This Unscientific Age
I WAS
HAPPY, WHEN I got the invitation to give the John Danz Lectures, to hear that
there
would be three lectures, as I had thought about these ideas at great length and
wanted
an opportunity not to express myself in only one lecture, but to develop the
ideas
slowly
and carefully in three lectures. I found out that I developed them slowly and
carefully,
completely, in two.
I
have completely run out of organized ideas, but I have a large number of
uncomfortable
feelings
about the world which I haven't been able to put into some obvious, logical,
and
sensible
form. So, since I already contracted to give three lectures, the only thing I
can do
is to
give this potpourri of uncomfortable feelings without having them very well
organized.
Perhaps
someday, when I find a real deep reason behind them all, I will be able to give
them
in one sensible lecture instead of this thing. Also, in case you are beginning
to
believe
that some of the things I said before are true because I am a scientist and
according
to the brochure that you get I won some awards and so forth, instead of your
looking
at the ideas themselves and judging them directly—in other words, you see, you
have
some feeling toward authority—I will get rid of that tonight. I dedicate this
lecture
to
showing what ridiculous conclusions and rare statements such a man as myself
can
make.
I wish, therefore, to destroy any image of authority that has previously been
generated.
You
see, a Saturday night is a night for entertainment, and that is... I think I
have got the
right
spirit now and we can go on. It is always a good to entitle a lecture in a way
that
nobody
can believe. It is either peculiar or it is just the opposite of what you would
expect.
And that is the reason, of course, for calling it "This Unscientific
Age." Of course
if
you mean by scientific the applications of technology, there is no doubt that
this is a
scientific
age. There is no doubt at all that today we have all kinds of scientific
applications
which are causing us all kinds of trouble as well as giving us all kinds of
advantages.
And so in that sense it certainly is a scientific age. If you mean by a
scientific
age
an age in which science is developing rapidly and advancing fully as fast as it
can,
then
this is definitely a scientific age.
The
speed at which science has been developing for the last two hundred years has
been
ever
increasing, and we reach a culmination of speed now. We are in particular in
the
biological
sciences, on the threshold of the most remarkable discoveries. What they are
going
to be I am unable to tell you. Naturally, that is the excitement of it. And the
excitement
that comes from turning one stone over after another and finding underneath
new
discoveries has been going on now perpetually for several hundred years, and it
is an
ever-rising
crescendo. This is, in that sense, definitely a scientific age. It has been
called a
heroic
age, by a scientist, of course. Nobody else knows about it. Sometime when
history
looks
back at this age they will see that it was a most dramatic and remarkable age,
the
transformation
from not knowing much about the world to knowing a great deal more
than
was known before. But if you mean that this is an age of science in the sense
that in
art,
in literature, and in people's attitudes and understandings, and so forth
science plays a
large
part, I don't think it is a scientific age at all. You see, if you take, the
heroic age of
the
Greeks, say, there were poems about the military heroes. In the religious
period of the
Middle
Ages, art was related directly to religion, and people's attitudes toward life
were
definitely
closely knit to the religious viewpoints. It was a religious age. This is not a
scientific
age from that point of view.
Now,
that there are unscientific things is not my grief. That's a nice word. I mean,
that is
not
what I am worrying about, that there are unscientific things. That something is
unscientific
is not bad; there is nothing the matter with it. It is just unscientific. And
scientific
is limited, of course, to those things that we can tell about by trial and
error. For
example,
there is the absurdity of the young these days chanting things about purple
people
eaters and hound dogs, something that we cannot criticize at all if we belong
to
the
old flat foot floogie and a floy floy or the music goes down and around. Sons
of
mothers
who sang about "come, Josephine, in my flying machine," which sounds
just
about
as modern as "I'd like to get you on a slow boat to
China." So in life, in gaiety,
in
emotion,
in human pleasures and pursuits, and in literature and so on, there is no need
to
be
scientific, there is no reason to be scientific. One must relax and enjoy life.
That is not
the
criticism. That is not the point.
But
if you do stop to think about it for a while, you will find that there are
numerous,
mostly
trivial things which are unscientific, unnecessarily. For instance, there are
extra
seats
in the front here, even though there are people [standing in the back].
While
I was talking to some of the students in one of the classes, one man asked me a
question,
which was, "Are there any attitudes or experiences that you have when
working
in
scientific information which you think might be useful in working with other
information?"
(By
the way, I will at the end say how much of the world today is sensible,
rational, and
scientific.
It's a great deal. So, I am only taking the bad parts first. It's more fun.
Then we
soften
it at the end. And I latched onto that as a nice organizing way to make my
discussion
of all the things that I think are unscientific in the world.)
I
would like, therefore, to discuss some of the little tricks of the trade in
trying to judge an
idea.
We have the advantage that we can ultimately refer the idea to experiment in
the
sciences,
which may not be possible in other fields. But nevertheless, some of the ways
of
judging
things, some of the experiences undoubtedly are useful in other ways. So, I
start
with
a few examples.
The
first one has to do with whether a man knows what he is talking about, whether
what
he
says has some basis or not. And my trick that I use is very easy. If you ask
him
intelligent
questions—that is, penetrating, interested, honest, frank, direct questions on
the
subject, and no trick questions—then he quickly gets stuck. It is like a child
asking
naive
questions. If you ask naive but relevant questions, then almost immediately the
person
doesn't know the answer, if he is an honest man. It is important to appreciate
that.
And I
think that I can illustrate one unscientific aspect of the world which would be
probably
very much better if it were more scientific. It has to do with politics.
Suppose
two
politicians are running for president, and one goes through the farm section
and is
asked,
"What are you going to do about the farm question?" And he knows
right away—
bang,
bang, bang. Now he goes to the next campaigner who comes through. "What
are
you
going to do about the farm problem?" "Well, I don't know. I used to
be a general, and
I
don't know anything about farming. But it seems to me it must be a very
difficult
problem,
because for twelve, fifteen, twenty years people have been struggling with it,
and
people say that they know how to solve the farm problem. And it must be a hard
problem.
So the way that I intend to solve the farm problem is to gather around me a lot
of
people who know something about it, to look at all the experience that we have
had
with
this problem before, to take a certain amount of time at it, and then to come
to some
conclusion
in a reasonable way about it. Now, I can't tell you ahead of time what
conclusion,
but I can give you some of the principles I'll try to use—not to make things
difficult
for individual farmers, if there are any special problems we will have to have
some
way to take care of them," etc., etc., etc.
Now
such a man would never get anywhere in this country, I think. Its never been
tried,
anyway.
This is in the attitude of mind of the populace, that they have to have an
answer
and
that a man who gives an answer is better than a man who gives no answer, when
the
real
fact of the matter is, in most cases, it is the other way around. And the
result of this
of
course is that the politician must give an answer. And the result of this is
that political
promises
can never be kept. It is a mechanical fact; it is impossible. The result of
that is
that
nobody believes campaign promises. And the result of that is a general
disparaging
of
politics, a general lack of respect for the people who are trying to solve
problems, and
so
forth. It's all generated from the very beginning (maybe—this is a simple
analysis). Its
all
generated, maybe, by the fact that the attitude of the populace is to try to
find the
answer
instead of trying to find a man who has a way of getting at the answer.
Now
we try another item that comes in the sciences—I give only one or two
illustrations
of
each of the general ideas—and that is how to deal with uncertainty. There have
been a
lot
of jokes made about ideas of uncertainty. I would like to remind you that you
can be
pretty
sure of things even though you are uncertain, that you don't have to be so
in-themiddle,
in
fact not at all in-the- middle. People say to me, "Well, how can you teach
your
children
what is right and wrong if you don't know?" Because I'm pretty sure of
what's
right
and wrong. I'm not absolutely sure; some experiences may change my mind. But I
know
what I would expect to teach them. But, of course, a child won't learn what you
teach
him.
I
would like to mention a somewhat technical idea, but it's the way, you see, we
have to
understand
how to handle uncertainty. How does something move from being almost
certainly
false to being almost certainly true? How does experience change? How do you
handle
the changes of your certainty with experience? And it's rather complicated,
technically,
but I'll give a rather simple, idealized example.
You
have, we suppose, two theories about the way something is going to happen,
which I
will
call "Theory A" and "Theory B." Now it gets complicated.
Theory A and Theory B.
Before
you make any observations, for some reason or other, tha t is, your past
experiences
and other observations and intuition and so on, suppose that you are very
much
more certain of Theory A than of Theory B—much more sure. But suppose that the
thing
that you are going to observe is a test. According to Theory A, nothing should
happen.
According to Theory B, it should turn blue. Well, you make the observation, and
it
turns sort of a greenish. Then you look at Theory A, and you say, "It's
very unlikely,"
and
you turn to Theory B, and you say, "Well, it should have turned sort of
blue, but it
wasn't
impossible that it should turn sort of greenish color." So the result of
this
observation,
then, is that Theory A is getting weaker, and Theory B is getting stronger.
And
if you continue to make more tests, then the odds on Theory B increase.
Incidentally,
it is
not right to simply repeat the same test over and over and over and over, no
matter
how
many times you look and it still looks greenish, you haven't made up your mind
yet.
But
if you find a whole lot of other things that distinguish Theory A from Theory B
that
are
different, then by accumulating a large number of these, the odds on Theory B
increase.
Example.
