Reddit (www.reddit.com) is a major web site consisting mainly of a variety of special interest web pages that are called "subreddits." For example, the Science subreddit (www.reddit.com/r/science) gives each day a long list of links to science news stories; and the Psychology subreddit (www.reddit.com/r/psychology) gives each day a long list of links to psychology news stories. There are thousands of different subreddit pages, each dealing with some specialized topic.
I have noticed on Reddit's science subreddits a deplorable long-standing tendency to display links to what may be called weaponized psychology papers. When someone trains to be a psychologist, he will typically think that he is learning about the mind to help people, such as people with psychological problems. But the purpose of a weaponized psychology paper is not to help anyone, but only to damage the reputation of some group of people. Like some sniper putting someone in the crosshairs of his gun, a scientist working on a weaponized psychology paper will pick some group that will be the target of his attack. Often the group will be some people holding some belief or engaging in some behavior that psychology professors disapprove of. The goal may be to stigmatize or pathologize or deligitimize some group that is disliked.
I may describe the type of shoddy methods typically used by the writers of weaponized psychology papers. Some group of people will be queried, usually by having them fill out questionnaires. Some of the questions will be trying to determine how much a subject believes in a variety of different things someone can believe in, or how much someone engages in some particular practice. Other questions will be used to try to find some type of abnormality or personality defect or character flaw in the person. For example, questions may be asked that are trying to look for signs of anxiety, untruthfulness, anger, jealousy, narcissism, hasty thinking, or any of a hundred similar imperfections. The questions will very often be what lawyers call "leading questions," designed to get people to confess to things they would never normally confess to.
The scientists handling the weaponized psychology research project will typically not start out by publicly stating that only one exact hypothesis will be tested, like scientists ideally should. Instead they will be on a kind of fishing expedition, looking for any and all bad things they can report about the belief group that is their attack target. After the data is gathered, the scientists will look for some kind of correlation that will cause embarrassment for the belief group that has been targeted.
This will be easy to find. Given a small group of subjects, random variation in answers, and a very large pool of questions, we would expect by random chance that there will be some correlation between answers given by the members of the belief group and some unflattering psychological characteristic or some belief capable of being shamed -- no matter how respectable the belief is. For example, if I gave 100 people surveys with 300 questions asking about beliefs and looking for psychological flaws, and one of the questions was whether the person believed the moon is round, I could no doubt find some correlation (perhaps only a weak one) between such a belief and some kind of undesirable characteristic or some other belief that was unreasonable. Random chance will usually produce slight correlations between different things that have no causal connection; and the smaller the sample size, the more likely such false alarm correlations will appear.
Having found a few embarrassing correlations between the beliefs of the belief group they have targeted for attack and some other belief or tendency that is regarded as undesirable or embarrassing, the scientists will write up their paper. The abstract will typically highlight whatever correlation is most embarrassing for the belief group that is the attack target. When the research is presented on a subreddit page of www.reddit.com, we will read some defamatory headline such as these imaginary but typical-sounding examples:
"Republican Voters More Likely to Be Narcissistic"
"Democrat Voters More Likely to Be Psychopathic"
"UFO Believers More Likely to Be Stupid"
"Churchgoers More Likely to Have Dark Triad Traits"
"Atheists More Likely to Have Dark Triad Traits"
Let us take a close look at one of the weaponized psychology studies that was promoted this week by a Reddit science subreddit page, with a headline announcing that research had shown astrology believers are less intelligent than average. The link was to a paper which demonstrates no such thing, but mainly demonstrates the most glaring defects in the methods of its authors.
The paper's title was "Even the stars think that I am superior: Personality, intelligence and belief in astrology." With a title like that, the authors are making rather clear their animosity and contempt towards their subjects, and after reading such a title we should have little doubt that the paper is an exercise in weaponized psychology.
In their abstract the authors state "intelligence showed a negative relationship with belief in astrology." How did they determine that? By finding IQ scores for their subjects? No. By doing standardized intelligence tests on their subjects, such as the most widely used IQ test, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale test that takes more than an hour to complete? No.
