I chose the title Fake Physics to echo the "fake news" that everyone was talking about at the time, but it's very much about fakery for the purposes of entertainment rather than deception. The scope is made clearer in the book's subtitle, which is "Spoofs, Hoaxes and Fictitious Science". In the latter category are science-fictional creations ranging from the carefully explained (but entirely made-up) Blackett-Dirac equations of James Blish's Cities in Flight novels to the throwaway technobabble - "subspace field stress" and the like - of Star Trek.
As for hoaxes - in the world of academic physics, their most common purpose is to catch out gullible editors while amusing fellow scientists. These include such things as littering papers with references to popular culture from Star Wars to Rick and Morty, or using an AI-style computer program to generate convincing-looking technical jargon. As an example of the latter, specially created for this blog post, I used an online tool called MathGen to produce a paper on abstract mathematics by Charles Fort and H. P. Lovecraft. The result is 9 pages long, highly academic-looking and incomprehensible in a thoroughly realistic way. I won't inflict the whole thing on you, but I'll attach a screenshot of the opening to the bottom of this post.
Perhaps the most amusing items in Fake Physics are the numerous scientific spoofs, whether done specifically for April Fools' Day or not. These include an entire book called Mathematical Modelling of Zombies, published by the University of Ottawa Press in 2012 and featuring chapters with titles like "When Humans Strike Back: Adaptive Strategies for Zombie Attacks" and "An Evolvable Linear Representation for Simulating Government Policy in Zombie Outbreaks".
Even the most upmarket journals aren't above printing the occasional April Fool piece. A case in point is Nature, which Wikipedia describes as "one of the world's most-read and most prestigious academic journals". In April 2015 it printed a short article called "Here Be Dragons", which begins as follows:
Emerging evidence indicates that dragons can no longer be dismissed as creatures of legend and fantasy, and that anthropogenic effects on the world's climate may inadvertently be paving the way for the resurgence of these beasts.The authors back up their claim with a graph - based on genuine, unaltered statistical data - showing a definite correlation between global temperature and the occurrence of dragons in fiction. This is an example of another category of "fakes" discussed in the book - ones that use valid data, but deliberately misinterpret it to humorous effect. There's a whole website devoted to such things - Tyler Viglen's Spurious Correlations - which is packed with bizarre relationships that his software has found while trawling through a vast database of statistical data. Here's an example, showing an indisputable correlation between UFO sightings in Massachusetts between 2011 and 2021, and patents granted to the Sony Corporation over the same period:
Despite the website's name, correlations like this aren't "spurious" - they're perfectly real. Where the error arises is in assuming (as is common among conspiracy theorists, for example) that, if two quantities are correlated, there must be a cause-and-effect relationship between them. As Viglen's strapline puts it, "correlation is not causation". If you go to the page where I found that graph, he gives a detailed explanation of what's shown, where the data came from, and what can and can't be deduced from it. You'll also notice that, just below the graph, he seems to imply that he's in the process of developing an AI that can fabricate its own explanations for all these correlations!
Finally, before I forget, here's the snippet from that maths paper by Fort and Lovecraft that I promised:
15 comments:
Fakery for the purpose of entertainment? Maybe that's how Von Daniken got started? Or was it just love of money? Do you think these so-called 'reality' shows about ghosts and the paranormal fall into this category, AM, or do the people involved in such trash actually believe in it?
Really you're asking two different questions there, Kid! As regards my definition of "fake for the purposes of entertainment", I was encompassing things like sci-fi movies and April Fool jokes, where the creator/perpetrator deliberately makes up some fancy-sounding scientific theory in the full expectation that the audience won't take it seriously. So the answer to the first part of your question is no, the majority of paranormal-themed TV shows don't fall into this category (with a few notable exceptions, such as the BBC's notorious Ghostwatch spoof, featuring Michael Parkinson and first shown at Halloween in 1992).
But right at the start of the Fake Physics book, I explained that (in order to focus on the stuff I was most interested in), there are two types of "fake" that are completely omitted. I mentioned one of these in the post above - namely frauds designed to deceive. In these cases, the originator knows it's a fake, but hopes the audience won't realise this. The other omission is essentially the mirror-image of this, where the originator sincerely believes their theory but readers may suspect it's just pseudoscience. I'd say most of the shows you're talking about fall into one of these two categories, so the answer to your question about whether they believe it would be "no" in the first case (fraud) or "yes" in the latter (pseudoscience).
Two questions in one sentence, AM? Shucks, I'm even more talented than I gave myself credit for. Well done me. (Or are they two sides of the same coin?) Where's CJ? He should've been here by now.
