My Million-Dollar Challenge

You know what disgusts me? Conspiracy theories. Look at it this way: which of the following represents a greater danger to society? The fact that the mainstream media uncritically repeated Bush's claims about Iraq's nonexistent WMD's, or the fact that so many people think that oil may have played at least a partial role in Bush's decision to go to war? I'm with professional skeptic George Case on this one- only a conspiracy theorist could possibly think oil had anything to do with the Iraq war. In fact, I think it's just bizarre that people are so gullible as to believe that oil ever plays a role in geopolitical calculations. But, fortunately, Case's article explains at length what sorts of brain pathologies lead people to hold these weird political beliefs.

And it doesn't stop there. The fact that so many people believe that oil played a role in the Iraq war is insignificant compared to the fact that a small number of people think that the Queen of England is a shapeshifting pedophile lizard from Zeta Reticuli. How can democracy survive, when small fringe groups are permitted to hold unusual beliefs?

Well, I've had enough. The fact of the matter is that evil men simply do not use secrecy as a cover for coordinated illegal actions, not ever. It's just not physically possible. And when it does happen, it is inevitably exposed. And since the public is having so much trouble grasping that fact, I now proudly announce the Wintermute Bookbinder Million Dollar Challenge.

I, Wintermute Bookbinder, will pay a million dollars cash to anyone who can provide conclusive evidence of any conspiracy theory of any kind whatsoever. It's really that simple. And when, after a few years pass and not one single person has claimed the prize money, we'll be able to point to the challenge as proof that conspiracies are in general impossible.

Are you a friendless, paranoid nut who would like to apply for the challenge? Fear not- I have compiled a brief FAQ for applicants. Please read it in full before bothering me. Let me also remind you that you are insane. Thus, you may want to have a lawyer or a non-insane friend read the FAQ for you.

1. Is the challenge really open to all conspiracy theories?

Yes.

2. Really?

Yes. All conspiracy theories of any sort whatsoever.

3. Are you sure?

Yes, dammit, no exceptions. The fact that no one has claimed the prize money will one day stand as proof that all conspiracy theories are false. Obviously it would be pointless to open the challenge to some conspiracy theories but not others.

4. How do you define "conspiracy theory"?

The term "conspiracy theory" is surprisingly difficult to define. Not all claims of nefarious acts plotted by multiple actors in secret are "conspiracy theories."

If you have any questions about whether your claim is a conspiracy theory, please email it to me and I will happily tell you if it is, in fact, eligible for the challenge, long before my money is at risk.

5. Does (this) qualify as a conspiracy theory?

The best way to answer this is to apply a list of things that people commonly apply for.

For purposes of this challenge, the following DO NOT count as conspiracy theories:

The JFK assassination. The assassinations of RFK, MLK, or X. The Illuminati. Claims that the government is storing a UFO at Roswell. Watergate. MK-ULTRA. Operation Stargate.

For purposes of this challenge, the following DO count as conspiracy theories:

Bat boy. Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster mid-coitus, either a) by crushing him between her steely thighs at the moment of orgasm, or b) using a poofy, 1960's style machine-gun bra. The belief that vampires have killed your wife and replaced her with an identical impostor. Elvis is alive, and working under the stage name "Michael Jackson."

Theories regarding the JFK assassination are not eligible for this challenge because- unlike claims regarding Bat Boy- they have already been conclusively proven false. Claims regarding the Illuminati are not eligible because, if true, they would expose claimants to dangerous reprisals. Watergate is ineligible because it's a real conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory.

Some claims are clearly too ridiculous to be worth further scrutiny. Thus, MK-ULTRA and Operation Stargate are not eligible for the challenge because not only is the government too incompetent to engage in a conspiracy, it is also far too wise to waste money on bizarre schemes to develop psionic and mind-control weapons.

6. How is the challenge to be judged?

I do not serve as the judge for the challenge. Instead, applicants to the challenge must devise their own criterion of proof which will make the truth or falsity of their claim self-evident, without requiring formal judging. My only involvement in the process is to reject criteria of proof which do not meet my standards of academic rigor.

