Mysticism – Lesson 9

Table of Contents

• [0:00] The difference between public information and mysticism
• [1:51] The prohibition of worms and the naked eye
• [3:41] The debate over indirect causation in an electric car
• [6:36] Macroscopic versus microscopic indirect causation
• [9:49] Glass — a liquid or a halakhic solid
• [21:42] Principle-level accessibility versus practical accessibility
• [27:11] Aristotelian science — mysticism or science
• [30:54] Aristotle as a source of authority
• [34:01] Newtonian science as an open methodology
• [35:33] The criterion of publicity and repeatability in science
• [39:50] Modern science versus mysticism
• [42:38] Mystical charlatanism and its implications
• [48:50] Testing prophecy and Kabbalah through rationality
• [55:33] Scientific tools for exposing charlatans
• [58:32] The law of small numbers and the error in inference

Summary

General overview

The text argues that Jewish law relies on what is public and accessible to ordinary human perception, and therefore what takes place on a microscopic or esoteric level should not be halakhically decisive, while mysticism is defined as knowledge that is non-public by its very nature and rests on trust in authority. The speaker brings examples from the laws of worms, electricity on the Sabbath, and legal-physical concepts to show that normative systems operate according to what the ordinary person perceives and not according to fine scientific descriptions, and from this he draws support for the thesis that mysticism lacks full halakhic standing. Later, he sharpens the distinction between science and mysticism through the scientific requirement of repeatability and critical examination in modern science, and explains how non-empirical science in the Aristotelian style can in practice become mysticism because of untested authority. Finally, he turns to mystical charlatanism and explains, with the help of statistics and the law of small numbers, how isolated success stories and attention to extreme tails create the illusion of miracles and fuel an industry of frauds.

The publicity of Jewish law versus microscopy

The speaker argues that Jewish law focuses on public and accessible information, and therefore mysticism, which is esoteric by nature, cannot carry full halakhic status. Rabbi Soloveitchik is cited as a source for the claim that many halakhic decisors hold that what cannot be seen by the naked eye has no halakhic significance, such as worms that are not visible and therefore do not render food forbidden. The speaker applies the same principle stringently in the context of electricity, where the main thing is the macroscopic result of pressing and activating, not the microscopic current mechanisms.

Rabbi Yitzchak Brand’s critique of indirect causation in electricity

Rabbi Yitzchak Brand is presented as sharply criticizing the Tzomet Institute and technical permissions based on indirect causation, such as delayed current and indirect circuits. Rabbi Brand argues that a mobility scooter that moves by pressing a button is defined as a mechanism operated directly, and what happens inside the electronics is irrelevant to the halakhic ruling. The speaker says he tends to agree with Rabbi Brand and frames the dispute as a question of whether indirect causation is judged only on the visible macroscopic level, as in causing extinguishing in the Mishnah in tractate Sabbath, and not on the microscopic level.

Glass as a liquid in physics and as a solid in Jewish law

The speaker describes a question he was asked in the Hazon Ish kollel about the claim that glass is a liquid, and explains that the physical reason is the absence of an ordered crystalline structure. He states that this definition relies on microscopic characteristics that are not accessible to direct perception, and therefore are irrelevant to the halakhic classification of wet and dry. He concludes that from the standpoint of Jewish law, glass is a solid, because that is what is evident to touch and to ordinary perception.

The Poynting theorem anecdote and the normativity of ordinary perception

The speaker tells about Professor Frankental and the Poynting theorem, which makes it possible to describe the transfer of electrical power also through the field around the wire and not only “in the wire.” He brings a story about a lawsuit in the United States in which they tried to argue that electricity “passes through the air” in order to avoid payment, and he defines this as missing the legislator’s intent. He states that in law and in Jewish law, the determination sticks to what the ordinary person sees and to what is practically required to transfer something, and not to an equivalent physical description that does not change the normative function.

The question of what the Sages knew and ruling in the present

The speaker is asked whether the lack of microscopic consideration in Jewish law stems from the fact that the Sages did not have scientific knowledge, and he admits that if they had known, they might have expressed it. He argues that the practical question remains fully in place even today, because one still has to decide what is permitted and what is forbidden despite the new scientific knowledge. He states that there is no way to know how the Sages would have ruled if they lived today, and therefore the basic assumption is that the halakhic criterion rests on publicity and accessibility of the ruling.

Science, mysticism, and principle-level accessibility versus practical accessibility

The speaker distinguishes between advanced science that few people understand and mysticism, and argues that science is not mysticism because in principle anyone who studies can understand it. He points to a further step, according to which even scientific-professional knowledge that is not actually accessible to most of the public might be considered halakhically weightless, and marks this as a far-reaching claim about which there are disputes. He formulates the accessibility dispute as the question whether principle-level accessibility to anyone who studies is enough, or whether practical accessibility to the ordinary person is required for a claim to have halakhic standing.

Kabbalah as a discipline versus mysticism

The speaker is asked why Kabbalah is not a public discipline that can be learned like any other field, and he defines a discipline as knowledge that can be transmitted such that whoever studies it can reach independent professional competence. He argues that in Kabbalah, even someone who studies will not necessarily become a kabbalist, because “spiritual capacities” or intuition are required that are not accessible to everyone. He brings the story of the Ari and Rabbi Yosef Karo, who fell asleep during a lesson in Safed, and the statement “the root of his soul is not here,” as an expression of the idea that the level of Kabbalah depends on the root of one’s soul and is not equally accessible.

Aristotelian science, empiricism, and authority as a slide into mysticism

The speaker is asked whether Aristotelian science is mysticism, and explains that in its time it was viewed as science and in principle was accessible to study, even if it turned out to be mistaken. He argues that the main problem is methodological: Aristotelian science was not empirical in the modern sense, and allowed claims on the basis of logic even without experiment, such as the claim about bodies falling in relation to their weight. He explains that when there is no public observation that allows testing, an authority is created that people accept “because he said so,” and then an apparently rational field functions as mysticism.

Modern science as the opposite of mysticism: repeatability and publicity

The speaker states that science is defined as claims that can be reproduced, verified, or refuted, and that a scientific article is supposed to include details that make it possible to repeat the experiment. He mentions the parody The Journal of Irreproducible Results to emphasize that repeatability is a condition for legitimate scientific knowledge. He argues that modern science broke through the esoteric shell of the Middle Ages, and therefore it is the strongest alternative to mysticism, but he rejects the categorical conclusion that everything non-scientific is necessarily nonsense.

Mystical charlatanism, trust, and the “heretic” fallacy

The speaker opens the section on “mystical charlatanism” from the definition that mysticism is not publicly testable and therefore invites charlatans. He argues that in a mystical world, charisma and trust replace examination, and when there are no counterarguments, it is easy to stick on the label “heretic” instead of having a substantive discussion. He notes that there is also charlatanism in philosophy because of the difficulty of empirical refutation, but in the mystical world it is more common because criticism is not legitimate and authority cannot be publicly examined.

Rational tests for prophecy as a borderline case

The speaker brings the ways of testing a prophet in the Talmud and Maimonides’ development of the issue in order to show that the Torah requires tests and not blind faith in someone claiming prophecy. He states that prophecy is “the summit of mysticism” in terms of inaccessibility, but mystical status is accepted only after empirical tests of signs and predictions. He also brings the difficulty concerning “one who suppresses his prophecy is punished with lashes” and the suggestion that his fellow prophets warn him, as a hint to a certain degree of publicity within the guild of prophets.

Psychoanalysis as mysticism according to Popper

The speaker is asked about psychologists and psychiatrists and refers to columns on his website in which he separates scientific from non-scientific components. He notes that Popper argued that psychoanalysis is mysticism in the sense that it is not scientific, and says he largely agrees with that diagnosis. He emphasizes that the fact that a field is non-scientific does not necessarily mean there is nothing to it, only that it does not meet the criteria of science.

