Busted Bulbs; A Pseudoscience Parable
A new perspective on conspiracies
First of all, I should begin with an apology. Sorry for going dark for literal months. I have been taking a break from Substack for a few reasons.
One is mental health reasons, two is that I’ve been extremely busy. Three is the exciting one. I’ve been working with a few friends trying to get some future projects together behind the scenes. I’m hoping some of these “secret projects” will bear fruit in the near future, but we’ll have to see.
Honestly, my Substack hiatus probably would have continued had this idea not popped into my head literally an hour ago. And I think it’s fairly profound.
So please, indulge me, reader. Listen to my story, and I swear it has a point. As a matter of fact, it’s something of a modern parable…that or I’m tooting my own horn too much.
Either way, please read the short narrative below, I promise it’s going somewhere.
The lightbulbs in a room in my house keep going out. Some of them don’t even last a few days before they begin flickering on and off, over and over, until they finally just quit.
It’s awfully annoying. Flicker, flicker, flicker. Day and night. It drives me insane.
I talk to an electrician friend of mine. I describe the problem in great detail. He tells me it could be a few things, though he bets that the wiring in the ceiling is faulty. He offers to check it; with a fee, of course.
Now, I’m no electrician. As a matter of fact, about all I know about home electricity is not to stick a metal fork in a plug. But even so, what my electrician friend is describing sounds awfully dramatic for a few flashing bulbs.
And faulty wiring would be a huge inconvenience. First of all, it’d be expensive, even if I hire my friend. We’d have to set up a time. He’d have to tear apart my ceiling, and that would be less than desirable. And then it would take God knows how long to fix, and on top of that I’d probably need to clean before and after he works…
I really hope it’s not faulty wiring. Maybe this was just a batch of busted bulbs. I’ll go to the store, buy a new pack, install them, then see how they do.
So I do exactly that. I get the new bulbs, replace the old ones, and they work…for a while…
After a few days, one of the bulbs begins flickering. Then another. Then another.
I express my problem to my electrician friend. He is extremely confident that the wiring in my house is to blame.
Oh God.
I really, really, really hope it’s not the wiring. All the work and effort and time consumption…maybe this batch of bulbs was busted too? I’ll buy some more and try again.
So I buy a new batch. And they go strong for about a week…until another bulb begins to flash on and off at random.
My electrician friend talks to another electrician. They both agree that what I’m describing is faulty wiring. They tell me it could be serious. If I don’t get it addressed soon, it could become a fire hazard.
No.
No, no, no.
Then it can’t be faulty wiring.
That’s a worst case scenario. And I can’t have a worst case scenario. Not right now. I have other things I need to do. Other worries to tend to. They must be blowing it out of proportion, right? I mean, they’re electricians after all. They need someone to hire them, so they threaten me with a fire so I pay them for their services. Job security, am I right?
No. No, these bulbs must be broken too.
Up until now, I’ve been getting the same brand of bulbs from the same store. Maybe this brand is incompatible with my light fixtures…somehow. So I’ll go to the store and buy a different brand. Yeah, that should do it.
Out with the old, in with the new. I hastily install the new brand of bulbs. They shine bright like polished diamonds in the high summer afternoon glow.
Yes, this batch is going to be different. This batch will survive–
…Flicker…flicker…flicker…
Dammit.
I go talk to some of my friends. I tell them how my bulbs keep going out, and how my electrician friend keeps telling me it’s faulty wiring. I, however, believe it’s busted bulbs.
I mean, electricians need job security, right? So they’re going to tell you that your problem is as bad as it can be. That just makes sense, right?
They agree with me.
Maybe if I buy from another store, these bulbs will work. Right?
They agree with me.
Now, none of these friends are electricians. One’s a pet groomer, another’s an accountant, and the other is a fast food worker. None of them bothered to study electricity at all. As a matter of fact, one tried to clean the “gunk” off a battery with a wet wipe, another can’t tell a hammer from a screwdriver, and the third still thinks lightning is solely the wrath of Thor.
But it’s three of my trusted friends against one electrician, who obviously needs work. And I guess that electrician had another electrician back him up, but I never met that other one. How can I trust them?
Either way, it’s three trusted friends’ words against two slimy electricians, probably trying to get money out of me. You can’t trick me so easily.
I’m going to go buy some new bulbs.
So I rush to a new store. I charge straight for the electrical section. I weed out an entirely new brand I have yet to try. I carefully examine each box, making note of the amount of wear and tear on each to see if the shipping might’ve caused any damage to the precious cargo contained within.