Clearly this is a fair rule, and slanted towards the applicants- after all, they get to serve as their own judges. Moreover, since the criterion of success is mutually agreed upon, neither side can be forced into doing something they don't want to do. It's potentially easy for the challenge to degenerate into finger-pointing once you fail. This rule is meant to ensure that finger-pointing will have no merit.

7. Can I be disqualified from the challenge because of my atrocious behavior?

YES. I can cancel your application at any time if I deem your behavior to be unacceptable, and it will be all your fault, and you will have no one to blame but yourself, you... you... you nasty little child, you!

The following behaviors can result in your being disqualified and permanently barred from the challenge:

Profanity. Obstinacy. Unwillingness to cooperate. Criminal libel (especially insistence that I, Wintermute Bookbinder, am narrow-minded or dishonest, or insistent criticisms of the terms of the Million-Dollar Challenge.)

8. Is there a judge to whom I can appeal my disqualification?

NO. The decision will be made purely by myself, with no possibility of appeal.

Please understand that as I am an eminently fair and reasonable person, you cannot hope for any better judge than myself. I will only use my unilateral power to cancel the challenge under the most extreme circumstances. After all, it is not my goal to reject your claim. While I feel that beliefs such as your own are so inane that I often publicly speculate that they must have their origins in an undiagnosed brain tumor, I nonetheless have no greater interest than giving your beliefs a full and fair hearing, and am perfectly willing to pay out $1 million should they turn out to be true. Surely you understand that criticisms of my challenge or my character constitute criminal libel, and thus it is only reasonable that anyone making such criticisms be permanently banned.

9. Can I only be banned for criticising the challenge while I am being tested, or am I forbidden to make any public comments criticising the challenge at all?

You will be permanently banned from the challenge if you ever claim that the test is unfair, or that I am dishonest, in any place, at any time.

In particular, visitors to the online forum of the Wintermute Bookbinder Educational Foundation should remember that the forum exists solely to further free and open debate. It does not exist to provide you with a platform for criticising me or my challenge. While you are free to offer brief or tepid criticism of the WBEF and its challenge, bear in mind that it shouldn't get out of hand. Remember, the WBEF exists to further my crusade against conspiracy theorists such as yourself. And while open debate is a healthy part of that crusade, the fact remains that the WBEF does not exist to further the crusade of conspiracy theorists against me.

What a real million-dollar challege looks like

Note: Blogger seems to be screwing up the formatting of this post. I've contacted tech support, but in the meantime, the text will look a little screwy.

James "the Amazing" Randi's million-dollar challenge has long been one of the prominent features of faux Skepticism. It was originally open to "any person or persons who will demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability of any kind under satisfactory observing conditions." Then he dropped the "of any kind." Now he's finally downgraded it to an invitation-only event.

I maintain that Randi's challenge is, quite simply, fraudulent. In fact, it has to be fraudulent, because the thing it's aiming to prove- that the paranormal does not exist- is an inherently meaningless statement. And in promoting a fraudulent challenge, Randi is, like so many Skeptics, using sensationalism and media stunts to make sure that people believe the right things, while eroding their ability to think critically.

First, what would a real million-dollar challenge look like? Look no further than the X Prize foundation. They have extremely well-defined, clear-cut challenges. What the claimants are being asked to do, and what constitutes successful completion of the challenge, are straightforwardly and unambiguously defined in detail and in advance.

If the X Prize foundation were to offer an X Prize for telepathy, it might look (in part) like this:

"Claimants will be placed in two windowless rooms in separate buildings. They must be able, without using any technological device, to transmit a string of 30 Zener cards with 90% accuracy in one hour in order to claim the prize."

Suppose someone figured out that telepathy was real. I'm not saying telepathy is real. I'm just asking that, for the sake of argument, you accept the science fictional premise that someone discovers a "radio gland" in the human brain, and learns how to use it to send and receive messages via radio to other properly trained people. And, that the scientific community as a whole comes to accept that this phenomenon is real. I think it's reasonable to think that they could win the X Prize outlined above.

