Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole (24 page)

THE UNWITTING AND WELL-INTENTIONED BRAINWASHER

Often, those who use such techniques are despicable people with the evil aim of enslaving minds. Edward Hunter, the CIA operative who coined the phrase back in 1950, characterized brainwashing in emotive terms:

The intent is to change a mind radically so that its owner becomes a living puppet—a human robot—without the atrocity being visible from the outside. The aim is to create a mechanism in flesh and blood, with new beliefs and new thought processes inserted into a captive body. What that amounts to is the search for a slave race that, unlike the slaves of olden times, can be trusted never to revolt, always to be amenable to orders, like an insect to its instincts.
⁶

Perhaps this very often was the intent so far as the regimes of which Hunter had experience were concerned. However, the intent to produce mental slaves is not required for brainwashing. Sometimes those who apply these techniques genuinely believe themselves to be doing good. Their intention is not to enslave but to
free
their victims from evil and illusion (this is often true of religious brainwashers). Yet, despite the absence of any evil intent, heavy reliance on such techniques still adds up to brainwashing. Brainwashers can be good people with little or no awareness that brainwashing is, in reality, what they're engaged in.

THE CONSENTING VICTIM

In the second Taylor quotation above, Taylor says that brainwashing involves various techniques of
nonconsensual
mind change. That can't be quite right. Of course, prisoners of war don't usually consent to being brainwashed. But people can in principle consent. In one well-known thriller, the trained assassin at the heart of the film turns out to have agreed to be brainwashed. Surely the fact that he consented to have such techniques applied to him doesn't entail that he wasn't really brainwashed after all.

People do sometimes willingly submit themselves to brainwashing. They sign up to be brainwashed at a cult's training camp, say. Admittedly, they will not usually describe what they have signed up to as “brainwashing.” As they see it, even while they are fully aware that the above techniques will be applied to them, they nevertheless suppose they are merely being “educated"—being put through a process that will open up their minds and allow them to see the truth.

REASON VS. BRAINWASHING

So what
is
brainwashing, then, if it can even be consensual? What marks it out from other belief-shaping mechanisms if it can even be consensual? At this point, some readers might be wondering whether what I am calling “brainwashing” is really any different than any other educational method. Isn't the application of reason to persuade really just another form of thought control? Just another way of wielding power over the minds of others? So why shouldn't we favor brainwashing over reason? Particularly if no one is actually being coerced, threatened, or harmed?

In fact, there's at least one very obvious and important difference between the use of reason to persuade and the use of these kinds of belief-shaping techniques. Reason is
truth sensitive.
It favors true beliefs over false beliefs. Try making a rational case
for believing that New Jersey is populated with ant-people or that the earth's core is made of yogurt. Because these statements are false, you're not going to find it easy to believe them.

Reason functions, in effect, as a filter on false beliefs. It's not 100 percent reliable, of course—false beliefs can still get through. But it does tend to weed out false beliefs. There are innumerable beliefs out there that might end up lodging in your head, from the belief that Paris is the capital of France to the belief that the earth is ruled by alien lizard-people. Apply your filter of reason, and only those with a fair chance of being true will get through. Turn your filter off, and your head will soon fill up with nonsense.

And yet many belief systems do demand that we turn our filters off, at least when it comes to their own particular beliefs. In fact, those who turn their filters off—those whose minds have become entirely passive receptacles of the faith—are often held up by such belief systems as a shining example to others. Mindless, uncritical acceptance (or, as they would see it, a simple, trusting faith) is paraded as a badge of honor.

Reason is a double-edged sword. It does not favor the beliefs of the “educator” over those of the “pupil.” It favors those beliefs that are true. This means that if you try to use reason to try to bring others around to your way of thinking, you run the risk that they may be able to demonstrate that it is actually you who's mistaken. That's a risk that some “educators” aren't prepared to take.

The contrast between the use of reason to persuade and the use of the kind of belief-shaping mechanisms outlined above is obvious. You can use emotional manipulation, peer pressure, censorship, and so on to induce beliefs that happen to be true. But they can just as effectively be used to induce the belief that Big Brother loves you, that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, and that the earth's core is made of yogurt. Such techniques do indeed favor the beliefs of the “educator” over those of the “pupil,” which is precisely why those “educators” who suspect they may end up losing the argument tend to favor them.

