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The End of the World

Pseudoscience & The Paranormal

Dr. Mark Berg

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Y2K

Computers were going to run out of digits.

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Other predictions?

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Countdown

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Official Site

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Preppers

Prepper tips:

https://urbansurvivalsite.com/prepper-tips-i-wish-id-heard-before-i-started-prepping/

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Billionaires:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

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Oct 7th 2015

Chris McCann, leader and founder of the eBible Fellowship, claims the world will end on this day. The choice stems from an earlier prediction by Harold Camping, a Christian radio host in California.

In 2011 Camping used his radio station, Family Radio, to notify people that the world would end on 21 May of that year. When that prediction failed, Camping revised his prediction to October 2011. After that, he faded from public life.

McCann, a believer in Camping’s works, now claims that 21 May 2011 was actually the beginning of the day of judgment. He added 1,600 days – taken from a Revelation verse – to that date, coming up with 7 October 2015.

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Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian

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2020 to 2037

Jeane Dixon, a noted astrologer, apparently predicted in 1971 that the world would end somewhere between these years. It is hard to confirm because the prediction was made in her book The Call to Glory. Dixon made a slew of other predictions, including that there would be a cure for cancer by 1967.

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Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian

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2021 to 2028

Kenton Beshore Kyle, pastor of Mariners church in California, said Jesus Christ would return for the Rapture around 2021. There will then be seven years of tribulation – a period of intense suffering – which will end with Christ establishing a new kingdom.

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Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian

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2026

The Messiah Foundation International says an asteroid will collide with the Earth in this year, destroying it. Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi, founder of the organisation, says the “mammoth comet” is already “hurtling” towards us. Also: followers believe Shahi’s image is present on the moon.

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Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian

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2060

The world will end for the fifth time in 2060, according to Sir Isaac Newton. The English physicist and mathematician used the Book of Daniel to come up with the date, according to a 1704 letter which went on show in Jerusalem’s Hebrew University in 2007.

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Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian

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Pseudoscience relies on Fast Thinking and Heuristics

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Science relies on Slow Thinking and Critical Thinking

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Elements of Thought

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Case #2

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The Power of Ambiguous Specificity

Michel Nostradamus

  • 16th Century French Astronomer
  • Predicted centuries in advance all sorts of events like:
    • JFK Assassination
    • Hitler
    • 9-11
    • Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans
      • "The cities of Tours, Orleans, Blois, Angers, Reims and Nantes are troubled by sudden change. Tents will be pitched by [people] of foreign tongues; rivers, darts at Rennes, shaking of land and sea."
  • Amazing psychic abilities?

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Which are from Nostradamus?

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Confirmation Feels Better

Confirmation Bias

  • Normal Cognitive Processes Lead to Paranormal Beliefs
  • We search for information that confirms rather than disconfirms beliefs 

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Specifically Ambiguous

Vagueness is essential to fortune-telling and cold reading

  • "You will face an important decision soon"
  • Nostradamus used incredible vagueness in his 10 volume collection of 942 four-line prophecies
    • Written in French with Hebrew, Latin and Spanish
    • Events are not predicted before they occur only afterwards
      • Good trick in and of itself
    • Each prophecy is so vague it's hard to attribute it to an exact event until prophecies are viewed in hindsight
  • What appears to be specific is highly generalizable

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Test the Ambiguous

2 Events

  • 9-11
    • World Trade Center
  • London Blitz
    • WWII German bombing of London for 57 consecutive nights

See whether a particular prophecy could equally be applied to both events

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Test the Ambiguous

Scoured the Nostradamus prophecies for key words

  • City & Fire
  • Words widely used on internet after 9-11
  • Selected at random 10 prophecies with key words
  • Presented prophecies to 2 groups
    • Group 1, asked if each prophecy indicated Nostradamus had predicted 9-11
    • Group 2, same question for London Blitz
    • Yes, No Maybe
  • Both groups indicated that the prophecies were accurate equally to both events
  • The subjects searched for confirmation
  • They ignored the competing hypothesis that the predictions could be false

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Which are from Nostradamus?

Original: 1,4 & 5

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Made up scrambled: 2,3 & 6

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Nostradamus's True Genius.....

...was his ability to write descriptions of crisis that are significantly ambiguous that they could describe almost any crisis

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  • More Ambiguous!
    • 29 % of participants said any prophecy selected at random may have predicted a war selected at random
  • Can it go even further?
    • Scrambled the lines of different prophecies and 34% of participants said they may have matched one of the randomly selected wars

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Pseudoscience relies on Fast Thinking and Heuristics

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Science relies on Slow Thinking and Critical Thinking

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Elements of Thought