But what about Randi's challenge? I maintain that they would never, ever be able to win Randi's $1 million, any more than an evolutionist could ever win Kent Hovind's $250,000 challenge. Randi could rig the challenge without breaking the rules as stated.

First of all, Randi could declare that telepathy isn't paranormal, but is instead an established part of science, and thus isn't eligible for his challenge. (Remember, I posited that telepathy had already passed extensive peer review.) If he wanted to be a little more subtle, he could claim that brain radio isn't telepathy as traditionally understood, and point to old writings by pseudoscientists who claimed that telepathy was a faster-than-light phenomenon, or was the result of quantum entanglement, etc.

He could also insist on a test beyond the known capacity of telepathy. For example, he could insist on the transmission of information more complicated than Zener cards. After all, the test is made up on a case-by-case basis, and must be agreeable to both Randi and the claimant. Usually Skeptics hoot about claimants who demand favorable test conditions, but the sword cuts both ways.

Lastly, Randi has a catch-all escape hatch. If all else fails, he can unilaterally declare that he doesn't like your attitude, and that the test is over. That's right- the stated rules actually grant Randi the right to take his marbles and go home. In fact, I have already forfeited my right to participate in the challenge: "The following are some examples of the type of behavior than can result in the rejection of your claim... Making Libelous Accusations (such as insisting that the Challenge itself is a Sham/Fraud or that Randi himself is a liar and a cheat who will never award the prize money even if the Applicant Passes the Tests)."

Sound farfetched? Actually, Randi has already disqualified a number of phenomena on the grounds that they supposedly aren't paranormal:

The following things have been ruled NOT paranormal and/or NOT eligible for the Challenge in the past:

UFOs. "Bigfoot" & "Yeti" (or other legendary creatures). Anything that is likely to cause injury. "Cloud-busting". Claims of a Religious or Spiritual nature. Exorcism and/or Demonic Possession. The Existence of Chakras. The Existence of God[s]. Reincarnation. The Existence of the Soul or "Astral Bodies".

UFO's aren't pararnormal? You could have fooled me! Randi explains further:

Many of the NOT PARANORMAL claims are listed as such solely because they cannot be properly tested for.

...

There are some claims that are far too implausible to warrant any serious examination, such as the "Breatharian" claims in which the applicant states that he can survive without food or water. Science conclusively tells us all we need to know about such matters, and the JREF feels no obligation to engage applicants in such delusions.

How interesting! So the claims really are paranormal. But Randi is redefining them as "not paranormal" because he can't test for them, or thinks they're ridiculous. Why would he do this? Why not simply state, "The following paranormal claims are not eligible, because we cannot properly test them"? Because then Randi wouldn't be able to claim that the challenge is open to "any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability of any kind." And if he did that, it wouldn't be nearly as impressive a media stunt. (Imagine how ludicrous an honest description of the challenge would be: "Randi offers $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal phenomenon that he doesn't find ridiculous.")

More interesting is his rejection of crop circles:

Other claims, such as "Crop Circles" and UFO's are rejected because they have been definitively proven to be the result of hoaxes or mass hysteria.

Randi's claim is, in fact, demonstrably untrue. A number of meteorologists posit that while the more complex crop circles are clearly hoaxes, it may be that a rare natural phenomenon can flatten simple circles in fields of grain. Those meteorologists publish peer-reviewed papers on their findings. I personally think crop circles are a long shot, but the fact remains that the question is more open than Randi claims.

By contrast, Randi declares that the following phenomena do count as paranormal. Presumably, they have, in Randi's mind, not been "definitively proven to be the result of hoaxes or mass hysteria."

Dowsing. ESP. Precognition. Remote Viewing. Communicating with the Dead and/or "Channeling". Violations of Newton's Laws of Motion (Perpetual Motion Devices). Homeopathy. Chiropractic Healing (beyond back/joint problems). Faith Healing. Psychic Surgery. Astrology. Therapeutic Touch (aka "TT"). Qi Gong. Psychokinesis (aka "PK"). The Existence of Ghosts. Precognition & Prophecy. Levitation. Physiognomy. Psychometry. Pyramid Power. Reflexology. Applied Kinesiology (aka "AK"). Clairvoyance. The Existence of Auras. Graphology. Numerology. Palmistry. Phrenology.

