When People Talk Backwards
Skeptoid #105
June 17, 2008
Podcast transcript
Listen:
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This phenomenon is called pareidolia, which we talked about not too long ago when we discussed the face on Mars. Pareidolia is the perceptual phenomenon by which we perceive familiar patterns in disorder. It is the brain's incredible computing power that lets us recognize people, understand language, and read handwriting. For the brain to have this capability, it necessarily results in the ability to perceive patterns where none in fact exists. Most of us can say "Hey, that tree bark looks like Ernest Borgnine," without actually concluding that Ernest Borgnine has somehow become a tree. Our intelligence allows us to not make that mistake. But sometimes a horse might see a garden hose on the ground; its pareidolia tells it that it's a snake, but it lacks sufficient intelligence to overcome the instinctive recognition. I'm not saying that reverse speech believers lack intelligence, only that they lack critical thinking skills; because there is a genuine gray area where it's hard to tell if a pattern is accidental or deliberate. But speech is a deliberate speaking action, so the reverse speech advocates do have a point they can make. It's not an accident of nature like the tree bark, speech is the deliberate result of a speaker's brain communicating. What the reverse speech advocates are missing is that the well-known, well-understood, and well-evidenced phenomenon of pareidolia is a much more reasonable, simple, and probable explanation for why we can often perceive patterns in meaningless noise, in this case reverse speech.
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Recordings of alleged ghost voices, usually called Electronic Voice Phenomena, fall into three categories: First, hoaxes; second, undetermined; and third and most commonly, audio pareidoliac cases of mistaken identification. You hear some random anomalous sound on the tape, and your brain does its best to make sense of it, often turning it into speech. If the words that the ghost hunters claim are spoken are at all indistinct or ambiguous, there is a very probable explanation for them that's not "a ghost". You're hearing some sound, and unless you were present throughout the tape's entire history (which you probably weren't), it's some sound of unknown origin that, to your brain, sounds vaguely like speech, and isn't it interesting that it's always in the ghost hunter's own language and dialect? Here's a really good illustration of that. Listen to this song, it sounds like it's from India but really I have no idea. I won't even remotely guess what language it's in, I don't speak it and it's meaningless to my brain; but to me, it sounds quite clearly like someone saying:
My lurid barn is fine, Benny Lava... (play sample)
http://media.libsyn.com/media/skeptoid/rs_Benny_Lava_1.mp3 Minor bun engine made Benny Lava... (play sample)
http://media.libsyn.com/media/skeptoid/rs_Benny_Lava_2.mp3 Anybody need this sign, Benny Lava? (play sample)
http://media.libsyn.com/media/skeptoid/rs_Benny_Lava_3.mp3 In mirror one, divine Benny Lava... (play sample)
http://media.libsyn.com/media/skeptoid/rs_Benny_Lava_4.mp3 I could be high today... (play sample)
http://media.libsyn.com/media/skeptoid/rs_Benny_Lava_5.mp3 I see the nuns are gay... (play sample)
http://media.libsyn.com/media/skeptoid/rs_Benny_Lava_6.mp3The words I heard are a little different from what someone else heard, as you can see from this subtitled video posted to YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1NoOOoaNwYouTube is full of similar examples (here's another good one that's too racy for Skeptoid).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRUGGy9RVrM The human brain is hardwired to hear its own language in otherwise meaningless noise. If it wasn't, you'd never be able to recognize your own name when someone calls out to you in a noisy room full of people.
Whether that noise is human speech played backwards, music played backwards, traffic sounds, random noises in a graveyard or haunted house, or the musings of the great Indian poet Benny Lava, your human brain will process it and find intelligible speech. It's the way your brain works, it's not evidence of ghosts, Satanic messages, and certainly not of something as childish as reverse speech.
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http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4105
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