Instead our scientists most lazily resorted to a ridiculous shortcut. We read in Section 2.24 of their paper that they tested intelligence only by asking 4 questions. They claimed that there was a correlation between results on this super-shrunken mini-test and IQ scores. This is a very shoddy procedure that any scientist should be ashamed to be using. No scientist has any business making claims about intelligence of some group based on results in some laughably skimpy 4-question mini-test rather than a full intelligence test such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale test. Also, the scientists used a very unscientific method of getting survey subjects. We are told "participants were recruited via word-of-mouth on Facebook."
So their paper tells us nothing reliable about the intelligence of astrology believers, but merely gives us a good example of the shoddy shortcuts and Questionable Research Practices of some scientists. Referring to their sample of 264 subjects filling out their questionnaire, the scientists confess in their paper that "the sample is not generalisable to a broader population." So why did we see a link to their paper on Reddit's main science page, and why did the paper even get published?
There are all kinds of equally shameful tactics that go on in papers presenting examples of weaponized psychology. One of the most common is to categorize as a "conspiracy theory" some thinking that is not actually a conspiracy theory. The strategy is: (1) stretch the phrase "conspiracy theory" like some pizza maker stretching out a ball of dough to make it pizza-sized, so that it applies to things that are not really conspiracy theories; (2) then using this distorted super-expanded definition, try to defame some belief group by saying that there is a correlation between its beliefs and beliefs in conspiracy theories.
We see such shoddy tactics going on in the weaponized psychology paper here, one which attempts to associate belief in the lab-leak hypothesis of COVID-19 origins with a "dark triad" of "Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy." The authors give us a 5-point "conspiracy theory belief scale" on which you can score 1 point if you think "Coronavirus has escaped from a lab in one of the cities of China, Wuhan," and another point if you think "many dead bodies affected by Coronavirus were secretly burned in China." Neither one of these is an example of a conspiracy theory. A person can believe that coronavirus (COVID-19) escaped from a lab in China because of ordinary human error and overconfidence, not because of any conspiracy. Also, believing that dead bodies were secretly burned is not an example of a conspiracy theory, as it does not involve people plotting together to achieve nefarious ends, but simply garden-variety hiding of embarrassing things.
The same thing goes on in countless other weaponized psychology papers. Often the scientists writing such papers will be trying to discredit some belief by associating it with a belief in conspiracy theories. To increase the likelihood that such a correlation can be found, "belief in conspiracy theories" will be described in the widest way possible, so that more people can be discredited as having beliefs correlating with conspiracy theories. Similarly, if you wanted to label as many believers as possible as being "killers," you could conveniently define "killer" in the widest way possible, so that it might include anyone who killed a roach by stepping on it, or anyone who hunted for small game.
Over the past few years I have noticed very frequent attempts on the Reddit science pages to discredit various parties solely on the basis of a supposed correlation (usually weak) with such persons and belief in one or more conspiracy theories. Such a deprecation strategy seems very strange and ineffective. We know historically that there have been some important conspiracies in history, such as the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar. The Holocaust of World War II was a secret conspiracy, and the secret planning resulting in the Holocaust (at the Wanasee Conference) was a documented in a TV production entitled Conspiracy. The plot to assassinate Hitler was another real-life conspiracy, as was the Soviet-Cuban effort in 1962 to secretly construct nuclear missiles in Cuba. This week a committee published credible-sounding accusations about secretive mass mistreatment of an ethnic minority by a major Far East government, which supporters of that government have tried to dismiss as a "conspiracy theory," although the evidence for such accusations seems very substantial. So why would someone think that some belief group can be discredited by merely showing some correlation between that group and a tendency to believe in one or more conspiracy theories?
A staple of weaponized psychology papers is the arbitrary scale, in which points are assigned based on some belief or tendency. Sometimes a scale may be made up by the authors of the paper, to achieve whatever defamation effect they are striving to achieve. In other cases very dubious scales invented by others with a similar agenda may be evoked. Often scales will be designed so that the targeted group will be as likely as possible to score highly on some scale in which higher numbers are represented as signs of pathology. So, for example, if a psychology professor wants to portray UFO witnesses as being "fantasy prone," he may devise or use a scale in which belief in UFOs scores a person a higher score of being "fantasy prone." Or if a psychology wants to portray people having out-of-body experiences as being "schizoid," he may devise or use a scale in which a belief in life-after-death or a belief in ever being outside of your body gets you a higher score on a "schizoid" scale. The possibilities for defamatory mischief are endless when professors can use or invent whatever scale furthers their deligitimization agenda.
