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Erik Davis on Deception and Being Deceived
Feb. 4th, 2013 09:09 amGenuine Fakes
Erik Davis provides the URL to his latest essay on deception as truth, in the recent case of an atheist skeptic who posed as a guru specifically to disenchant gullible followers by leading them in a false course of instruction before revealing the truth about himself: http://www.aeonmagazine.com/oceanic-feeling/erik-davis-guru-trickster/
The problem with this, Davis points out, is that in order to create a plausible course of instruction, the fake guru had to cite methods that might actually work whether or not the practitioner believes that they work.
We are back to the issue of the trickster whose tricks contain truth whether or not the trickster thinks they are true. (This is a more complicated question than whether or not tricks can contain falsehood whether or not the trickster thinks they are false, since it is self-evident that they can and do, just like every other human statement about the world.)
Jean Baudrillard wrote many years ago that it is impossible to stage a simulated bank robbery, since someone will start shooting and someone else die of fright even if the fake bank robber is carrying documented proof that this is not a real holdup.
In other words, social engagements, whether robber and bank or guru and disciple, are determined by rules of conduct that have real effects regardless of whether the robber or the guru believes in the rules of the transaction. What counts is that the bank teller or the disciple believe in the rules, and in neither case is this a “placebo effect” that merely elicits comforting or deleterious emotions. Simply engaging in the transaction brings about actual physical results, not just transitory emotional ones.
I could belabor this point (before I could post this story, NPR carried a report on how the physical results of the placebo effect in medicine seemed to be the result of engaging in what the researcher conducting the experiment called “the ritual of medical treatment,” for example), but for once I think I shall shut up while I am only modestly repeating myself.
It’s possible, of course, to devise much more obviously ludicrous fakery intended to amuse as well as enlighten the devotees when they figure it out, which sometimes they never do. I think it was Robert Ornstein who told the tale of a couple of the merry pranksters of the Esalen Institute who dressed up in Hindu robes as the representatives of Swami Suchabanana, and led worshippers in the mantra “ba-na-na” until one by one the reverent practitioners realized what they were chanting.
Erik Davis provides the URL to his latest essay on deception as truth, in the recent case of an atheist skeptic who posed as a guru specifically to disenchant gullible followers by leading them in a false course of instruction before revealing the truth about himself: http://www.aeonmagazine.com/oceanic-feeling/erik-davis-guru-trickster/
The problem with this, Davis points out, is that in order to create a plausible course of instruction, the fake guru had to cite methods that might actually work whether or not the practitioner believes that they work.
We are back to the issue of the trickster whose tricks contain truth whether or not the trickster thinks they are true. (This is a more complicated question than whether or not tricks can contain falsehood whether or not the trickster thinks they are false, since it is self-evident that they can and do, just like every other human statement about the world.)
Jean Baudrillard wrote many years ago that it is impossible to stage a simulated bank robbery, since someone will start shooting and someone else die of fright even if the fake bank robber is carrying documented proof that this is not a real holdup.
In other words, social engagements, whether robber and bank or guru and disciple, are determined by rules of conduct that have real effects regardless of whether the robber or the guru believes in the rules of the transaction. What counts is that the bank teller or the disciple believe in the rules, and in neither case is this a “placebo effect” that merely elicits comforting or deleterious emotions. Simply engaging in the transaction brings about actual physical results, not just transitory emotional ones.
I could belabor this point (before I could post this story, NPR carried a report on how the physical results of the placebo effect in medicine seemed to be the result of engaging in what the researcher conducting the experiment called “the ritual of medical treatment,” for example), but for once I think I shall shut up while I am only modestly repeating myself.
It’s possible, of course, to devise much more obviously ludicrous fakery intended to amuse as well as enlighten the devotees when they figure it out, which sometimes they never do. I think it was Robert Ornstein who told the tale of a couple of the merry pranksters of the Esalen Institute who dressed up in Hindu robes as the representatives of Swami Suchabanana, and led worshippers in the mantra “ba-na-na” until one by one the reverent practitioners realized what they were chanting.
