CGI and Give-the-Wrong-Idea Visuals Help Scientists Market Their Speculations

When you're a scientist trying to sell some idea, a good visual always helps.  Nowadays when there are so many good visuals around, it is hard for a science press release to get noticed when it has no visual. There is no credibility problem in providing a visual when something new has been well-observed.  For example, if some new type of geological structure has been discovered on Mars, and some rover spacecraft has taken photos of it, then such photos can be provided in some press release describing the discovery. 

But what about when scientists are trying to sell us on some concept or speculation that has not been directly observed? That's when scientists or those promoting their thoughts sometimes may start resorting to shady tactics when trying to whip up visuals. 

One common tactic is the artist's visualization. So if a paleontologist just has some bone fragments of some creature that lived long ago, some artist can create some artwork that imagines what the creature may have looked like.  Such artwork used to be created by painting, but now CGI computer visualizations are more common. Such artwork will be a lot more appealing than some mere photo of some bone fragments. But such visualizations are often not presented in a candid, honest manner.  Guesswork visualizations that are largely speculative are rarely described as the speculations that they are.  Similarly when paleontologists present "inheritance tree" charts of evolution, they almost always fail to identify such things as the speculations that they are.  We rarely get a visual like the one in this article, where we see side-by-side two "inheritance tree" charts of evolution that disagree with each other, letting us know how speculative such charts are. 

Now that computers can create visualizations that look so much like photos, such visualizations may have the effect of fooling people into thinking some photograph was taken that was never taken. In the many articles written about the strange space object 'Oumuamua, we saw again and again a speculative CGI artist's visualization that looked like a photo of a cigar-shaped asteroid.  Some of the articles using this visualization included in very small print a line saying the visual was an "artist's visualization" or "artist's concept," but many did not. The result was that very many readers thought that 'Oumuamua had been photographed and determined to be cigar-shaped, even though the object had never been photographed as anything more than a speck, and its dimensions were unknown. A later analysis claimed that 'Oumuamua was pancake shaped.  We have here a case in which an extremely speculative guesswork visual was shaping the narrative in a way that should not have happened. 

I often see stories about the speculative scientific concepts of dark matter and dark energy.  Both are believed to be invisible, and neither has been detected by scientific instruments. But when I do a Google image search for "dark matter" or "dark energy," I get many image results. How can there be so many articles about dark matter or dark energy that supply a visual that should be unavailable, given the invisible nature of these alleged things? What's going on is that time and time again, such articles are supplying photos of either regular matter seen in outer space, or some result coughed up by some computer simulation. We will often see an image looking like this:

Such images should be honestly labeled, maybe like in the example below:

But instead of such honesty, you'll usually get something like the visual below, with a barely visible indication that what we're seeing is just the result of a computer simulation, and not something actually photographed by a telescope:

The casual reader will get the impression that dark matter or dark energy has been photographed, even though no one has observed any such things. 

Then in other cases that are even more prone to raise the wrong idea in the minds of readers, there won't even be such a barely visible clue that the visual isn't an actual photograph. An example was a recent story on the LiveScience.com site. The story was entitled "These weird lumps of 'inflatons' could be the very first structures in the universe."  We saw a visual of some strange structure that looked like a planetary nebula. The caption read, "Shown here, one of the dense clumps of inflatons that emerged during the inflation phase of the Big Bang, in the infant universe."  The caption led the reader to believe he was looking at some photo of something in space. 

But the photo was not a photo of anything observed in space.  It was merely a photo of some junk generated by an entirely speculative computer program. No actual "inflatons" have ever been observed, and the program was based on one of the innumerable speculative models of the unproven cosmic inflation theory.  Not only is the theory  unproven, it is also unprovable, because it speculates about things happening a fraction of a second after the universe's beginning, and scientists know of a reason why it will never be possible to get observations from before about 300,000 years after such a beginning (the density being so great that no light could transmit from before such a time).  Inflatons are as speculative as unicorns. 

When things are done in such a way, 90% of the casual readers will go away with the entirely misleading impression that dark matter or dark energy or inflatons have been photographed.  This reminds me of the deceptive visuals that are so very common in the neuroscience field. We will see some brain visual that shows certain areas of the brain in bright red, raising the impression in most readers that in some area of the brain there is a much greater brain activity during some particular cognitive task. But in truth the areas in red are only very slightly more active, almost always less than 1% more active (the kind of difference one might expect to occur by mere random variations). If the brain visual were accurately done, it would show every brain area seeming to have the same color, because humans can't even recognize color differences of less than 1%.

