Solar Eclipses and Q

Science is based on respect for correct predictions, while conspiracy theorists forgive multiple failures

"Solar Eclipse" by asifch is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In 1919, Albert Einstein was an obscure physicist battling starvation in post-war Berlin. He had published a new theory about physics, but it was little known outside Germany, the details were complex and not many people understood it. A British astronomer called Arthur Stanley Eddington had received a copy during WWI from a mutual friend in the Netherlands and decided to test it. One of Einstein’s predictions was that gravity would bend the rays of a star in a specific way that wouldn’t happen in a classical model. Eddington organized expeditions to Brazil and West Africa to observe a solar eclipse. Einstein’s prediction turned out to hold enormous predictive power. Almost overnight, his name became known throughout the world; and he eventually became famous as an iconic scientist. If his prediction had failed, it is extremely unlikely that any of us would have heard of him.

Compare Eddington’s test of Einstein’s predictions with Q, a right-wing poster on internet forums who claims to have access to high-level intelligence briefings in the US. Q’s track record of predictions is uniform failure. To take just five examples, Q said Donald Trump’s administration would arrest Hillary Clinton and she would attempt to flee the country (it never happened); there would be mass suicides among establishment figures in the US on 10th February 2018 (there weren’t); there would be a bombshell about North Korea in May 2018 (incorrect); Mark Zuckerberg would leave Facebook and flee the US (nope); and Trump would be inaugurated on 20th January despite losing the election (obviously not). Believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory have tended to give Q’s failure to correctly predict current affairs a free pass, often inventing convuluted explanations to explain away Q’s failure rather than grappling with the idea that the poster might just be a con artist.

There is an important lesson here for people who are doing their own research about the world. Science is an extremely negative way of looking at the universe. Scientists take multiple suggestions, then test them and ruthlessly discard those that fail. Once in a while, an idea will pass multiple tests. Scientists treasure the small handful of ideas that prove to have an impact in the world, but only provisionally. If someone one day finds a framework that yields better predictions than Einstein’s theory of relativity, he or she will become very famous indeed. Those of us who are interested in developing a probabilistic worldview can use respect for scientific negativity as the bedrock of our belief systems.

On the other hand, people who treasure unproven fringe views intensely dislike any negative evidence. It promotes a strong sense of cognitive dissonance. Rather than rejecting their first guesses, they tend to double down on them and invent conspiracy theories to explain away their failure. The methodology behind fringe views and conspiracy theories might be weak, but defending them with utter certainty can be persuasive to some.

If you want to take a deep dive into the difference between real research and pseudo-research, I explore these ideas in much further depth in Chapter Eight of Sharpen Your Axe, my free book on critical-thinking skills. If you missed the beginning, here are the links to Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six and Chapter Seven.

I would like to thank everybody who has shared previous posts on social media. It is greatly appreciated! I decided to make this material free so that it could circulate as widely as possible. It would be wonderful if you could take a moment to share this post too. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do so. The next installment in a week’s time will look at skepticism. See you then!

Update (25 April 2021)

The full beta version is available here

[Updated on 10 March 2022] Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.