The law of small numbers as the engine of alternative medicine and “miracle” consciousness

The speaker presents Daniel Kahneman’s “law of small numbers” as the tendency to draw conclusions from small samples as if they were large ones. He gives an example of kidney cancer mortality rates in counties in the United States, where the small counties produce extremes both for better and for worse simply because of sample size and not because of “lifestyle.” He gives another example from the Bill Gates Foundation about investment in small schools that seemed successful because the best extremes were small, but it turned out that the worst extremes were also small, and therefore the initial conclusion was a statistical bias.

How charlatans produce statistical “miracles”

The speaker argues that most alternative medicine relies on isolated success stories without a control group, without double-blind testing, and without neutralizing placebo and spontaneous recovery. He describes how a healer in the style of Oren Zarif can present natural “successes” that occur in a small percentage, while the failures are forgotten, and in this way a profitable industry of trust is created. He concludes that the wonders in many cases are statistical wonders that anyone can produce if they exploit the tails of the distribution.

Illustrative stories: “Think of a Number” and fear of vaccines

The speaker brings the plot of John Verdon’s book Think of a Number, in which a letter predicting a number appears to involve supernatural powers, but turns out to be a statistical manipulation applied to thousands of recipients. He brings another example about reports of miscarriages after vaccination, and argues that a large number of testimonies does not prove causation when the rate in the population does not change, but rather reflects an expected coincidence in large numbers. He ends with the claim that lack of statistical skill fuels conspiratorial and mystical beliefs, and suggests that the tools for exposing charlatanism are scientific thinking, probability, and common sense.

Okay, let’s begin. Maybe one or two more comments about what we’ve done so far. I’ve had various exchanges following these lessons, and among other things someone commented—before the comment that was raised earlier, there was actually an earlier comment. My claim was that Jewish law basically focuses on information that is public, meaning accessible to everyone, whereas mysticism is defined as something that is essentially not public—it is esoteric—and therefore part of the public, or the public as a whole, can only really receive things there on the basis of trust in whoever says them. I just want to make one remark about that point. There’s an even more far-reaching claim regarding the nature of Jewish law, which takes this idea one step further. I even once heard this myself from Rabbi Soloveitchik when I was in Boston, just a little before he passed away. He no longer gave regular classes then, only on Sabbath afternoons at Maimonides there, the school in Boston. He spoke there, I think, about the prohibitions regarding worms. And the claim is well known; quite a few halakhic decisors say it: things that are not visible to the naked eye have no halakhic significance. Meaning, you are not supposed to inspect for worms using microscopes or even special magnifying glasses. What you can see with your eyes is what is relevant, that is what is prohibited with regard to eating worms. If there is a worm you cannot see with your eyes, then no. Yes, there is no prohibition against eating bacteria—although I’m not sure whether bacteria have signs of ritual purity. But whatever cannot be seen with the eyes, Jewish law simply does not deal with, does not prohibit, and does not relate to in any way.

Maybe an opposite example: I once saw an article—there are a few articles by a very interesting Jew named Rabbi Yitzhak Brand, not Yitzhak Brand the jurist from Bar-Ilan; same name, but someone else—a Jew who deals a lot with updating Jewish law for our times and adapting it to our times from a very interesting point of view: on the one hand open and liberal and willing to accept innovations, and on the other hand very, very conservative at the same time. Sounds interesting. In any case, he has articles on the subject of electricity on the Sabbath, and he comes out with very sharp criticism of the Tzomet Institute and the like, who make all kinds of gadgets involving indirect causation circuits and delayed current and things of that sort. And Rabbi Yitzhak Brand’s claim is, let’s say, take for example the scooter—the Tzomet Institute scooter, to make it accessible to everyone—which has some kind of… Rabbi, can we mute? I can’t hear. So they built a scooter, some kind of motorized vehicle, for people who need it—elderly people or people with disabilities—and it is built in some way, I don’t remember exactly right now, based on one of Tzomet’s tricks, either indirect causation or delayed current or something of that kind.

And Rabbi Yitzhak Brand’s claim is that if you have this kind of scooter where you press the button and it moves, I do not care at all how the current circulates inside the electric motor of that device. That is not relevant to the halakhic discussion. There is here an electrical mechanism; you press the switch, it activates, and it drives. So it makes no difference at all if inside the current jumps backward and goes around through the left hand and grows a tail. That’s not relevant to the discussion. Why? His claim is that once you have a mechanism that you activate and it functions, that is what is prohibited. What happens inside it, microscopically, in the electronics there inside, is the concern of engineers or scientists or things like that. It is not of interest on the halakhic plane. Therefore, when we talk for example about permissions based on indirect causation, we are talking about indirect causation on the macroscopic plane. Meaning, if we do, say—yes, the Mishnah in tractate Sabbath, 122 I think—the Mishnah speaks there about blocking a fire by means of water jugs. When the fire reaches the jug, it bursts it, the water comes out and extinguishes the fire. So that is causing extinguishing, yes? The topic there is causing extinguishing. That is the concept of indirect causation. Why? Because that the macroscope sees—you can see it with your eyes. And basically you are doing some action that is visibly indirect. That is the discussion of indirect causation. Why is indirect causation permitted, prohibited on the Sabbath, all kinds of disputes, never mind—but that is the mechanism of indirect causation that Jewish law is talking about.

By contrast, if there is a microscopic electronic mechanism where, yes, there too there is really something very similar—you are basically, when you press the switch, causing something to move and enabling the current to flow, or the switch activates the current directly. So if that happened on the macroscopic level, it would be indirect causation. But once it happens on the microscopic level, it’s not interesting. That is his claim. There we do not discuss it in terms of yes indirect causation or no indirect causation. What I see with my eyes is a mechanism that, when you press the button, works. I do not care what jumps the current makes inside. And in that sense it is supposed to be prohibited. There is no permission based on indirect causation in that sense. By the way, I tend to think he is right. But that is basically the claim. It is the other side of the same coin I spoke about earlier with the worms. In the case of worms they say this consideration leniently. In the case of electricity they say this consideration stringently, but it is the same consideration. The claim is that the microscopic level is not relevant to the halakhic discussion. In the case of worms, if the worms are microscopic you may eat them—the implication is lenient. In the case of electricity, since the thing functions, I do not care that microscopically there is indirect causation; it should be prohibited. Here the implication is stringent. But the consideration is the same consideration. In other words, both sides are basically built on the idea that things happening on a microscopic level that is inaccessible to the naked eye are not relevant to the halakhic discussion. That is basically the claim.

And that reminds me that once I was sitting in the Chazon Ish kollel. I used to sit there on weekends; I joined some framework of Torah study on weekends. So a Jew approached me—I was sitting there on Friday—and he had studied one year below me at the yeshiva high school. But this was many years later already; he was already a kollel fellow, later he became, I think, a head of a kollel or something like that, a Torah scholar. He approached me, and he knew I was studying physics—I think I was in my doctorate then—and he asked me, “Tell me, is it true what they say, that glass is a liquid?” So I asked him, in what connection are you asking whether glass is a liquid—regarding heating it on the Sabbath? Does it have the status of a liquid or a solid? That it has the status of a solid is obvious. The fact that physicists tend to relate to glass as though it were a liquid is because, from the physicists’ point of view, matter whose crystal structure is not ordered, that does not have an ordered crystal structure, is not called a solid. Solids are things that have an ordered crystal structure; say, the atoms that make up the solid are arranged in some orderly crystal, say cubes, actually at equal distances with some internal symmetry. There is a set of symmetries—Bravais lattices, for those who know it—and that is what defines solid materials. In glass the atoms are located disorderly; there is no symmetry in the locations of the atoms when you look. Therefore, in certain senses physicists sometimes relate to glass as a liquid and not as a solid. But that is of course irrelevant because from the standpoint of Jewish law—and I’m bringing this example for what I said earlier—what matters is what I can feel in my hand. The crystal structure, how these atoms are arranged, is not accessible to any naked eye. And even to an armed eye it is not accessible—you have to do spectroscopy and all kinds of indirect measurements; you cannot see atoms. Okay? So therefore we are dealing here with a microscopic property of the material. A microscopic property is not relevant to the halakhic discussion. That is basically the claim. And therefore glass is a solid from the standpoint of Jewish law. The fact that physicists define it as a liquid because they are interested in microscopic structures—yes, it’s like when I talk about this, another nice example always pops into my mind that I heard from our lecturer in electromagnetic fields at Tel Aviv University, Professor Frankenthal. He told us—we were learning Poynting’s theorem. Poynting’s theorem says that when current is run through an electric wire, and the wire has some sort of resistance, then you can speak about the power passing through the wire, and there are ways to calculate it through the current and the resistance or the voltage in the wire. But you can also look at the power, sorry, as though it passes through the air around the wire, in the electromagnetic fields that surround the wire. Those are two equivalent ways of looking at the transfer of electrical power.

