Raymond Skiles was a dumb guy. We both were. A dumb guy can be a state of mind, in most cases, as opposed to a quantitative or qualitative characteristic. The first question dumb guys must ask themselves is what are you going to do about it? Raymond and I both spent our early adult years trying to educate ourselves, in various ways, to try to catch up to those who were engaged in school. We shared so many characteristics at one point in our lives that some called us similar, but in our quest for more knowledge, we fell prey to some bizarre ideas. At one point on the timeline, our differences emerged. 

These differences that emerged can be explained in one simple scenario. If a used car salesman, skilled in the art of persuasion, approached us, we would both enter into that transaction believing that we were now smart enough to outdo a used car salesman at his game. Over time, I learned that I was not as intelligent as I always thought I was. There were no specific incidents that led to this clarity, but I eventually realized that I wasn’t half as bright or crafty as I thought I was. I realized that while I might now know more than the average person does about James Joyce, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the history of United States Presidents that knowledge doesn’t do me any good the moment a guy in polyester leapt out from behind his balloons saying, “What do I have to do to get you into a car today?” I developed a technique that works for me. I run away.

Raymond Skiles, on the other hand, knew a thing or two about the techniques used car salesmen employed on unsuspecting customers. By reading alternative websites that warn potential customers about the tactics used car salesmen employ, Raymond thought he knew them, and that he could use that knowledge to defeat them at their game. “You just have to know who they are,” he once informed me. “Once you know what he eats for breakfast, who he calls his family, and if he’s stepping out on his wife, you got him where he lives.”

Whereas I recognized the limits of my knowledge the moment I set foot on a car lot, Raymond considered it a challenge and a mark of his intelligence to outdo the salesman on his turf. I might overestimate the craftiness of the average used car salesman, but if they are half as skilled in the art of persuasion as I fear they are, they will learn who Raymond is and flip the focus of their negotiations to an arena Raymond finds more pleasing. They might even compliment the knowledge Raymond has accumulated on their industry. He will smile proudly, they will smile back, and they will take a more honest and direct approach in their negotiations with him, and Raymond will end up paying more for the car than he intended.

The time I spent around Raymond Skiles before and after our divergence taught me a number of things about the differences between unconventional thinking and following traditional or conventional norms, but the element that stuck with me was that unconventional thinking is far more seductive. The purveyors of unconventional information seduce us with the idea while “dumb guys” don’t have the base of knowledge those who attained and retained their traditional education, there is different knowledge. When we attain and retain that knowledge, the seeds of this seduction sprout among “dumb guys” when we decide that anyone who believes what “they told you” is a sucker. 

When we hear conventional knowledge, we consider the source and frame it accordingly, and then we fact check it. When we hear unconventional ideas, however, we have an instinctive, emotional attachment to them. Some part of us wants these ideas to be so true that we put our skepticism aside to embrace them, another part of us believes that unconventional knowledge is the result of healthy skepticism and therefore thoroughly vetted.

Former dumb guys learn over time, and through trial and error, that we must make a concerted effort to avoid falling prey to the allure of unconventional information. We want to have more knowledge, even if it is different and relatively inconsequential, but experience with alternative sources teaches us that quantity does not always equal quality. There are only so many facts on a given issue, and most of them fall into constructs that are comparatively boring. Alternative, unconventional avenues are so intriguing and sexy because they make us feel intelligent for arriving at a take on an issue that our peers haven’t considered before.

We’ve all witnessed the effect this can have on people. “Where did you hear that?” they ask us, after we drop what they consider a surprising amount of information on them, or “I’ve never heard that before.” The tone of their voice, and the slight bit of awe on their face, can prove so intoxicating to dumb guys who didn’t do well in school that we spend the rest of our lives chasing that dragon. Surprising information also allows purveyors of unconventional information to dismiss much of the traditional knowledge our peers attained. Some of these arguments are worth pursuing, but in my experience, most of them provide nothing more than provocative distractions and obfuscations from the core argument.

Finding out that many of my intoxicating, alternative theories, based on unconventional information were wrong, provided another break between Raymond’s way of thinking and mine, and I began placing more importance on being correct over provocative. Conventional information, reported by conventional outlets, is not always true either of course, but in my experience, their batting average is far superior to the alternative outlets. Some dumb guys don’t put as much value in this results-oriented approach, and we tend to place greater value in avoiding the word naïve, a label we attach to suckers who believe everything “they tell you”.

In our discussions on a wide variety of topics, Raymond and I also found many differences between how we arrive at a conclusion. We both seek primary source information, corroborating evidence, and perhaps some opinion pieces to bolster our conclusions. At some point, however, I am “easily satisfied” with my findings, whereas Raymond digs deeper. Raymond has a better feel for the “piece of crud” factor. Raymond knows when a subject is a piece of crud, and Raymond knows how a piece of crud thinks. He seeks explanations that detail the piece of crud’s motives in a way Raymond can understand. In Raymond’s search for absolute objectivity, he accidentally trips over a critical line between objectivity and subjectivity. He finds subjective speculation regarding the motives of the piece of crud that fit with his theories on the subject in question, and he uses them to develop theories that end up mostly autobiographical.