Personally, I don't know of any serious scientists who are writing peer-reviewed papers asserting the reality of pyramid power, perpetual motion machines, or auras. And yet, these supposedly have more validity than crop circles, which are supported by peer-reviewed research. If Randi is being honest about his challenge, that would suggest that the head of the James Randi Educational Foundation is himself ignorant of the available research on the subjects he's preaching about.

On the other hand, if the challenge is just a media stunt, the explanation is obvious. Randi knows that his $1 million is safe if he offers it to dowsers and faith healers. But crop circles are a different matter. They're in the same position meteorites were once upon a time. They're rare, they're extremely difficult to explain in terms of contemporary science, and researchers had to rely heavily on eyewitness testimony that meteorites really fall from the sky, just as modern meteorologists have to rely on eyewitnesses who claim to have seen crop circles forming. It may be a long shot, but there is nonetheless a slim possibility that crop circles might pan out. Not only would Randi lose $1 million, but the dowsers and faith healers would never let him forget it. Best to claim- falsely- that crop circles are conclusively disproven, and therefore "not paranormal," and keep the money safe.

Not only is Randi's challenge fraudulent, it necessarily must be fraudulent. The problem is that Randi is trying to prove that the "paranormal" doesn't exist. But Randi himself admits that the term "paranormal" has no clear-cut definition. (But don't worry- just submit your claim, and Randi will tell you whether or not it's eligible long before his money is in any danger.) And if the term "paranormal" isn't a clearly defined category, then statements like "the paranormal does not exist" are meaningless.

Yes, there are plenty of phenomena like dowsing or pyramid power that are unambiguously paranormal, and unambiguously false. But there's also a big grey area. Ball lightning, for example, shares a lot of qualities with paranormal phenomena. It's rare, it was for a long time considered false, research into it relies heavily on eyewitness testimony, it has resisted explanation for a very long time, and it appears to violate the laws of physics. (Specifically, a ball of hot gas should cool quickly, and should rise due to buoyancy. Ball lightning does either, and thus seems to violate the laws of conservation of energy and universal gravitation.) Is ball lightning paranormal? Of course not. If it were, Randi would have to pay someone $1 million. What about the Tunguska event? Also not paranormal. The floodgates would really open if Randi were to open the challenge to cryptozoologists. Yes, the Loch Ness Monster is unambiguously nonexistent. But, the giant squid and the coelacanth are unambiguously real. If Randi opened the challenge to Bigfoot and Nessie, he would have to draw a line somewhere. And not only would he have to justify including Bigfoot but excluding the giant squid, there's always the possibility that he would draw the line in the wrong place, and end up having to pay out the challenge once the Flores man controversy is settled. Nonetheless, for a "not paranormal" subject, CSICOP sure spills a lot of ink over it in Skeptical Inquirer.

And remember when I said that Randi could always declare brain radio to be, technically, not the same as telepathy? He's already done it. "Palmistry" and "physiognomy" are eligible for the challenge. But geneticists have found correlations between facial and hand features and traits such as susceptibility to heart disease. (By the way, there's nothing particularly astonishing about this, if you know how chomosomes work.) Presumably, if you can look at someone's hand and declare that they have a 22% greater chance of dying of a heart attack, that's palmistry. So why hasn't Randi declared that the paranormal is real, and paid out his challenge? Simple- the genetic correlations between hand and face shape and heart disease are not quite the same thing as palmistry. For that matter, scientists can levitate small animals using magnetic fields, but that doesn't count as levitation. Call it Randi-mandering, because Randi has extensively gerrymandered the definition of "paranormal" with one goal in mind: keeping that money safe in its vault.