I call the application of such non-truth-sensitive belief-producing methods
Pressing Your Buttons.
Brainwashing involves the systematic and dedicated application of such button-pressing techniques.

A MATTER OF DEGREE

Of course, to some extent, we can't avoid pressing the buttons of others. Nor can we entirely avoid having our own buttons pressed. The fact is, our beliefs are often shaped by such non-truth-sensitive mechanisms. No doubt we flatter ourselves about just how “rational” we really are. And, like it or not, you will inevitably influence the beliefs of others by such means too.

For example, my own children's beliefs are undoubtedly shaped by the kind of peer group to which I introduce them, by their desire to want to please (or perhaps annoy) me, by the range of different beliefs to which I have given them access at home, and so on. But of course, that's not yet to say I'm guilty of brainwashing my children. The extent to which we shape the beliefs of others by pressing their buttons, rather than by relying on rational means, is a matter of degree. There's a sliding scale of reliance on non-truth-sensitive mechanisms, with brainwashing located at the far end of the scale. There's clearly a world of difference between, on the one hand, the parent who tries to give her child access to a wide range of religious and political points of views; who encourages her child to think, question, and value reason; and who allows her child to befriend children with different beliefs; and, on the other hand, the parent who deliberately isolates her child, who ensures her child has access only to ideas of which the parent approves, who demands formal recitation of certain beliefs, who allows her child to befriend children who share the same beliefs, and so on.

THE DEHUMANIZING EFFECT OF BUTTON PRESSING

We have seen that one key difference between relying on reason to influence the beliefs of others and relying on button pressing is that only the former is sensitive to truth. Button pressing can as easily be used to induce false or even downright ridiculous beliefs as it can be used to induce true beliefs.

There is also a second important difference worth noting. As philosopher Immanuel Kant observed, when you rely on reason to try to influence the beliefs of others, you respect their freedom to make (or fail to make) a rational decision. When you resort to pressing their buttons on the other hand, you are, in effect, stripping them of that freedom. Your subject might think they've made a free and rational decision, but the truth is they're your puppet—you're pulling their strings. By resorting to button pressing—peer pressure, emotional manipulation, repetition, and so on—you are, in effect, treating them as just one more bit of the causally manipulatable natural order—as mere
things.
The button-pressing approach is, in essence, a dehumanizing approach.

CONCLUSION

Clearly a cult that employs full-blown brainwashing at a training camp is a matter of serious concern. If the beliefs it induces are pernicious—if, for example, followers are being lured into terrorism—then obviously we should alarmed. However, even if the beliefs induced happen to be benign, there's still cause for concern.

One reason we should be concerned is the
potential
hazard such mindless and uncritical followers pose. They may as well have cotton wool in their ears so far as the ideas and arguments of nonbelievers are concerned. They are immune to reason. Trapped inside an Intellectual Black Hole, they are now largely at the mercy of those who control the ideas at its core. The dangers this poses are obvious.

Such extreme examples of brainwashing are comparatively rare. Still, even if not engaged in full-blown brainwashing, if the promoters of a belief system come increasingly to rely on button pressing to shape the beliefs of others, that, too, is a cause for concern. The more we rely on button pressing, the less sensitive to reason and truth our beliefs become.

I

The eight mechanisms are as follows:

1.
Playing the Mystery Card
involves immunizing your beliefs against refutation by making
unjustified appeals to mystery.
For example, deal with any scientific evidence against your paranormal beliefs by insisting, without justification, that what you believe is “beyond the ability of science to decide.”

2. “
But It Fits!
” involves
coming up with ways of making evidence and theory “fit” after all.
As we have seen, any theory, no matter how absurd, can be made
consistent
with the evidence (even Dave's theory that dogs are Venusian spies).

3.
Going Nuclear
involves
exploding a skeptical or relativist
philosophical argument
that appears to bring all beliefs down to the same level, rationally speaking. You can thereby
force a draw
in any debate. Then, once the threat has receded, the skepticism/relativism may be conveniently forgotten.