Do a Google image search for "string theory," and you will see many images from articles about string theory. The images mostly look a little like the one below:

In such cases we are not seeing anything photographed in nature, and not even seeing anything arising from a speculative computer simulation. We are merely seeing artwork that is designed to give the casual reader the impression that the strings of string theory have some observational basis, an impression that is entirely false, because there is zero observational evidence for any of the claims of string theory.  That's clear from a recent interview from string theorist Michio Kaku, in which he promotes his recent book on string theory, but mentions no evidence for string theory. Trying to give some reason why we might be on the verge of a new era including string theory, all Kaku has to give is the following "not really anything" answer, mentioning a never-observed (dark matter), that has little to do with string theory: 

 "I think we’re on the verge of a new era. New experiments are being done to detect deviations from the Standard Model. Plus, we have the mystery of dark matter. Any of these unexplored areas could give a clue as to the theory of everything."

Elsewhere Kaku confesses, "The most glaring problem is that, for all the press extolling the beauty and complexity of this theory, we have no solid, testable evidence." String theory has been a gigantic failure that has wasted the time of physicists for decades in groundless speculations without an observational basis, but Kaku is not humbled by such a failure, and is swaggering around with  statements like this: "The destiny of science is to become like grandmasters, to solve this puzzle that we call the universe."  Sounding rather like some exemplar of overconfident hubris, he makes a very silly boast about "an equation that's maybe 1 inch long" that "explains the entire universe." Kaku has written a book called The God Equation which very amusingly tries to put floundering string theory theorists on some kind of god throne, painting them as grand lords of explanation who have come up with "the crowning achievement of science."  While noting how hollow are the boasts of string theorists, we should note how misleading is their use of the term "theory of everything" to describe string theory, which is nothing remotely like an actual "theory of everything," the theory saying nothing about a hundred deep mysteries of mind and biology, and also leaving countless mysteries of physics and chemistry unsolved.    

Postscript: A recent scientific paper states the following about unreliable artist depictions of organisms known only from incomplete fossils:

"Given what Anderson (2011) has shown regarding the variability present in reconstructions of the same individual across separate museum displays, it is clear that very little effort has been made to produce reconstructions that are substantiated by strong empirical science. This is surprising given how museums boast about decades of success presenting scientific knowledge and education to the public...There are potential educational harms in presenting unscientific reconstructions of hominins under the shroud of presumed validity."

When Two or More See the Same Apparition

"But, if precisely the same form was seen by two persons at the same place at the same time, we have evidence, and very cogent evidence, of the actual existence of such an object, by reason of the extreme improbability that the identical hallucination should arise in two minds at the same moment. If three or more persons beheld the same object at the same time, the proof amounts almost to demonstration, for the chances against such a concurrence of mental actions are as infinity to one."

Edward W. Cox, The Mechanism of Man

In six previous posts I discussed cases in which multiple witnesses reported seeing the same apparition. The six posts are below:

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 Cases

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 More Cases

More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers
Many an Apparition Is Seen by More Than One
Still More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers

When an Apparition Is Seen by Not Just One

Let us look at some more cases of this type, cases not discussed in the posts above.

In the 1887 book Posthumous Humanity: A Study of Phantoms, we have a report of three different witnesses who reporting seeing at different times a Mr. X after he died.  The first witness, a gardener, reported that the day before Easter he "turned about and saw myself face to face with the deceased Mr. X," who was dressed as he typically was while living.  The second witness, a grave digger,  also recognized a figure as Mr. X, after Mr. X had died.  This occurred the same day, the day before Easter. A third witness, a retired customs officer, also reported seeing an apparition of the deceased Mr. X on the day before Easter. 

On page 99 of the remarkable book People from the Other World by Henry Steel Olcott, we have the following narrative in which the author claims to have seen a life-like apparition that was also seen by nineteen other people:

"I know the full value of words, and I mean to say unequivocally that a woman — a breathing, walking, palpable woman, as palpable as any other woman in the room, recognized not only by her sons and daughters, but also by neighbors present, as Mrs. Zephaniah Eddy, deceased December 29th, 1872 — on the evening of October 2d, 1874, walked out of a cabinet where there was only one mortal, and where, under ascertained circumstances, only this one man could have been at the time, and spoke to me personally in audible voice. And nineteen other persons saw her at the same time, and heard her discourse."