I'm in Las Vegas,
suppose. And I meet a mind reader, or, let's say, a man who
claims
not to be a mind reader, but more technically speaking to have the ability of
telekinesis,
which means that he can influence the way things behave by pure thought.
This
fellow comes to me, and he says, "I will demonstrate this to you. We will
stand at
the
roulette wheel and I will tell you ahead of time whether it is going to be
black or red
on
every shot."
I
believe, say, before I begin, it doesn't make any difference what number you
choose for
this.
I happen to be prejudiced against mind readers from experience in nature, in
physics.
I
don't see, if I believe that man is made out of atoms and if I know all of
the—most of
the-ways
atoms interact with each other, any direct way in which the machinations in the
mind
can affect the ball. So from other experience and general knowledge, I have a
strong
prejudice against mind readers. Million to one.
Now
we begin. The mind reader says it's going to be black. It's black. The mind
reader
says
it's going to be red. It's red. Do I believe in mind readers? No. It could
happen. The
mind
reader says it's going to be black. It's black. The mind reader says it's going
to be
red.
It's red. Sweat. I'm about to learn something. This continues, let us suppose,
for ten
times.
Now it's possible by chance that that happened ten times, but the odds are a
thousand
to one against it. Therefore, I now have to conclude that the odds that a mind
reader
is really doing it are a thousand to one that he's not a mind reader still, but
it was a
million
to one before. But if I get ten more, you see, he'll convince me. Not quite.
One
must
always allow for alternative theories. There is another theory that I should
have
mentioned
before. As we went up to the roulette table, I must have thought in my mind of
the
possibility that there is collusion between the so-called mind reader and the
people at
the
table. That's possible. Although this fellow doesn't look like he's got any
contact with
the
Flamingo Club, so I suspect that the odds are a hundred to one against that.
However,
after
he has run ten times favorable, since I was so prejudiced against mind reading,
I
conclude
it's collusion. Ten to one. That it's collusion rather than accident, I mean, is
ten
to
one, but rather more likely collusion than not is still 10,000 to one. How is
he ever
going
to prove he's a mind reader to me if I still have this terrible prejudice and
now I
claim
it's collusion? Well, we can make another test. We can go to another club.
We
can make other tests. I can buy dice. And we can sit in a room and try it. We
can keep
on
going and get rid of all the alternative theories. It will not do any good for
that mind
reader
to stand in front of that particular roulette table ad infinitum. He can
predict the
result,
but I only conclude it is collusion.
But
he still has an opportunity to prove he's a mind reader by doing other things.
Now
suppose
that we go to another club, and it works, and another one and it works. I buy
dice
and it
works. I take him home and I build a roulette wheel; it works. What do I
conclude?
I
conclude he is a mind reader. And that's the way, but not certainty, of course.
I have
certain
odds. After all these experiences I conclude he really was a mind reader, with
some
odds. And now, as new experiences grow, I may discover that there's a way of
blowing
through the corner of yo
ur
mouth unseen, and so on. And when I discover that,
the
odds shift again, and the uncertainties always remain. But for a long time it
is possible
to
conclude, by a number of tests, that mind reading really exists. If it does, I
get
extremely
excited, because I didn't expect it before. I learned something that I did not
know,
and as a physicist would love to investigate it as a phenomenon of nature. Does
it
depend
upon how far he is from the ball? What about if you put sheets of glass or
paper
or
other materials in between? That's the way all of these things have been worked
out,
what
magnetism is, what electricity is. And what mind reading is would also be
analyzable
by
doing enough experiments.
Anyway,
there is an example of how to deal with uncertainty and how to look at
something
scientifically. To be prejudiced against mind reading a million to one does not
mean
that you can never be convinced that a man is a mind reader. The only way that
you
can
never be convinced that a man is a mind reader is one of two things: If you are
limited
to a finite number of experiments, and he won't let you do any more, or if you
are
infinitely
prejudiced at the beginning that it's absolutely impossible.
Now,
another example of a test of truth, so to speak, that works in the sciences
that would
probably
work in other fields to some extent is that if something is true, really so, if
you
continue
observations and improve the effectiveness of the observations, the effects
stand
out
more obviously. Not less obviously. That is, if there is something really
there, and
you
can't see good because the glass is foggy, and you polish the glass and look
clearer,
then it's
more obvious that it's there, not less.
I
give an example. A professor, I think somewhere in Virginia, has done a lot of
experiments
for a number of years on the subject of mental telepathy, the same kind of
stuff
as mind reading. In his early experiments the game was to have a set of cards
with
various
designs on them (you probably know all this, because they sold the cards and
people
used to play this game), and you would guess whether it's a circle or a
triangle and
so on
while someone else was thinking about it. You would sit and not see the card,
and
he
would see the card and think about the card and you'd guess what it was. And in
the
beginning
of these researches, he found very remarkable effects. He found people who
would
guess ten to fifteen of the cards correctly, when it should be on the average
only
five.
More even than that. There were some who would come very close to a hundred
percent
in going through all the cards. Excellent mind readers.
A
number of people pointed out a set of criticisms. One thing, for example, is
that he
didn't
count all the cases that didn't work. And he just took the few that did, and
then you
can't
do statistics anymore. And then there were a large number of apparent clues by
which
signals inadvertently, or advertently, were being transmitted from one to the
other.
Various
criticisms of the techniques and the statistical methods were made by people.
The
technique was therefore improved. The result was that, although five cards
should be
the
average, it averaged about six and a half cards over a large number of tests.
Never did
he
get anything like ten or fifteen or twenty- five cards. Therefore, the
phenomenon is that
the
first experiments are wrong. The second experiments proved that the phenomenon
observed
in the first experiment was nonexistent. The fact that we have six and a half
instead
of five on the average now brings up a new possibility, that there is such a
thing
as
mental telepathy, but at a much lower level. It's a different idea, because, if
the thing
was really
there before, having improved the methods of experiment, the phenomenon
would
still be there. It would still be fifteen cards. Why is it down to six and a
half?
Because
the technique improved. Now it still is that the six and a half is a little bit
higher
than
the average of statistics, and various people criticized it more subtly and
noticed a
Couple
of other slight effects which might account for the results. It turned out that
people
would get tired during the tests, according to the professor. The evidence
showed
that
they were getting a little bit lower on the average number of agreements. Well,
if you
take
out the cases that are low, the laws of statistics don't work, and the average
is a little
higher
than the five, and so on. So if the man was tired, the last two or three were
thrown
away.
Things of this nature were improved still further. The results were that mental
telepathy
still exists, but this time at 5.1 on the average, and therefore all the
experiments
which
indicated 6.5 were false. Now what about the five? . . . Well, we can go on
forever,
but
the point is that there are always errors in experiments that are subtle and
unknown.
But
the reason that I do not believe that the researchers in mental telepathy have
led to a
demonstration
of its existence is that as the techniques were improved, the phenomenon
got
weaker. In short, the later experiments in every case disproved all the results
of the
former
experiments. If remembered that way, then you can appreciate the situation.
There
has been, of course, some considerable prejudice against mental telepathy and
things
of this kind, because of its arising in the mystic business of spiritualism and
all
kinds
of hocus-pocus in the nineteenth century. Prejudices have a tendency to make it
harder
to prove something, but when something exists, it can nevertheless often lift
itself
out.
One
of the interesting examples is the phenomenon of hypnotism. It took an awful
lot to
convince
people that hypnotism really existed. It started with Mr. Mesmer who was
curing
people of hysteria by letting them sit around bathtubs with pipes that they
would
hold
onto and all kinds of things. But part of the phenomenon was a hypnotic
phenomenon,
which had not been recognized as existing before. And you can imagine
from
this beginning how hard it was to get anybody to pay enough attention to do
enough
experiments.
Fortunately for us, the phenomenon of hypnotism has been extracted and
demonstrated
beyond a doubt even though it had weird beginnings. So it's not the weird
beginnings
which make the thing that people are prejudiced against. They start prejudiced
against
it, but after the investigation, then you could change your mind.
Another
principle of the same general idea is that the effect we are describing has to
have
a
certain permanence or constancy of some kind, that if a phenomenon is difficult
to
experiment
with, if seen from many sides, it has to have some aspects which are more or
less
the same.
If we
come to the case of flying saucers, for example, we have the difficulty that
almost
everybody
who observes flying saucers sees something different, unless they were
previously
informed of what they were supposed to see. So the history of flying saucers
consists
of orange balls of light, blue spheres which bounce on the floor, gray fogs
which
disappear,
gossamer- like streams which evaporate into the air, tin, round flat things out
of
which
objects come with funny shapes that are something like a human being.
If
you have any appreciation for the complexities of nature and for the evolution
of life
on
earth, you can understand the tremendous variety of possible forms that life
would
have.
People say life can't exist without air, but it does under water; in fact it
started in
the
sea. You have to be able to move around and have nerves. Plants have no nerves.
Just
think
a few minutes of the variety of life that there is. And then you see that the
thing that
comes
out of the saucer isn't going to be anything like what anybody describes. Very
unlikely.
It's very unlikely that flying saucers would arrive here, in this particular
era,
without
having caused something of a stir earlier. Why didn't they come earlier? Just
when
we're getting scientific enough to appreciate the possibility of traveling from
one
place
to another, here come the flying saucers.
There
are various arguments of a not complete nature that indicate some doubt that
the
flying
saucers are coming from Venus—in fact, considerable doubt. So much doubt that
it is
going to take a lot of very accurate experiments, and the lack of consistency
and
permanency
of the characteristics of the observed phenomenon means that it isn't there.