4.
Moving the Semantic Goalposts
involves dodging possible refutations by
switching back and forth between meanings
(between effable and ineffable meanings, for example).

5. “
I Just Know!
” involves suggesting that the truth of your belief has somehow been revealed to you, by, for example, some sort of a psychic or god-sensing faculty (this suggestion is unreasonable if you are aware of grounds for supposing that at least a large proportion of these supposedly revelatory experiences are, in fact, delusional).

6.
Pseudoprofundity
is the
art of making the trite, false, or nonsensical appear both true and deep.
Various linguistic recipes are able to create the illusion that you have achieved some sort of profound insight into the human condition.

7.
Piling Up the Anecdotes.
Anecdotes are in most cases almost entirely worthless as evidence, particularly in support of supernatural claims. But they can be highly persuasive, especially when collected together.

8.
Pressing Your Buttons
involves reliance on certain kinds of non-truth-sensitive techniques for shaping belief, such those I termed
isolation, control, uncertainty, repetition
, and
emotional manipulation.
These techniques are a mainstay of the “educational” programs of many cults and totalitarian regimes. Applied in a consistent and systematic way, they amount to brainwashing.

The table on
page 211
is based on my impression of how these various strategies tend to be applied to different areas of belief. I have checked boxes where I believe a significant number of people holding those kinds of beliefs tend to rely fairly heavily on those kinds of strategies in convincing themselves and others that what they believe is reasonable, or at the very least not unreasonable.

The table is meant only to be indicative. We can argue about the details. Perhaps you think certain boxes should be checked
that I have left blank, or other boxes should be unchecked. I'm open to persuasion on that front. Many other beliefs might be added, of course.

Notice that the extent to which a belief system qualifies as an Intellectual Black Hole is not determined by the
number
of boxes checked. Young Earth Creationism is surely an Intellectual Black Hole, despite the fact that its proponents rely primarily on just one strategy, “
But It Fits!
” (combined with
The Blunderbuss
). The reason Young Earth Creationism qualifies as an Intellectual Black Hole is that, while it may check only one or two boxes, its proponents typically rely very heavily on those strategies to generate an impression of “reasonableness” and convince themselves that what they believe is true.

As I mentioned in the introduction, I'm not primarily concerned with judging the content of the belief systems in question here (though in many cases, it's clear what I think). Whether or not some people have psychic powers, whether or not 9/11 was the result of a government conspiracy, whether or not homeopathy works, and whether or not any particular religion is true is not the issue.

Nor am I claiming that there may not be perfectly good reasons for holding at least some of the beliefs we have examined. Argue, if you like, that homeopathy really does work, that a particular political belief is correct or that a particular religion is true. What I'm pointing out is the extent to which
many
(if not all) of those holding these kinds of belief tend to rely on these kinds of strategy in order to generate an impression of “reasonableness” and convince themselves that they're true. If you believe in the efficacy of homeopathy, and you do so because you have good, nonanecdotal evidence that it works, that's fine—I'm not suggesting that you're the victim of an Intellectual Black Hole. However, to the extent that you find yourself relying very heavily on one or more of these strategies in order to convince yourself and others that what you believe is both reasonable and true, you should be concerned.

THE EXAMPLES

Let's go through my nine examples.

Homeopathy

As we saw in
Piling Up the Anecdotes
, those who believe in the efficacy of homeopathy typically rely heavily on anecdotal evidence to create the impression that what they believe is reasonable. However, they also tend to
Play the Mystery Card.
That's because there's a puzzle about how homeopathy could possibly work, given that it involves diluting substances to such a degree that there's not even a molecule of the supposedly active ingredient left. In other words, what homeopaths are prescribing is, quite literally, just water (or a drop of water in a sugar pill). In which case, how can homeopathic remedies possibly have any genuinely medicinal effect? Homeopaths usually admit they don't know. “But still,” they'll say, “homeopathy
works
, so there must be
some
mysterious mechanism in play.” They remind us that there are, after all, “more things in heaven and earth.”