On page 158 of the book, we have an attestation to Henry Steel Olcott by a Franklin Bolles, who says he and three others saw the ghost of his mother, and that the ghost gradually dissolved away. Here is the statement:

"Hartford, Conn., December 8th, 1874. 

Dear Sir : In reply to your inquiry as to my seeing a spirit-form dissolve outside the door of William Eddy's cabinet, I take pleasure in communicating the following facts : 

In June last, I visited Chittenden, in company with my wife, wife's sister, Mrs. Waite, of this city, and a friend from Waterbury. On one evening during our stay, my wife's mother, a former resident of Hartford, who deceased March, 1859, at the age of 78 years, appeared to us in white clothing, looking so natural that we recognized her instantly. She stood outside the cabinet curtain, leaned her body forward, and stretched out her arms to her daughter, as though she were longing to embrace her. Mrs. Prior asked the spirit if she could not speak to us, and she seemed to make a desperate effort to comply. But suddenly,. as if she had exhausted all her power of materialization in the attempt, her arms dropped, and her form melted down to the floor, and disappeared from our view. The figure did not dissolve into a mist and disperse laterally, but sank down and disappeared, as if every particle comprising her frame had suddenly lost its cohesion with every other, and the whole fell into a heap together. Yours truly. 

To Col. H. S. Olcott. Franklin Bolles."

Olcott then quotes a Dr. T. G. Horton of Utica, NY stating that she saw a certain Honto apparition dissolve, and Olcott states he saw the apparition "dissolve up to her waist."  The book provides the following artist's illustration of a similar reported event (not a photograph). 

On pages 248-251, Olcott states that he saw the apparition of a Mrs. Eddy shortly after visiting the grave of this Mrs. Eddy. Referring to this apparition of Mrs. Eddy, Olcott states "the lady was recognized by sundry of her former acquaintances in the room, who greeted her; in addition to her children, of whom, there were two present."

In the modern account here, we read of a kind of apparition seen by multiple observers, a very unusual one in that it only appeared on a video monitor.  A family suffered a disastrous auto accident in which three children were killed, including a small boy wearing a baseball hat. The mother was put in the ICU. A group of nurses saw (a total of about six different times) what looked like a small boy wearing a baseball hat, in the ICU room of the mother. But the child was only seen on a video monitor. Whenever someone checked the room to look for such a child, it was not found. 

In a nineteenth century work, we read the following account:

"Mr. Hubschmann, of Stuttgart, had a father in Bothland, and a brother in Strasburg. It happened, that one morning, at break of day, Mr. H ’s children awoke him, by crying out, 'Grandfather ! grandfather! grandfather is come!'  Mr. H looked about, but saw nothing. On interrogating his children, they solemnly declared that their grandfather had been there, but whither he had gone they knew not. After some days had elapsed, Mr. H received a letter from his brother at Strashurg, inquiring anxiously if he had any intelligence of their father, as a circumstance that had happened had occasioned him much alarm ; namely, that, on a certain day and hour, (and they were the same on which  the children had made the above-mentioned exclamation,) he had been met by his  father, as he entered his work- shop in the morning. Eight days afterwards came the news of the old man’s death ; he had expired at the precise moment when he appeared to his family,  at Strasburg and Stuttgart."

This account is particularly evidential, as it has both of the most impressive features you might hope to find in an apparition account: (1) an apparition of someone is seen at the time someone died, by people who did not know the person had died; (2) the apparition is seen by multiple witnesses. 

In Volume X of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, page 213, we read the following account:

"We went to a cottage in Gloucestershire, where my sister and I shared the same room. About the 14th of September, 1882, my sister and I felt worried and distressed by hearing the ' Death Watch ' ; it lasted a whole day to night. We got up earlier than usual the next morning, about six o'clock, to finish some birthday presents for our mother. As my sister and I were working and talking together, I looked up, and saw our young acquaintance standing in front of me and looking at us. I turned to my sister, she saw nothing ; I looked again to where he stood, he had vanished. We agreed not to tell anyone — and, although I wished to put it down in my diary (which I bad not kept for some time), I was afraid to do so ; I therefore made marks to remind myself. Some time afterwards we heard that our young acquaintance had either committed suicide or had been killed ; he was found dead in the woods twenty-foar hours after landing. On looking back to my diary, 1 found that my marks corresponded to the date of his death."