Finally, after combing over box after box, I find it. The cleanest, most pristine lightbulb box in the entire store of this entirely new brand.
This has to work.
I race to the checkout and eagerly purchase the new box. What does that electrician know? He’s just trying to prey off of my hard earned, well-deserved money, like some parasite. Well, that leech can’t fool me.
With a certain pride bounding in my step, I march out of the store – box of bulbs clenched tightly in my arms.
And when I finally return home from the store with my new batch of bulbs snug tightly against my side, lo and behold, one of the faulty wires in the ceiling finally caught fire, setting my home ablaze and burning the whole building down to an ashy crisp while I was away.
Years of gifts, belongings, and memories now remain in a tiny, smoldering pile of soot where my house used to be.
I’m stunned beyond words.
So I just stand there, holding my batch of probably busted bulbs tightly in my hands.
The narrative above is not based on a true story (thank goodness). It’s not particularly too entertaining either.
Rather, it is meant to convey a message.
In this post-COVID world, conspiracies and pseudoscience (false science) run wild all over social media and within gossip circles. Places like TikTok and Facebook are particularly overrun by false information about science, history, politics, and medicine.
And almost all of these conspiracies share something in common.
“They don’t want you to know about this!”
“They are trying to hide the truth!”
“They are rewriting history books!”
“They” is a catchall term for mainstream science and about anyone who disagrees with them. These conspiracy theorists are trying to plant seeds of doubt in people’s minds about mainstream academia and encourage distrust.
So what’s the problem? Does it matter what these people believe?
I personally believe that you have a right to your own beliefs as long as they affect you alone, but I also know that these conspiracies, no matter how seemingly harmless at first, can lead to harmful beliefs.
We see this with people who deny climate change or anti-vaxxers. Their personal beliefs can lead to the damage of the human race as a whole.
And even when a conspiracy doesn’t outright go against these big topics, it can still be harmful. Because what it does is it creates a gap between the viewer and the scientific community. It creates distrust.
Then it creates a pipeline.
Mainstream academia has plenty of issues, don’t get me wrong. Science isn’t always 100% right. But here’s the thing about science. It is constantly trying to improve itself. It is constantly trying to find the truth rather than create its own truth.
Sometimes, we come to the wrong conclusions. That’s why it’s the scientific community and not one scientist. Theories and studies are intensely peer reviewed so that the most amount of experts in each field get to weigh in on this new information, and they collectively decide whether it makes sense or not. And then they continue to put it to the test over and over to be sure.
Scientists are not out to get you. They are here to help. But instead, people deny them. People refuse to believe them because what they say doesn’t align with their personal beliefs, their narrative. And they get reaffirmation from friends who agree with them or from strangers on social media who share their views.
But here’s the thing. Scientists have to study for years to become the authorities they are. Many are overqualified experts in their fields. Why doubt thousands of people who are overqualified for their fields of study who also work together to make sure everything they do is as close to the truth as possible?
And scientists are not gods. They are flawed human beings, let us not forget. But even with that in mind, if I have an electrical problem, why should I trust the word of my friend who works at McDonald’s over the word of a qualified electrician?
And people trying to disprove science really sucks because science…IS FREAKING AWESOME.
But I digress.
This is an extremely complex topic with plenty of nuances that I have failed to mention, but for the sake of keeping this short, I’m going to try to wrap up. I encourage open discussion about this topic. Feel free to share this story and talk about the rise of pseudoscience. Besides, a trait of fascism is the creation of distrust in academia.
I would love to keep going, but I am currently writing this at 1:12 a.m. like a maniac and I need sleep. But I’d like to finish with this thought.
You can believe what you want, but ignoring the truth doesn’t solve the problem. It only makes it worse.
If we refuse to listen to the truth and do something about it, issues will fester in our failures. They will grow and grow and grow like a flame.
Climate change won’t stop because we ignore it. A pandemic won’t stop because we ignore it.
They will only get worse.
If we continue to ignore the causes of our issues and try to find useless alternatives, we will soon find ourselves standing in the charred rubble of a burnt down house, a box of probably busted bulbs clenched tightly in hand.
I love your message. But getting back to the original problem…
The wiring is good, I did it.
Cheap lightbulbs, I bought them.
Sorry
Again you get to a real problem society is facing. With all the different media streams it is getting more and more difficult to vet out the truth. AI doesn’t help . Keep thinking of ways to challenge and improve the stream of truth and knowledge.