Most
likely. It's not worth paying much more attention to, unless it begins to
sharpen up.
I
have argued flying saucers with lots of people. (Incidentally, I must explain
that because
I am
a scientist does not mean that I have not had contact with human beings.
Ordinary
human
beings. I know what they are like. I like to go to
Las Vegas and talk to the show
girls
and the gamblers and so on. I have banged around a lot in my life, so I know
about
ordinary
people.) Anyway, I have to argue about flying saucers on the beach with people,
you
know. And I was interested in this: they keep arguing that it is possible. And
that's
true.
It is possible. They do not appreciate that the problem is not to demonstrate
whether
it's
possible or not but whether it's going on or not. Whether it's probably
occurring or
not,
not whether it could occur.
That
brings me to the fourth kind of attitude toward ideas, and that is that the
problem is
not
what is possible. That's not the problem. The problem is what is probable, what
is
happening.
It does no good to demonstrate again and again that you can't disprove that
this
could be a flying saucer. We have to guess ahead of time whether we have to
worry
about
the Martian invasion. We have to make a judgment about whether it is a flying
saucer,
whether it's reasonable, whether it's likely. And we do that on the basis of a
lot
more
experience than whether it's just possible, because the number of things that
are
possible
is not fully appreciated by the average individual. And it is also not clear,
then,
to
them how many things that are possible must not be happening. That it's
impossible
that
everything that is possible is happening. And there is too much variety, so
most
likely
anything that you think of that is possible isn't true. In fact that's a
general principle
in
physics theories: no matter what a guy thinks of, it's almost always false. So
there have
been
five or ten theories that have been right in the history of physics, and those
are the
ones
we want. But that doesn't mean that everything's false.We'll find out.
To
give an example of a case in which trying to find out what is possible is
mistaken for
what
is probable, I could consider the beatification of Mother Seaton. There was a
saintly
woman
who did very many good works for many people. There is no doubt about that—
excuse
me, there's very little doubt about that. And it has already been announced
that she
has
demonstrated heroicity of virtues. At that stage in the Catholic system for
determining
saints, the next question is to consider miracles. So the next problem we have
is to decide whether she performed miracles.
There
was a girl who had acute leukemia, and the doctors don't know how to cure her.
In
the
duress and troubles of the family in the last minutes, many things are
tried—different
medicines,
all kinds of things. Among other things is the possibility of pinning a ribbon
which
has touched a bone of Mother Seaton to the sheet of the girl and also arranging
that
several
hundred people pray for her health. And the result is that she—no, not the
result—then
she gets better from leukemia.
A
special tribunal is arranged to investigate this. Very formal, very careful,
very
scientific.
Everything has to be just so. Every question has to be asked very carefully
Everything
that is asked is written down in a book very carefully. There are a thousand
pages
of writing, translated into Italian when it got to the
Vatican. Wrapped in special
strings,
and so on. And the tribunal asks the doctors in the case what this was like.
And
they
all agreed that there was no other case, that this was completely unusual, that
at no
time
before had somebody with this kind of leukemia had the disease stopped for such
a
long
period of time. Done. True, we don't know what happened. Nobody knows what
happened.
It was possible it was a miracle. The question is not whether it was possible
it
was a
miracle. It is only a question of whether it is probable it was a miracle. And
the
problem
for the tribunal is to determine whether it is probable that it is a miracle.
It's a
question
to determine whether Mother Seaton had anything to do with it. Oh, that they
did.
In
Rome. I
didn't find out how they did it, but that's the crux of the matter.
The
question is whether the cure had anything to do with the process associated
with the
praying
of Mother Seaton. In order to answer a question like that, one would have to
gather
all cases in which prayers had been given in the favor of Mother Seaton for the
cures
of various people, in various states of disease. They would then have to
compare
the
success of the cure of these people with the average cure of people for whom
such
prayers
were not made, and so forth. It's an honest, straightforward way to do it, and
there
is
nothing dishonest and nothing sacriligious about it, because if it's a miracle,
it will hold
up.
And if it's not a miracle, the scientific method will destroy it.
The
people who study medicine and try to cure people are interested in every method
that
they
can find. And they have developed clinical techniques in which (all these
problems
are
very difficult) they are trying all kinds of medicines too, and the woman got
better.
She
also had chicken pox just before she got better. Has tha t got anything to do
with it?
So
there is a definite clinical way to test what it is that might have something
to do with
it—by
making comparisons and so forth. The problem is not to determine that something
surprising
happens. The problem is to make really good use of that to determine what to
do
next, because if it does turn out that it has something to do with the prayers
of Mother
Seaton,
then it is worthwhile exhuming the body, which has been done, collecting the
bones,
touching many ribbons to the bones, so as to get secondary things to tie on
other
beds.
I now
turn to another kind of principle or idea, and that is that there is no sense
in
calculating
the probability or the chance that something happens after it happens. A lot of
scientists
don't even appreciate this. In fact, the first time I got into an argument over
this
was
when I was a graduate student at
Princeton,
and there was a guy in the psychology
department
who was running rat races. I mean, he has a T-shaped thing, and the rats go,
and
they go to the right, and the left, and so on. And it's a general principle of
psychologists
that in these tests they arrange so that the odds that the things that happen
happen
by chance is small, in fact, less than one in twenty. That means that one in
twenty
of
their laws is probably wrong. But the statistical ways of calculating the odds,
like coin
flipping
if the rats were to go randomly right and left, are easy to work out. This man
had
designed
an experiment which would show something which I do not remember, if the
rats
always went to the right, let's say. I can't remember exactly. He had to do a
great
number
of tests, because, of course, they could go to the right accidentally, so to
get it
down
to one in twenty by odds, he had to do a number of them. And its hard to do,
and he
did
his number. Then he found that it didn't work. They went to the right, and they
went
to
the left, and so on. And then he noticed, most remarkably, that they
alternated, first
right,
then left, then right, then left. And then he ran to me, and he said,
"Calculate the
probability
for me that they should alternate, so that I can see if it is less than one in
twenty."
I said, "It probably is less than one in twenty, but it doesn't
count." He said,
"Why?"
I said, "Because it doesn't make any sense to calculate after the event.
You see,
you
found the peculiarity, and so you selected the peculiar case."
For
example, I had the most remarkable experience this evening. While coming in
here, I
saw license
plate ANZ 912. Calculate for me, please, the odds that of all the license
plates
in the state of
Washington
I should happen to see ANZ 912. Well, it's a ridiculous
thing.
And, in the same way, what he must do is this: The fact that the rat directions
alternate
suggests the possibility that rats alternate. If he wants to test this
hypothesis, one
in
twenty, he cannot do it from the same data that gave him the clue. He must do
another
experiment
all over again and then see if they alternate. He did, and it didn't work.
Many
people believe things from anecdotes in which there is only one case instead of
a
large
number of cases. There are stories of different kinds of influences. Things
that
happened
to people, and they all remember, and how do you explain that, they say. I can
remember
things in my life, too. And I give two examples of most remarkable
experiences.
The
first was when I was in a fraternity at M.I.T. I was upstairs typewriting a
theme on
something
about philosophy. And I was completely engrossed, not thinking of anything
but
the theme, when all of a sudden in a most mysterious fashion, there swept
through my
mind
the idea: my grandmother has died. Now, of course, I exaggerate slightly, as
you
should
in all such stories. I just sort of half got the idea for a minute. It wasn't
something
strong,
but I exaggerate slightly. That's important. Immediately after that the
telephone
rang
downstairs. I remember this distinctly for the reason you will now hear. The
man
answered
the telephone, and he called, "Hey, Pete!" My name isn't Peter. It
was for
somebody
else. My grandmother was perfectly healthy, and there's nothing to it. Now
what
we have to do is to accumulate a large number of these in order to fight the
few
cases
when it could happen. It could happen. It might have occurred. Its not
impossible,
and
from then on am I supposed to believe in the miracle that I can tell when my
grandmother
is dying from something in my head? Another thing about these anecdotes
is
that all the conditions are not described. And for that reason I describe
another, less
happy,
circumstance.
I met
a girl at about thirteen or fourteen whom I loved very much, and we took about
thirteen
years to get married. It's not my present wife, as you will see. And she got
tuberculosis
and had it, actually, for several years. And when she got tuberculosis I gave
her a
clock which had nice big numbers that turned over rather than ones with a dial,
and
she
liked it. The day she got sick I gave it to her, and she kept it by the side of
her bed for
four,
five, six years while she got sicker and sicker. And ultimately she died. She
died at
9:22
in the evening. And the clock stopped at 9:22 in the evening and never went
again.
Fortunately,
I noticed some part of the anecdote I have to tell you. After five years the
clock
gets kind of weak in the knees. Every once in a while I had to fix it, so the
wheels
were
loose. And secondly, the nurse who had to write on the death certificate the
time of
death,
because the light was low in the room, took the clock and turned it up a little
bit to
see
the numbers a little bit better and put it down. If I hadn't noticed that,
again I would
be in
some trouble. So one must be very careful in such anecdotes to remember all the
conditions,
and even the ones that you don't notice may be the explanation of the
mystery.
So,
in short, you can't prove anything by one occurrence, or two occurrences, and
so on.
Everything
has to be checked out very carefully. Otherwise you become one of these
people
who believe all kinds of crazy stuff and doesn't understand the world they're
in.
