My 2012 woo beats your 2012 woo

There is a problem with believing in stuff that can't be validated by independent evidence (ie, the stuff skeptics refer to as “woo”), namely that you don’t know where to stop. I was reminded of that reading this description of a recent book signing by Daniel Pinchbeck. Pinchbeck has a new book out about what is supposed to happen in the year 2012, which is (not) the end of the Mayan calendar. According to Amazon’s editorial review:

Pinchbeck… has set out to create an "extravagant thought experiment" centering around the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it, "the conclusion of a vast evolutionary cycle, and the potential gateway to a higher level of manifestation." More specifically, Pinchbeck's claim is that we are in the final stages of a fundamental global shift from a society based on materiality to one based on spirituality.

This is followed by numerous credulous five stars “awesome” type customer reviews. LOL – I haven’t read the book but it sounds just like Gregg Braden’s nonsense – made-up drivel leading up to a big secret the author is going to clue you in on. Apparently one of Pinchbeck's big deals is “synchronicity”. New agers define this as being where different, seemingly unconnected, events are meaningfully related; skeptics use the word “coincidence” to describe the same thing.

Anyway, this guy is clearly getting tired of all the out-there woo beliefs of his fans. This is how he started off his book signing:

“It would be great if you didn't pontificate" when asking questions, Pinchbeck told the 50 or so listeners, noting a tendency of his audiences to use the Q-and-A sessions as a sounding board for their own cosmological outlook.

(Snip)

A number of audience members, many already clutching their own jade-green copies of "2012" to be signed, recognized the concept of synchronicity and wanted to offer their own versions (one such instance included buying Pinchbeck's new book and then discovering that the author was coming to Portland).

Pinchbeck, however, had heard plenty of these stories of late. "Now I get a little bored -- people come up to me, 'Oh, I had this amazing synchronicity. . . .' Yeah, whatever."

Translation – don’t bother me with your made-up woo when I’m trying to sell my made-up woo. Priceless.

Edited November 27, 2006

See Brian Doherty's review of Pinchbeck's book in Reason Online.

Comments

[Big Al]

Well, that's good enough for me. I am going to cover my head with tin foil and live like a hermit for the next six years.

At least this forthcoming apocalypse has saved me some cash. Living like a hermit should be pretty cheap, I guess.

[daniel]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for alerting me to that humorous piece on the Portland reading. I think that my book is much more than "woo woo" - you would have to care enough to check it out for yourself.

The theoretical framework for synchronicity is developed well by Carl Jung in his famous essay on the subject, and by the physicist F David Peat in his book "Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Mind and Matter". As for the statistical validity of psychic phenomena, check out Dean Radin's "The Conscious Universe".

There is nothing wrong with being a skeptic as long as you are equally skeptical of your skepticism - otherwise, skepticism is just another belief system or "archetype" that takes possession of the skeptical one.

Yours,
dp

[daniel]

sorry - i thought your name was richard, now i don't see why i thought it.

yours,
dp

[Skeptico]

As I said, I haven’t read the book, and so can’t say too much about it, although the references to 2012 are not encouraging. Perhaps I will write about the “the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it” nonsense sometime.

However, I do find Dean Radin to be very unimpressive. Read: Book Review: Dean Radin, "The Conscious Universe" and An evening with Dean Radin for more details.

[BronzeDog]

There is nothing wrong with being a skeptic as long as you are equally skeptical of your skepticism - otherwise, skepticism is just another belief system or "archetype" that takes possession of the skeptical one.

Perhaps you'd be so kind as to furnish us with a direct link to some of the evidence, rather than cookie-cutter arguments.

I have great doubt in the statistical honesty of "The Conscious Universe." So far, I have yet to see a book about psychic phenomena that dealt with numbers in a forthright manner.

[Skeptico]

Bronze Dog:

I think that last paragraph of daniel's that you quoted is just a rather sly Appeal To Be Open-Minded.

[BronzeDog]

True. That's why I referred to it as a cookie-cutter "argument". I expect he'll pull rather a lot of them before we're done with him.

I need to brush up on my quantum mechanics so that I can do one on "Quantum," sometime.

[Big Al]

Have any other clear, unambiguous, plain-language Mayan prophecies come to pass? Or, Heaven forfend, fallen flat on their faces?

I've always thought synchronicity was Jung's wet-wekend armchair musing on why coincidences happen.

Ah, but I forgot! Quantum entanglement. That means everything Jung said was right!

[Big Al]

Why should this end-of the world prophecy be any more accurate than the myriad of others that have come and gone?

Supposedly, according to Nostradamus, 1999 was the year. For Edgar Cayce, it was mid- to late-Sixties, I believe. But, of course, the Mayans are _real_ prophets, unlike these latterday charlatans.

Jung, to put it very mildly, had some extremely esoteric and idiosyncratic ideas, but I'm unaware of any actual evidence he adduced for any of them.

[daniel]

I can't rehash the entire argument of the book here - sorry. If you aren't interested enough to check it out for yourself, then best of luck to you.

[Skeptico]

Daniel:

Fair enough - no reason why you should. No offence but this is why I’m probably not going to read your book.

[Big Al]

Daniel,

I don't think it necessary to rehash the whole thrust of the book - I just want to know what puts this particular prophecy more believable than all the other failed predictions of disaster. Also, I tend (perhaps unfairly) to think of Carl Junk (sorry, Jung) as an utter kook. These factors seem, to say the least, uninspiring starting points for changing my world-view.

If I thought there were some kernel of verifiable evidence for any of these musings, I might look at it. However, right here, right now, I have better books to spend my money on.

"[...]Pinchbeck's claim is that we are in the final stages of a fundamental global shift from a society based on materiality to one based on spirituality."

Um, wasn't this covered with the whole "Age of Aquarius" thing?

Damn, I'm old.

[Thursday]

"[...]Pinchbeck's claim is that we are in the final stages of a fundamental global shift from a society based on materiality to one based on spirituality."

Um, wasn't this covered with that whole "Age of Aquarius" thing?

Damn, I'm old.

[BronzeDog]

Now I've got that song stuck in my head.

[Big Al]

That's synchronicity for you, Dog...

DAMMIT! Now I've got a Police song going through my head!

[Bronze Dog]

Thankfully, that song turned out to be good, because someone else got an even worse stuck in my head shortly after my post.

[H.]

Well, everyone thinks their woo is best. Don't ask how, but I got involved with a psychic. She would babble for hours on how her ethereal body was exceedingly beautiful, how her dreams and precognitions were always fulfilled. So I get a tad tired and try to chip in with my bit of experience.
I told her how, back in my freshman year, I was sitting in the library and got a bit of a panick attack, imaginging how nasty it would be if people with guns burst in. Nothing too strange, since everyone can be jumpy when sitting with their back to the door. Anyway, the date was 9.11.2001.
"Did I in any way predict what happened or had a remote feeling of it?"
"No, my dear, this is just an expression of your internal fearful and insecure nature," she replied, Yoda style.
Yet I'm supposed to believe when she says "Something is going to happen in Moscow ten days from now". Well, Moscow is a big city in a country not unacquainted with terror and crime- the possibility of "something" happening is not that distant.