How to predict the future with dreams

There are two ways:

Firstly: Make the prediction after the event has happened.

Let's go over the first way, using an imaginary example of a dream from Richard Wiseman's excellent book Paranormality to illustrate the point:

"At two o'clock in the morning you are right in the middle of a rather sinister dream in which you are driving along a dark country lane. Eric Chuggers, your all-time favourite rock star is sitting in the passenger seat, and the two of you are chatting easily. Suddenly a giant purple frog jumps out in front of the car, you swerve to avoid the frog but go off the road and hit a tree. However, tonight your cat feels a bit peckish and decides to pester you for food. As she jumps onto the bed you wake up from the dream with a vague memory of Eric Chuggers, a giant purple frog, a tree and impending death."

In a couple of days time you wake to the news that Eric Chuggers was driving through the city, swerved to avoid a car, and hit a lamp post. You realise that your dream was a prediction of the future!

However, this doesn't stack up on closer inspection. Firstly, in the dream, Eric is not driving, but in the passenger seat; it's a dark country lane, not the city; there is no purple frog; Eric slams into a lamppost and not a tree.

However, the dream gets twisted as a prophecy, given that all of the incidents are broadly similar. Of course, the other dreams that you have had that week are forgotten. And so it is for most dreams - the majority go forgotten, as real life events don't trigger our memory of them.

So it is with "true" tales of prophecy - it's not uncommon to see, after the fact, people coming forward with how they predicted a catastrophic event, because they had this or that dream that if you squint your eyes, kinda matches the real life events.

I am unaware of any cases of a catastrophe being avoided because someone acted on their prophetic dream to stop the disaster occurring.

The second way, which is essentially the same as the first: wait. It's a bit like the first, but in this case you have a dream in which you are convinced that a life altering situation is going to happen.

Let's say you have a vivid dream of some life changing event happening when you are 32 years old. Maybe this will be a good thing - you will meet the partner of your dreams. Maybe it's a bad thing and you will die.

You have this dream as a child, and you really remember it, you're convinced that you have had a prediction of the future. Your life carries on, and you hand to 32 as a special number. You've primed yourself already for spotting things that happen based around this number.

Maybe you marry the partner of your dreams, but you're actually 29. However, you don't think any less of your premonition - it turns out you were spot on, because he lived at number 66 when you first me, which, is 32 x 3. You got married three years before you were 32, and that's a hit for your premonition!

Maybe you marry the partner of your dreams, but you're actually 29. However, you don't think any less of your premonition - it turns out you were spot on, because if you add the day, month and year of when you get married it's 23, which is 32 backwards! Granted it's 3 years earlier than you thought, but 32 is there if you look closely enough.

Of course, maybe the prophecy was your death, and you are convinced that you will meet your end at 32. However, you're in the 32nd week of your pregnancy, it's not been going well, and now, the 32 years has become 32 weeks, and the impending doom has transferred from yourself to your unborn child. Harrowing stuff, and entirely understandable. However, had these issues arisen in the 34th week you may not have thought anything of it.

It's a lot like the "27 club" - whereby famous and talented muscians die too soon, at the age of 27 - Amy Winehouse being a recent example, who joins the likes of Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix,  and Jim Morrison. Of course, this club becomes self selecting. Any musician who dies at 27 enters it.

Nobody thought of the 27 club this year when we sadly lost David Bowie, Glenn Frey or the tragic deaths of Viola Beach reported today.

As soon as you become fixated on a particular feature of a dream, it is bound to crop up at some point in your life. Of course, this is not because your dream was prophetic. The details of the dream have long been forgotten, and all that is left is a fixation on a particular feature or two.

Again, from Paranormality Wiseman writes that sleep scientists are finding out that the majority of dreams tend to be unpleasant ones. This means that most "prophetic" dreams will involve something horrid.

None of these dreams, of course, translates to the real world, unless you make them, after the event, and with a little tweaking along the way.

If you're worried about your dreams, that's understandable, they can impact on how you feel.

But dreams are no more prophetic than tea leaves - you'll only see what you want to see. This is why it's best to forget your prophetic dreams- after all, they're more likely to be horrid than not, and who wants to see that?

There's no convincing a Moon Landing Hoaxer...

There was a great talk at Chichester Skeptics in the Pub on Tuesday from Dan Parry, author of Moon Shot.

