 There are a lot of paranormal beliefs out there and it's something that I'm fascinated with. Why do we believe the things that we do? From ghosts to gods to conspiracies, in this video we're going to analyze what skeptical scientists discovered when talking to two of the most famous paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren. As many of you know, I'm a huge fan of critical thinking as a form of personal well-being and it's used in evidence-based treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy. When we're able to practice applying critical thinking to other aspects of our lives, it turns into a habit that improves our overall emotional intelligence. When it comes to ghosts, I'm someone who was terrified for most of my life when it came to anything supernatural. I couldn't even watch scary movies. But recently, I've been overcoming my fears by watching scary movies with my son and my beautiful girlfriend Tristan. Tristan is an Uber horror fan, so I'm glad we're able to enjoy these together now. I've found through critical thinking and educating myself I'm less scared and I can talk to my son about the science behind the paranormal so he can sleep at night. Now, some of you might be saying, but Chris, there's no harm in believing in ghosts or there's nothing wrong with having supernatural beliefs. I definitely agree. I'm personally of the belief that if you're not hurting anyone or yourself, do your thing. Practicing witchcraft and believing in astrology can be fun and even therapeutic. But this is the first video of a series. Believing too strongly in the supernatural can have grave consequences. For example, psychics can be some of the biggest scam artists in the world. From predicting your future to helping you contact dead loved ones, you could get scammed out of a lot of money. This is the money people use to support themselves and their loved ones. So, at its best, believing in the supernatural is a fun, quirky hobby, but at its worst, believing in the supernatural can ruin a family financially and psychologically. In a future video, I'm also going to analyze how conspiracy theorists prey on the mentally ill, when we better educate ourselves about our inherent biases, flawed cognitive abilities, and more, we can look at the world through a clearer lens. When it comes to ghosts, we're gonna start by understanding the importance of the scientific method. Science is a crucial aspect of human progress and you wouldn't even be able to watch this video if it weren't for science. So, before we get started, we should ask ourselves, what makes good science? Dr. Steven Novella is an assistant professor at the Yale University School of Medicine and he's also one of the hosts of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast. He's an incredible teacher when it comes to developing your critical thinking skills and I'll be referencing him a few times in this video. Dr. Novella and others classify good science as having the following characteristics. Good science uses observations about the world that are as objective, quantitative, precise, and unambiguous as possible. Most importantly, it uses methods not to prove a hypothesis, but to disprove a hypothesis. Novella states that good science is skeptical of its own ideas. For example, something you'll notice about pseudoscientists is that they claim to know something that the scientific community doesn't. It's a blatant lack of humility. Our ego tells us that we're the one person who knows the quote unquote truth and all these other people just aren't intelligent enough to understand. An example of a good scientist is someone who makes a breakthrough and says, this can't be right. I need to retest this a few times just to make sure. So as we dive into the topics of ghosts and the quote unquote evidence behind ghosts, we're going to see what psychological biases we have that may block us from seeing the truth. Remember, being skeptical isn't about trying to insult another person's intelligence. Skepticism and critical thinking helps us better understand ourselves to improve our own wellbeing. But before we discuss the scientific flaws of Ed and Lorraine Warren, if you're new to the rewired soul, make sure you subscribe and turn on the notifications. I do video essays taking deep dives into popular topics to see what we can learn to improve our mental and emotional wellbeing. Ed and Lorraine Warren are the most famous paranormal investigators out there and they've become extremely popular in recent decades. You may know about Ed and Lorraine from the Conjuring universe, which are based on their real experiences. Throughout their career, they've investigated over 4,000 cases involving ghosts, demonic possessions and more. Not only do they assist people with banishing the supernatural from their lives, but they also teach people about the supernatural. The Warrens traveled the world and have spoken at universities giving lectures on the paranormal. During their lectures and interviews, they claim to have scientific evidence of the supernatural. They used pictures, videos and audio recordings to show that the paranormal in fact does exist. Although we're going to be debunking some of Ed and Lorraine's claims in this video, I wanna make it clear that I don't think they're bad people. While there are legitimate scam artists out there, we can't harshly judge those who truly believe. As we begin to learn more about the science of belief, we begin to empathize more with the people we interact with. For example, maybe you're an atheist in a religious family, or you have a friend who believes in conspiracies. As you've probably realized, insulting their intelligence through name calling doesn't work out so well. If we ever hope to have mature conversations with others, we need to understand that the person's beliefs are their reality. When it comes to the Warrens, they were paid a visit by Dr. Steven Novella in the New England