Now he told us that there was once a federal law in the United States saying that if state A transfers something to state C through state B, which lies in between them, then if it passes through the air they don’t have to pay state B. But if it passes through wires through state B or through pipes—physically—then they do have to pay state B transit fees. Now state A transferred electricity to state C. State B sued them so they would pay, because the electricity passes through wires. So states A and C brought physicists who explained in court that electricity does not pass through the wires at all; it passes through the electromagnetic field around the wire. That is Poynting’s theorem. Okay. Therefore they do not have to pay. I don’t remember whether he told us—I don’t know, I don’t remember what the judge ruled there. But that is of course nonsense. Why is it nonsense? Because when the legislator spoke of something that passes through wires—sorry—he meant something that requires wires in order to transfer it. To transfer electricity you need wires. The fact that physicists amuse themselves with mathematical theorems saying you can look at the power as though it passes through the air around the wire—that is a nice mathematical anecdote. But practically, this is something that requires a wire in order to transfer it. Without the wire there would be no power in the surrounding air either. You need the wire for this thing to pass. Therefore on the legal level I am not interested in physical theories. On the legal level this is something that passes through a wire.

That is very similar to what I said earlier: the jurist is not interested in physical theories. The jurist is interested in what the layman sees when he looks—what is visible to the naked eye, the simple layman, okay? And if he sees here something passing through a wire, then for legal purposes this is something passing through a wire. And I do not care that physicists are doing all kinds of calculations and mathematical acrobatics that can explain that it also passes through the air. That is not even true, of course; these are simply two equivalent forms of describing the same thing. You can describe the power as passing in the wire, or as passing in the field around the wire. There is no truth here in the sense that one is right and the other is wrong; these are two equivalent descriptions. That is what Poynting’s theorem says. Poynting’s theorem establishes equivalence between this description and that description. Okay.

So that is another example showing that this is not something unique to Jewish law. It really characterizes normative legal systems—or Jewish law, or whatever it may be—that by their nature do not deal in microscopic descriptions, in scientific and mathematical theories. They deal with things as the layman perceives them. That is what determines the legal and halakhic rule. Okay. So now, here… Rabbi, a comment: maybe that is simply because the sages had no knowledge of these matters at all? But we do. Yes, but it could be that if they had had that knowledge when they established things—say, in the Talmud—then they would have given it expression in Jewish law. Of course if they had known, they could have given it expression, but they did not know. And now the question is not what they did not know; the question is what we do. Is there a permission based on indirect causation here or not? Is there a prohibition against eating these worms or not? We have to decide now. Decisions. We can know that these things exist there on the microscopic level. And the sages did not address them because they did not know. Okay, but I still need to make a decision now about what to do. Permitted or forbidden? So the fact that the sages did not address it doesn’t help me; on the contrary, it intensifies the question. Okay. And basically one cannot know whether they would have taken it into account or not, because they did not know. Right, and therefore it is not relevant. We live today; we need to make this decision. If the sages were alive today, they would not be “the sages”; they would be today. No, but I mean, the person making the decision today can say, okay, they didn’t know; now I know, so I will take it into account. It reminds me—my son wrote some time ago on WhatsApp on his birthday, we prepared him a birthday greeting, and he said, “How wonderful that I was born into this family.” I told him there is nothing special here—if you had not been born into this family, you simply would not be you. There is no meaning to talking about “if I had been born into another family,” because if you had been born into another family, you would not be you. It is not a relevant claim at all. Yes, yes, the Rabbi already said that once before. Okay.

Anyway, so for our purposes, why am I bringing these examples? Because I think these examples move in the direction I was talking about earlier, but take it one step further. What do I mean? I said that Jewish law deals with public things, things accessible to everyone. That which is not accessible to everyone, the esoteric, is what is called mysticism. Therefore mysticism does not have full halakhic standing. If it has any halakhic standing at all, at least not full standing—not the same standing as the revealed realm, as the public things. Now here this is a very subtle point, because when I dealt with mysticism, I said that science is not mysticism. I mentioned this in the previous lesson: what about quantum theory, relativity theory? How many people in the world understand relativity and quantum theory? Relatively few, right? A very, very small percentage of the world’s people deal with it and understand it. It is a matter for professionals, for those who work with it. Is that mysticism? I said no. Why not? Because in principle, whoever studies it will know it. So if people do not bother to study it, then they don’t bother. Why, most people also do not really understand Jewish law either, certainly not at the level of halakhic decisors. Okay? And still, revealed Jewish law is not mysticism. Why? Because it is the kind of field that whoever studies it will indeed know it. In other words, in principle it is accessible to everyone. And there, from my point of view, that is how I defined mysticism: in mysticism, on the level of principle, it is not accessible to everyone. Not because I simply need to study and then all will be fine—no. Even if I study, it still may not be accessible to me, depending on whether I have the mystical intuitions or whatever, as I discussed in the previous lesson.

Now, what happens here is that my claim was that even advanced fields in science, very complex ones, which very few people understand, are still not mysticism in my view. I ask the person; he gives me the answer, and from my perspective that is public information. Why is it public? There are very few people who really know it, and I am supposed to trust them—that is true. I trust them, and that is how I receive the information. But in principle it is accessible to everyone. In principle anyone who wants to study it can study it. That is the point. Now here we have gone one step further in the examples I just brought. Because here the claim is—here we are talking about scientific claims. The tiny worms, or the electrical circuits inside the Tzomet scooter. These are scientific questions. Anyone who studies the material will know it. True, very few people know it because it is professional knowledge. Those involved in the field know it and others do not, okay. But that is because they did not study it. In other words, in principle, anyone who studies it will know it. So in that sense it does not enter the definition of mysticism, the definition as I presented it. Because the principled accessibility exists for everyone. The fact that people don’t make the effort and don’t look does not mean they cannot look. It is as if something is standing here and everyone can see it, but some people close their eyes and don’t look at it. Does it become mysticism? No, because whoever wants can look and see.