Another staple of weaponized psychology papers is the use of questionnaires with many examples of what lawyers call "leading questions," which are often questions designed to get someone to make some confession he would not naturally make. A person asked to describe his personality in a paragraph might never mention anything bad. But ask the same person a long series of questions such as "Do you sometimes stretch the truth to achieve your goals?" or "Do you sometimes feel angry towards others because of their success?" or "Do you sometimes fantasize about sexual behavior you would not want your mother to know about?" and you will probably get a few "yes" answers. This type of thing can be used as a springboard to defame the group that the questioned person belongs to.
Another staple of weaponized psychology papers is a vague report of differences without any specific numbers being supplied about how great the difference was. For example, both the title and the abstract of some paper may claim that one group (the group targeted by the weaponized psychology study) is "less intelligent" or "more Machiavellian" or "more selfish" or "less charitable" or "more angry" than control subjects, but we read no specific numbers indicating how great this alleged difference is. Reading the paper (typically behind a paywall), one will find that the supposedly discovered difference is usually some trivial difference like 1% or 2%.
A good general rule regarding weaponized psychology papers is that we should completely ignore all claims of differences between groups of people unless a specific degree-of-difference number is mentioned in the paper's abstract. When scientists get significant numbers in their studies, such numbers will be usually stated in the abstracts. When scientists don't get significant numbers, but only minimal borderline numbers such as 1% differences, such scientists will typically avoid telling us (in their paper abstracts) about how big a difference they found. So you should assume that if no exact figure is given about a difference in some group, then probably any difference found was only some tiny borderline difference.
In recent years the titles and abstracts of weaponized psychology papers have often had a rather racist sound. Again and again in such papers we hear of "dark traits" and "a dark triad" of characteristics, and such papers may refer to "the dark side" of this or that group or may distinguish normal members of some group and "dark" members of that group (the "dark" members being those who are regarded as having one or more undesirable traits). In all of this language there is an underlying thinking of "dark=bad" or "dark=dysfunctional" or "dark=inferior," which has a kind of racist dog-whistle sound to it, which may produce a subliminal cascade of hate, fear or suspicion in the readers of the papers.
I have not kept exact statistics on how many times there will be links to weaponized psychology papers on the Reddit science subreddit (www.reddit.com/r/science). But over the past few years I seem to have seen new links to such papers appear at a rate of about a few times per week.
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Here is an interesting question to ponder: if there were some deity who wanted to create an inhabited universe that had the fewest possible signs that it had been created or directed, what kind of universe would such a deity create? To answer this question we must imagine the strange hypothetical case of a deity who wants to create a universe with living beings, but who for some reason does not want any of those beings to ever suspect that they were part of a created universe or a designed universe or a directed universe. I can't imagine why a deity would want to do that. But I do have an idea about the type of universe such a deity might create so that the fewest possible minds would get suspicions that they were in a universe that had been designed or created or directed. We can call such a universe a "no design appearances" universe.
We can imagine this universe as consisting mainly of a featureless black plane, infinite in width and depth. The living beings in such a universe might consist of merely featureless balls. All of these balls might have different sizes and colors, leaving no impression that any mind was controlling the size or colors of such balls to create some uniformity. Such balls might float above the featureless plain. Physically about the most interesting thing that would happen in such a universe might be that some of these floating balls might occasionally group rather close together. In such a universe there might be no sun, and no real concepts such as hot and cold and darkness and light. The temperature might be a constant uniform temperature that no one would notice as being either hot or cold. Any of these floating balls might be able to perceive other balls that were near them, and might also be able to see the featureless plain below them.
Each such floating featureless ball might be a conscious observer, but none of them would have complex minds and complex memories such as humans have. There would be basically nothing to learn about in so simple a universe. It might be that none of these balls had any memory of anything that had happened earlier than about a week earlier. Each such ball might exist indefinitely. Or it could be that balls would just pop up from the featureless plain, and last a certain number of years. Or perhaps a new ball might arise from an unimpressive process when an existing ball split into two or three smaller balls. Each of these balls might have a strange simple little life, but none of the balls would have any such concepts such as family, nation, tribe, science, religion and so forth.