In the absence of any clear-cut definition of "paranormal," the challenge becomes not only fraudulent, but meaningless. Why is Randi so eager to test the paranormal, if he can't even tell us what the word means? The answer, as I've said several times before, lies in the fact that Skeptics aren't really skeptical. Teaching true critical thinking is hard. Much easier is snookering people into believing things that happen to be true- snookering them using the same kind of sensationalism and media stunts that people like Uri Geller use. And, having done so, Skeptics like Randi can pretend that by indoctrinating people into their catechism, they have taught real critical thinking. If Randi were to genuinely educate people about critical thinking, and abandon his stance on the meaningless category of "the paranormal," he wouldn't be able to stand in front of a camera and grandly declare that he has $1 million available to anyone who can demonstrate any paranormal phenomenon whatsoever. Skeptics wouldn't have a ready supply of sadly deluded fools to sneer at, and might have to look at their own thinking instead. Randi's job would be much harder- but it would be much more honest.

Update:

While researching Randi on the web, I found this interesting tidbit:

For example, CSICOP founding member Dennis Rawlins pointed out that not only does Randi act as "policeman, judge and jury" but quoted him as saying "I always have an out"! (Fate, October 1981).

There is some controversy over what, exactly, Randi means by this. Some claim that it means Randi has an "out" as a safeguard against cheating.

This is, of course, one of those odd, self-damning excuses. We're supposed to believe that Randi is entitled to an "out" (and he clearly has one, as detailed above) because someone might cheat. But that means, in effect, that the test really means that Randi will give away $1 million at his discretion. Randi is in effect admitting that he is cheating at his own challenge, and justifying it on the grounds that the other side might cheat, too.

My beef with Skepticism, in a nutshell

I recently received this nice comment from Mike Shaw (in response to "Skepticism: What's the difference?"):

Very elegantly constructed, as with all of your posts, but please could you offer a summary paragraph for the hard of thinking? (like me).

I am very much in sympathy with your implied concerns about Skeptic; it always reads like a religious tract, and I often find myself put off by the sheer evangelism of the writing. This is a pity, as it's clearly written by well-meaning intelligent humans. Why is Fortean Times, with its lack of peer-review, legions of crazy people and absence of critical thought so much more fun to read?

My position is very simple: I think that we need a movement promoting critical thinking. But unfortunately, so such movement exists. Even worse, a number of people have co-opted the terms "Skepticism" and "critical thinking" to describe their own subculture, even though their subculture has nothing to do with critical thinking, beyond their rhetoric. As a result, the public becomes even less able to learn about genuine critical thinking. Thus, the first step in promoting critical thinking has to be exposing the fraud of "Skepticism."

The "Skepticism" movement is indeed a subculture, even though its members deny that. They will self-identify as "Skeptics" both in conversation and in print, and they have an array of "Skeptical societies." They have their own publications, like Skeptical Inquirer and Skeptic. They have their own heroes and luminaries, like Michael Shermer and James Randi. The "Skeptics" would have you believe that a "Skeptic" is merely a person who thinks critically. But are all critical thinkers so fascinated by the paranormal and by conspiracy theories? If a critical thinker believes that his time is better spent scrutinizing media coverage of Bush's WMD claims, would he spend his time reading the hundredth article debunking Bigfoot in Skeptical Inquirer?

Genuinely promoting critical thinking- or even genuinely engaging in critical thinking- is difficult. It's much easier to pretend to promote critical thinking. In the case of "Skepticism," this pretense is accomplished through use of what is, in effect, a catechism. If you believe in evolution, and don't believe in Bigfoot, UFO's, or telekinesis, and have the right beliefs on a number of other issues, you're a Skeptic. Getting people to believe the catechism is much easier than teaching them to think critically, because the "Skeptics" are free to use sensationalism and propaganda techniques, as I've explained before. And since the catechism is generally well-proven by science, it can be very hard to convince Skeptics that having the right beliefs is not the same as critical thinking.