Okay, so here too I argued that whoever wants can study this scientific field and know it and become knowledgeable about it. Therefore in principle it is not mysticism. Here what we are seeing is taking the same idea further. The claim that even things that are the concern of a handful of scientists or professionals who understand them, while everyone else does not understand them—even they have no halakhic standing. Why? Because in practice they are not accessible to everyone, only to a small minority of people who work in it or understand it, and there are claims saying that these considerations too have no halakhic standing. So I can learn from here, all the more so, with regard to the claims I made earlier: something whose inaccessibility to the broad public is principled certainly has no halakhic standing. About this one can really argue. For example, the Tzomet Institute argues that there are permissions based on indirect causation. Rabbi Brand argues that there are not. There is a dispute among contemporary halakhic decisors and rabbis whether yes or no, absolutely. Why can there be a dispute here? There can be a dispute because on the level of principle this is not mysticism; it belongs to science. In principle it is accessible to all of us—whoever studies it will know and understand it. True, most people are not familiar with it; most people do not know electronics, fine, so what? On the level of principle it is accessible. To say that even this has no halakhic significance—that is already a more far-reaching claim. I said I tend to think it is correct, but that is indeed already a more far-reaching claim, and over it disputes are being fought. But notice that this is really the same idea, just taken one step further. The claim that Jewish law is supposed to be something public, something accessible to anyone who looks. Okay? Now the question is what level of accessibility is required here; that is where the dispute lies. Is principled accessibility enough, or do we require practical accessibility, that anyone can understand what is being discussed here and one does not need to be a professional for it? Or even if only a professional understands it, does that still count for me as publicly accessible, because whoever wants can become a professional and know it? Those are already disputes. But all these disputes are fought on the basis of the assumption that Jewish law must be public. The only question is what counts as public, or how public something must be in order to have halakhic standing. But the shared assumption is that something must be public in order to have halakhic standing. And in that sense it seems to me this strongly reinforces the thesis I have been inclined toward in the last few times.

At the end of the previous lesson a question was raised that seemingly—go study Kabbalah, study Kabbalah, become acquainted with that body of teaching, and then that too becomes a discipline. And then you ended by saying, “It seems to me it is not a discipline,” but I didn’t understand the reasoning. Especially since you also give credit to Kabbalists and say they can indeed issue halakhic rulings based on what they know, which seems to me a bit strange—because if there is no discipline, or you do not accept that there is a discipline, then on what basis are they ruling at all? A discipline, as distinct from a person’s private method, is something public. A discipline is something you can transmit to someone else—that is the meaning of a discipline. It means that whoever studies it will know it. That is the meaning of a discipline, and that is also in a certain sense why a discipline is the opposite of mysticism. So Kabbalah too—why not? So why is Kabbalah, if studied, not accessible? Come study—why not? I explained this last time and said that what distinguishes Kabbalah, why I think it is not a discipline, is that in Kabbalah I do not think everyone who studies it will become a Kabbalist. There is some kind of spiritual intuition, spiritual capacities, whatever it may be. And again, without entering the question whether maybe it is all charlatanism—I’m not going into that right now—but even assuming there is something there, it is something not accessible to everyone. Even if I study, maybe I’ll get to know some of the concepts, but I will not become a Kabbalist. In other words, I will not be able to reach conclusions on my own, produce new ideas, or things of that sort. Unlike the revealed study. That requires something subjective, and that is what I call mysticism. But then you are already talking about a somewhat different distinction, where Kabbalah is not grasped by us intellectually, not by reason, but rather as something spiritual that I cannot access not because it isn’t public or because I can’t study Kabbalah, but because these are tools I cannot work with the way I can with ordinary Jewish law. It’s not because of that—it’s exactly because of that, that’s my point: because it is not public. That is my claim. That is exactly what I argued. Okay, and how did the Rabbi reach that conclusion? Because in order to reach that conclusion I think you have to be inside the matter. Someone spiritual will come and say to you: listen, study all you want; if you don’t have the powers, whatever, of the Kabbalists… Okay, I know. If I am wrong, I am wrong, but that is how I understand it. No, I mean, in order to make such a claim, don’t you think one would need to have been on the other side and say, “It’s not what you think, it’s something completely different”? First, I have studied it a little. I am not saying I am a Kabbalist, but I know that world a bit, and I also speak with people involved in it, and that is my impression. Again, a person can always be wrong. I am not certain I am right; I am describing things as I understand them. Okay, so in your opinion, how does one become a Kabbalist? I told that story about the Ari, who gave a lesson in Safed and Rabbi Yosef Karo sat there in the audience and fell asleep. They wanted to wake him, and the Ari of blessed memory said to them, “Leave him, leave him. The root of his soul is not here; let him sleep. It’s not for him.” And is he considered not a Kabbalist? Rabbi Yosef Karo? I think not. I also had some correspondence about that. In my opinion, absolutely not. But all right, he had the Maggid Meisharim, which is itself an enigma, but that is not Kabbalah in the accepted, systematic sense. So the claim is that this story expresses precisely this point: there is someone whose soul-root is of this kind, and someone whose soul-root is not of this kind. So he will not be a Kabbalist. He can maybe study it and understand—they will explain the concepts to him—but he will not be able to derive conclusions there; he cannot become a professional in that field, arrive at conclusions in that area. And that is unlike Jewish law, the revealed realm, philosophy, or whatever, where of course there is always the question whether you are sufficiently talented, more talented, less talented—each according to his level. But in principle it is accessible to everyone, each according to his abilities. There is no principled inaccessibility here. That was basically my claim.

Another comment that came up in correspondence was: what about Aristotelian science? Is Aristotelian science mysticism? When you read it today it sounds like mysticism. Earth, wind, fire, stars, spheres, all kinds of things—it looks completely mystical. Okay, that is an interesting question, because on the face of it, at least in Aristotle’s own time, when people thought it was true, it was perceived as science, not mysticism. In principle one could study it, become expert in it, and become part of the professional class. In that sense it is a kind of science; never mind that it turned out in the end not to be true. Okay? Today’s science too may turn out not to be true in the future; there is nothing special about that. But in principle it is not mysticism. However, what happens there—the point that still, I don’t know whether to call it confusing here, or maybe there is something real to it—is that Aristotelian science, unlike modern science, was not empirical. That does not mean Aristotle did not observe reality and did not even perform experiments here and there; those are incorrect myths. He did do that. But it is true that he did not base himself only on that. Meaning, he allowed himself to make scientific claims by force of his reasoning, even without observation. In modern science people allow themselves that less—or not at all; “less” is probably more accurate. And therefore what happened there is that science back then was not separate from philosophy. Philosophy included science too; there was no disciplinary distinction there between science and philosophy. Why? Because science too was not empirical. It was thought—how do I think about things? Aristotle says that bodies fall to the ground at a speed proportional to their weight, their mass, which of course is not true. And to test this you do not need particle accelerators: take two stones of equal shape, one much heavier and one less heavy, drop them, and you’ll see they hit the ground together. Aristotle certainly could have done this experiment, but he didn’t. Why? Because if his reason told him that it was so, then there was no need to do an experiment; obviously it was so. And this is perhaps the most famous example of the problem of scientific rationalism, of dependence on thought instead of observation. Thought misleads. The world owes us nothing; it was here before us, as Mark Twain said. Fine—just because I think something or because it seems logical to me does not mean that is how the world actually behaves. And that is the central insight of modern science: modern science is based on observations and not on logic. That does not mean reason is not used, but the basis of modern science is observations. And with Aristotle it was not only observations; it was also logic.

Now what happens here is, again, I said that philosophy too is not mysticism. Therefore, when you have a field that is not empirical but based on reason, it is not mysticism. But it is liable to become mysticism. Why? Because Aristotle is a great sage—that is how everyone viewed him—even Maimonides writes of his extraordinary greatness, yes? Aristotle was considered a great sage. And because of that, for many hundreds of years—one could say not even hundreds but a thousand or fifteen hundred years after him—people still fed off Aristotelian science. Yes, throughout the Middle Ages basically, saying something against Aristotle was heresy. For the Church, for example, that was heresy. What Aristotle said was pure truth. And in a certain sense Aristotle became some kind of authority source from whom you had to accept things simply because he said them. Because after all the things were not based on experiment. If you say something based on observation, then one can test you; I will run the experiment and see if you are right or not. Once science became more empirical, more observational, it became more public and more democratic. Because basically anyone could perform the experiment and check me. But when science was basically a kind of philosophy, there was a sort of aristocratic class of sages, and everyone else was supposed to accept what they said because they said it, because they were wise people. And it was not accessible to me—I could not test them, because there was no observation. What could I do? If I thought otherwise they would say, “Well, that’s because you’re an idiot; that’s why you think otherwise. You’re not smart enough.” So de facto what comes out is—I can refuse to accept what I’m told—but de facto what comes out is indeed something that very much resembles mysticism. Because Aristotle can invent all kinds of things from his fevered imagination, and everyone has to accept it because we are supposed to believe what Aristotle said since he was so very wise. Do you see why this begins to approach mysticism according to my definition? And I basically accept it because he said it, not because I have some ability to criticize what he said myself, to test what he said myself—because this is not a matter examined observationally; it is a matter examined logically. And once it is examined logically, it is very easy to slide into a state where I say, “Well, he has great reason, he is a very wise person, so whatever he says is correct and that is science.” You have to accept it because he said it. And thus you have turned science into mysticism. Not “turned”—that is how it was originally. On the contrary, later they turned science into something else that is not mysticism. That happened in modern science, at the beginning of the modern era.