Within such a universe there might be no laws at all. There might be no law of gravity, with these balls floating around at random distances above the featureless plane. There might not be any type of laws of motion similar to Newton's laws of motion. If two balls approached each other, they might simply pass through each other, like little ghost balls. There might not even be a law requiring the balls to be above the plane, and the balls might exist both below and above the plane, passing through the featureless plane often.
Now imagine yourself as one of these strange little featureless balls floating above such a featureless plain. There would probably never arise in your mind any such concept as the idea that your little universe of floating balls and a featureless plain had been created. For one thing, no one in your universe would ever have done any such thing as creating anything. So the whole idea of creation or design would probably be utterly foreign to you. Also nothing that you saw around you would look like anything that had been designed or created. The featureless plain below you would not look like anything that had been made with care. And neither yourself nor any of your fellow floating balls would look anything that had been created or designed.
There would be nothing special about your mind that would cause you to think that beings such as yourself were caused by something other than yourself. You would have no mind that analyzed complex facts, and you would probably have no language at all. The universe you inhabited would show no signs of design, no signs of ever having begun at some time in the past. So all in all, there would seem to be no reason at all for you to suspect that there existed anything greater than yourself and the type of floating ball being that you were.
I think the paragraphs above are a pretty good stab at imagining the type of universe a deity might create if such a deity wanted to minimize the chance of any of the universe's inhabitants suspecting that they were part of a universe that had been created or designed. But now let's consider a question that is the opposite of the one I posed at the beginning of this post. What type of universe might a deity create if the deity wanted to create a universe that would maximize the chance of its inhabitants eventually suspecting that they were part of a universe that had been created or designed or directed, or that they had some great dependency on some metaphysical reality higher than themselves? We can call such a universe a universe that displays hugely demonstrative directedness. A dictionary defines "directedness" as "the state or quality of being directed." A universe with hugely demonstrative directedness would be one in which it was very obvious that some higher power was controlling things, and the source of wonders or order or organization in that universe.
What type of characteristics would a universe with hugely demonstrative directedness have? I can list some possible characteristics of such a universe.
Possible characteristic #1 of a universe with hugely demonstrative directedness: living beings might have fantastically organized bodies that could not be explained by low-level causes.
We can imagine here a situation that is the exact opposite of the one described in the "no design appearances" universe imagined above. Instead of featureless balls raising no suspicions of any kind of design, living beings would be fantastically organized structures even more organized than the most organized things humans have made.
Possible characteristic #2 of a universe with hugely demonstrative directedness: living beings might require for their existence fantastically complex and seemingly directed processes within them.
Something that is static can be very impressive if it is very organized. For example, if the captain of an aircraft tells everyone to stop moving at noon, the aircraft carrier is still a very impressive example of organization, suggesting design and directedness. But something can be far more impressive if it is both extremely organized and also something in which enormously organized dynamic processes are continually occurring. Consider, for example, a huge factory that is both enormously organized (with many types of specialized machines) and also a center of great dynamic activity, with many different manufacturing processes occurring simultaneously. Such a thing even more dramatically suggests the idea of directedness.
Possible characteristic #3 of a universe with hugely demonstrative directedness: there might be many complex uniformities and complex repeated patterns suggesting design or directedness.
In a universe with hugely demonstrative directedness, there might be many uniformities suggesting things were being directed. There might also be many complex repeated patterns of a type that we would never expect chance to produce multiple times.
Possible characteristic #4 of a universe with hugely demonstrative directedness: there might be many physical laws suggesting design or directedness.
The existence of rules of nature being mysteriously followed for no known reason would tend to suggest that the universe had been created or designed or directed, particularly if such laws were necessary for the living beings in the universe to exist.
Possible characteristic #5 of a universe with hugely demonstrative directedness: there might be evidence the universe had begun in a state of perfect disorder, or as if it had appeared from nothing, and then progressed to enormous organization and order.
One way to accentuate design and directedness is to have it mysteriously arising from non-order or chaos or from apparent nothingness. For example, it would be rather hard to make a more impressive display of supernatural power than for someone to pick up a blob of thick paint in his left hand and a blob of thick paint in his right hand, and to then throw them on to a canvas, instantly producing some beautiful painting looking like a purposeful work of art.