But, in order for the catechism to work, the Skeptics have to be careful to not step outside its bounds. This is why Skeptics frequently make statements like, "...I was dismayed in 1976 by the rising tide of belief in the paranormal and the lack of adequate scientific examinations of these claims." (Why not be troubled by a lack of critical thinking in general?) Or take the James Randi Educational Foundation, "an educational resource on the paranormal, pseudoscientific and supernatural." (Why doesn't James Randi, or any other "Skeptic," found an educational resource to help people skeptically examine the news media?) The defining attribute of Skepticism is not critical thinking, but opposition to a vague enemy called "the paranormal," which even James Randi admits cannot be defined clearly. And of course it can't. It can't, because it's a bogeyman, an incoherent grab-bag of scientifically disproven beliefs that Skeptics have seized upon as a monolithic enemy. And they need an enemy, because if they don't actually stand for critical thinking, then they have to define themselves as being in opposition to some external foe. They cannot stand examining themselves against a yardstick of real critical thinking, so they assure themselves that at least they are smarter than the people who believe in Bigfoot. Even worse, straying outside the catechism would mean facing issues that aren't settled yet. That would mean genuine critical thinking, and the possibility of one day having one's beliefs disproven.

And this is why Skeptic is so much more boring to read than Fortean Times. Skeptical publications devote themselves to endlessly rehashing the catechism. How can anyone be entertained by yet another tired trip to the same old foregone conclusions? How many articles debunking Bigfoot can one stand? The message of "Skeptical" publications, drilled home over and over again, is that there's nothing to see here. Yes, they make token comments about how science doesn't have all the answers and how the universe is full of wonders- but those are just formulas. How many articles do "Skeptical" publications devote to unanswered questions? Approximately zero. Take ball lightning, for example. Ball lightning was for a long time dismissed by science. Now it's proven to be real, but it has resisted explanation for decades. It appears to violate both the laws of gravity and of conservation of energy. In short, it is a demonstrably real paranormal phenomenon. Has Skeptical Inquirer ever run an article on it? No. Their only interest in ball lighting is in using it to explain away UFO reports. If you read the books of William Corliss, you'll find countless inexplicable phenomena attested to in the pages of esteemed peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Science and Nature. And yet, my experience has been that "Skeptics" mock Corliss, and I have seen not one single article in any Skeptical publication admitting that any of these phenomena are real.

Or take the RFK assassination. The evidence makes it blatantly clear that RFK was killed by a conspiracy. There's nothing particularly outlandish about that claim. After all, three people can kill a senator, just like three people can rob a liquor store. But the problem is that "conspiracy theorists" are one of the imaginary enemies that "Skeptics" need in order to define themselves. So while you will find endless rehashes of the JFK assassination in skeptical publications, you won't find a single article on RFK.

That, then, is why the Fortean Times is entertaining, and "Skeptical" publications are not. Skeptics pay lip service to the wonder of the unknown. The Forteans- for all their flaws- embrace it.

What went wrong with Star Trek

I've been a big fan of the original series of Star Trek ever since childhood. Even now, I catch it on TV when I get the chance, even though I've seen all episodes several times (with the exception of "Space Seed," which, strangely, was the one episode my local TV station would never, ever show when I was a kid.) On the other hand, I watched Star Trek: the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Enterprise for a while, but lost interest long before the ends of their runs. (Voyager I hated from the start.)

In my opinion, the problem is that the people making the new Star Trek series never quite managed to grasp the fact that what made the original series so special was its sense of intellectual adventure. What scenes from TOS stick out most clearly in my memory? Spock cursing himself for a fool, because he forgot to use his tricorder to record the centuries of history being revealed by a time portal. Or later in the same episode, when Spock, stranded in the 1930's, used vacuum tubes to repair his broken tricorder. Scotty draining people's phasers into the fuel tanks of a downed shuttle, trying to get enough power for orbit.

Roughly speaking, there are four kinds of intellectual adventure. Either it's about using your brain to get out of a jam, or using your brain to play a joke on someone, or cooking up an elaborately cerebral way to make money, or finding a treasure whose value is cerebral rather than monetary. In Apollo 13, when an engineer dumps a pile of detritus on a table and says, "This is what's inside the command module- now figure out how to turn it into an adapter for the air filters," that's intellectual adventure. In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Feynman used his brain to make adventures for himself. In The Mad Scientists' Club, a group of adolescents played elaborate scientific pranks on the citizens of their small midwestern town- and the book, while obscure, secures a permanent place in the hearts of its fans. The engineers from The Eudaemonic Pie tried to beat the casinos by building a computer that could predict where a roulette ball would land. Finding King Solomon's Mines is regular adventure. Finding the Library of Alexandria is intellectual adventure.