Nobody
understands the world they're in, but some people are better off at it than
others.
The
next kind of technique that's involved is statistical sampling. I referred to
that idea
when
I said they tried to arrange things so that they had one in twenty odds. The
whole
subject
of statistical sampling is somewhat mathematical, and I won't go into the
details.
The
general idea is kind of obvious. If you want to know how many people are taller
than
six
feet tall, then you just pick people out at random, and you see that maybe
forty of
them
are more than six feet so you guess that maybe everybody is. Sounds stupid.
Well, it
is
and it isn't. If you pick the hundred out by seeing which ones come through a
low door,
you're
going to get it wrong. If you pick the hundred out by looking at your friends
you'll
get
it wrong because they're all in one place in the country. But if you pick out a
way that
as
far as anybody can figure out has no connection with their height at all, then
if you
find
forty out of a hundred, then, in a hundred million there will be more or less
forty
million.
How much more or how much less can be worked out quite accurately. In fact, it
turns
out that to be more or less correct to 1 percent, you have to have 10,000
samples.
People
don't realize how difficult it is to get the accuracy high. For only 1 or 2
percent
you
need 10,000 tries.
The
people who judge the value of advertising in television use this method. No,
they
think
they use this method. It's a very difficult thing to do, and the most difficult
part of it
is
the choice of the samples. How they can arrange to have an average guy put into
his
house
this gadget by which they remember which TV programs he's looking at, or what
kind
of a guy an average guy is who will agree to be paid to write in a log, and how
accurately
he writes in the log what he's listening to every fifteen minutes when a bell
goes
off, we don't know. We have no right, therefore, to judge from the thousand, or
10,000,
and that's all it is, people who do this, who study what the average person is
looking
at, because there's no question at all that the sample is off. This business of
statistics
is well known, and the problem of getting a good sample is a very serious one,
and
everybody knows about it, and it's a scientifically OK business. Except if you
don't
do
it. The conclusion from all the researchers is that all people in the world are
as dopey
as
can be, and the only way to tell them anything is to perpetually insult their
intelligence.
This
conclusion may be correct. On the other hand, it may be false. And we are
making a
terrible
mistake if it is false. It is, therefore, a matter of considerable
responsibility to get
straightened
out on how to test whether or not people pay attention to different kinds of
advertising.
As I
say, I know a lot of people. Ordinary people. And I think their intelligence is
being
insulted.
I mean there's all kinds of things. You turn on the radio; if you have any
soul,
you
go crazy. People have a way—I haven't learned it yet—of not listening to it. I
don't
know
how to do it. So in order to prepare this talk I turned on the radio for three
minutes
when
I was at home, and I heard two things.
First,
I turned it on and I heard Indian music—Indians from
New Mexico, Navajos. I
recognized
it. I had heard them in
Gallup,
and I was delighted. I won't give an imitation
of
the war chant, although I would like to. I'm tempted. It's very interesting,
and it's deep
in
their religion, and it's something that they respect. So I would report
honestly that I
was
pleased to see that on the radio there was something interesting. That was
cultural.
So we
have to be honest. If we're going to report, you listen for three minutes,
that's what
you
hear. So I kept listening. I have to report that I cheated a little bit. I kept
listening
because
I liked it; it was good. It stopped. And a man said, "We are on the
warpath
against
automobile accidents." And then he went on and said how you have to be
careful
in automobile
accidents. That's not an insult to intelligence; it's an insult to the Navajo
Indians,
and to their religion and their ideas. And so I listened until I heard that
there is a
drink
of some kind, I think it's called Pepsi-Cola, for people who think young. So I
said,
all
right, that's enough. I'll think about that a while. First of all, the whole
idea is crazy.
What
is a person who thinks young? I suppose it is a person who likes to do things
that
young
people like to do. Alright, let them think that. Then this is a drink for such
people.
I
suppose that the people in the research department of the drink company decided
how
much
lime to put in as follows: "Well, we used to have a drink that was just an
ordinary
drink,
but we have to rearrange it, not for ordinary people but for special people who
think
young. More sugar." The whole idea that a drink is especially for people
who think
young
is an absolute absurdity.
So as
a result of this, we get perpetually insulted, our intelligence always
insulted. I have
an
idea of how to beat it. People have all kinds of plans, you know, and the ETC.
is trying
to
straighten it out. I've got an easy plan. Suppose that you purchased the use
for thirty
days
of twenty-six billboards in Greater Seattle, eighteen of them lighted. And you
put
onto
the billboards a sign which says, "Has your intelligence been insulted?
Don't buy the
product."
And then you buy a few spots on the television or the radio. In the middle of
some
program a man comes up and says, "Pardon me, I'm sorry to interrupt you,
but if
you
find that any of the advertising that you hear insults your intelligence or in
any way
disturbs
you, we would advise you not to buy the product," and things will be
straightened
out as quickly as it can be. Thank you.
Now
if anybody has any money that they want to throw around, I'd advise that as an
experiment
to find out about the intelligence of the average television looker. It's an
interesting
question. It's a quick shortcut to find out about their intelligence. But maybe
it's
a little bit expensive.
You
say, "Its not very important. The advertisers have to sell their
wares," and so on and
so
on. On the other hand, the whole idea that the average person is unintelligent
is a very
dangerous
idea. Even if it's true, it shouldn't be dealt with the way it's dealt with.
Newspaper
reporters and commentators—there is a large number of them who assume
that
the public is stupider than they are, that the public cannot understand things
that they
[the
reporters and the commentators] cannot understand. Now that is ridiculous. I'm
not
trying
to say they're dumber than the average man, but they're dumber in some way than
somebody
else. If I ever have to explain something scientific to a reporter, and he says
what
is the idea? Well, I explain it in words of one syllable, as I would explain it
to my
neighbor.
He doesn't understand it, which is possible, because he's brought up
differently—he
doesn't fix washing machines, he doesn't know what a motor is, or
something.
In other words, he has no technical experience. There are lots of engineers in
the
world. There are lots of mechanically minded people. There are lots of people
who
are
smarter than the reporter, say, in science, for example. It is, therefore, his
duty to
report
the thing, whether he understands it or not, accurately and in the way it's
been
given.
The same goes in economics and other situations. The reporters appreciate the
fact
that
they don't understand the complicated business about international trade, but
they
report,
more or less, what somebody says, pretty closely. But when it comes to science,
for
some reason or another, they will pat me on the head and explain to dopey me
that the
dopey
people aren't going to understand it because he, dope, can't understand it. But
I
know that
some people can understand it. Not everybody who reads the newspaper has to
understand
every article in the newspaper. Some people aren't interested in science. Some
are.
At least they could find out what it's all about instead of discovering that an
atomic
bullet
was used that came out of a machine that weighed seven tons. I can't read the
articles
in the paper. I don't know what they mean. I don't know what kind of a machine
it
was
just because it weighed seven tons. And there are now sixty-two kinds of
particles,
and I
would like to know what atomic bullet he is referring to.
This
whole business of statistical sampling and the determining of the properties of
people
by this manner is a very serious business altogether. It's coming into its own,
but
it's
used very often, and we have to be very, very careful with it. It's used for
choice of
personnel—by
giving examinations to people—marriage counseling, and things of this
kind.
It's used to determine whether people get into college, in a way that I am not
in
favor
of, but I will leave my arguments on this. I will address them to the people
who
decide
who gets into Caltech. And after I have had my arguments, I will come back and
tell
you something about it. But this has one serious feature, among others, aside
from the
difficulties
of sampling. There is a tendency, then, to use only what can be measured as a
criterion.
That is, the spirit of the man, the way he feels toward things, may be
difficult to
measure.
There is some tendency to have interviews and to try to correct this. So much
the
better. But it's easier to have more examinatio ns and not have to waste the
time with
the
interviews, and the result is that only those things which can be measured,
actually
which
they think they can measure, are what count, and a lot of good things are left
out, a
lot
of good guys are missed. So it's a dangerous business and has to be very
carefully
checked.
The things like marriage questions, "How are you getting along with your
husband,"
and so on, that appear in magazines are all nonsense. They go something like
this:
"This has been tested on a tho usand couples." And then you can tell
how they
answered
and how you answered and tell if you are happily married. What you do is the
following.
You make up a bunch of questions, like "Do you give him breakfast in
bed?"
and
so on and so on. And then you give this questionnaire to a thousand people. And
you
have
an independent way of telling whether they are happily married, like asking
them, or
something.
But never mind. It doesn't make any difference what it is, even if the test is
perfect.
That's not the part where the trouble is. Then you do the following. You see
about
all the ones who are happy—how did they answer about the breakfast in bed, how
did
they answer about this, how did they answer about that? You see it's exactly
the same
as my
rat race, with right and left. They have decided on the odds of the thing in
terms of
the
one sample. What they ought to do to be honest is to take the same test that
has now
been
designed, in which they know how to make the score. They've decided this gets
five
points,
that gets ten points, in such a way that the thousand that they tried it on get
marvelous
scores if they are happy and lousy scores if they're not. But now is the test
of
the
test. They cannot use the sample which determined the scoring for them. That's
going
backwards.
They must take the test to another thousand people, independently, and run it
out
to see whether the happy ones are the ones that score high, or not. They do not
do
that,
because it's too much trouble, A, and the few times that they tried it, B, it
showed
that
the test was no good.