So there is something to identifying Aristotelian science with mysticism. It is not because it speaks in terms of spheres and active intellect and things like that, which seem to us mystical concepts. In its own time those were scientific concepts. I don’t think one can define sharply why those concepts are mystical and not scientific. Our concepts today are also not directly observational—electron, wave function, electromagnetic field, and so on. But I think what arouses the connotation of mysticism in relation to Aristotelian science is its authority. It is that I need to accept it because wise people said so. His intellectual intuition, Aristotle’s spiritual-philosophical-scientific intuition, however you want to call it, was treated in such a way that people accepted it because he said it. Once it becomes like that, once it works in that way, then it really is mysticism. Even if people related that way to science, to Newtonian mechanics—if people did not allow themselves to test it in the laboratory, but accepted it only because Newton was wise, then Newtonian mechanics would be mysticism. Even though it is almost the polar opposite of mysticism, the most opposite thing to mysticism I can imagine. But not because it is rational and logical and systematic—no, not because of that. Rather because it is accessible to everyone. Because it is based on observation. Anyone can do an experiment and test it. And one who cannot can study and then do the experiment. But in principle it is accessible to everyone. And when that is not the case, we are dealing with mysticism.

Therefore I think there is something to this connotation that accompanies Aristotelian science, as if it were some kind of mysticism. But specifically from the perspective I defined earlier—the methodological one—not because of the content, but because of the methodology by which the whole thing was conducted. And in a certain sense—and with this I’ll finish my remarks—in a certain sense, the emergence of modern science, yes, from the beginning of the modern era onward, is basically the creation of the clearest opposite pole to mysticism in human thought. Science is the clearest pole opposite mysticism. And why? Because science by definition is something public. It is accessible to everyone. That is a definition, by the way. A claim that is not reproducible—meaning one cannot repeat the experiment and test it, confirm or refute it—is not a scientific claim. An experiment you cannot repeat again is not accepted. Meaning, if you do not write in your article how you conducted the experiment in full detail, in a way that will allow anyone willing to invest the effort to repeat your experiment and test you, your article will not be published. In principle, I mean—there are always failures and exceptions and problems—but on the principled level, your article will not be published. A result must be reproducible, repeatable, what is called reproducible. There is an amusing parody journal, The Journal of Irreproducible Results. It is a journal that publishes all kinds of scientific findings and scientific experiments that are absurd and of course cannot be repeated, and therefore are not scientific. It is of course meant to mock various fields that regard themselves as science but are actually irreproducible. Yes, it is a parody journal, scientists’ humor. But the nice idea in this parody is that it puts the focus exactly on this point: science must be reproducible. And whatever is not reproducible, that cannot be repeated—anyone who wants should in principle be able to repeat it. Again, provided he has the skill and the money and everything else and invests what is required, but in principle anyone who invests what is required should be equipped with all the information about my experiment in order to repeat it and test me. And if that is not present in my article, the article should not be published. It is not a legitimate scientific result. You cannot say, “I did an experiment in ways I don’t want to report, and I got amazing results.” No. If you are not willing to publish the way you conducted the experiment, your article should not be published. It is not a scientific result.

And that sharpens very much the point I have been talking about all along. When modern science was born, it basically burst the mystical shell that accompanied the Middle Ages—even in fields that are not traditionally perceived as mysticism. Philosophy and science in the Middle Ages were also, in a certain sense, mysticism. There was indeed, for example, a policy—Aharon Katzir in his book In the Furnace of the Scientific Revolution talks about this a bit, if I remember correctly—about the esotericism that was practiced in philosophy, esoteric writing. Philosophers wrote in such a way that ordinary people in the world would not understand. If anyone could understand at all. There are still today all kinds of people who write in such a way that no one can understand. They are what are called “the French and their helpers.” Lawyers are something else. Lawyers are just a guild, but there is meaning to what they write because they are careful about jargon that serves their guild well. But there are others for whom there is no meaning in what they write; it is only jargon, meaning it represents nothing. And pardon our French friends here, but for me that is connected with French philosophers. Well, in any case, the point I want to sharpen through all these examples is really the significance of reproducibility and publicity as the antithesis to mysticism. Mysticism is distinguished by the fact that it is not public, not reproducible, and therefore not accessible to everyone. That is basically the point. And when modern science was born, it is really no wonder that people began kicking mysticism around, looking down on mysticism, because there is another alternative. It appears stronger, broader-fronted, more convincing. Anyone can test us. It is falsifiable. To the point that people really reach the conclusion—which I do not accept either, at least not categorically—that rules out everything that is not scientific. Everything mystical is necessarily nonsense. I do not agree. My starting point is that everything mystical is probably nonsense, but it needs to be checked. Maybe yes, maybe no. I do not say it categorically, okay? And the claim there is that it is categorical. That is, if it is mysticism, it is nonsense. Whatever does not pass the scientific test simply does not exist. Meaning it is not really something one can relate to. With that I do not agree, and I will still get to the balance between these two things. And in order to get to that balance, I want to move on to the next chapter of our series, and that is mystical charlatanism.

As a result of the definition I have suggested for mysticism up to this point, you can understand very naturally how mystical charlatanism is born. Because once the claims are not supposed to be examined by anyone willing and wanting to examine them, but rather you are supposed to accept things only because someone with abilities—or without abilities, it doesn’t matter, people think he has abilities—said them, you understand that this opens a wide field for charlatans. Frauds, charlatans—the mystical world is full of charlatans. Maybe it is all like that; I said I don’t know. But certainly there are many such people in it. I don’t know whether all of it is like that, but certainly there are many such people, okay? I would say the overwhelming majority of those who deal in this field are charlatans. And why is that possible? In the scientific world there is much less charlatanism because they will catch you very quickly. If you tell me stories about an experiment, I will do the experiment myself and discover that you are talking nonsense. Sometimes the experiment is terribly expensive, so it takes a little time, but in the end people will discover that you are talking nonsense. By contrast, in the mystical field, once I have trust in someone, I accept what he said, and not only do I not bother to test it—it is not legitimate to test it. He has some sort of intuitions, and if he said it then he probably understands, and I’m not like that. Therefore I am supposed to accept what he said. Now, if a person has charisma and can cause many people to believe him and think he is a person with special mystical or spiritual powers, then everyone will accept what he says, and there is no way to convince them that he is wrong, because every time you make another claim they will say that you are stupid and he is wise. And therefore you are a heretic. The concept “heretic” basically represents this. When there are no arguments against you and they want to say, “We disagree with you,” what do they say? They say you are a heretic. No problem—that is the winning card. When there are no arguments that can be made against you substantively, what people say is that you are not speaking like these holy people who know everything. And whoever does not speak like the holy people is a heretic. Among Christians too, among Jews too, among everyone, there is this category. It always appears where the arguments run out. Where the arguments end, the slogans and labels of “heretic” begin.

