by Antonia Caruso
There are people who think I’m a killjoy. Those people enjoy the antics of fakers. They say that séances and communing with the dead are, at worst, harmless entertainment. We pay our entertainers. Why shouldn’t we pay our fortune-tellers, even if they are fake?
I think my idol, The Amazing Randi, explains it best when he says there is a real danger in believing people who claim that they can solve real problems—like, for instance, the energy crisis and environmental decline—by magic. For example, there are common illusions that give the impression of matter or energy springing into being from nothingness. One of them looks like a large faucet, suspended in mid-air, from which water flows unceasingly. To the eye, water is being made out of nothing and the illusionist responsible deserves a citation from the Reality Police for violating the Law of Conservation of Matter.
If the illusionist is enterprising, a small water wheel is part of the apparatus, merrily turning in the flow of water being created from nothing. Thus, the illusionist is creating energy from nothing, and the Reality Police exact very high fines from people who build perpetual motion machines violating the Law of Conservation of Energy. Even worse, the size of the punishment dealt to those who defy entropy, the relentless killjoy that will eventually make motionless atomic particles of us all, is incalculable.
So is it true? Can anyone build a faucet that creates water and energy? Of course not.
In reality, there is a pipe running upward, hidden by the gushing flow of water that supports the faucet. Attached to this pipe is a submersible pump that recirculates the water so that it can flow out again. This pump requires electricity to do its magical work.
Voila! Energy has not been created out of nothing, and neither has matter. Entropy continues uninterrupted in its quest to destroy us. The Reality Police can rest easy.
There is no harm in an illusion that makes the audience laugh and say, “Wow! How did he do that?” But if that audience is in the thrall of someone unethical enough to suggest that such violations of the laws of physics are possible for people with magical powers, then a very real harm has been done. People who believe in impossible things may lack an understanding of the need to conserve water and energy, and they may feel no pressing need to vote for people who are willing to deal with reality.
A society consisting of people who believe in the irrational could find itself in a condition where only magic can save them. I don’t know about you, but that’s not a society I ever want to see. Consider this book my contribution to the rationality of the world.
You can thank me any time.