The Unicorn Paradox

Dieu Et Mon DroitThe other day I heard someone say this on NPR:

You can only see unicorns if you truly believe in them.

That made me think: what can you tell that person that would possibly convince her that unicorns don't really exist? If nobody sees them, it's not that they don't exist, it's just that people don't have enough faith!

Here you have an assertion that is obviously not rooted in anything real, but still there is no way you can really refute it. It's somehow reminiscent of the Invisible Pink Unicorn or the Dragon in the Garage.

What do you think? Do you have your own unicorns? How do you react when faced with this kind of rhetoric?

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Archived comments

  • Ludovic said on Friday, February 11, 2011

    The question, to me, is how can you then tell the difference between a self induced hallucinatory unicorn, and a real unicorn that only reveals itself to the faithful? My first proposal is that you could bring in several "enlightened" people together in the same room, but take away their ability to communicate, or even see each other (for example they're all in separate "booths" overlooking the center of the room). The person running the experiment, however, can communicate independently with each subject. Wait for one subject to say he can see the unicorn, then ask around and check that everybody sees the same unicorn doing the same things. If everybody says at the same time that they see a pink and blue unicorn running to the left and shaking its head and whatever, you would have some strong evidence the unicorn is indeed real, albeit semi-invisible... unless somehow all the test subjects experience a group hallucination but that would probably lead to theories on thought transmission and all that stuff. I don't quite know what would be better: invisible unicorns or telepathy?

  • bleroy said on Saturday, February 12, 2011

    Ah, well done but that won't work you see. Randi has been doing that sort of thing for decades, and invariably, the conditions of the experiment or the ambient negativity are blamed for the disappearance of the phenomenon when under scientific scrutiny.

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