On page 440 of Volume 5 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, we read the following account by a person of something that happened seven days after his mother died:

"On the seventh day after death she was buried, and it was on that night she appeared to me....I seemed to have been sleeping some time when I woke, and turning over on the other side towards the window saw my mother standing by my bedside crying and wringing her hands. I had not been awake long enough to remember that she was dead and exclaimed quite naturally (for she often came in when I was asleep) 'Wliy, dear, what's the matter ?' and then suddenly remembering I screamed. The nurse sprang up from the next room, but on the top step flung herself on her knees, and began to tell her beads and cry. My father at the same moment arrived at the opposite door, and I heard his sudden exclamation of ' Julia, darling !' My mother turned towards him, and then to me, and wringing her hands again retreated towards tlie nursery and was lost. The nurse afterwards declared that she distinctly felt something pass her, but she was in such a state of abject terror that her testimony is quite worthless. My father then ordered her out of the room, and telling me that I had only been dreaming stayed until I fell asleep. The next day, however, he told me that he too had seen the vision, and that he hoped to do so again, and that if ever she came to see me again I was not to be frightened, but to tell her that 'papa wanted to speak to her,' which I faithfully promised to do, but I need scarcely say that she never appeared again."

In Volume 41 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, page 208, we have the following account of a kind of apparition of the dead seen by multiple witnesses:

"In May 1904, in Switzerland, four ladies sat in front of a mirror in company with a friend who was a non-professional medium. The four percipients were Mrs A., her sister Mrs P., her daughter, Miss A., and a Mrs H. All four of them saw in the mirror a vision of the father of Mrs A. and Mrs P. The three who were acquainted with him recognised him ; the other notes that the vision was recognised by the others. The face of the vision formed over the reflection of the medium, according to the accounts of all but Mrs H. ; she saw it in a corner of the mirror, apart from the medium. Miss A. says that the apparition smiled and nodded at them when it was recognised. Mrs A., Mrs P., and Miss A. all saw a vision of the sister of the two married women who had died three months before. Mrs A. says that she saw this face two or three times, smiling and looking intently at the percipients. Two other apparitions are mentioned as having been seen by one or two of the percipients."

In one of his two long and very interesting works on the paranormal, Robert Dale Owen describes a case of an apparition seen by multiple witnesses, witnesses he interviewed himself.  The account (found here) is that one day a mother and two daughters (age nineteen and seventeen) were doing needlework when a female figure entered, one seeming to move noiselessly.  The figure disappeared as the females were watching it. We are told,  "The ladies were looking at it, at the moment of its disappearance." The mother asked, "Who was it?" and a daughter replied, "It was grandmamma!" referring to her grandmother who had died ten years before. A check of the premises revealed no one, and there were not even any footsteps in the snow around the house.  The women reported the incident to a minister the same day, who was interviewed by Owen, who also interviewed the mother and one of the daughters, their stories all agreeing.  The grandmother had expressed interest in returning from the next world to witness her son's prosperity (if he achieved it); and on the day of the appartion sighting, the son had bought a house. 

In the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (Volume 41, page 217), we read the following:

"Julia Murray died in Yonkers, N.Y., on 23 March 1901. At about 3 a.m. the next morning, seven relatives and friends (all Catholics) each saw and recognised an apparition of the deceased which came into view near a picture of the Virgin Mary, on the wall of a room next to the one where the body lay. Katie Cain, Rose Kearne and Mrs Corbalis, when interviewed separately, all agreed on the following facts : a wreath or crown (of 'flowers,' 'leaves and flowers,' or 'evergreens') was on the head; rosary beads hung from the hands, which were crossed on the breast or in a position of prayer, or both successively ; the figure wore a robe which ended at the bottom in clouds. Points mentioned by two, but not all three of the percipients interviewed were as follows : The apparition was seen in profile ; the hair was hanging down the back ; the robe was white ; the figure appeared to be solid (or was seen as plainly as in life) ; it faded toward the ceiling, or disappeared slowly through the ceiling."

The original report in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research can be read at this link, on page 584. 