Those autobiographical details helped me explain the anatomy of Raymond’s thought process, and why he didn’t follow me down the more traditional trail. Raymond was born and raised with three sisters. For reasons endemic to her own upbringing, his mother always believed the girl. His dad was a generally passive man who generally deferred to the mother when the dysfunction of the day in the Skiles’ household arose, in part because she broke the man down for “always believing the boy”. Raymond’s father went along to get along, and he basically left Raymond to fend for himself. Though Raymond grew up saying he was telling the truth 100% of the time, and the law of averages suggest that he had to be right some of the times. Yet, no one ever believed him. This not only led Raymond to the lifelong notion that everyone was against him and plotting against him, as his sisters were, daily, but it led the adult Raymond Skiles to not only question every authority figure in his life, but he believed they were against him. Knowing this didn’t necessarily lead me to sympathize with Raymond, but it did help me understand his mindset better.

Alien Information

Police officers, working a beat, have a modus operandi (M.O.) they bring to their job, “Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.” This is the ideal mindset for a law enforcement official to have when investigating suspected criminal matters. Is this M.O. ideal for a consumer of news, an employee who learns information regarding their employer, or a friend listening to another friend tell a story?

A high profile media personality once suggested that skepticism of the press undermines their authority, but the vaunted role the press plays in our republic should require them to combat constant, intense scrutiny, skepticism, and cynicism that makes them uncomfortable. Members of the media should conduct themselves in a manner that welcomes that from their audience and defeats it with a performance that leads to a solid record they can point to whenever anyone questions them. Wouldn’t members of the media say the same thing about the subjects they cover?

There is a tipping point, however, when a healthy sense of skepticism creeps into a form of cynicism that believes “none of what I hear and half of what I see.” Such cynicism opens holes in the thought process that invites other information to fill it.

As someone with an incurable passion for the wide spectrum of thought regarding human behavior, and a peculiar crush on the extreme, I have had a number of friends introduce me to a wide array of alternative ideas. They introduce me to various definitions of human psychology through astrology, numerology, and witchcraft. Raymond Skiles introduced me to the idea that aliens from other planets could teach us a lot about ourselves.

Raymond provided me with a collection of transmitted (or transmuted) messages that these superior beings sent to us. As I read through the information he found, I found that the theme of these messages was that the bullet points of my philosophy were wrong. I found them somewhat humorous, but before I could entirely dismiss them, I learned that Raymond considered these messages proof that I was wrong. Although he didn’t say this exactly, the import of his responses was that he could not understand how I could argue against statements made by superior life forms.

The first question this skeptic would love to ask authors of human psychology, by way of alien scripture, is why do we assume that aliens from another planet are of a superior intellect? The collective thought, in certain quarters of human authority, suggests that not only is there intelligent life out there, but they’re more intelligent than earthlings can conceive. Even though we have no concrete proof that life exists outside our planet, at this point in our explorations of space, it would be foolish to think that the only lifeforms in the vast universe are those that live on Earth. If other lifeforms exist, however, we don’t know what form they take. (We assume they are humanoid in form and that they’re here for our water, but if they’re intelligent beyond our comprehension why haven’t they been able to develop a synthetic substitute for water, or an artificial way to preserve or increase their supply?) We also don’t know what concerns alien life forms have, or how they think, but we assume that all creatures share the same concerns. The one crucial nugget of information missing in these theories is that we know less than nothing about aliens. If we had some substantial proof that they exist, we could say we know nothing about them, but we don’t even know if they exist yet. With that in mind, any theories of alien intellectual superiority can only be rooted in the human inferiority complex.

What would be the point of worshiping a deity who had a level of intelligence equal to our own, and what would be the point of reporting on the transmissions from space if the aliens were not of a superior intellect who could teach us a lot about our way of life? My takeaway from this friend’s collection of transmitted (or transmuted) messages was that most of the alien transmissions, submitted for the reader’s pleasure, have an agenda that suspiciously aligns with the author of the work.

The next time an alien transmits a message that suggests humans are of equal or superior intellect, “We are in awe of the capabilities of your iPhone, and we have not found a way of replicating that technology in our labs,” will be the first time I take an alien transmission seriously. The next time an alien transmits a message that has something to do with a compliment regarding human technology in agricultural techniques, “We find the techniques developed by Monsanto awe-inspiring”, will be the first time I re-read an author’s interpretation of an alien transmission. One would think that a complex being would know that the best way to persuade another being is to surround their criticisms with some compliments. Even if they have no emotions, in the manner most sci-fi movies depict them, it would only be logical for them to suggest that our life form managed to get some things right. What readers receive from aliens, instead, are warnings about our dystopian nature that suspiciously align with human politics.