A gentleman came who did not believe that the Moon landings had happened, and was trying to persuade us of that "fact". His biggest issue was that, so he said, the door of the lunar lander was too small for the pressurised space suit of the astronauts to fit through. I hadn't heard this argument before. I explained to him (alas, I forget his name) that this seemed like a trivial issue to me, given the huge weight of evidence that shows they did get there. Whilst I couldn't explain exactly how they got through, based on the measurements he stated, I said that it's pretty easy to image things being squeezed through tight spots it happens all the time.

I then added that photos now existed of the landing sites, and that, for me, to believe the moon landings were faked, I'd love to know how all the left over bits ended up on the Moon. He was unaware of these photos, and so I said I'd sign post him to them (this post will be shared via the ChiSkeptics twitter feed), here they are:

Apollo 11:

Apollo 12:

Apollo 14:

Apollo 15:

Apollo 16:

Apollo 17:

I then asked him what it would take for him to accept the moon landings. He told me that the photos probably wouldn't be enough, and that he would always have his doubts, because a grain of truth can't be hidden with a mountain of lies.

When debating those into conspiracy theories, alternative medicine or other pseudoscience, it can be quite useful to see if there could exist anything that would make the other change their mind. If there isn't, well, their mind can't be changed then there is no point in the debate, and you might just as well listen to their differing opinions.

It's also a good question to ask yourself - what evidence would you need to change your mind about your beliefs?

UPDATE: The guy in question at a subsequent Skeptics in the Pub told me these photos were rubbish, and as evidence used the resolution available on Google Street View as evidence. As the title says, there's no convincing a Moon Landing Hoaxer.

Great tool for breaking the online "filter bubble"

Here's a great little tool for skeptics:

rbutr

It links articles together that offer differing points of view. You can browse these, or you can join the community and actively link websites together.

If you do this, and download the plug in, the rbutr icon handily let's you see if anyone has had a rebuttal to an article:

Anyone is free to link their opposing opinion to any other article - this is a useful tool for breaking the "filter bubble". Even if you're comfortable reading your usual articles on whatever, this lets you read opposing view points. Or, as they say:

"rbutr’s ultimate goal is to provide an easy way out of the confirmation bias bubble we all subconsciously construct around ourselves, where we are only ever presented claims and beliefs with which we already agree."

However, for this to work, it has to have people to link articles together (until a genius comes up with an automated process). Without the people doing this, the tool will not work.

I hadn't realised it existed, until it sent some traffic my way, because someone had linked Sean Thomas' "Are atheists mentally ill?" article to my reply.

Without people doing this, it won't work. So, join up, link articles, especially if you suffer SIWOTI syndrome, and use a personal blog to help alleviate this.

Fact checking "I fucking love science"

I saw this in my timeline:

As with all such things, I thought: "Is that true?" Being a sceptic doesn't mean reserving your scepticism to alternative medicine, religion and superstition etc. It means, at least as far as I see it, questioning everything - from advertsing claims to random internet forwards.

Granted, I can't help escape certain biases of my brain, but I do my best. Often, I can't find out if something is true or not, as I don't have the time. Fortunately though, it's the summer holidays, so I have the time (though I really should be cleaning the kitchen) to find out. So, with some rough and ready back of the envelope calculations, let's see how valid the above is!

These are useful to see if you're in the right sort of area with right or wrong, but, as I expect we will see, aren't terrifically accurate. I'm blogging as I do the calculations...

First bullet point: For this I also wondered "Support two humans, for how long?"

We'll assume a single tree does absorb 22.7kg/year of carbon dioxide. Why? Well, what's a standard tree? Hard to define. So we'll give them that.

The simple equation for photosynthesis (how a plant turns carbon dioxide into sugar, so it can grow etc) is:

carbon dioxide  +   water  ------- >  glucose  +   oxygen

It takes six molecules of carbon dioxide and six molecules of water to make one molecule of glucose and six molecules of oxygen. (I'd add the chemical symbol formula, but can't see how to do subscripts).

So for every carbon dioxide molecule absorbed, one molecule of oxygen is released.

If it absorbs 22.7kg of carbon dioxide, then it must release 16.51kg of oxygen in that time. This is because the relative atomic mass of carbon dioxide is 44, and for oxygen 32.