Possible characteristic #6 of a universe with hugely demonstrative directedness: there might be evidence had begun in a state requiring very precise fine-tuning.
Imagine you grow up living in a giant upside-down pyramid structure. You might have no idea how such a structure originated. But the physical condition would seem to tell you very dramatically that the structure had to have had a very fine-tuned and well-directed origin, or else the pyramid would never have properly balanced so that it could rest on its smallest point.
Possible characteristic #7 of a universe with hugely demonstrative directedness: minds might have very rich capabilities that could not be physically explained.
The richer the mental capabilities of living beings in a universe, and the greater the difficulty of explaining such mental capabilities physically, the more the inhabitants would tend to suspect came from higher power. For example, if all humans had entirely empty skulls, or skulls filled only with sand, they might be more likely to think that their minds came from some high power rather than something inside their body.
Now, let us consider the question: could our universe be such a universe with hugely demonstrative directedness? It seems that it might. In fact, our universe seems to have each of the characteristics mentioned above.
Characteristic #1: "living beings might have fantastically organized bodies that could not be explained by low-level causes."
Every human body is a state of physical organization more impressive than found in any object human beings can construct or manufacture. Humans know how to build fully equipped aircraft carriers from scratch. There is no nation or corporation in the world that knows how to build a living human body from scratch. We do not understand how the vast organization of any adult body is able to arise. For decades we have told a false story about such a matter: that a human body arises because a DNA blueprint for such a body is read. No such blueprint or program or recipe for making a human body exists in DNA. Containing only low-level chemical information, DNA does contain any anatomy information, and does not tell how to make a human body or any of its organs or cells.
Characteristic #2: "living beings might require for their existence fantastically complex and seemingly directed processes within them."
Nothing could be more erroneous than to imagine a human body as being like some state of enormous static organization, like some cathedral that is very impressive in its organization but almost entirely static (with the exception of ringing church bells and opening doors). Instead the human body is as internally dynamic as some city. Imagine all of the internal activity within a city: people going to and from jobs, workers moving around as part of their work, 1000 buildings being torn down every day down in different parts of the city, 1000 other buildings being constructed or remodeled in other parts of the city. That is a rough analogy for what goes on every day in the human body. Very many of the 200+ types of cells in the human body have relatively short lifetimes, and the average cell has a lifetime of only about seven years. In places such as the brain, protein molecules have an average lifetime of less than two weeks. So the human body is like some city that is in a constant process of replacing and remodeling itself. Moreover, the continued existence of the human body requires the continual occurrence of fantastically complex chemical combinations and reactions, such as the very-hard-to-achieve thing called protein folding, and the combination of different types of proteins into protein complexes, and the construction of organelles from protein complexes, and the construction of new cells from organelles.
But there's one big difference between the enormously dynamic internal purposeful activity of the human body and the enormously dynamic internal purposeful activity of a city. That difference is that we know what causes the enormously dynamic purposeful internal activity of a city: the purposeful action of many thousands or millions of intelligent agents inside the city. But we do not know what causes the enormously dynamic purposeful internal activity within a human body. For a long time our biologists told us a gigantic lie, that such activity was occurring because of a DNA script or gene script for how to keep a body alive. No such script or program exists in DNA or its genes. DNA and its genes only contains very low-level information such as which amino acids make up a protein.
We do not know what causes the miracle of dynamic activity within the human body needed for a human body to survive. Why do the polypeptide chains (chains of amino acids) that are the starting points of protein molecules form into just the right hard-to-achieve folded 3D shapes needed for protein molecules to be functional? We do not know. Why do protein molecules form into just the right type of protein complexes needed for the body to operate? We do not know. Why do such protein complexes form into the organelles needed for cells to continue to exist and reproduce? We do not know. How is a cell even able to reproduce? We do not know. All of the vast internal purposeful dynamism within the body of humans and other large organisms is just what we might expect in a universe with hugely demonstrative directedness.
Characteristic #3: "there might be many complex uniformities and complex repeated patterns suggesting design or directedness."
