To Insanity And Beyond
December 8th, 2005Channel 4 are, apparently, conducting “the biggest hoax in the history of space travel”. That’s their claim, and that is precisely what they’re doing: nobody has ever performed a large-scale space-travel related hoax in history, particularly not NASA, and particularly not in 1969. Anyone who claims otherwise is misguided, and, more often than not, an idiot. I suspect they are creationists.
So what’s the idea? Anyone who’s watched TV lately ought to know it, but for people in other countries, people without TVs, and people who’ve spent the three weeks living in what they’ve been told is a Russian military camp, here’s the deal:
From a group of thousands of applicants to an imaginary TV show called “Thrillseekers” (suggested theme music: Thrillseeker by the Divine Comedy), they have been whittled down to only the most ignorant, most gullible, and least claustrophobic nine. These have been joined by some actors to prod them away from any independant thought, and sent to what they believe is Russia but is in fact Suffolk. Next they’ll be given intensive training for what they’ll be told is The Infinite Vaccuum Of Space, but will in fact be the building nextdoor. This is the gist of the much more real TV show called “Space Cadets” (suggested theme music: Life On Earth by the Divine Comedy).
So au revoir joi, bonjour tristesse.
Good times come and they go.
This life owes nobody happiness;
Only pain and sorrow,
So don’t rely on the starry sky.
Screw the universe.
You’d better try to live your life on Earth.
I’m gonna try to live my life on Earth.
Of course, many people have suggested that nobody in their right minds would actually fall for such a preposterous hoax. They go on to claim that Channel 4 are fooling nobody but the British public, and that in fact everybody on the show is an actor. And, as logic goes, it’s fairly sound. The problem is in the implicit assumption that most people are in their right minds.
They’re not.
Most people are idiots. For proof one must only look to Korea. (Well, one needn’t look that far at all, but let’s look to Korea for the time being.) In Korea, they believe in a thing called “Fan Death”. Fan Death is not, as one might assume, a heavy metal band, but is, in fact, a real danger to human life. (Well, they think it’s real. In fact it’s preposterous.) Almost all South Koreans believe in Fan Death, including most doctors and lawyers. About ten cases of Fan Death are reported every year in South Korea. That’s ten more than have ever been reported in the rest of the world combined.
Fan Death is the term for death caused by an electric fan. If you leave the fan on in a sealed room you die. Of Fan Death. Apparently. Some say it’s hypothermia caused by the terribly efficient fan. Some say it’s due to the fan creating a vortex and depriving you of oxygen. Some skeptics (such as me) say that it the cause of death may have been heart attack, the jar of chemicals left open in the sealed room, gunshot, or other mundane and obvious things. But you won’t convince Average Jin to sleep in a sealed room with a fan on.
This is why the Korean man on Lost (suggested theme music: Lost Property by the Divine Comedy) is stupid enough to decinde he’s never speaking to the only other Korean speaking survivor on the island.
The lesson here is that people will happilly believe anything. Anything at all. Because they’re idiots. So why should we think that Channel 4 are capable of convincing nine of them that Suffolk is Russia and a hanger is space? After all, they convinced enough people that “Deal Or No Deal” (suggested theme music: Dumb It Down by the Divine Comedy) is entertaining. They probably got the Derren Brown to help.
He’s real too, by the way. Just so we’re clear.
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21 Responses to “To Insanity And Beyond”
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February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
You know, I don’t think the author(s) of the Wikipedia article on Fan Death takes this extremely important subject very seriously either:
“There are several reasons given as to how a fan can kill (other than using it to bludgeon someone to death).”
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
Apparently “Deal or No Deal” has been given the funding for 230 more episodes for channel 4!
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
I suspect that lots of people who aren’t South Korean would believe in fan death if they lived in a country where the media were endlessly reporting it as truth and there were doctors assuring them that it happened. You don’t have to be stupid to believe what people supposedly in the know tell you.
Just out of curiosity, what’s your source on “almost all” South Koreans believing in fan death?
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
Incidentally, I much preferred the people on the Space Cadets message board suggesting that it’s probably a hoax on the public, but because the contestants are actually in Russia and will be going into space.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
“You don’t have to be stupid to believe what people supposedly in the know tell you.”
Aah, the less well known if they told you to run in front of a bus, you wouldn’t be stupid if you did argument.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
Crap! I used to laugh at people for using HTML tags instead of BBCode ones. I laughed!
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
At least you weren’t told to use them.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
Aah, the very well known straw man argument.
