Require Real Fish

When I was a child most years my family would spend Christmas vacation in Sebring Florida at my grandparents house. My number one favorite thing to do there was to go fishing for bass in Jackson lake which fronted my grandparent’s house. My dad, brother and I went every day at 5PM like clockwork.

I learned an important lesson from fishing in that lake. I guess now I might call it cognitive bias but I was years away from learning about that term or what it meant . Here is how it went. I would be casting or still fishing. Often I would feel a tug, maybe a weed or a rock laying on the bottom that my hook caught on. Every time I would imagine that I had hooked a fish and would be disappointed when it was not a catch. Over time I began to realize that what I was feeling in those tugs was my brain turning something obviously not a fish on the line into one because I wanted it to happen so badly. But the truth is that when there is actually a fish on the line the experience has a totally different feel and there is hardly ever any doubting it. Also there is indisputable evidence of the fish when it jumps or swings the line around and ,if all goes well, when it ends up in the boat.

Over the years I have been interested in so many things that I want to be true. I became a charismatic christian for several years looking for an active god and its miracles. I watched all the flying saucer shows and read about ancient aliens. I wondered about big foot and the abominal snow man. But what I learned was that all these things are like those ghost tugs when I was fishing. We want them to be true and go to such great lengths to convince ourselves that they are real.

The fact is that when we actually do come across aliens or Jesus, there won’t be a few fuzzy maybe photos and second hand stories told by people. It will be undeniable. There are millions of cameras on earth now. Most people have one. When we have those clear pictures and sound recordings we will know we have our fish. The rest is wishful thinking and a huge waste of time.

Pro tip: If someone has a long complicated explanation with flimsy or no evidence, it is bull shit whether they know it or not. Wait for the real fish.