Now,
looking at the troubles that we have with all the unscientific and peculiar
things in
the
world, there are a number of them which cannot be associated with difficulties
in how
to
think, I think, but are just due to some lack of information. In particular,
there are
believers
in astrology, of which, no doubt, there are a number here. Astrologists say
that
there
are days when it's better to go to the dentist than other days. There are days
when
it's
better to fly in an airplane, for you, if you are born on such a day and such
and such
an
hour. And its all calculated by very careful rules in terms of the position of
the stars. If
it
were true it would be very interesting. Insurance people would be very
interested to
change
the insurance rates on people if they follow the astrological rules, because
they
have
a better chance when they are in the airplane. Tests to determine whether people
who
go on the day that they are not supposed to go are worse off or not have never
been
made
by the astrologers. The question of whether it's a good day for business or a
bad
day
for business has never been established. Now what of it?
Maybe
it's still true, yes. On the other hand, there's an awful lot of information
that
indicates
that it isn't true. Because we have a lot of knowledge about how things work,
what
people are, what the world is, what those stars are, what the planets are that
you are
looking
at, what makes them go around more or less, where they're going to be in the
next
2000 years is completely known. They don't have to look up to find out where it
is.
And
furthermore, if you look very carefully at the different astrologers they don't
agree
with
each other, so what are you going to do? Disbelieve it. There's no evidence at
all for
it.
It's pure nonsense. The only way you can believe it is to have a general lack
of
information
about the stars and the world and what the rest of the things look like. If
such
a
phenomenon existed it would be most remarkable, in the face of all the other
phenomena
that exist, and unless someone can demonstrate it to you with a real
experiment,
with a real test, took people who believe and people who didn't believe and
made
a test, and so on, then there's no point in listening to them. Tests of this
kind,
incidentally,
have been made in the early days of science. It's rather interesting. I found
out
that in the early days, like in the time when they were discovering oxygen and
so on,
people
made such experimental attempts to find out, for example, whether missionaries—
it
sounds silly; it only sounds silly because you're afraid to test it—whether
good people
like
missionaries who pray and so on were less likely to be in a shipwreck than
others.
And
so when missionaries were going to far countries, they checked in the
shipwrecks
whether
the missionaries were less likely to drown than other people. And it turned out
that
there was no difference. So lots of people don't believe that it makes any
difference.
There
are, if you turn on the radio—I don't know how it is up here; it must be the
same—
in
California you hear all kinds of faith healers. I've seen them on television.
It's another
one
of those things that it exhausts me to try to explain why it's rather a
ridiculous
proposition.
There is, in fact, an entire religion that's respectable, so called, that's
called
Christian
Science, that's based on the idea of faith healing. If it were true, it could
be
established,
not by the anecdotes of a few people but by the careful checks, by the
technically
good clinical methods which are used on any other way of curing diseases. If
you
believe in faith healing, you have a tendency to avoid other ways of getting
healed. It
takes
you a little longer to get to the doctor, possibly. Some people believe it
strongly
enough
that it takes them longer to get to the doctor. It's possible that the faith
healing
isn't
so good. It's possible—we are not sure—that it isn't. And its therefore
possible that
there
is some danger in believing in faith healing, that its not a triviality, not
like
astrology
wherein it doesn't make a lot of difference. It's just inconvenient for the
people
who
believe in it that they have to do things on certain days. It may be, and I
would like
to
know—it should be investigated—everybody has a right to know—whether more
people
have been hurt or helped by believing in Christ's ability to heal; whether
there is
more
healing or harming by such a thing. It's possible either way. It should be
investigated.
It shouldn't be left lying for people to believe in without an investigation.
Not
only are there faith healers on the radio, there are also radio religion people
who use
the
Bible to predict all kinds of phenomena that are going to happen. I listened
intrigued
to a
man who in a dream visited God and received all kinds of special information fo
r his
congregation,
etc. Well, this unscientific age . . . But I don't know what to do with that
one.
I don't know what rule of reasoning to use to show right away that it's nutty.
I think
it
just belongs to a general lack of understanding of how complicated the world is
and
how
elaborate and how unlikely it would be that such a thing would work.
But I
can't disprove, of course, without investigating more carefully. Maybe one way
would
be always to ask them how do they know it's true and to remember maybe that
they
are wrong. Just remember that much anyway, because you may keep yourself from
sending
in too much money
There
are also, of course, in the world a number of phenomena that you cannot beat
that
are
just the result of a general stupidity. And we all do stupid things, and we
know some
people
do more than others, but there is no use in trying to check who does the most.
There
is some attempt to protect this by government regulation, to protect this
stupidity,
but
it doesn't work a hundred percent.
For
example, I went on a visit to one of the desert sites to buy land. You know
they sell
land,
these promoters—there's a new city going to be built. It's exciting. It's
marvelous.
You
must go. Just imagine yourself in a desert with nothing but some flags poked
here in
the
ground with numbers on them and street signs with names. And so you drive in
the
car
across the desert to find the fourth street and so on to get to the lot 369,
which is the
one
for you, you're thinking. And you stand there kicking sand in this thing
discussing
with
the salesman why it's advantageous to have a corner lot and how the driveway
will
be
good because it will be easier to get into from that side. Worse, believe it or
not, you
find
yourself discussing the beach club, which is going to be on that sea, what the
rules of
membership
are and how many friends you're allowed to bring. I swear, I got into that
condition.
So
when the time comes to buy the land, it turns out that the state has made an
attempt to
help
you. So they have a description of this particular thing that you have read,
and the
man
who sells you the land says it's the law, we have to give you this to read.
They give
it to
you to read, and it says that this is very much like many other real estate
deals in the
state
of California and so on and so on and so on. And among other things, I read
that
although
they say that they want to have fifty thousand people at this site, there is
not
water
enough for a number which I better not say or I'll get accused of libel, but it
was
very
much less—I can't remember it exactly—it was in the neighborhood of five
thousand
people, somewhere like that. So, of course they had noticed that this was in
there
before, and they told us that they had just found water at another site, far
away, that
they
were going to pump down. And when I asked about it, they explained to me very
carefully
that they had just discov- ered this and that they hadn't had time to get it
into the
brochure
from the state. Hmmmm.
I'll
give another example of the same thing. I was in Atlantic City, and I went into
one of
these—well,
it was sort of a store. There were a lot of seats, and people were sitting
there
listening
to a man speaking. And he was very interesting. He knew all about food, and he
was
talking about nutrition, different things. I remember several of the important
statements
which he made, such as "even worms won't eat white flour." That kind
of
stuff.
It was good. It was interesting. It was true—maybe it wasn't true about the
worms,
but
it was good stuff about proteins and so on. And then he went on and described
the
Federal
Pure Food and Drug Act, and he explained how it protects you. He explained that
on
every product that claims to be a good health food that's supposed to help you
with
minerals
and this and that, there must be a label on the bottle which tells exactly
what's in
it,
what it does, and all claims must be explicit, so that if it's wrong, so on and
so on. He
gives
them everything. I said, "How is he going to make any money? Out come the
bottles.
It comes out, finally, that he sells this special health food, of course, in a
brownish
bottle. And it just so happens that he has just come in, and he's been in a
hurry,
and
he hasn't had time to put the labels on. And here are the labels that belong on
the
bottles,
and here are the bottles, and he's in a hurry to sell them, and he gives you
the
bottle,
and you stick it on yourself. That man had courage. He first explained what to
do,
what
to worry about, and then he went ahead and did it.
I
found another lecture which was somewhat analogous to that one. And that was
the
second
Danz lecture given by myself. I started out by pointing out that things were
completely
unscientific, that things were uncertain, particularly in political matters,
and
that
there were the two nations, Russia and the United States, at odds with each
other.
And
then by some mystic hocus-pocus it came out that we were the good guys and they
were
the bad guys. Yet, at the beginning, there was no way to decide which was the
better
of
the two. In fact, that was the main point of the lecture. So by some sort of
magic I
produced
some kind of relative certainty out of uncertainty. I told you about the bottle
with
the labels, and then I came out on the other end with a label on my bottle. How
did I
do
it? You have to think about it a little bit. One thing, of course, that we can
be certain
of,
once we're uncertain, and that is that we are uncertain. Somebody says
"No, maybe
I'm
sure." Actually, though, the gimmick in that particular lecture, the weak
point in the
whole
thing, the thing that requires further development and study is this one: I
made an
impassioned
plea for the idea that it's good to have an open channel, that there's value in
uncertainty,
that it's more important to permit us to discover new things, rather than to
choose
a solution that we now make up—that to choose a solution, no matter how we
choose
it now is to choose a much worse thing than what we would get if we waited and
worked
things out. And that's where I made the choice, and I am not sure of that
choice.
Okay.
I have now destroyed authority.
Associated
with these problems of lack of information and so forth, but particularly lack
of
information, there are a number of phenomena that are more serious, I believe,
than
astrology.
I, in
preparation for this lecture, investigated something that was in my town, in
the
shopping
center. There was a store with a flag in front. And it's the Americanism
Center,
Altadena
Americanism Center. And so I went into the Americanism Center to find out
what
it is, and it's a volunteer organization. And on the front outside, there is a
Constitution
and the Bill of Rights and so on, and a letter which explains their purpose,
which
is to maintain rights and so on, all in accordance with the Constitution and
the Bill
of
Rights and so on. That's the general idea. What they do in there is simply
educative.