32/44*22.7 = 16.51

So, in a year, a tree will release 16.51kg of oxygen.

How much oxygen do we need each year?

At rest, humans need to breathe in about 5 - 8 litres of air a minute. It can increase to 40 - 60 litres of air during exercise. Let's just assume we have a sedentary person who's always at rest.

So, in a day, our hypothetical person needs 7,200 to 11,520 litres of air, if they stay entirely at rest.

One litre of air is about 21% oxygen, and in total weighs about 1.286g (at standard atmospheric pressure). So one litre of air contains 0.286g of oxygen.

So that means, in a day, someone at rest needs 2.05 to 3.29kg of oxygen a day.

So 16.51kg of oxygen in a year provides 8.05 to 5.01 man days of oxygen.

So, in a year, if two people stayed entirely at rest, a mature tree will provide enough oxygen to keep them going for at least two and a bit days.

Second bullet point:

The average car release 149g/km of carbon dioxide.

So it's saying an acre of tree consumes 149*41483 = 6181kg of carbon dioxide.

This means it will release 4495kg of oxygen.

We know (from above) that 16.51 kg of oxygen is, at best enough to keep one person going for eight days. So about 2kg of oxygen is about one man day.

So 4495kg of oxygen is enough for about 2192 man days of oxygen.

If we divide that by 18, that's 121.8 days. So actually, according to their figures, one acre is enough to keep 18 people going for about 3 months at best.

So that second bullet point isn't true, given the figures they've used. Remember, these calculations aren't the most accurate, but we are not even close to having an acre of trees produce enough oxygen for 18 people to live for a year. And that's even if those 18 people sat around doing nothing - not even planting more trees!

Of course, I have made the assumption that one acre of trees does indeed take up the amount of carbon dioxide released by a car that's travelled 26,000 miles.

Third bullet point: We're not told how long the tree takes to produce the oxygen. So, it's got to be true, assuming the tree doesn't die.

So, why have I just gone ahead an gone sceptic on a Facebook post that's not doing any harm, and is promoting a good message (I am a big fan of trees and plants in general!)?

Trees are important - but they're important enough that we don't have to make stuff up.

It's not as if the real figures are hard to find, this report took me 3 minutes to find using google:

Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 2007. 33(3):220–226.
Oxygen Production by Urban Trees in the United States
David J. Nowak, Robert Hoehn, and Daniel E. Crane

"A commonly cited statement is an acre of trees (100% tree canopy) can provide enough
oxygen for 18 people (e.g., American Forests 2006; TreePeople 2006), but based on this study, this estimate appears to be high by at least a factor of two. The number is more on the order of eight people per acre of tree cover (100% tree canopy)."

Trees are important, but let's make sure people know how important they really are.


UPDATE: It's been pointed out this post makes it look like I'm underselling plants. Which is a bad thing to do, let's not forget they (in no particular order, and by no means complete):

Act as carbon sinks; provide habitats for wildlife; hold soil together and help prevent erosion; provide sustainable building materials; can help clear areas of pollutants and contaminants; reduce stress.

My take home message, which I didn't make clear is that: when you have something awesome, you don't need to oversell it or make stuff up to extol its virtues.

UPDATE 2: Another thing I should have mentioned: When we breath in, we don't actually use all of the oxygen inhaled. As has been pointed out below, exhaled air is 16% oxygen, whereas inhaled air is 21% oxygen. So we're only using about 23.8% of the oxygen we breath in. So, this obviously affects the calculations. One should expect the answer to the first bullet point to be four times higher. But it is not.

"If oxygen levels are below 16% at atmospheric pressure most people faint due to hypoxia. If oxygen levels fall below 11% individuals may die by suffocation. The amount of oxygen in the air depends on its partial pressure - inhaling pressurized gas while scuba diving which is below 16% oxygen does not cause hypoxia (because the air is pressurized)."

So actually, we can only use about half of the oxygen we breath in. So this would double the man days of oxygen. Of course, this then also assumes that the trees and our people are in a sealed environment - otherwise we could talk about all the oxygen being used, and another source of oxygen to supply that which is used in the body, but which is needed so the lungs can function. But then it all starts to get more complicated, and, as I said at the start,  these were just back of the envelope calculations, I didn't want to get bogged down - it was just to see if we were in the right ball park figure. And we weren't.