I think, Paul, you missed the part where you have to know very little about the matter at hand before. If you genuinely didn’t know what would happen if you ran in front of a bus, and someone you had good reason to believe was an expert told you it would cure your terrible chronic disease, then no, you wouldn’t be stupid to do it.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
Doctors, Mark. Doctors. They haven’t been told by experts that Fan Death is real (well, they probably have); they are themselves the experts professing it, and that means they can’t use that excuse. Ordinary Joe Stupid can believe whatever he is Stupid enough to fall for and get away with it by pleading ignorance, but experts can’t. Example: a qualified physicist and statistician once told me that the Poissonian Distribution explained why buses come in threes. It doesn’t. I didn’t take his word for it; I worked it out for myself and proved to my own satisfaction that he was an idiot. And this was just some trivial statistical factoid. The reality of Fan Death would be quite literally a matter of life and death. One would think at some stage they’d at least have discussed it with someone outside Korea.
My source is http://fandeath.net/menu/whobelieves.htm as I think it’s probably marginally more reliable than Wikipedia. I see no reason why it would by lying.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
Oh, I’m not saying that the doctors aren’t stupid, just the people who believe them. I generally believe my doctor when he tells me about things I don’t know about.
It’s not really a matter of life or death if you’re just not sleeping in a room with a fan on (which is what you’d do if you believed in fan death, unless you were an idiot). It’s a matter of being a bit warmer when you’re already too asleep to really notice anyway. Probably easier to just turn the fan off than to spend your precious time investigating.
I don’t know what the hell that Poissonian Distribution thing was supposed to demonstrate. Or do you expect people who believe in fan death to sleep in a room with a fan on just to make sure? Keeping in mind that they think that doing this might kill them?
I assume that it’s the doctors you’re expecting to have discussed this with other people, as I think expecting the general public to seek out international confirmation of this sort of thing is a bit bloody ridiculous.
I bet you’ve believed stuff you’ve been told that would seem ridiculous to someone in the know.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
There was that whole “Santa Claus” debacle a couple of decades ago, as I (don’t actually) recall.
But yes. I expect doctors to discuss something like this, particularly since a fan is one of the most harmless objects I can think of. Short of someone climbing into a bath with one or being hit by one falling from a great height, I can’t imagine how they could possibly injure someone. They hardly even affect the temperature, most of the time, especially considering they’re generally only used when it’s way too hot to get hypothermia, and the theory that the fan “creates a vortex and sucks out all the oxygen” doesn’t even make sense, unless you’re in a bad science-fiction movie.
The Poissonian Distribution thing was intended to demonstrate a non-idiot (i.e. me) questioning something stupid he was told by someone supposedly in the know instead of believing it wholesale simply because he’d been told to. To prove it could (and should) be done and that I wasn’t preaching things I didn’t myself do.
I wonder if it’s legal to carry those little pocket fans in Korea.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
So, we agree that the doctors are idiots. Lovely.
See, now, I suspect either that you had knowledge about statistics that showed you that what he was saying was bollocks, or that just by explaining it he provided enough information for it to be demonstrated that he was wrong. Neither of which is necessarily the case with fan death.
(Just out of curiosity, was he serious about the bus thing or was he joking? Because if he was serious, I’m worried. Especially as the point could be disproven pretty easily by the simple observation that buses don’t come in threes very often at all.)
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
I think he was serious. If it as a joke, his delivery needs a lot of work.
That said, if he’s going to be a lecturer his delivery needs a lot of work.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
I’m worried.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
OMG MISPELL: “decinde”
On-topic (quite ridiculous for a comments box): Euan keeps telling me about this show. If the contestants are, in fact, fools, I wonder what would happen if they did something unexpected.
For instance, Euan told me that on a hoax press conference, they were asked “Would you have sex in space?”. WOULD they? Though they might have signed a contract that forbids them to do such things, who knows.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
I can now confirm that the contestants are, in fact, fools.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
It’s fair easy to show that buses come in twos, mind, particularly on routes with short scheduled times between buses (ironic, really). Buses coming in threes is a myth, though.
The proof does not require a Poisson distribution, though.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
On Palatine Road, in West Didsbury, Manchester, the buses have been known to come in 5s and 6s!
This is just down to poor scheduling and the fact that there is a turnaround layby there.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
I walked down Oxford Street in Manchester a couple of weeks ago and waled past a string of no fewer than eighteen buses one behind the other. Behind this was a car, and behind that were another fourteen buses.
I can’t imagine how anyone can get anywhere in Manchester with all those buses in the way.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
Apparently it’s the most highly populated bus route in Europe. Populated with buses, that is. There’s about eight different companies running buses up and down the 42 route. Highly convenient for me personally, so I won’t complain.
Oh, and it’s Oxford Road. Oxford Street is between Regent Street and Bond Street and costs £50 for a house there.
February 17th, 2007 at 00:00
Dammit, I always get that wrong. I think I shall start a petition to have it renamed.