Part of the key to intellectual adventure is that the audience has to be able to understand what's going on. That's what makes ST:NG so tiresome. On the old series, Spock repaired his tricorder with vacuum tubes. On ST:NG, Geordi just blathers about reconfiguring the warp coil. Imagine if the air-filter scene in Apollo 13 had been replaced with engineers jabbering about how they have to retro-oxidize the samarium-231 ortho-nebulizer. Or what if Feynman's practical jokes had all involved finding eigenfunctions of the n-topic quark manifold? Nobody would care. And that's why I don't care about ST:NG.

Of course, the writers of ST:NG did have a vague sense that they needed to be intellectual. That's why we had endless trial episodes, typically involving a relatively bloodless discussion of some philosophical point. Even worse, the philosophical debates would be so heavily skewed towards one side or another as to destroy any curiosity on the part of the audience. (What fan is going to say that yes, Data is just a robot, and can be killed with impunity?) Even worse, their philosophical stances would flip-flop wildly, depending on the demands of the episode. In one episode the Prime Directive is so sacred that Wesley's life has to be sacrificed for it. In another, the Enterprise crew finds cloning so offensive that they upend a society of clones by forcing them to have sex with unwashed rural hicks.

I can't help but feel that the writers of ST:NG were conflicted on the question of how intellectual the show would be. The show declared itself- at times quite explicitly- to be more intellectual than the old series. When Kirk battled a being with godlike power, he would gamble the Enterprise on a hand-to-hand duel. When Picard battled a being with godlike power, he poured himself a cup of tea and sipped it in his armchair while he quietly waited for death. Excuse me? Who the hell wants to watch an old man wait for death? And yet, the writers seemed to have no faith in the intelligence of the audience. Otherwise, why would they resort, week after week, to the deus ex machina of reconfiguring the warp coil? And in the end, we got neither intellectualism nor adventure.

The generally anti-intellectual attitude of ST:NG led to all kinds of silliness, repeated week after week. Once Geordi and Data beamed down to a planet and found alien technology which surpassed anything available to Starfleet. Did they take it back to the Enterprise for study? No, of course not. It's not like they're explorers or anything. No, they just made some appreciative noises, and then moved on to the next shiny object. Time and again, the Enterprise crew would find something that, in theory, should completely change their society, and yet it would completely disappear with no trace once it had served its purpose in the plot.

This found its silliest expression in the Disposable Deus Ex Machina. For example, in one episode, Dr. Pulaski and a number of other members of the crew got infected with a virus that made them age quickly. In the end, they fixed the problem by using the transporter to revert their bodies back to the way they were before they got old. Got that? They didn't solve the problem by coming up with a cure for the virus. They solved the problem by coming up with a cure for aging. For centuries, people have tried to find a way to stop aging- and Dr. Pulaski does it in a few days during a race against senility. Not that it makes any difference. Apparently no one in the ST:NG universe wants longevity anymore, because never again in any subsequent episode of that or any other Trek series did anyone mention that aging had been abolished.

It makes a kind of weird sense, in a way. Between 1870 and 1970, we went from covered wagons to men on the moon. What technological advances and societal changes have taken place in the 100 years between ST:TOS and ST:NG? Faster warpdrive, smaller communicators, and plusher spaceships. When even their explorers have no curiosity,
can you blame them for having a stagnant society?

Where has all this led? It led to Star Trek: Enterprise, in which all presense of intellectualism has been abandoned in favor of tepid gunfights and cheesy T&A. I imagine that the producers decided that if people didn't like the "intellectualism" of ST:NG, then the audience must just not be that cerebral. But if they would just try presenting problems with real solutions, instead of bombarding us with treknobabble, or show the characters displaying any interest whatsoever in exploring the universe, instead of using exploratory missions to comets as an opportunity to make snowmen...