Lt.-Col. L. Moore Cosgrave reported the following incident occurring near the time of the death of Horace Traubel, the main biographer of the American poet Walt Whitman:

"During this long watch, Horace Traubel, who was suffering from paralysis and debility, was without visible pain, and semi-conscious, unable to articulate owing to paralysis of the tongue....On the last night, about 3 a. m., he grew perceptibly weaker, breathing almost without visible movement, eyes closed and seemingly comatose, he stirred restlessly after a long period, and his eyes opened, staring towards the further side of the bed, his lips moved, endeavoring to speak, I moved his head back, thinking he needed more air, but again it moved away, and his eyes remained rivetted on a point some three feet above the bed, my eyes were at last drawn irresistibly to the same point in the darkness, as there was but a small shaded night lamp behind a curtain on the further side of the room. Slowly the point at which we were both looking grew gradually brighter, a light haze appeared, spread until it assumed bodily form, and took the likeness of Walt Whitman, standing upright beside the bed, a rough tweed jacket on, an old felt hat upon his head and his right hand in his pocket, similar to a number of his portraits, he was gazing down at Traubel, a kindly, reassuring smile upon his face, he nodded twice as though reassuringly, the features quite distinct for at least a full minute, then gradually faded from sight."

In the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, we read the following:

"On Easter Monday, 1920, a State Tax Commissioner in a New England State committed suicide. He had been greatly devoted to a church of which he was senior warden. On the next Sunday morning, when the offering was brought to the chancel steps by the new warden and his associate, the rector and two parishioners, in widely separated parts of the church, saw an apparition of the suicide at his usual place near the other two wardens. He was as life-like and realistic to each of the three percipients as on any Sunday of the thirty years during which he had officiated there."

The Science News Would Be Far More Interesting If the Dogmas of Materialists Were True

Scrolling through the science news headlines these days you will get many interesting-sounding headlines, although most of the more interesting headlines are clickbait and hype which lead to disappointment when you read the story. Again and again, some unimportant research or dubious claim will be announced with some headline that makes you think some epic breakthrough was made. The progress of science these days is actually fairly slow.  But it would be a totally different situation if the belief dogmas of materialists were true.  In such a case the science news would be many times more interesting than the science news you'll read today.

Let's consider natural history. A belief dogma of materialists is that earthly organisms all arose through gradual Darwinian evolution.  If that were true, there would be millions of transitional fossils all over the place, so many that the discovery of missing links would be announced all the time. It would happen so much you would get sick of hearing about it. Upon reading the seventh story you read this week about a discovery of important missing links in evolution, you might say, "Enough with the missing links already."

Were it true that random mutations can yield important biological innovations, we would read on our science news sites an abundance of headlines telling how some new biological wonder was produced in a laboratory experiment.  If we read the news stories matching the headlines, they might say something like, "Scientists have produced yet another new organismic innovation by exposing some animals to radiation that caused mutations."

If it were true that Darwinian processes of random mutation and survival-of-the-fittest were capable of producing great marvels of innovation,  then software engineers would utilize such a thing to easily produce new computer programs. We would have a constant stream of stories telling about how some marvelous new computer software innovation was produced by some software-generating computer program that used an evolutionary approach to computer programming.

If it were true that brains are the source of human thinking, scientists by now would have discovered some principle by which matter can produce thinking, and would have leveraged such a principle to create super-intelligent computers.  So our science news stories would frequently give us stories like this: "Scientists created a new electronic super-brain with an IQ of 10,000, vastly surpassing their previous best effort, which only had an IQ of 8000."  There would probably also be stories of thinking caps that allowed you to expand your creativity or imagination by a factor of five or ten times.

If it were true that human memories are stored in brains, we would have very many extremely interesting memory-related news stories in our science news feeds.  Scientists would be able to read memories from brains, which would be the source of countless fascinating stories. For example, there might be a story telling how memories were read from the mind of an executed prisoner, to try and find out for sure whether he was really a murderer.  Or there might be a story telling how biographers were working with scientists reading the memories of an important person who recently died, so that the biographers could find additional details about the person's life experiences, by reading the dead person's memories.

If it were true that human memories are stored in brains,  the science news would also have stories of new companies that specialized in surgical removal of unpleasant memories.  There would also be stories of companies providing the service of letting you read all the memories of your parent after that parent died. Our science news sites would also have fascinating stories about how some people were skipping old-fashioned universities, and instead paying for neural knowledge downloads that allowed them to learn much faster. 