In fact, were there some solid evidence that homeopathy worked, putting its effectiveness down to some as-yet-unknown mechanism would not be so very unreasonable. However, there appears to be no such evidence. While other devices may also come into play, it's primarily
Piling Up the Anecdotes
and
Playing the Mystery Card
that do most of the work in transforming homeopathy into what can be, for at least
some
of its practitioners, an Intellectual Black Hole.

Conspiracy Theories/Alternative Histories

If you want to create and promote your own conspiracy theory or alternative history, here's a simple recipe you might follow. First, identify some intriguing mystery to which you might provide the “solution.” In fact it doesn't matter whether it's a genuine mystery
(perhaps scientists solved it long ago). It is enough that many people find what you offer to explain intuitively baffling.

Second, produce your own explanation. The suggestion that mysterious unseen agents with extraordinary powers are involved is likely to go down well, given our natural tendency, noted in the introduction, to switch to such an agent-based explanation when other explanations aren't available.

For example, someone noting the striking way in which the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed (vertically, with puffs of smoke appearing below the collapsing structure, as in a demolition), might claim they were actually brought down by explosive charges set by a secret cabal of government conspirators. Or, like the alternative-science historian Erich von Däniken (author of
Chariots of the Gods?
),
¹
explains the extraordinary architectural achievements of ancient civilizations, such as the Mayan temples or the Great Pyramid of Giza, by suggesting these ancient people were aided by advanced extraterrestrial visitors. Use your imagination. You shouldn't find it too difficult to bestow upon your mysterious agents whatever extraordinary powers they'll need to get the job done. It's particularly easy if they're advanced aliens or supernaturally gifted beings of some sort.

Of course, the criticisms will come. Many will be skeptical about the role of the mysterious agents you've invoked. Deal with such criticisms by using a combination of “
But It Fits!
” and
Playing the Mystery Card.
Suppose critics point out that alien civilizations based around other stars would be too far away to make regular trips back and forth to the earth to help ancient civilizations with their construction projects. The journey would take too long, even at the speed of light (the maximum speed limit of the universe). In response, say the aliens must have developed mysterious technology beyond our comprehension that somehow allows them to travel faster than light. Or suggest that they are really time travelers from the earth's future, and/or that they live inside the earth itself, perhaps coming and going through holes at the poles (if it's pointed out there are no such
holes, you might insist, as some have, that the photographic and other evidence has been removed by government conspirators).

You can also empty
The Blunderbuss
at your critics—firing off numerous genuine but irrelevant or invented “problems” for more orthodox theories to cope with. Let off enough salvos in quick succession, and your critics will soon start to struggle. There is all sorts of information and misinformation about the destruction of the World Trade Center that might provide you with ammunition—from (false) reports of some of the hijackers later being found alive to (false) reports that many Jewish people failed to show up for work at the WTC that day, to dubious footage of one of the airliners with mysterious “pods” attached. Trot out a long series of such “problems,” saying: “Explain
this
, and
this
, and
this
!” and your critics will find themselves either hopelessly bogged down or else, if they refuse to deal with them, looking evasive.

You might further bolster your theory by trawling around for anecdotal and other “evidence” to support your theory. For example, von Däniken points out how the figures in some ancient carvings look a bit like they are wearing space helmets (of course, plow through enough ancient imagery, and you'll probably be able to “discover” all sorts of other “alien” paraphernalia), and that some ancient images such as the Nazca Lines in Peru can only be seen from the air and so were probably made for the benefit of passing aliens (never mind that there are other more prosaic explanations for these images, such as that they were designed to be seen by gods). Von Däniken also interprets some ancient texts as referring to alien astronauts, claiming, for example, that Ezekiel's revelation in the Old Testament is a detailed description of a landing spacecraft. Mixing in further tall tales about UFOs and alien abduction may help lend further credibility to your ancient astronaut theory. Dig around, and you should be able to amass a significant quantity of other supporting “evidence.” The Internet is awash with it. If you are really stuck, you can, of course, just make some up.

Alien Abduction

According to some surveys, up to 6 percent of US citizens believe they have been abducted by aliens. Victims are often taken while in bed. Many are supposedly subjected to peculiar medical examinations. Some abductions involve a sexual dimension.