Watching you Sleep — a Creepy Logic Lesson

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen 

After getting acquainted with logic and critical thinking in general, some things practically shout, "Fallacious!" This is very important nowadays, as people "think" with their emotions and do not ask important questions.

When confronted with a statement or claim that seems important, it is good to pull back on the reins and slow down. Examine it. A favorite of mine probably tricks gullible folks: This year will be the first time in 666 years that Halloween falls on a Friday the thirteenth.

Woman watched by spirits while sleeping, made with AI at Bing
That was the comedy. The creepy one up next is...truly bizarre.

It was posted on X (formerly Twitter), informing readers that when we wake up between two and three AM without any reason, there is a 99% chance that something has been staring at you for a long time. The clincher is that this is "according to experts."

People familiar with my work know that I am mighty fond of asking questions. This post raises a prairie schooner full of them:
  • How does anyone know this?
  • What experts?
  • How was research conducted?
  • Who or what is doing the watching?
  • Are there other possible explanations for waking up at that time?
Use of the word experts tends to make people sit up and take notice, maybe even letting their defenses down. Experts in the secular science industry make assertions and write papers that often contain bad logic. This bad logic may include ignoring possible alternative explanations other than what is being postulated.

Got your pony reined in? Good, now ease on over to the internet. You can do what I did and look up reasons people wake up around 3 AM. The wee hours. (For me and many others, wee hours has two meanings.) Assuming that people go to sleep around ten or eleven PM, the sleep cycle is changing to a lighter sleep pattern. Indeed, people briefly wake up several times in the night. Nothing supernatural here, Horace.

Implicit in the text is some kind of psychic activity: People are sensitive to spirits staring at us. That would be a belief smuggled into the thing, but there would be nothing to back it up.

Y'all can see that there is nothing to this. Also, it can be seen that I took it far more seriously than was intended. Still, it was a fun logic exercise. An important note is that spotting logical fallacies can help us from being deceived. Logic applies to many areas of life. For Christians, we use our minds for the glory of God and should strive to not be like the deceivers and to keep our discussions clean.

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