They
have books that people could buy on the various subjects that help to teach the
ideas
of
citizenship and so on, and they have, among other books, also Congressional
records,
pamphlets
on Congressional investigations and so on, so that people who are studying
these
problems can read them. They have study groups which meet at night, and so on.
So,
being interested in rights for people, I asked, since I said I didn't know very
much
about
it, I would like a book on the problem of the freedom of the Negroes to vote in
the
South.
There was nothing. Yes, there was. There was one thing which turned up later,
two
things which I saw out of the corne r of my eye. One was what went on in
Mississippi
according
to the Oxford city fathers, and the other was a little pamphlet called
"The
National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Communism."
So I
discussed it at some greater length to discover what was going on and talked to
the
lady
for a while, and she explained among other things (we talked about many things—
we
did this on a friendly basis, you will be surprised to hear) that she was not a
member
of
the Birch Society but there was something that you could say for the Birch
Society,
she
saw some movie about it and so on, and there was something that she could say
for it.
You're
| not a fence sitter when you're in the Birch Society. At least you know what
you're
for, because you don't ha ve to join it if you don't want to, and this is what
Mr.
Welch
said, and this is the way the Birch Society is, and if you believe in this then
you
join,
and if you don't believe in this then you shouldn't join. It sounds just like
the
Communist
Party. It's all very well if they have no power. But if they have power, it's a
completely
different situation. I tried to explain to her that this is not the kind of
freedom
that
was being talked about, that in any organization there ought to be the
possibility of
discussion.
That fence sitting is an art, and it's difficult, and it's important to do,
rather
than
to go headlong in one direction or the other. Its just better to have action,
isn't it,
than
to sit on the fence? Not if you're not sure which way to go, it isn't.
So I
bought a couple of things there, just at random that they had. One of the
things was
called
"The Dan Smoot Report"—it's a good name—and it talked about the
Constitution,
and a
general idea I'll outline: that the Constitution was right the way it was
written in the
first
place. And all the modifications that have come in are just the mistakes.
Fundamentalists,
only not in the Bible but in the Constitution. And then it goes on to give
the
ratings of Congressmen in votes, how they voted. And it said, very specifically
and
after
explaining about their ideas, "The following give the ratings of the
congressmen and
senators
with regard to whether they vote for or against the Constitution." Mind
you that
these
ratings are not just an opinion, but they are based on fact. They are a matter
of
voting
record. Fact. There's no opinion at all. It's just the voting record, and, of
course,
each
item is either for or against the Constitution. Naturally. Medicare is against
the
Constitution,
and so on. I tried to explain that they violate their own principles.
According
to the Constitution there are supposed to be votes. It isn't supposed to be
automatically
determinable ahead of time on each one of the items what's right and what's
wrong.
Otherwise there wouldn't be the bother to invent the Senate to have the votes.
As
long
as you have the votes at all, then the purpose of the votes is to try to make
up your
mind
which is the way to go. And it isn't possible for somebody to determine by fact
ahead
of time what is the situation. It violates its own principle.
It
starts out all right, with the good, and love, and Christ, and so on, and it
builds itself up
until
it's afraid of an enemy. And then it forgets its original idea. It turns itself
inside out
and
becomes absolutely contrary to the beginning. I believe that the people who
start
some
of these things, especially the volunteer ladies of Altadena, have a good heart
and
understand
a little bit that it's good, the Constitution, and so on, but they are led
astray in
the
system of the thing. How, I can't exactly get at, and what to do to keep from
doing
this,
I don't exactly know.
I
went still further into the thing and found out what the study group was about,
and if
you
don't mind I'll tell you what that was about. They gave me some papers. There
were a
lot
of chairs, you see, in the room, and they explained to me, yes, that evening
they had a
study
group, and they gave me a thing which described what they were going to study.
And I
made some notes from it. It had to do with the S.P.X.R.A. In 1943 the S.P.X.
research
associates—which turns out to be the ... well, I'll tell you what it turns out
to
be—came
into being through the professional interest of intelligence officers then on
active
duty in the armed forces of the United States concerning the Soviet revival of
a
long
dormant tenth principle of warfare. Paralysis. See the evil. Dormant.
Mysterious.
Frightening.
The mystic people of the military orders have had principles of warfare since
the
Roman legions. Number one. Number two. Number three. This is number ten. We
don't
have to know what number seven is. The whole idea that there are long dormant
principles
of warfare, much less that there is a tenth principle of warfare, is an
absurdity.
And
then what is this principle of paralysis? How are they going to use the idea?
The
boogie
man is now generated. How do you use the boogie man? You use the boogie man
as
follows: This educational program concerns itself with all the areas where
Soviet
pressure
can be used to paralyze the American will to resist. Agriculture, arts, and
cultural
exchange. Science, education, information media, finance, economics,
government,
labor, law, medicine, and our armed forces, and religion, that most sensitive
of
areas. In other words, we now have an open machine for pointing out that
everybody
who
says something that you don't agree with has been paralyzed by the mystic force
of
the
tenth principle of warfare.
This
is a phenomenon analogous to paranoia. It is impossible to disprove the tenth
principle.
It's only possible if you have a certain balance, a certain understanding of
the
world
to appreciate that it's out of balance, to think that the Supreme Court—which
turns
out
to be an "instrument of global conquest"—has been paralyzed.
Everything is
paralyzed.
You see how fearful it becomes, the terrible power which is demonstrated
again
and again by one example after the other of this fearful force which is made
up.
This
describes what a paranoia is like. A woman gets nervous. She begins to suspect
that
her
husband is trying to make trouble for her. She doesn't like to let him into the
house.
He
tries to get into the house, proves that he's trying to make trouble for her.
He gets a
friend
to try to talk to her. She knows that its a friend, and she knows in her mind,
which
is
going to one side, that this is only further evidence of the terrible fright
and the fear
that
she's building up in her mind. Her neighbors come over to console her for a
while. It
works
fairly well, for a while. They go back to their houses. The friend of the
husband
goes
to visit them. They are spoiled now, and they are going to tell her husband all
the
terrible
things she said. Oh dear, what did she say? And he's going to be able to use
them
against
her. She calls up the police department. She says, "I'm afraid."
She's locked in her
house
now. She says, "I'm afraid." Somebody's trying to get into the house.
They come,
they
try to talk to her, they realize that there is nobody trying to get into the
house. They
have
to go away. She remembers that her husband was important in the city. She
remembers
that he had a friend in the police department. The police department is only
part
of the scheme. It only proves it once again. She looks through the window of
the
house,
and she sees across the way someone stopping at a neighbor's house. What are
they
talking about? In the backyard, she sees something coming up over a bush.
They're
watching
her with a telescope! It turns out later to be some children playing in the
back
with
a stick. A continuous and perpetual buildup, until the entire population is
involved.
The
lawyer that she called, she remembers, was the lawyer once for a friend of her
husband's.
The doctor who has been trying to get her to the hospital is now obviously on
the
side of the husband.
The
only way out is to have some balance, to think that it's impossible that the
whole city
is
against her, that everybody is going to pay attention to this husband of mine
who's such
a
dope, that everybody's going to do all these things, that there's a complete
accumulation.
All the neighbors, everybody's against her. It's out of proportion. It's only
out
of proportion. How can you explain to somebody who hasn't got a sense of
proportion?
And
so it is with these people. They don't have a sense of proportion. And so they
will
believe
in such a possibility as the Soviet tenth principle of warfare. The only way
that I
can think
to beat the game is to point the following out. They're right. And like my
friend
with
the bottle with the label, the Soviets are very, very ingenious and clever
indeed.
They
even tell us what they're doing to us. You see, these people, these research
associates
are really in the hire of the Soviets who are using this method of paralysis.
And
what
they want us to do is to lose faith in the Supreme Court, to lose faith in the
Agriculture
Department, to lose faith in the scientists and all the people who help us in
all
kinds
of ways and so on and so on, and lose faith in all sorts of ways, and it's a
way that
they
have entered into this movement of freedom that everybody wanted, this thing
with
all
the flags and the Constitution, and they've gotten in on it, and they're
getting in there,
and
they're going to paralyze it. Proof. In their own words. S.P.X.R.A. has
qualified,
under
oath, in the United States court as the leading, American authority on the
tenth
principle.
Where did they get the information? There's only one place. From the Soviet
Union.
This
paranoia, this phenomenon—I shouldn't call it a paranoia, I'm not a doctor, I
don't
know—but
this phenomenon is a terrible one, and it has caused mankind and individuals
a
terrible unhappiness.
And
another example of the same thing is the famous Protocol of the Elders of Zion,
which
was a fake document. It was supposed to be a meeting of the old Jews and the
leaders
of Zion in which they had gotten together and cooked up a scheme for the
domination
of the world. International bankers, international, you know... a great big
marvelous
machine! Just out of proportion. But it wasn't so far out of proportion that
people
didn't believe it; and it was one of the strongest forces in the development of
anti-
Semitism.
What
I am asking for in many directions is an abject honesty. I think that we should
have
a
more abject honesty in political matters. And I think we'll be freer that way.
I
would like to point out that people are not honest. Scientists are not honest
at all, either.
It's
useless. Nobody's honest. Scientists are not honest. And people usually believe
that
they
are. That makes it worse. By honest I don't mean that you only tell what's
true. But
you
make clear the entire situation. You make clear all the information that is
required for
somebody
else who is intelligent to make up their mind.
