all sorts of other, lesser things secret... and because it's exactly what I would have done. As I've written elsewhere, I would probably still keep it secret, because I don't think humanity is ready for that knowledge - and here I'm talking about all of us, and not just the college-educated minority even within Western countries, who would be better equipped to handle such a revelation.

But fundamentalist debunkers, like died-in-the-wool believers, are never about the truth, which is usually coloured in shades of grey. They live instead in a world of black and whites - either "they" are here, or "they" are not; either the government is covering it up, or it is not. Neither position has anything to offer the free and rational thinker who is interested in facts and evidence, even when all that those facts and evidence leave us with a mystery... as has been the case with UFOs for over sixty years.

Paul Kimball