In our universe there are some dramatic uniformities in the world of physics. All electrons have exactly the same mass. All protons have the same mass, which is 1836 times greater than the mass of each electron. All electrons have exactly the same charge, which is the very precise opposite of the charge on each proton. The speed of the light is the same everywhere. The gravitational constant is the same everywhere. There are numerous other uniformities and fundamental constants that have to be just right for the universe to be habitable. We can imagine other types of universes that might allow living beings to exist without such uniformities. But given the overall arrangement of our universe, each of the uniformities must exist, and must in many cases exist with numerical values very close to their existing values, or life could not exist in our universe. For example, a slight mismatch in the absolute value of the electron charge and the absolute value of the proton charge would make our universe uninhabitable.
In addition to such purposeful-seeming uniformities in the world of physics, there are a host of purposeful-seeming uniformities or near uniformities in the world of biology. Among these are the various structures of anatomy used by various different types of organisms. This is something we take for granted, but something we have no credible explanation for. Why is almost every human born with ten toes, ten fingers, two arms, two legs, one head, two eyes, two lips, two ears and one mouth? Since neither DNA nor its genes have any anatomy specification nor even a specification of how to make a cell, the answer is "because they all started with the same DNA." We could go on and on asking similar questions. Why does every human use the same type of protein complexes, when neither DNA nor its genes specify which proteins belong to particular protein complexes? Why do such protein complexes so often form units of such complexity and apparent directedness that biochemists are now extensively using the term "molecular machines" to refer to them? Why does every human have the same type of cells, when neither DNA nor its genes specifies how to make a cell?
Characteristic #4: "there might be many physical laws suggesting design or directedness."
Our universe is quite the opposite of the lawless universe imagined at the beginning of this post. Our universe has many laws, and most of them seem to be necessary in one or another for our universe's habitability. Some of these laws have names, and many others have no names. For example, the precise laws known as Coulomb's law and Newton's universal law of gravitation are named laws absolutely necessary for life to exist in our universe, as is the law of the conservation of charge. If the law of the conversation of charge had not been in effect in the early universe, we probably would have ended up with a vast imbalance of positive charges and negative charges, which would have prevented planets and stars from ever forming. There are numerous other laws that have no name, but which seem necessary for life to exist in our universe. One law of nature guarantees that when high energy photons collide, they do not produce stable subatomic particles with a random range of masses, but only produce stable subatomic particles of a few types such as protons, electrons and neutrons. Without such a law the Big Bang would not have produced a habitable universe. I could write a long separate post on all the laws of nature, named and unnamed, which seem to suggest directedness and purpose in our universe.
Characteristic #5: "there might be evidence the universe had begun in a state of zero organization, or as if it had appeared from nothing, and then progressed to enormous organization."
Any universe that seems to have appeared from nothing is one that gives a strong sign of directedness, particularly if we track a progression from perfect disorganization to enormous organization. We see such things in the history of our universe. The Big Bang described by cosmologists is either a case of the universe apparently originating from nothing, or a facsimile of such a thing. Involving inconceivable temperatures, the Big Bang was a state of perfect disorganization, which we can define as one with zero systems of any type. From such a state has arisen our planet filled with vastly organized structures. The progression from perfect disorder to enormous order leaves a very strong impression of directedness.
Characteristic #6: there might be evidence the universe had begun in a state requiring very precise fine-tuning.
As shown in the many examples given here, here, here, here and here, contrary to the predictions of materialism, human minds can operate very well despite tremendous damage to the brain, caused by injury, disease or surgery. For example, removing half of a person's brain in the operation known as hemispherectomy produces little change in memory or cognitive abilities. There have been quite a few cases of people (such as Lorber's patients) who were able to think and speak very well despite having lost more than 60% of their brain due to disease. Such cases argue powerfully that the human mind is not actually a product of the brain or an aspect of the brain.
Although it is claimed that memories are stored in the brain (specifically in synapses), there is no place in the brain that is a plausible storage site for human memories that can last for 50 years or longer. The proteins that make up both synapses and dendritic spines are quite short-lived, being subject to very high molecular turnover which gives them an average lifetime of only a few weeks. Both synapses and dendritic spines are a “shifting sands” substrate absolutely unsuitable for storing memories that last reliably for decades.
It is claimed that memories are stored in brains, but humans are able to instantly recall accurately very obscure items of knowledge and memories learned or experienced decades ago; and the brain seems to have none of the characteristics that would allow such a thing. The recall of an obscure memory from a brain would require some ability to access the exact location in the brain where such a memory was stored (such as the neurons near neuron# 8,124,412,242). But given the lack of any neuron coordinate system or any neuron position notation system or anything like an indexing system or addressing system in the brain, it would seem impossible for a brain to perform anything like such an instantaneous lookup of stored information from some exact spot in the brain.