What If?

“Your problem is you have no room for if,” Raymond told me one day. “Numerous wonderful and beautiful intellectuals in all fields have brought us where we are today by asking what if questions, yet you put a big old lid on if, lock it up, and throw away the key.”

“I’ve cleared an entire warehouse out for if,” I said. “Give me an if! How about I give you an if?” I continued. “What if I told you that there was incontrovertible proof that your favorite conspiracy theory was wrong? Let’s say they discovered previously unknown security tape that showed your favorite victim of the justice system pulling the trigger. I’m not saying he’s guilty, but have you ever considered that mind-blowing prospect before?”

Raymond’s characterization of me was spot on in the sense that I was locked in on what I considered correct, and I locked out the what if scenarios that were impossible to prove either way. My divergence from Raymond began as a result of the subjective speculation arguments. Guy A introduced scenario A, Girl A countered with scenario B, and we all worked our way through the alphabet, until we arrived nowhere. The scene was similar to comedic exchanges that occur between actors in sitcoms. That beat involves players arguing a little, then escalating, until the point of reason steps in and calls them children, and we all laugh. I became that point of reason when I recovered from my dumb guy’s disease, but I realized that the point of reason doesn’t get the laugh. Their role in the sitcom is to keep the dialog snappy and entertaining, because we don’t watch sitcoms to receive answers to life’s mysteries. We just want to laugh.    

The ifs and what ifs of unconventional television shows on alien abductions are so interesting that they’re entertaining, and the egghead who steps in and drops his math and science is a Debby Downer. Those who introduce the facts, figures, and hard evidence are party poopers, no fun, and they can flatten an intrigued smile out “Just like that.” Speculative thinkers have so much invested in this line of thought that we realize we’re not going to make any friends saying, “That’s just wrong.” Our instinct, when someone argues with our findings is to pound the point home with more facts and figures, which further alienates our friends. At some point in this never-ending and unwinnable wars, we realize it’s less about being right and wrong and more about fighting against the man, the status quo, and believing that everything “they” taught us was wrong. 

 

When we try to caution them, however, they tell us that they’ve done massive amounts of research on this subject, and they say, “Most people don’t know the truth. I know I didn’t,” we dumb guys say before launching into the speculative theories we learned after doing massive amounts of research on this topic. “I’ll send you the URL on the site. It’s from a credentialed expert who spent decades in the field and he’s just now revealing what he saw.”

When we read the books, listen to the podcasts, and go to the sites, we realize there are enough outlets of information out there now to feed the confirmation bias of any researcher. Decent writers have ideas about the world, some are insightful and meaningful, and some are very creative writers. Anyone who has attempted the art of creative writing knows that the art of persuasion involves manipulating readers into believing that they’ve arrived at the central point themselves, before they punctuate it. If the writer nails it, the reader might be persuaded to believe that the idea is so their’s now that they develop some personal intimacy for it. 

Once they arrive at the point that the idea is theirs, they evaluate “their” ideas in a manner similar to the approach a fan takes to an athlete. If a fan “knows” that an athlete is a quality player on the fan’s team, they develop a special bond with that athlete that is difficult to shake. Even if that athlete proves to underperform for years, that fan’s relationship will continue. Disciples of alternative knowledge have a similar relationship to purveyors of such information, as they often fail to focus on results in a similar manner. How many of their favorite outlets provide straight, verifiable points that pass peer review? How many of them can point to a verifiable track record of their assertions, as opposed to providing the anecdotal evidence that they promote? How many of their messages devolve into speculation regarding motives that no one can refute? How many of us are skeptical enough of the information that seems so right it has to be true?

Those of us who ascribed to unconventional thoughts at one point in our lives began to spot these plot holes for what they were, and we came to the uncomfortable conclusion that just because the information we hear is unconventional, alternative, and “what your father doesn’t want you to know” does not mean that they’re correct. 

I no longer buy a book of unconventional thinking, or befriend an unconventional thinker, with the hope of having them change my mind on a subject. If their ideas persuade me to change my mind, that’s gravy, but I have learned that such thoughts are often best used to challenge my current worldview, and/or bolster my arguments as I attempt to defeat them. I do not then write this with the intent of changing anyone else’s mind. I do enjoy, however, taking the conventional standpoint and melding it with the unconventional to arrive at what I consider a hybrid of the truth, until I can use that to arrive at the truth.