And that is exactly the point. Given the way I defined this field called mysticism, you can understand that charlatanism is almost built into it. Unlike scientific, rational, philosophical fields. By the way, in philosophy too there is a lot of charlatanism—I mentioned that a few minutes ago. Why? Because there too it is really hard to test what you are saying, because it is not an empirical test. You can test whether what you say sounds reasonable to me, but one cannot refute what you say empirically. In science these are clear cases, meaning anyone can go and test. That is why there is the least charlatanism there. In philosophy there is much more charlatanism than in science, because if a person is smart then everyone says, “Well, he is so smart, so maybe I just didn’t understand him, and therefore he is really right.” And in the mystical world there is the most charlatanism, because there it is built on the trust I have in the person and on my not allowing myself to criticize it and test it myself. And that is the meaning of charlatanism.

But notice—I am getting ahead of myself already—that this does not mean all mysticism is charlatanism. On the contrary, it means: do not conclude from the fact that there are many charlatans there that necessarily all mysticism is charlatanism. I am arguing against that conclusion in what I am saying now. What I want to say is that there are more charlatans there than in science, not because all mysticism is charlatanism—or not necessarily because of that—but simply because the nature of the field dictates this fact, or dictates this phenomenon, that it is much easier to develop charlatanism there or to succeed there charlatanically. Therefore it is no wonder there are many charlatans there, and that does not mean the whole field is charlatanic. Fine. In fact, the claim I am making here—that this field is very open to charlatanism, or that charlatanism is to be expected in it—is actually an argument that can somewhat fend off the claims against the field. Because it says: okay, there are many charlatans, let’s ignore them—but there may also be something serious here. Don’t be impressed by the fact that there are many charlatans, because the nature of the field is such that it is easy for a charlatan to succeed there; there are many fools in the world, and it is easy for a charlatan to deceive them. And in a moment I will explain how they deceive them. But what are our tools for testing this? Whether there is charlatanism or not? We don’t really have tools to test it. How do we test? Right, right—we do not have a sharp way to test it, but still it may be that I have some trust in the person and yet I try to formulate that a little more responsibly, let’s call it that, even if I do not test him like I test the scientist. But one can get an impression whether this is a serious person or a less serious one. And foolish people do not test this; they can be duped, and in a moment I will explain how they are duped. But there are certain levels of testing that I think can be applied here too.

Let me maybe give a few examples. For example, in the world of Jewish law and thought they discuss ways of testing prophecy. When I want to check whether a prophet is a true prophet, there are methods that appear in the Talmud, and Maimonides develops this greatly: how do you test whether a prophet is a true prophet? And you test him. The Torah forbids us to believe someone just because he informs us that he is a prophet and we are very impressed by him. Someone who believes such a person is a transgressor. You must test the prophet, and only after you have tested the prophet does he receive the stamp that he is a prophet, and from then onward one must obey him. There is a law that one must obey a prophet. Okay, I think that is very beautiful, because it sharpens that tension I spoke about: on the one hand, the prophet is the peak of mysticism. A prophet tells us: listen, I saw things in prophetic visions, none of you can see that even if you study whatever you want. Because the level of prophecy is the level of prophecy, and the Holy One, blessed be He, chooses His prophets, and that’s it; it is not accessible to everyone. You have to accept it because I said it, because you trust me that I am a true prophet. That is the summit, the most mystical thing possible. But notice how you gain that trust that allows you to convey things to me and be a sort of mystical prophet, a mystical leader or mystical teacher. You have to pass rational tests. You have to give me predictions of what will happen in the future, and I test you empirically. I test scientifically whether you are a prophet or not a prophet. The verses in the Torah say this. What? “If he gives you a sign or a wonder.” Right. So on the one hand you can see that here there is some branch of the Torah that is open to mysticism in its sharpest form. A prophet is someone who—one person in the world says something and everyone has to accept it because he said it. The most mystical thing possible. But in order to receive that status, he must pass tests by the public. And those tests are conducted with rational tools, not mystical tools. In order to receive the mystical crown, you need to pass rational tests.

By the way, there is an interesting anecdote. It is written that “one who suppresses his prophecy is flogged,” the Talmud says in Sanhedrin. Yes. So they ask there, how can he be flogged—there has to be prior warning. Who can warn him? After all, no one knows that he is receiving prophecy. How can anyone know that he received prophecy and did not say it? So they answer that his fellow prophets can warn him. It emerges there somewhat that the prophecy received by a prophet—even fellow prophets, other prophets, understand that he has received prophecy. There is some measure of publicity even in this mystical field. Fine, but of course that is only for that specific guild, if it exists at all, certainly not for the general public. Okay. So here is an example of that tension: on the one hand I recognize the existence of mysticism, but on the other hand I demand very careful tests before giving someone that status. He will not get it just because I admire him, and because he is charismatic, and because he convinced me that he is righteous. No. He has to pass tests. Okay.

How do you define psychologists or psychiatrists? Because there it is not something where I think—it’s not something scientific that people test all that much. That is a difficult and loaded question. I have said many times what my opinion is about those fields, and it is not particularly flattering. I wrote about it—but you can look on my site; I wrote a column on it that is relatively balanced compared to my usual remarks on these subjects. And there I try to explain what part yes and what part no. And even if it is not scientific, that does not mean there is nothing there; it only means it is not scientific. Fine. So it is worth looking there; there is a column on the site. Actually more than one column, maybe two, a series of two columns if I am not mistaken, I think. Fine, in any case, yes—Popper, as is known, argued that psychoanalysis is mysticism. That is, it is not science, and I think he was largely right.

So I want to speak a little about mystical charlatanism. Yes? The Oren Zarif types, yes, that magician from Pardes Katz, “the divine Kabbalist,” where all sorts of people come in to him and he performs miracles and wonders and heals them in exchange for sums that are not symbolic, and the like. There are many such people. I assume Pinto is that kind of thing too, and all kinds of such creatures. Various people who create a big mystical aura around themselves and catch many fools in their net. And all of these are examples of the problematic nature of the field that allows charlatanism. I say explicitly: allows, but does not necessarily require. I do not want right now to express the view that there is nothing in this field and it is all charlatanism. Maybe that is true; I do not know. I only want to claim, however, that this field invites charlatanism. That is certainly true. Okay? Is all of it charlatanism? I do not know. By the way, I tend to think not, but I do not know—I do not want to go that far.

Now there are all kinds of people who deal in practical Kabbalah and miracles and wonders and various magicians and holy water and unholy water and I don’t know what, all kinds of things of that sort. So I don’t know—maybe there are also some whose holy water really works, or maybe the Baba Sali—I’ve never checked it. I doubt that too, but I don’t know, maybe yes, maybe no. But it is completely clear that many of these people are simply charlatans. Some of them, by the way, deliberately, simply for the money. And I assume another part are just naive people who manage to fool even themselves, who can believe about themselves that they are great Kabbalists and great magicians when they are simply great fools. And those who follow them are even greater fools. Yes, only today, only today, I read an article by Rabbi Aviner about Rabbi Tau. I don’t think it came out today, just that for some reason it came my way today. I don’t know, I simply cannot understand the attitude toward that man. It is really strange. Intelligent people are taken captive by creatures from outer space. Fine.