Given I was being quite liberal with the assumption that the people are entirely at rest, I was happy to just leave out this line of thinking as it seemed to complicated things, but I guess I was wrong.

Atheism+

Agnostics, Atheists, New Atheists, Gnu Atheists, Secular Humanists, Apatheists, Secularists, Secular Humanists, Anti Theists, Freethinkers.

There are a lot of labels given to people who don't believe in god(s). A lot of it comes down to semantics - by some people's definition, I'd be an agnostic (as would Richard Dawkins). I'm just going to use atheist from here on in though...

To me though atheism's not that important - I became an atheist by myself, the more I though about religion, the more atheism made sense. I only started proactively speaking out about it after reading books like the God Delusion which successfully argued (to me) that religion is, on balance, a bad thing for society. People are free to believe what they like - so long as it's not going to be detrimental to others.

It wasn't just me that became more vocal about atheism though - more books, blogs and media airtime was given to the subject. Groups of atheists got together online and IRL, and unsurprisingly, shared interests in skepticism, science and such.

Turns out though, that when you have a bunch of people who have strong views; prize independence of thought; and like to be vocal about it, you end up with a wide range of interests and views on what needs to be done. Hence the plethora of labels for atheists - people come to it for different reasons, have different goals, and different values about what's important. Who knew?

Well, there's a new name tag in town: Atheism+

"We are…
 Atheists plus we care about social justice,
 Atheists plus we support women’s rights,
 Atheists plus we protest racism,
 Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia,
 Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism."

I like it - as I said before, atheism wasn't important. It was only when I realised that religion is on the whole a bad thing that I started to speak out and do stuff about my atheism. To quote a famous vigilante "It's not who I am underneath. It's what I do that defines me".

It's a shame though that this new wave of atheist action has grown out of the flaming misogyny from too many in the wider atheist community. I've barely touched on the issue myself, mostly because I've not had time to deal with the vindictiveness that comes from when you do. I wish I did have the time - one can only stop things like this by speaking out. So I doubt I'll have the time to be actively involved in Atheism+, much as I'd like to. But I wish them luck.

Some may say Atheism+ is just the same as Secular Humanism - may be it is? But who cares - it's what they do that will define them.

Cheltenham SITP - Tues 30th

Cheltenham SITP is properly up and running! Big thanks to @Jin_Shei for sorting it all out.

The Strand in Cheltenham on the last Tuesday of the month.

For the full Cheltenham SITP experience, check out: the website, twitter, Facebook and you can email Chelt.Sitp@gmail.com

The first talk will be "Breaking the crop circle" by Trystan Swale of Righteous Indignation podcast fame:

Plasma vortices, extra-terrestrial communication or manmade works of art - the annual summer crop circle season continues to inspire, encourage debate and amuse. Having been fascinated with the whole phenomenon since a child, Trystan Swale analyses the various claims as to their origins and explains why the myth is one that will continue despite the wealth of evidence for a man-made solution.

This post contains Paranormal Activity 2 spoilers

I saw Paranormal Activity 2 last night, and really enjoyed it. I'm not generally a fan of horror movies, I find them a bit dull and predictable (which is funny, as I like action movies which are well known for their complex and original plots).

Any how, it got me thinking. One of the characters I liked was the husband of the couple. He was skeptical about his house being haunted, and came up with rational explanations for the phenomena at first. This doesn't mean he was closed minded, but the reason the film is a work fiction and not fact, is because in real life rational explanations generally work out.

What I liked was his response to the video evidence of his house being haunted. If I saw a video of my (hypothetical) wife being dragged by her feet, by an invisible force, twice, and finally flung down into the basement, I'd think there would be something weird going on.

Earlier in the film he had fired the maid, as she was found wondering around with burning herbs, to ward off evil spirits. His first reaction was to call her back in, as she seemed to know about this paranormal stuff. It was a nice demonstration of re-adjusting his beliefs with evidence, and then acknowledging his ignorance of such matters, having previously dismissed it all, and calling in someone who seemed to know more on the matter than him. In fact her actions drove the demon from the house!

Obviously, he wasn't to know that this demon was out to get his son, and that in driving the demon from the house it possesed his sister in law instead, who ultimately returned, broke his neck, killed his wife too, and made off with Hunter. But hey, the dog and the daughter survived.