For
example, in connection with nuclear testing, I don't know myself whether I am
for
nuclear
testing or against nuclear testing. There are reasons on both sides. It makes
radioactivity,
and it's dangerous, and it's also very bad to have a war. But whether it's
going
to be more likely to have a war or less likely to have a war because you test,
I don't
know.
Whether preparation will stop the war, or lack of preparation, I don't know. So
I'm
not
trying to say I'm on either side. That's why I can be abjectly honest on this
one.
The
big question comes, of course, whether there's a danger from radioactivity. In
my
opinion
the greatest danger and the greatest question on nuclear testing is the
question of
its
future effects. The deaths and the radioactivity which would be caused by the
war
would
be so many times more than the nuclear testing that the effects that it would
have
in
the future are far more important than the infinitesimal amount of
radioactivity
produced
now. How infinitesimal is the amount, however? Radioactivity is bad. Nobody
knows
a good effect of general radioactivity. So if you increase the general amount
of
radioactivity
in the air, you are producing something not good. Therefore nuclear testing
in
this respect produces something not good. If you are a scientist, then, you
have the
right
and should point out this fact.
On
the other hand, the thing is quantitative. The question is how much is not
good? You
can play
games and show that you will kill 10 million people in the next 2000 years with
it.
If I were to walk in front of a car, hoping that I will have some more children
in the
future,
I also will kill 10,000 people in the next 10,000 years, if you figure it out,
from a
certain
way of calculating. The question is how big is the effect? And the last time
... (I
wish
I had—I should, of course, have checked these figures, but let me put it
differently.)
The
next time you hear a talk, ask the questions which I point out to you, because
I asked
some
questions the last time I heard a talk, and I can remember the answers, but I
haven't
checked
them very recently, so I don't have any figures, but I at least asked the
question.
How
much is the increase in radioactivity compared to the general variations in the
amount
of radioactivity from place to place? The amounts of background radioactivity
in
a
wooden building and a brick building are quite different, because the wood is
less
radioactive
than the bricks.
It
turns out that at the time that I asked this question, the difference in the
effects was less
than
the difference between being in a brick and a wooden building. And the
difference
between
being at sea level and being at 5000 feet altitude was a hundred times, at least,
bigger
than the extra radioactivity produced by the atomic bomb testing.
Now,
I say that if a man is absolutely honest and wants to protect the populace from
the
effects
of radioactivity, which is what our scientific friends often say they are trying
to
do,
then he should work on the biggest number, not on the smallest number, and he
should
try to point out that the radioactivity which is absorbed by living in the city
of
Denver
is so much more serious, is a hundred times bigger than the background from the
bomb,
that all the people of Denver ought to move to lower altitudes. The situation
really
is—don't
get frightened if you live in Denver—it's small. It doesn't make much
difference.
It's only a tiny effect. But the effect from the bombs is less than the
difference
between
being at low level and high level, I believe. I'm not absolutely sure. I ask
you to
ask
that question to get some idea whether you should be very careful about not
walking
into
a brick building, as careful as you are to try to stop nuclear testing for the
sole reason
of
radioactivity. There are many good reasons that you may feel politically strong
about,
one
way or the other. But that's another question.
We
are, in the scientific things, getting into situations in which we are related
to the
government,
and we have all kinds of lack of honesty. Particularly, lack of honesty is in
the
reporting and description of the adventures of going to different planets and
in the
various
space adventures. To take an example, we can take the Mariner II voyage to
Venus.
A tremendously exciting thing, a marvelous thing, that man has been able to
send
a
thing 40 million miles, a piece of the earth at last to another place. And to
get so close
to it
as to get a view that corresponds to being 20,000 miles away. It's hard for me
to
explain
how exciting that is, and how interesting. And I've used up more time than I
ought.
The
story of what happened during the trip was equally interesting and exciting.
The
apparent
breakdown. The fact that they had to turn all the instruments off for a while
because
they were losing power in the batteries and the whole thing would stop. And
then
they
were able to turn it on again. The fact of ho w it was heating up. How one
thing after
the
other didn't work and then began to work. All the accidents and the excitement
of a
new
adventure. Just like sending Columbus, or Magellan, around the world. There
were
mutinies,
and there were troubles and there were shipwrecks, and there was the whole
works.
And it's an exciting story. When it, for example, heated up, it was said in the
paper,
"It's heating up, and we're learning from that." What could we be
learning? If you
know
something, you realize you can't learn anything. You put satellites up near the
earth,
and you know how much radiation you get from the sun . .. we know that. And
how
much do they get when they get near Venus? Its a definitely accurate law, well
known,
inverse square. The closer you get, the brighter the light. Easy. So it's easy
to
figure
out how much white and black to paint the thing so that the temperature adjusts
itself.
The
only thing we learned was that the fact that it got hot was not due to anything
else
than
the fact that the thing was made in a very great hurry at the last minute and
some
changes
were made in the inside apparatus, so that there was more power developed in
the
inside and it got hotter than it was designed for. What we learned, therefore,
was not
scientific.
But we learned to be a little bit careful about going in such a hurry on these
things
and keep changing our minds at the last minute. By some miracle the thing
almost
worked
when it was there. It was meant to look at Venus by making a series of passes
across
the planet, looking like a television screen, twenty-one passes across the planet.
It
made
three. Good. It was a miracle. It was a great achievement. Columbus said he was
going
for gold and spices. He got no gold and very little spices. But it was a very
important
and very exciting moment. Mariner was supposed to go for big and important
scientific
information. It got none. I tell you it got none. Well, I'll correct it in a
minute. It
got
practically none. But it was a terrific and exciting experience. And in the
future more
will
come from it. What it did find out, from looking at Venus, they say in the
paper, was
that
the temperature was 800 degrees or something, under the surface of the clouds.
That
was
already known. And it's being confirmed today, even now, by using the telescope
at
Palomar
and making measurements on Venus from the earth. How clever. The same
information
could be gotten from looking from the Earth: I have a friend who has
information
on this, and he has a beautiful map of Venus in his room, with contour lines
and
hot and cold and different temperatures in different parts. In detail. From the
earth.
Not
just three swatches with some spots of up and down. There was one piece of
information
that was obtained—that Venus has no magnetic field around it like the earth
has—and
that was a piece of information that could not have been obtained from here.
There
was also very interesting information on what was going on in the space in
between,
on the way from here to Venus. It should be pointed out that if you don't try
to
make
the thing hit a planet, you don't have to put extra correcting devices inside,
you
know,
with extra rockets to re-steer it. You just shoot it off. You can put more
instruments
in, better instruments, more carefully designed, and if you really want to find
out
what there is in the space in between, you don't have to make such a to-do
about
going
to Venus. The most important information was on the space in between, and if we
want
that information, then please let us send another one that isn't necessary to
go to a
planet
and have all the complications of steering it.
Another
thing is the Ranger program. I get sick when I read in the paper about, one
after
the
other, five of them that don't work. And each time we learn something, and then
we
don't
continue the program. We're learning an awful lot. We're learning that somebody
forgot
to close a valve, that somebody let sand into another part of the instrument.
Sometimes
we learn something, but most of the time we learn only that there's something
the
matter with our industry, our engineers and our scientists, that the failure of
our
program,
to fail so many times, has no reasonable and simple explanation. It's not
necessary
that we have so many failures, as far as I can tell. There's something the
matter
in
the organization, in the administration, in the engineering, or in the making
of these
instruments.
It's important to know that. It's not worthwhile knowing that we're always
learning
something.
Incidentally,
people ask me, why go to the moon? Because it's a great adventure in
science.
Incidentally, it also develops technology. You have to make all these
instruments
to go
to the moon—rockets, and so on—and it's very important to develop technology.
Also
it makes scientists happy, and if scientists are happy maybe they'll work on
something
else good for warfare. Another possibility is a direct military use of space. I
don't
know how, nobody knows how, but there may turn out to be a use. Anyway, it's
possible
that if we keep on developing the military aspects of long-range flying to the
moon
that we'll prevent the Russians from making some military use that we can't
figure
out
yet. Also there are indirect military advantages. That is, if you build bigger
rockets,
then
you can use them more directly by going directly from here to some other part
of the
earth
instead of having to go to the moon. Another good reason is a propaganda
reason.
We've
lost some face in front of the world by letting the other guys get ahead in
technology.
It's good to be able to try to get that face back. None of these reasons alone
is
worthwhile
and can explain our going to the moon. I believe, however, that if you put
them
all together, plus all the other reasons which I can't think of, it's worth it.
Well,
I gotcha.
I
would like to talk about one other thing, and that is, how do you get new ideas?
This is
for
amusement for the students here, mostly. How do you get new ideas? That you do
by
analogy,
mostly, and in working with analogy you often make very great errors. It's a
great
game to try to look at the past, at an unscientific era, look at something
there, and
say
have we got the same thing now, and where is it? So I would like to amuse
myself
with
this game. First, we take witch doctors. The witch doctor says he knows how to
cure.
There are spirits inside which are trying to get out. You have to blow them out
with
an
egg, and so on. Put a snakeskin on and take quinine from the bark of a tree.
The
quinine
works. He doesn't know he's got the wrong theory of what happens. If I'm in the
tribe
and I'm sick, I go to the witch doctor. He knows more about it than anyone
else. But
I
keep trying to tell him he doesn't know what he's doing and that someday when
people
investigate
the thing freely and get free of all his complicated ideas they'll learn much
better
ways of doing it. Who are the witch doctors? Psychoanalysts and psychiatrists,
of
course.