Skeptical Society. The goal of Novella and his colleagues wasn't to change the Warrens beliefs, but it was to investigate for themselves and maybe educate the Warrens about some science along the way. One of the most important things to realize is that it's a complete myth that skeptics and scientists are close-minded. If you think about it, if it wasn't for scientists and other innovators believing in the impossible, we wouldn't have electricity, flight, or other technological advances. Skeptics want to believe, but in order to make a skeptic believe, they need to be presented with good science. Even the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has gone on record stating that he'd have no problem believing in God or the paranormal if he was presented with valid evidence. When Dr. Novella and the New England Skeptical Society met with the Warrens, they asked to see paranormal evidence to analyze for scientific validity. As you may know from seeing movies about the Warrens, they have a room that is filled with what they claim to be haunted and cursed items. So that's where they took the scientist. It's here when the team is presented with what Dr. Novella refers to as the 10-foot stack phenomenon. This is something that is common amongst conspiracy theorists and those who believe in the unbelievable. It refers to when a person points to a mountain of what they see as evidence and simply say, see, look at all of this. How could all of this be wrong? This is a cognitive trick that people use intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. The goal is to overwhelm you with information because it'd be impossible to debunk it all. You'll notice that politicians and others trying to persuade you use the same tactic by fooling you with an overwhelming amount of information. In the Warrens case, I don't think this was intentional, but nevertheless, the New England Skeptical Society has a counter for the 10-foot stack phenomenon. When presented with this 10-foot stack of evidence, they simply ask, can you show us one or two pieces of your best evidence? By inducing critical thinking about the quote-unquote best evidence, you can begin to get a person's wheels turning. If the best evidence is shown to have flaws by using the scientific method, it brings to question the other pieces of evidence that a person has. The problem with cognitive biases is that they're so unconscious that we don't even know we're being affected by them. Using the Warrens Museum as an example, we can get so caught up in the quantity of the evidence that we never question the quality of the evidence. Some of the best evidence from the Warrens is their photos of spirits, so they handed them over to be analyzed. Something that's important to ask yourself about these photos is, why is it that no one in the room ever sees the spirit until they look at the photo? A true believer might argue, well, that's because cameras can pick up things a human eye can't. Aside from specific capabilities and accessories for cameras, there's no scientific evidence to back this claim up. What we do have evidence for is the three primary causes of why there appears to be ghosts in photos. There are many reasons these types of photos can happen, but the three main categories include flashback, light diffraction, or camera cords. These methods have been rigorously tested to recreate photos that have the illusion of the paranormal. First, let's talk about the flashback. This is the light from the flash that's reflected back at the lens, which can create one of these illusions of the paranormal. In Dr. Novella's book, he even mentions that the Warrens website at one time said that using a flash is the best way to get ghost photographs and quote, the brighter the flash, the better. End quote. Next, let's talk about light diffraction. Light diffraction often creates what the skeptical community refers to as ghost globules. The diffraction creates spheres of light rather than wispy forms like flashback does. This happens when light refracts off a point source. Small amounts of condensation on a camera's lens is enough to make these happen. Finally, there are camera cords with what's known as the camera cord effect. This is what happens when a camera cord falls in front of a lens, something that often happens with my own camera and it can reflect the light of the flash. This is something that often goes unnoticed because when taking pictures, many cameras don't view through the lens but a separate aperture. After hearing about how effects from lights and camera cords can create illusions of the paranormal, some will point to photos and argue, that's a face. You can't argue with me that this doesn't look like a face. Well, there's also an explanation for that and it's due to the fact that our brains are designed for facial recognition and looking for patterns. In an area of the brain called the inferior temporal cortex is the fusiform gyrus. This part of the brain is responsible for face recognition and it was an important part of our evolution. By being able to recognize faces, we're able to recognize emotions and this is important if we wanna assess whether someone is a friend or a foe. This is why you may see the face of Jesus Christ in your toast or your dead grandpa in the clouds. Our brain is also unconsciously looking for pattern recognition and this isn't just in different shapes that we see but also in sounds. Some of the evidence that ghost hunters like the Warrens point to is when they hear voices in static sounds but this is just an auditory illusion. In an article from the Scientific American titled Do You Hear What I Hear? Auditory hallucinations yield clues to perception. A psychiatrist from Stony Brook University School of Medicine states, the brain is a predictive machine. It is constantly scanning the environment and relying on previous knowledge to fill in the gaps of what we perceive. It's also important to take note