Richard Feynman - The Meaning of It All

Now, looking at the troubles that we have with all the unscientific and peculiar things in the world, there are a number of them which cannot be associated with difficulties in how to think, I think, but are just due to some lack of information. In particular, there are believers in astrology, of which, no doubt, there are a number here. Astrologists say that there are days when it’s better to go to the dentist than other days. There are days when it’s better to fly in an airplane, for you, if you are born on such a day and such and such an hour. And its all calculated by very careful rules in terms of the position of the stars. If it were true it would be very interesting. Insurance people would be very interested to change the insurance rates on people if they follow the astrological rules, because they have a better chance when they are in the airplane. Tests to determine whether people who go on the day that they are not supposed to go are worse off or not have never been made by the astrologers. The question of whether it’s a good day for business or a bad day for business has never been established. Now what of it?

Maybe it’s still true, yes. On the other hand, there’s an awful lot of information that indicates that it isn’t true. Because we have a lot of knowledge about how things work, what people are, what the world is, what those stars are, what the planets are that you are looking at, what makes them go around more or less, where they’re going to be in the next 2000 years is completely known. They don’t have to look up to find out where it is. And furthermore, if you look very carefully at the different astrologers they don’t agree with each other, so what are you going to do? Disbelieve it. There’s no evidence at all for it. It’s pure nonsense. The only way you can believe it is to have a general lack of information about the stars and the world and what the rest of the things look like. If such a phenomenon existed it would be most remarkable, in the face of all the other phenomena that exist, and unless someone can demonstrate it to you with a real experiment, with a real test, took people who believe and people who didn’t believe and made a test, and so on, then there’s no point in listening to them. Tests of this kind, incidentally, have been made in the early days of science. It’s rather interesting. I found out that in the early days, like in the time when they were discovering oxygen and so on, people made such experimental attempts to find out, for example, whether missionaries—it sounds silly; it only sounds silly because you’re afraid to test it—whether good people like missionaries who pray and so on were less likely to be in a shipwreck than others. And so when missionaries were going to far countries, they checked in the shipwrecks whether the missionaries were less likely to drown than other people. And it turned out that there was no difference. So lots of people don’t believe that it makes any difference.

There are, if you turn on the radio—I don’t know how it is up here; it must be the same—in California you hear all kinds of faith healers. I’ve seen them on television. It’s another one of those things that it exhausts me to try to explain why it’s rather a ridiculous proposition. There is, in fact, an entire religion that’s respectable, so called, that’s called Christian Science, that’s based on the idea of faith healing. If it were true, it could be established, not by the anecdotes of a few people but by the careful checks, by the technically good clinical methods which are used on any other way of curing diseases. If you believe in faith healing, you have a tendency to avoid other ways of getting healed. It takes you a little longer to get to the doctor, possibly. Some people believe it strongly enough that it takes them longer to get to the doctor. It’s possible that the faith healing isn’t so good. It’s possible—we are not sure—that it isn’t. And its therefore possible that there is some danger in believing in faith healing, that its not a triviality, not like astrology wherein it doesn’t make a lot of difference. It’s just inconvenient for the people who believe in it that they have to do things on certain days. It may be, and I would like to know—it should be investigated—everybody has a right to know—whether more people have been hurt or helped by believing in Christ’s ability to heal; whether there is more healing or harming by such a thing. It’s possible either way. It should be investigated. It shouldn’t be left lying for people to believe in without an investigation.

Not only are there faith healers on the radio, there are also radio religion people who use the Bible to predict all kinds of phenomena that are going to happen. I listened intrigued to a man who in a dream visited God and received all kinds of special information for his congregation, etc. Well, this unscientific age… But I don’t know what to do with that one. I don’t know what rule of reasoning to use to show right away that it’s nutty. I think it just belongs to a general lack of understanding of how complicated the world is and how elaborate and how unlikely it would be that such a thing would work.

But I can’t disprove, of course, without investigating more carefully. Maybe one way would be always to ask them how do they know it’s true and to remember maybe that they are wrong. Just remember that much anyway, because you may keep yourself from sending in too much money

There are also, of course, in the world a number of phenomena that you cannot beat that are just the result of a general stupidity. And we all do stupid things, and we know some people do more than others, but there is no use in trying to check who does the most. There is some attempt to protect this by government regulation, to protect this stupidity, but it doesn’t work a hundred percent.

For example, I went on a visit to one of the desert sites to buy land. You know they sell land, these promoters—there’s a new city going to be built. It’s exciting. It’s marvelous. You must go. Just imagine yourself in a desert with nothing but some flags poked here in the ground with numbers on them and street signs with names. And so you drive in the car across the desert to find the fourth street and so on to get to the lot 369, which is the one for you, you’re thinking. And you stand there kicking sand in this thing discussing with the salesman why it’s advantageous to have a corner lot and how the driveway will be good because it will be easier to get into from that side. Worse, believe it or not, you find yourself discussing the beach club, which is going to be on that sea, what the rules of membership are and how many friends you’re allowed to bring. I swear, I got into that condition.

So when the time comes to buy the land, it turns out that the state has made an attempt to help you. So they have a description of this particular thing that you have read, and the man who sells you the land says it’s the law, we have to give you this to read. They give it to you to read, and it says that this is very much like many other real estate deals in the state of California and so on and so on and so on. And among other things, I read that although they say that they want to have fifty thousand people at this site, there is not water enough for a number which I better not say or I’ll get accused of libel, but it was very much less—I can’t remember it exactly—it was in the neighborhood of five thousand people, somewhere like that. So, of course they had noticed that this was in there before, and they told us that they had just found water at another site, far away, that they were going to pump down. And when I asked about it, they explained to me very carefully that they had just discov- ered this and that they hadn’t had time to get it into the brochure from the state. Hmmmm.