If humans were storing their memories in brains, there would have to be a fantastically complex translation system (almost infinitely more complicated than the ASCII code or the genetic code) by which mental concepts, words and images are translated into neural states. But no trace of any such system has ever been found, no one has given a credible detailed theory of how it could work, and if it existed it would be a “miracle of design” that would be naturally inexplicable.
Contrary to claims that minds are merely an aspect of brains or a product of brains, we know from near-death experiences that human minds can continue to operate even after hearts have stopped and brains have shut down. As discussed here, such experiences often include observations of hospital details or medical details that should have been impossible if a mere hallucination was the cause of the experience.
If human brains actually stored conceptual and experiential memories, the human brain would have to have both a write mechanism by which exact information can be precisely written, and a read mechanism by which exact information can be precisely read. The brain seems to have neither of these things. There is nothing in the brain similar to the “read-write” heads found in computers.
We understand how physical things can produce physical effects (such as an asteroid producing a crater), and how mental things can produce mental effects (such as how a belief can give rise to another belief or an emotion). But no one has the slightest idea how a physical thing could ever produce a mental effect. As discussed here, no one has any understanding of how a brain or neurons in a brain could produce anything like a thought or an idea.
We know from our experience with computers the type of things that an information storage and retrieval system uses and requires. The human brain seems to have nothing like any of these things.
As discussed here, humans can form new memories instantly, at a speed much faster than would be possible if we were using our brains to store such memories. It is typically claimed that memories are stored by “synapse strengthening” and protein synthesis, but such things do not work fast enough to explain the formation of memories that can occur instantly.
As discussed here, human brains do not show signs of working harder during thinking or memory recall, contrary to what we would expect if such effects were being produced by brains.
Contrary to the idea that human memories are stored in synapses, the density of synapses sharply decreases between childhood and early adulthood. We see no neural effect matching the growth of learned memories in human.
There are many humans with either exceptional memory abilities (such as those with hyperthymesia who can recall every day of their adulthood) or exceptional thinking abilities (such as savants with incredible calculation abilities). But such cases do not involve larger brains, very often involve completely ordinary brains, and quite often involve damaged brains, quite to the contrary of what we would expect from the “brains make minds” assumption.
The very strong laboratory evidence for psi (most notably extrasensory perception) shows that humans have abilities that cannot be explained by neural activity, and that must involve some higher consciousness reality beyond the brain.
Results from the animal kingdom are inconsistent with claim that minds are made from brains and memories stored in brains. For example, animals such as crows with very small brains (and no cerebral cortex) perform astonishingly well on mental tests; elephants with brains four times larger than ours are not nearly as smart as us; and flatworms that have been taught things and then decapitated can still remember what they learned, after regrowing a head.
Well-documented evidence for apparitions provides evidence that the human mind is not merely the result of brain activity. Such evidence includes (1) more than 100 cases of people who saw an apparition of someone they did not know had died, only to very soon learn that the corresponding person had died (as discussed here, here, here and here); (2) many additional cases of apparitions seen by multiple observers, contrary to the explanation of hallucination (discussed here and here); (3) many other cases of death-bed apparitions as discussed here and documented by researchers such as Haraldsson and Osis.
Contrary to claims that the brain is the source of human thinking and memory recall, a full analysis of the signal delaying factors in the human brain (such as synaptic delays and synaptic fatigue) shows that signals in the brain cannot be traveling fast enough to explain human thinking and human memory recall which can occur instantaneously.
The human brain experiences extremely severe levels of signal noise, so much signal noise that we should not believe that it is the brain that is producing human memory recall that can occur massively and flawlessly for people such as Hamlet actors and Wagnerian tenors.
To summarize, our universe seems to have not merely some marginal evidence of directedness, but the most enormous and abundant evidence of directedness. Everywhere is the most abundant evidence of purposefulness and directness. The evidence pervades numerous different fields such as general biology, psychology, biochemistry, developmental biology, physics, parapsychology and cosmology. It seems justified to use the phrase "hugely demonstrative directedness" to describe such a state of affairs.
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