Anyway, the fact is that people with enough charisma can catch hundreds and thousands of people in their net and influence them to the point that they are ready to swear on their parents that this person is a Kabbalist and performs miracles and wonders. Now, how does this business work? One cannot avoid dealing with this a bit systematically. How does mystical charlatanism happen? The best way to deal with mystical charlatanism is, as I said earlier, with the tools developed to think systematically, which is the opposite of mysticism. Okay? What does that mean? Tools of science, tools of statistics and probability, and of course common sense. And with those tools one can often expose the charlatanism of various Kabbalists and mystics. How does it work? I’ll bring a few interesting examples. I’ll start perhaps—yes, I have columns on this. Column 38; maybe we’ll start with that. Yes, it’s a favorite subject of mine, so I wrote about it in several places. In column 38 I deal with—and the title is—“The law of small numbers: what do Breaking the Silence and alternative medicine have in common?” On this subject, what initially motivated me to deal with it was that I read some article, I don’t remember exactly, about Breaking the Silence. And I actually am one of those inclined to believe that the people in Breaking the Silence are not a collection of wicked liars. Even though I absolutely do not agree with the picture they describe, I am convinced it is not correct—both from my own personal acquaintance and from the general impression, I am convinced it is not correct. But on the other hand, unlike many of their critics, at least a large part of them—again, I don’t know all of them of course, and not even most of them—but clearly a large part of them sincerely believe what they are saying. Okay? Now how does that happen? And I do not think they are all idiots. There are lots of idiots too, but I do not think they are all idiots. How does that happen? In my view, what happens there is exactly how mysticism is born and how alternative medicine is born. Therefore I say these are similar phenomena. What do I mean? It is the law of small numbers. What does that mean? Let’s take examples. I’ll start with the person responsible for the term—or at least I saw it with him—and that is Daniel Kahneman. Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner, formulated it as the law of small numbers. He says that what holds for large numbers also holds for small numbers. That is of course nonsense, yes? The law of large numbers says there are things one can infer from large numbers and must not infer from small numbers. But this fallacy, that people go after small numbers, he calls the law of small numbers, by analogy with the law of large numbers. People believe in small numbers as if they were large numbers.

So let’s take a few examples, and I am taking them from him. Okay? He describes there, for example, one case in chapter 10 of his book Thinking, Fast and Slow—or whatever the Hebrew title is, I don’t remember anymore—yes. So he brings an example. There was a study that checked the mortality rate from kidney cancer in counties in the United States. 3,141 counties were checked. It turned out that the counties where the incidence of kidney cancer was the lowest were rural counties with sparse populations in the Midwest or the South and West of the United States, with a tradition of support for the Republican Party. That is what characterized the most prominent counties in this regard. Okay? Now what does that mean? How do we draw conclusions? What conclusions do I draw from this? I assume we agree that support for Trump is not exactly a protection against kidney cancer, right? The Republican support—let’s leave that aside—that is probably not the heart of the matter. So what is? The theories raised there were that there is rural life: they eat healthy and fresh food, they drink unpolluted water, it’s not urban, it’s not industrial, they live peacefully. Without urban neuroticism, so they get—yes, they live healthier lives and have better medical resilience. Okay, sounds good, sounds convincing, a story that explains the results well, okay?

But what do rational people do? They check where we find the counties in which mortality from kidney cancer is the highest. And the answer is: small and sparsely populated counties in the Midwest that support the Republican Party. The same kind of counties. And for that too there is a good story. Primitive people—here maybe it already does relate to support for Trump—people primitive enough, science deniers and the like, who don’t… they don’t have access to medicine simply because it’s far away, and maybe because of their lifestyle, large families perhaps, poor, lacking means. Therefore there is high mortality from kidney cancer there. Sounds very logical, right? Like the previous story. So who is right? The answer is: both are right—or neither is right, if you prefer. What does that mean? The answer is the law of small numbers. Out of 3,141 counties, there are very large counties with lots of population—usually the urban ones. And rural counties are more sparse, and in the Midwest or those regions they are the sparsest counties. So there can be a county with, I don’t know, fifty people, compared with a county with a hundred thousand people. This is a county and that is a county, yes? Like in the UN. My wife likes to say that Israel and China each have one finger in the UN. Yes, Israel—ten million jokers—versus I don’t know, over a billion Chinese, and they have one finger and they have one finger. I’m not talking about the Security Council right now, but in the UN, okay? It’s a bit strange; it’s a problematic arrangement. But that’s what happened there with the counties. There are counties with fifty people, there are counties with a hundred thousand people. Now what’s the difference? In a hundred thousand people, statistics works better—that’s the law of large numbers. Therefore you will usually get balanced results there; you will not find extreme results. In small counties, what happens is—say the counties were divided into one person each, not fifty. You understand that there would be counties with 100 percent mortality from kidney cancer, because that one person died of kidney cancer. And there would be counties with 100 percent healthy people, because the one person there did not die of kidney cancer. So with one it’s terribly easy. What happens in a county of ten people? Same thing. There is a chance that all ten won’t die of kidney cancer, even if on average it strikes ten percent of people. If it strikes ten percent of people, then there should have been one here, so okay, statistics. So there can be a county with none, and another county with two. So where will we find the counties that are sickest and healthiest regarding kidney cancer? In the small counties, right? The small counties will always show the most extreme results. In large counties, the results will always be close to the expected value. That is the law of large numbers. You will not see extreme results there. Therefore the greatest success will be in a small county, and the greatest failures will be in a small county, and the balanced results will be in the large counties. So the secret is not healthy living and not primitiveness and not poverty and not wealth—simply the number of people, that’s all.

Now why are we so convinced by each such result? We have a wonderful story that explains it. Each of these stories is really a wonderful and convincing story, right? They live healthy and peaceful lives and eat from nature and everything fresh and wonderful. So obviously they are healthier, right? You’ll hear this in every lecture by naturopaths—you’ll hear it. Okay, he has facts, he did statistics, he’ll show you this study. He proves it. He doesn’t show you the other tail of the Gaussian in that same study, where those same people who eat balanced and healthy and fresh are also the counties where the most people die of kidney cancer. Because the point is not whether they eat healthy or whether they are primitive—they are simply few. In counties with few people you will find the most extreme results. Now it may be that these stories are also true—that where people live healthy and peaceful lives fewer die of kidney cancer. But to test that you need a different study. You need a study of a large county that lives that way and a large county that does not live that way. Not just check 3,141 counties.

Then he brought an example from the Gates Foundation, Bill Gates. They decided to invest in education. They did a check among schools: where are the schools that achieve the best results, say matriculation scores? They reached the conclusion that small schools are the most successful, because all the most successful schools were small. And then what happened? They invested billions—he has lots of money there in Bill Gates’s foundation—they invested billions in splitting large schools into small ones. And there is also a wonderful story behind it: in a small school there is personal attention for each student, people notice them, it’s not a factory. Right? We hear these stories every day on the radio. Okay? And that is what they did, until it became clear that they needed to check the other side of the Gaussian, the other tail. And it turned out that the schools with the worst results are also small schools, because small schools produce the most extreme results, for better and for worse. Large schools produce average results, because that is the law of large numbers. You won’t find a school with, I don’t know, ten thousand students where all failed, right? But you will find a school with five students where all five failed. If there are a hundred schools each with five students, then among them there will probably be some schools where all five failed. That’s just simple statistics, right? By contrast, a school with ten thousand students—you won’t find, even if you take many schools with ten thousand students, a school where all ten thousand failed, unless you find a billion schools. But no—everything has its numbers; in the end you can reach the tail of the Gaussian, but not in an ordinary large school.

And it turns out that even smart people like Bill Gates fall into the same fallacy. And the fallacy is that if I have a good story explaining the results of small numbers, then for me these are no longer small numbers; the law of large numbers is operating here. The story does everything, and once I have found a rationale for the result, I am convinced the result is correct even though it has no statistical basis whatsoever. You see how this connects to what I said earlier, about the difference between modern science and the mysticism of the Middle Ages. Once I stick to observations, then I do not follow my own logic. My logic comes to explain the observations, but first I have to check the observations. And when you go after your stories, that is the rationalist approach in science, unlike the empiricist one: if it seems logical to me, then it is probably true. That is Aristotle’s science.