FOBF: The Fear of Being Foolish

Most people hate being wrong, but we have to be willing to concede that we’re going to be wrong some of the times. What we cannot abide is the idea that we might be wrong so often that somebody will consider us a fool. How many rhetorical devices, tactics, and persuasive techniques have we developed over the years to avoid being called a fool? One thing we know is that people who believe in nouns (people, places, and things) are more vulnerable to this charge, and we seek foolproof status by believing in nothing, but that foolproof status comes with strings, as most people who believe in nothing are more vulnerable to believing everything that isn’t something. Alternative thoughts and their unconventional thinking are rarely shown to be substantially incorrect, so unconventional thinkers are shielded against ever being called a fool. On the off chance that they are incorrect, they might make slight adjustments in their presentation to incorporate the newfound facts, but most of them just move on.

After an unusually heated argument, I told Raymond Skiles, “This isn’t a movie. You’re not going to prove to be the fearless prophet of doom who proves correct, and I am not the denier, played by a fat actor, who refuses to see the truth.” 

“If you think I’m crazy,” Raymond said, “You should hear my parents. They’re prophets of doom”

Raymond informed us that when the millennium neared, they could be seen handing out pamphlets and grain pellets at their church. They believed something would happen on 9/9/99, and when it didn’t, they moved onto the millennium scare. When nothing scary happened on 1/1/2000, they suggested that we all miscalculated the Aztec calendar, and that the day of doom awaited us sometime in the near future. He said they listed a specific date, based on specific criteria, but he didn’t remember the exact date, because he knew they would just move on after that date passed. He knew they would just move onto the next date of doom to some day in the all too near future.

“They just move on?” we asked Raymond.  

“They do,” he said with a smile. “They just move on to the next one.”   

“So, when the rest of us are proven wrong, we have to deal with the ramifications that come our way, but when your parents are wrong, they just move onto the next conspiracy theory? How do they do that?”

“They just do,” Raymond said.

We knew how much Raymond loved his parents, so it was a little surprising to see him lay them out like that, but we figured that it bolstered his “if you think I’m crazy, you should hear my parents” defense. We’ve all faced similar but different charges, but we never found introducing an exaggeration of this sort to thwart a characterization particularly effective. The listener might think, maybe you’re not as crazy as your parents, but you’re still crazy.

This “crazy crutch” often reveals itself among experts in alternative knowledge. When we visit expert A, we’ll call him Ted, we learn of Ted’s experiences with the crazy firsthand experience, and we believe him until we meet expert B, Donny. Donny absolutely lays Ted out, and he basically establishes his expert status on the faults of Ted’s testimony. When we meet Kyle, however, we learn that not only is Ted not a credible source, but Donny isn’t either. The only true expert in this field is Kyle. 

We don’t know what drives common, every day people to partake in doom-saying, but it probably has something to do with the idea that the track record of alternative, unconventional information is somehow immune to criticism. It is foolproof, because the alternative is believing in what the ever elusive “they” tell you.

If in the course of Raymond’s parents trying to warn us about a current date of doom in the all too near future, we were to call them out on their track record, they might turn the tables on us, “How can you be so sure that it won’t happen this time?” 

We can’t be sure, of course, because we are insecure beings who falter in the face of certitude. We’ve also watched too many movies where no one believed the sexy actor who knew something no one else in the production did, and we don’t want to be the overweight, unattractive character actor who didn’t believe them. They frame their questions in a probing, “Who do you think you are?” manner that asks us how many times we’ve been wrong before, and if we’re willing to wager that we know more about this than their list of experts do.

Dumb guys, like Raymond and I, who fell prey to believing far too many alternative, unconventional, and conspiracy theories were so relieved to read some psychologists write that we’re not immune to believing in such things, and we must continually make concerted efforts to avoid falling prey to their provocative and entertaining siren call. I don’t care how many letters you have listed after your name, you still susceptible to dumb guy’s disease and the effort to prove you’re not as dumb as we think you are. When a creative and persuasive writer writes up a siren call that is so alluring that we must proactively keep our susceptibility in the “off” position, it lends credence to the “shame on you for trying to fool me” portion of the idiom, but as the psychologists state we need to remain in that “off” position to avoid it from doubling back to the “shame on me” tail end of that idiom. Though the psychologists’ conclusions do not absolve us of the idea that we once believed a wide variety of crazy theories and loony conspiracy theories, we do find some comfort in numbers.

Maintaining this “off” position is not easy, and it is not our intent to suggest that we woke up one day deciding that we were no longer going to believe alternative ideas loaded with unconventional information that can lead to conspiracy theories. It isn’t any easier for us to avoid their interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking theories, but we put forth constant and diligent effort to defeat our susceptibility in this arena. Tune out, turn off, and defeat is the credo we use anytime we encounter sexy, enticing pieces that lead to emotional reactions. Current and future stories such as those are as difficult to ignore as all the previous ones were, but after mentally charting all of their hypothetical guesses, based on alternative thinking that many considered unconventional, we were finally able to break the leash.