If it were true that brains produced ideas and understanding, there would surely be some way to artificially cause humans to produce more ideas and much greater understanding.  So we would probably read our science news sites announcing on a regular basis that some brilliant new idea or some wonderful new insight about nature had come after some scientist had zapped his brain with electricity, or taken some pill that sped up the chemistry of his brain.  

If it were true that our brains store beliefs, scientists would have found exactly how such beliefs were stored, and we would therefore read very interesting news stories about how scientists are changing people's beliefs by erasing beliefs from particular parts of the brain, perhaps with an electrical jolt. People belonging to some religion or political group would be very worried that a person might lose his religion or political affiliation because of some scientist zapping his brain, erasing particular beliefs. 

Were it true that life is mere chemistry, and that minds arise from mere brain activity, it would almost certainly be possible to revive dead people by restarting their hearts. In that case we would have all kinds of fascinating stories in our science news feeds telling about modern day Dr. Frankensteins who were able to revive people who had died hours or days ago. 

In such a case we would also read on our science news sites  interesting stories debating whether the right to be revived after death should be considered a basic human right available to all. 

Were it true that life arose from mere chemical processes, we would read in the science news all kinds of fascinating stories about how scientists had created life from scratch in a laboratory, through some experiment that simulated the early Earth.  If it were true that life can accidentally arise from mere chemicals, and that large organisms and mankind arose merely because of Darwinian processes of random mutation and survival-of-the-fittest, it would almost certainly be true that our galaxy would be filled with intelligent life. For there are billions of solar systems in our galaxy.

In such a case, the science news would be so much more interesting. We would have a constant stream of stories telling about how scientists had detected radio signals from yet another civilization in space. Since it is easy to transmit images by radio using a grid system in which radio blips stand for pixels, every year would bring a bonanza of new images showing extraterrestrials and their strange cities on other planets.

If it were true that elevated emotions such as love were merely the products of brain chemistry, then we would probably read on our science news sites some very interesting stories such as accounts of neuroscientist marriage counselors with the power to fix up broken marriages by merely restoring the brain chemistry of the wife and husband as it existed when they were madly in love.  We would probably also read many science news stories about neuroscientist love potions and love-at-first-sight perfumes, or about politicians or clergymen who produced certain emotions in their audiences by simply sending out particular types of aromas laced with the right type of chemicals to produce some emotional effect. 

But we have no such stories on our science news sites.  Our actual science news sites are relatively boring. You will often read sensational-sounding headlines, but almost always when you click on the headline and read and critically analyze the story, weighing it against the standards of robust observational science, you will find that you have been lured by some clickbait hype, and that there's "not much there there" in the story. 

Our science news feeds would also be so much more interesting if scientists were to allocate their research dollars more intelligently.  For all practical purposes there is pretty much in effect the rule that research dollars should almost all be spent trying to confirm things that scientists believe in. But imagine if scientists paid no attention to their beliefs when allocating research dollars, and instead followed the rule that research dollars should be spent in proportion to how much something has been observed or reported. Then scientists would not waste countless billions of dollars trying to prove hollow boasts and ideas that are not based on observations, but would instead spend a great deal of time investigating phenomena that have often been reported, but which scientists don't care to believe in. Then our science news feeds would be so much more interesting, and would frequently report research results regarding many fascinating spooky things that very few scientists today investigate, because of fear of throwing doubt on their cherished assumptions. 

The Medical Wrist Band: A Science Fiction Story

Billionaire David Crasson was not one for graceful natural aging. He was trying to use all available medical treatments to slow or stop the aging process, and grant himself a very long life. Twice a week he got blood transfusions from 20-year-old persons who he paid lots of money.  Once a month he got cell implants from other people between the ages of 20 and 25. Crasson took a daily cocktail of biologically engineered drugs which he thought could slow the aging process.  He was also experimenting with nanobot injections designed to keep his arteries as unclogged as they were when he was in his twenties, thirty years ago. 

All of this seemed to be working rather well. Crasson felt more vigorous and healthy than he had felt in years. But he wanted to get some exact way of keeping track of how well his anti-aging efforts were working. So Crasson summoned a group of software developers and medical technologists to one of his seven homes. 

"I want you guys to develop a new hi-tech gadget, one that I can wear like a wrist watch," said Crasson. "I want to be able to glance at my wrist, and know how well I'm doing in my efforts to slow down the aging process."