Sorry Kid, I suppose what I really meant was that I had to give a two-part answer, first in the context of what I was writing about in the main post, and then to address the point you were actually making, which was raising a different (but equally interesting) issue. The post is really a quick summary of a book I wrote, which is part of a larger series from Springer dealing with science fictional science, so that's essentially what I meant by "fake physics for the purpose of entertainment". Because the title echoes "Fake News", where the intention is to deceive people through misinformation, I mentioned it in passing - but to be honest, in the case of physics (warp drives, antigravity, time travel etc) that kind of deliberate deception is almost non-existent. What's far more common, although I totally forgot to mention it in the post, is "unintentional fakery", where some crackpot inventor honestly believes in their pet theory. I think that's much closer to the sort of thing you were thinking of with your question about "do they actually believe it". Anyway, I was kicking myself for not having mentioned this aspect in the main post, and was pleased your question gave me the chance to clarify it (which I've now just done a second time!).
I suspect there's likely to be a mix in whatever aspect of the subject. Some writers will believe what they say, others won't, some will be out-and-out frauds, others will be deceiving themselves. Some may even come to believe what they at first knew was a load of old tosh. The human mind has an amazing capacity for self-deception, I've found. What the percentages of that mix is, though, is probably beyond anyone's ability to discern.
(Where are you, CJ?)
Thanks Kid - all good points. The ones in your first paragraph, I mean. As for the second para, I don't want anyone to feel they have to comment on a blog post of mine if there's nothing they feel they want to add to it. In fact, it panders to my self-delusion that everything I write is perfect first time (though, of course, you're always very helpful in demolishing that particular illusion, Kid).
I live to be of service, AM. (I think all blog writers suffer from that illusion/delusion - I know I do.)
I've been reading yours and Andrew's interesting comments, Kid, but I've nothing to add on the subject. However as you want me to say something I'll just tell Andrew that the final episode of the Dr Who story 'The War Games' (which he recently mentioned on Crivens) is my earliest TV memory - I was only three at the time but the scene where the Doctor is allowed to choose his next face has stuck in my mind through all the following decades. I watched that episode recently on BBC iplayer and, lo and behold, Patrick Troughton's Doctor didn't actually choose Jon Pertwee's face after all!
Thanks Colin, glad to see you're following this thread - although as I said, I don't want anyone to feel under pressure to contribute. I'm still waiting for Blogger to fully enter the social media age, with a "like" button against posts and comments, as well as the option to reply in emojis rather than words. That way people who don't have the time or inspiration to comment fully could still show their appreciation or amusement (I'm thinking of myself in relation to many of Kid's posts on his own blog, as much as anything else here).
That's interesting about The War Games, though it isn't actually the serial I was referring to earlier, which was The War Machines from 1966. If you haven't seen it, it's a really good story about an AI (as we'd call it now) rebelling against its creators.
Andrew, I really should watch some of the Dr Who stories from the '60s. When I've watched old episodes on BBC iplayer I stick with the Pertwee/Tom Baker era because those are the ones I remember.
Yes, I'm sure most people prefer the episodes from whatever their younger years happened to be, Colin. In my case, I have the fondest memories of the 3rd doctor. As I get older, I get increasingly confused about what I've done even quite recently, so I've taken to making lists of everything. So I can tell you with confidence that, since the BBC put all the surviving episodes online last year, I've watched the following number of serials from each incarnation: Hartnell 3, Troughton 4, Pertwee 14, T Baker 6, Davison 5, C Baker 3, McCoy 5. And need I add, nothing after that!
Andrew, there was a programme on Radio 4 this morning about the benefits of olive oil which includes helping prevent memory loss and even dementia. These findings come from proper academic research and not just some quack theory. You're still only 66 so if you started taking olive oil now it could be of great benefit in the future. Apparently you need to take at least two tablespoons per day to get the full benefit, either with food or straight from the bottle I suppose. Anyway I thought I'd pass on this tip as I know you're concerned about losing your memory.
Thanks Colin, that's useful to know. I just looked at a few web pages and it does seem that olive oil has benefits for memory and several other aspects of health. So I'll definitely give it a try - thanks for the suggestion. But I don't want to give the impression that I'm worried about all aspects of my memory. I've still got very good (and fast) recall of facts and words etc, which is one of the reasons I find my work as a non-fiction writer so easy. The only problem is that a smaller and smaller fraction of everything I do gets committed to memory in the first place. So, for example, I can often remember novels I read 15 years ago more clearly than ones I read 6 months ago - and ditto for movies, music, video games, comics etc. That's why I've taken to making lists of everything in Excel!
As a quick postscript to the above - one thing I do tend to remember pretty well is things I've written myself. Soon after posting the previous comment, I got a commission from a magazine editor for an identical feature to one I'd done for him two years ago. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut so I could have recycled the same thing, but I'm much too conscientious for that! So now it's going to be on a similar but not identical topic!
I think I'll be buying a bottle of olive oil (as long as Popeye doesn't mind) tomorrow myself, CJ & AM, 'cos I know my memory is deteriorating at an ever-alarming rate. Now what did I come in here for?
Post a Comment