Now here I am talking about people who do rely on observations. They checked which school succeeds most, or which county is sickest or healthiest. But they did not do it properly. They did not use statistics or probability properly, and therefore their heads—or their thinking—replaced observation, and therefore they reach their failed conclusions. Now this is what happens to all of us at every turn. We are captives of small numbers. What happens in alternative medicine—back when I still had the energy to argue here with the people on the bulletin board—every time there were ads for alternative medicine: “Come to me, I treat this way, I treat through fingernails, through hair, through Bach flowers, homeopathy,” or all that nonsense, “tested and experienced, I have tremendous experience with many successes,” and so on. And every time I put up a notice there: “Friends, guard your money. This is baseless. It is nonsense from A to Z.” And then people began arguing with me, including people with scientific education, master’s degrees, doctorates. They explained to me: what do you mean? It’s tested; we have statistics. What statistics? He knows five people it helped. But did you test it on a group of a thousand people—how many of them did it help—versus a thousand people who did not receive this treatment—how many there recovered? That is how you do an experiment. A scientific experiment has to work with a sample group and a control group in a double-blind way, yes, with all the rules to neutralize placebo, neutralize spontaneous recovery, neutralize everything. Then you check. That is what it means to rely on observation, on empiricism.

And alternative medicine is built on the logic of the small schools and the sparse counties with kidney cancer, with cancer treatment. That is alternative medicine. If it worked and people saw that it worked, then conventional doctors would use it. Alternative medicine by definition is simply medicine that doesn’t work. That is its definition. Now you tell me stories: “I knew someone whom they had given up on, and I gave her these drops or those drops, or reflexology or whatever these hocus-pocus things are, and three days later she was on her feet playing soccer.” Okay, so among every ten thousand sick grandmothers, there are two or three—let’s assume for the sake of discussion that you are not lying or fantasizing. Let’s say it really happened. There is spontaneous recovery, there is placebo. And among every ten thousand sick grandmothers, there will be two who are playing soccer after a month. So you need to test this on a group of ten thousand grandmothers who received your treatment and ten thousand grandmothers who received another treatment, and see whether your treatment produces more recovered grandmothers than the other treatment. The fact that you focus on the two grandmothers for whom it worked is simply statistical bias. It proves nothing.

Okay, so that is a point which I think almost all mystical charlatanism basically rests on: these phenomena, the law of small numbers. You go to some magician like Oren Zarif, he does hocus-pocus for you, gives you holy water to drink, I don’t know exactly what he does there, and of course one out of a hundred may even recover. He would have recovered without him, of course, or he recovered because he has confidence in Oren Zarif and placebo really does have medical effects. It doesn’t matter right now. Here there may be spontaneous recovery or placebo; there are various mechanisms by which people are indeed healed, but they would have healed anyway or independently of what he did. Oren Zarif’s ability receives no confirmation from that healing until they conduct an experiment with a sample group and a control group and check whether it works at significantly greater rates. Now what happens is that the ninety-nine who were not healed by Oren Zarif say, “Well, the money’s gone, too bad, this time it didn’t work, let’s go to another magician.” The one who was healed writes praise in the newspaper: “You have to go, it worked, wonderful, the man is a divine Kabbalist, you have to go to him and of course pay him a symbolic sum and he will do miracles and wonders for you.” Ninety-nine out of the hundred will have nothing happen, one will recover because that was going to happen anyway or because he wasn’t really sick and thought he was sick—it doesn’t matter why at the moment—and thus he thrives with a flourishing economic empire. And all mystical charlatanism is built on this.

And I say: these people sometimes do real wonders, but they are statistical wonders. Statistical wonders anyone can do, because statistics is what says that one in a thousand will happen. I’ll finish perhaps with a foundational story, yes, by John Verdon. In Hebrew it’s called Think of a Number, that thriller by John Verdon. It opens with a person receiving a letter, and in the letter it says: choose a number between one and a thousand. After you’ve chosen the number, there is another envelope inside this envelope; open the small envelope, and inside it will be written the number you chose. Because I know—I have supernatural powers. Test me. Open the envelope. And if you find that I was right, send me ten thousand dollars and I’ll make you a millionaire, because I have supernatural powers. Fine. It tells of a man who opened the letter, guessed the number, I don’t know, seven hundred and seventy-two, or seven hundred and seventy—whatever, seven-seventy—he guessed seven hundred and seventy, okay, opened the envelope, found inside seven hundred and seventy. Unbelievable. Even without hocus-pocus with the Tanya or whatever, the Rebbe’s fax-machine miracles.

So what did he find? Seven hundred and seventy in the envelope. Fine, he says, “Listen, someone with powers like that is worth investing ten thousand dollars in; he’ll make me a millionaire.” At the end of the book what turns out? The man took ten thousand envelopes, put ten thousand numbers in them, and sent them to ten thousand people. To each of them he told them to choose a number between one and a thousand. What is the chance that the number you choose will match the number in the envelope? One in a thousand, right? You choose one out of a thousand numbers, and there are ten thousand people—sorry, not one in ten—there are ten thousand people, so on average ten people will discover the number they chose inside the envelope, right? Do this to enough people, and the law of large numbers says it will indeed be about ten people. Those ten people send the man ten thousand dollars; he gets a hundred thousand dollars. The fellow is set. He has a hundred thousand dollars, and they are sure he has supernatural powers. Because from your point of view, you guessed 770 and you can’t believe it—you opened the envelope and it says 770. Who will convince me that I am not facing a person with supernatural powers? Think about that experience—if you went through that experience, would any of you imagine that this was not a man with supernatural powers? But you understand it is just statistics.

Okay, an example—I’m getting carried away—there was someone whose wife is anti-vaccine. He spoke with me and said, “What do I do with her? She says to me, listen, I saw on Facebook, Orly and Guy and all kinds of others, people saying they had miscarriages immediately after taking the vaccine, and stillbirths and all sorts of things.” That was the project of Orly and Guy and so on. This whole business was checked—I heard from the Ministry of Health—this was checked, and there is nothing to those claims. The number of miscarriages, the rate of miscarriages following the vaccine, is more or less the ordinary rate in the population. There is no indication that the vaccine did anything. But what happened? Suppose there are a thousand miscarriages a year, just for example. Of those thousand people, let’s say five hundred took the vaccine. Those five hundred people then had the experience of miscarriage immediately after taking the vaccine. So you have five hundred people on Facebook telling you that they had a miscarriage right after the vaccine. Hundreds of people saying, “Immediately after I took the vaccine I had a miscarriage.” The woman is hysterical, says, “What? I’m not going to take that vaccine.” Now you have to give her a lesson in statistics to explain to her that this is simply nonsense. You have to check—again, it could be true—but assuming the Ministry of Health checked it and said, and I think, I tend to believe them usually; mistakes can happen, but I don’t think they are deceiving us on that level—they checked and said there is no statistical difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated; it is ordinary statistics. People sometimes miscarry, there are stillbirths—it happens, what can you do? The number is no different among those who took the vaccine.

But when you look at those to whom it happened, that is the law of small numbers. A person goes into hysteria and says, “I see it—hundreds of people told me that immediately after I took the vaccine I had a miscarriage,” and they are telling the truth. I’m not talking about bots; let’s even say these are not bots. These are really people who are not lying, not imagining; they are really reporting what they experienced. It still proves nothing. In order to persuade such people, you need to teach them a lesson in statistics. But these people live in conspiracy theories and all kinds of mystical beliefs of one kind or another, in such-and-such righteous men or such-and-such Kabbalists, and the whole thing is generally built on a lack of statistical skill. That is usually what this whole business is built on.

Fine, I’ll stop here because I’ve already gone over time, but yes, this is an introduction to mystical charlatanism. Anyone who wants, I can give you courses in how to become Kabbalists. No problem—just a bit of statistical skill and anyone can become a Kabbalist. We are turning the Kabbalist into a non-mystical field, a public field—anyone can be a Kabbalist. One could make courses on this. I have a friend who once actually proposed a course on how to become a Kabbalist, with orderly techniques for performing miracles. Fine, I’ll stop here. Thank you very much, Sabbath peace, more power to you, Sabbath peace, goodbye.