During the next week the software developers and medical technologists came up with a plan for how to develop the gadget. The device would use sophisticated sensors to track vital signs such as heart rate, breathing and temperature. Instead of merely getting a single number for each of these things, real-time data on these factors would be subjected to continuous analysis searching for minute fluctuations and patterns that could signal signs of declining vitality.  The most sophisticated aspect of the device would be subcutaneous nano-probes that would perform telomere length readings and state-of-the-art analysis of tiny blood particles.  That would occur while the wearer of the device was sleeping, and the wearer would not even notice any pain or itching from his wrist. 

At a meeting with Crasson a week later, the team quoted a price for developing such a gadget, which Crasson thought was too high. Even though the price was trivial for a man of Crasson's wealth, he had a long-held habit of spending money in a miserly manner. Eventually a deal was made for a lower development fee, in exchange for giving the developers the rights to market the device to the public. 

After a few weeks of effort, the team leader Rod Scott returned to Crasson to show him a prototype of the wrist device. He demonstrated how you could use buttons on the device to navigate through different charts and tables that would be displayed on the screen of the little device. 

"That interface is terrible!" said Crasson. "Didn't you ever hear of the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid? I don't want to bother with charts and tables, because I'm not a doctor or a scientist."

"Okay, so we can take a totally different route," said Scott. "We'll make it so the little gadget will just display a single number that may change as your health situation changes."

"I like that idea," said Crasson. "Get cracking on it."

A few weeks later Scott returned with the completed device. He told Crasson that all he had to do was strap on the device, and occasionally peek at the number the device would display.

Crasson was pleased. He strapped on the gadget. At first the screen was blank. 

"Give it a few days," said Scott. "Then it will give you a number."

But after five days the wrist gadget displayed only a question mark. Crasson called Scott to complain. 

"Give it a few more days," said Scott. 

After three days, there was a change. Now the device displayed two question marks. 

"You guys blew it!" screamed Crasson after summoning Scott. "This gadget is junk, so I'm not paying you anything."

"We'll see you in court," said Scott, storming off.  He jumped in his self-driving car, and told it to take him home.

Crasson was just about to throw the wrist gadget in a garbage can when he noticed that it suddenly was giving a reading. The gadget now displayed the number 130. 

Crasson showed the wrist device to his wife. 

"The hi-tech medical wrist gadget says 130," said Crasson. "You know what that means, don't you?"

"No," said his wife. "What does it mean?"

"It means that my anti-aging program is working perfectly," said Crasson. "I'm going to live to be 130 years old!"

"Oh, that's wonderful," said his wife, faking a happy response.  Walking into another room, she began to cry. Thirty years younger than Crasson, she had married the unlikable billionaire mainly because she wanted to inherit half of his vast fortune.

For the next two weeks Crasson bragged to everyone in his main mansion that he was going to be the first man to live to be 130. He told people that he was starting to develop a written plan for the next seventy years of his life.  One of his plans was to make movies looking just as if they had been filmed by Hollywood in the late 1940's or 1950's, using its greatest stars of that age, even though all of the actors were really computer generated.  Then there was his plan to create a zero-gravity zoo in outer space, consisting of never-before-seen creatures genetically engineered to be ideal for floating in the weightlessness of space. Then there was his plan to create a rough terrain vehicle that would kind of throw little roads ahead of itself whenever necessary. 

But then one day his wife found him motionless and lifeless in bed. He had died during the night, at the age of only 57.  His aggressive use of experimental medical nanobots had helped bring about his sudden death by cardiac failure. 

His wife was very delighted to discover the dead body of Crasson, for she knew that she would inherit half of his billions. But she did her best to sound like she was sad. "All I can say is that I feel a genuine, authentic and not-at-all-artificial sense of feeling really, truly sad," she said. "In all true sincerity I feel that this outcome is completely and totally...tragic." 

"That stupid medical wrist band of his was such a failure," said Crasson's wife to his son. "It was so wrong, telling him he would live to be 130."

"No, I think that wrist device was precisely accurate," said the son. 

"How do you figure that?" asked the wife.

"They never told him what that number 130 meant," said the son. "He thought it meant the age he would live to. But maybe the number was something totally different. Maybe the number was a prediction of the day of the year he would die."

"So today is January 30," said the wife. "How would you express that as a number?"

"As the number 130," said the son, "with the 1 standing for the month, and the 30 standing for the day of the month."