that ghost hunting often occurs when a person or group of people are in abnormal conditions which can create hallucinations even in healthy people. The same article from Scientific American says the following. Healthy people also experience hallucinations. Drugs, sleep deprivation and migraines can often trigger the illusion of sounds or sight that are not there. Even in the absence of these predisposing factors, approximately one in 20 people hear voices or see hallucinations at least once in their lifetime according to mental health surveys conducted by the World Health Organization. Whereas most researchers have focused on the brain abnormalities that occur in people suffering at an extreme end of this spectrum. Powers and his colleagues have turned their attention to milder cases in a new study. Quote, we wanted to understand what's common and what's protecting people who hallucinate but who don't require psychological intervention, he says. So now that you know a little bit about why people believe in ghosts and the scientific evidence that disproves this phenomenon, where do we go from here? Like we discussed in the introduction of this video, there's nothing inherently wrong with belief in the paranormal and supernatural. Although I'm not religious, finding my own form of spirituality helped save my life eight years ago when I got sober from drugs and alcohol. For many people, believing in ghosts and spirits helps them with the passing of a loved one. Losing someone you love can be devastating. So if the power of belief brings a person some peace, who am I to argue with that? We begin to run into problems when our beliefs start affecting our life in a negative way. While I don't believe people like the Warrens were ever intentionally deceitful, some would argue that they quote unquote scan people by being paid for their unscientific services. Maybe it's because I subscribed to the utilitarian view of philosophy, but I argue that maybe the ends justified the means. Here's what I mean by this. The placebo effect is real and it's powerful. So if the Warrens were paid to do an exorcism or to get rid of demons from a family's house, and if that family's quality of life improved after, I'd say the Warrens services were worth it. As I mentioned in a future video, I'll be discussing more malicious people in this realm like this psychic Zoey, who scammed a woman out of $740,000. Although the Warrens may legitimately help some people, there are families that are in complete financial and emotional ruins as a result of their belief in the paranormal and supernatural. In that video, we'll discuss the psychological tricks these psychics use to make some people believe. So make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss it. Finally, let's talk about our own mental and emotional wellbeing and what we could take away from what we've learned. Remember, critical thinking isn't just about debunking other people, improving them wrong. It's to help us change the way we perceive the world and our experience. Let's use the 10 foot stack phenomenon as an example of our own thinking. How many times are we experiencing depression and we point to all of the quote unquote evidence that everything is awful? This type of thinking perpetuates our feelings of hopelessness. So what if we use some critical thinking and skepticism to challenge our thoughts? Rather than looking at the quantity of evidence, let's look at the quality. Maybe you can relate to the following scenario. When I'm feeling depressed, my mind can tell me that my friends don't care about me. Then my mind will point to evidence like how they don't text me sometimes or show me that they care in other ways. So what we can all do when this happens is ask ourself for the best evidence like Dr. Novella did to the warrants. Is our best evidence that our friend didn't text us yesterday? Well, let's analyze that. How does not getting a text mean that a person doesn't care about us? Where did this belief come from? Also, is it possible that they haven't texted us because we haven't texted them? Once we ask ourself this question, we can also ask ourself, why haven't I texted them? Maybe it's because we got busy or simply forgot. From here, we can practice empathy and wonder if our friend may be busy or maybe they're struggling too and feeling the same way we are. Challenging our thoughts and perceptions is a great way to improve our mental health. In order to do this more effectively, we need to practice. So whether you're experiencing your own thoughts or trying to understand why people believe in ghosts, practicing critical thinking and skepticism can set you up for success. All right, everybody. Thank you once again for making it all the way through this video, this video essay. I appreciate it and I hope you learned some stuff and I hope you enjoyed it. I'm learning so many cool things. I've been binging books and quarantine. And I think the stuff around the paranormal and practicing critical thinking, it's like really fascinating. So if you're into that, make sure you leave suggestions and comments down below. I have topics I'm gonna dive into. Like I mentioned, like psychics or some interesting psychology behind like Ouija boards and stuff and all sorts of things. So if there's anything you're curious about, let me know. I also have some other topics planned. All right, but also if you're struggling with your mental health, if you want to practice some therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy or rational motive behavioral therapy, like I do, make sure you check out BetterHelp Online Therapy. This is not a sponsored video, but I personally use BetterHelp Online Therapy and down in the description below, there is an affiliate link. So what that means is you get affordable online therapy and it comes back to help support the channel and all the work I put into these videos. 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