If you look at all of the complicated ideas that they have developed in an
infinitesimal
amount of time, if you compare to any other of the sciences how long it
takes
to get one idea after the other, if you consider all the structures and
inventions and
complicated
things, the ids and the egos, the tensions and the forces, and the pushes and
the
pulls, I tell you they can't all be there. It's too much for one brain or a few
brains to
have
cooked up in such a short time. However, I remind you that if you're in the
tribe,
there's
nobody else to go to.
And
now I can have some more fun, and this is especially for the students of this
university.
I thought, among other people, of the Arabian scholars of science during the
Middle
Ages. They did a little bit of science themselves, yes, but they wrote
commentaries
on the great men that came before them. They wrote commentaries on
commentaries.
They described what each other wrote about each other. They just kept
writing
these commentaries. Writing commentaries is some kind of a disease of the
intellect.
Tradition is very important. And freedom of new ideas, new possibilities, are
disregarded
on the grounds that the way it was is better than anything I can do. I have no
right
to change this or to invent anything or to think of anything. Well, those are
your
English
professors. They are steeped in tradition, and they write commentaries. Of
course,
they also teach us, some of us, English. That's where the analogy breaks down.
Now
if we continue in the analogy here, we see that if they had a more enlightened
view
of
the world there would be a lot of interesting problems. Maybe, how many parts
of
speech
are there? Shall we invent another part of speech? Ooohhhhh!
Well,
then how about the vocabulary? Have we got too many words? No, no. We need
them
to express ideas. Have we got too few words? No. By some accident, of course,
through
the history of time, we happened to have developed the perfect combination of
words.
Now
let me get to a lower level still in this question. And that is, all the time
you hear the
question,
"why can't Johnny read?" And the answer is, because of the spelling.
The
Phoenicians,
2000, more, 3000, 4000 years ago, somewhere around there, were able to
figure
out from their language a scheme of describing the sounds with symbols. It was
very
simple. Each sound had a corresponding symbol, and each symbol, a corresponding
sound.
So that when you could see what the symbols' sounds were, you could see what
the words
were supposed to sound like. It's a marvelous invention. And in the period of
time
things have happened, and things have gotten out of whack in the English
language.
Why
can't we change the spelling? Who should do it if not the professors of
English? If
the
professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the
universities,
after all those years of study, still cannot spell "friend," I say to
them that
something's
the matter with the way you spell friend.
And
also, it can be argued, perhaps, if they wish, that it's a question of style
and beauty in
the
language, and that to make new words and new parts of speech might destroy
that.
But
they cannot argue that respelling the words would have anything to do with the
style.
There's
no form of art form or literary form, with the sole exception of crossword
puzzles,
in which the spelling makes a bit of difference to the style. And even
crossword
puzzles
can be made with a different spelling. And if it's not the English professors
that
do
it, and if we give them two years and nothing happens—and please don't invent
three
ways
of doing it, just one way, that everybody is used to—if we wait two or three
years
and
nothing happens, then we'll ask the philologists and the linguists and so on because
they
know how to do it. Did you know that they can write any language with an
alphabet
so
that you can read how it sounds in another language when you hear it? That's
really
something.
So they ought to be able to do it in English alone.
One
thing else I would leave to them. This does show, of course, that there are
great
dangers
in arguing from analogy. And these dangers should be pointed out. I don't have
time
to do that, and so I leave to your English professors the problem of pointing
out the
errors
of reasoning by analogy.
Now
there are a number of things, positive things, in which a scientific type of
reasoning
works,
and in which considerable progress has been made, and I've been picking out a
number
of the negative things. I want you to know I appreciate positive things. (I
also
appreciate
that I'm talking too long, so I will mention them only. But it's out of
proportion.
I wanted to spend more time.) There are a number of things in which rational
people
work very hard using methods which are quite sensible. And nobody's bothered
with
them, yet.
For
instance, people have arranged traffic systems and arranged the way the traffic
will
work
in other cities. Criminal detection is at a pretty high level of knowing how to
get
evidence,
how to judge evidence, how to control your emotions on the evidence, and so
on.
We
shouldn't only think of the technological inventions when we consider the
progress of
man.
There are an enormous number of most important non-technological inventions
which
mustn't be disregarded. Economic inventions in checks, for example, and banks,
things
of this nature. International financial arrangements, and so on, are marvelous
inventions.
And they are absolutely essential and represent a great advance. Systems of
accounting,
for example. Business accounting is a scientific process—I mean, is not a
scientific,
maybe, but a rational process. A system of law has been gradually developed.
There
is a system of laws and juries and judges. And although there are, of course,
many
faults
and flaws, and we must continue to work on them, I have great admiration for
that.
And
also the development of government organizations which have been going on
through
the years. There are a large number of problems which have been solved in
certain
countries in ways that we sometimes can understand and sometimes we cannot. I
remind
you of one, because it bothers me. And that has to do with the fact that the
government
really has the problem of the control of the forces. And most of the time
there
has been trouble because the strongest forces try to get control of the
government. It
is
marvelous, is it not, that someone with no force can control someone with
force. And
so
the difficulties in the Roman empire, with the Praetorian guards, seemed
insoluble,
because
they had more force than the Senate. Yet in our country we have a sort of
discipline
of the military, so that they never try to control the Senate directly. People
laugh
at the brass. They tease them all the time. No matter how many things we've
stuffed
down their throats, we civilians have still been able to control the military!
I think
that
the military's discipline in knowing what its place is in the government of the
United
States
is one of our great heritages and one of the very valuable things, and I don't
think
that
we sho uld keep pushing on them so hard until they get impatient and break out
from
their
self- imposed discipline. Don't misunderstand me. The military has a large
number
of
faults, like anything else. And the way they handled Mr. Anderson, I believe
his name
was,
the fellow who was supposed to have murdered somebody and so on, is an example
of
what would happen if they did take over.
Now,
if I look to the future, I should talk about the future development of
mechanics, the
possibilities
that will arise because we have almost free energy when we get to controlled
fusion.
And in the near future the developments in biology will make problems like no
one
has ever seen before. The very rapid developments of biology are going to cause
all
kinds
of very exciting problems. I haven't time to describe them, so I just refer you
to
Aldous
Huxley's book Brave New World, which gives some indication of the type of
problem
that future biology will involve itself in.
One
thing about the future I look to with favor. I think there are a lot of things
working in
the
right direction. In the first place, the fact that there are so many nations
and they hear
each
other, on account of the communications, even if they try to close their ears.
And so
there
are all kinds of opinions running around, and the net result is that it's hard
to keep
ideas
out. And some of the troubles that the Russians are having in holding down
people
like
Mr. Nakhrosov are a kind of trouble that I hope will continue to develop.
One
other point that I would like to take a moment or two to make a little bit more
in
detail
is this one: The problem of moral values and ethical judgments is one into
which
science
cannot enter, as I have already indicated, and which I don't know of any
particular
way to word. However, I see one possibility. There may be others, but I see one
possibility.
You see we need some kind of a mechanism, something like the trick we have
to
make an observation and believe it, a scheme for choosing moral values. Now in
the
days
of Galileo there were great arguments about what makes a body fall, all kinds
of
arguments
about the medium and the pushes and the pulls and so on. And what Galileo
did
was disregard all the arguments and decide if it fell and how fast it fell, and
just
describe
that. On that everybody could agree. And keep on studying in that direction, on
what
everyone can agree, and never mind the machinery and the theory underneath, as
long
as possible. And then gradually, with the accumulation of experience, you find
other
theories
underneath that are more satisfactory, perhaps. There were in the early days of
science
terrible arguments about, for instance, light.
Newton did some experiments which
showed
that a light beam separated and spread with a prism would never get separated
again.
Why did he have to argue with Hooke? He had to argue with Hooke because of the
theories
of the day about what light was like and so on. He wasn't arguing whether the
phenomenon
was right. Hooke took a prism and saw that it was true.
So
the question is whether it is possible to do something analogous (and work by
analogy)
with moral problems. I believe that it is not at all impossible that there be
agreements
on consequences, that we agree on the net result, but maybe not on the reason
we do
what we ought to do. That the argument that existed in the early days of the
Christians
as to, for instance, whether Jesus was of a substance like the Father or of the
same
substance as the Father, which when translated into the Greek became the argument
between
the Homoiousions and the Homoousians. Laugh, but people were hurt by that.
Reputations
were destroyed, people were killed, arguing whether it's the same or similar.
And
today we should learn that lesson and not have an argument as to the reason why
we
agree
if we agree.
I
therefore consider the Encyclical of Pope John XXIII, which I have read, to be
one of
the
most remarkable occurrences of our time and a great step to the future. I can
find no
better
expression of my beliefs of morality, of the duties and responsibilities of
mankind,
people
to other people, than is in that encyclical. I do not agree with some of the
machinery
which supports some of the ideas, that they spring from God, perhaps, I don't
personally
believe, or that some of these ideas are the natural consequence of ideas of
earlier
popes, in a natural and perfectly sensible way. I don't agree, and I will not
ridicule
it,
and I won't argue it. I agree with the responsibilities and with the duties
that the Pope
represents
as the responsibilities and the duties of people. And I recognize this
encyclical
as
the beginning, possibly, of a new future where we forget, perhaps, about the
theories
of
why we believe things as long as we ultimately in the end, as far as action is
concerned,
believe the same thing.
Thank you very much. I enjoyed myself.
