Croppie Gossip: It Can’t Be Intelligence

We recently listened to an episode of Into The Fray podcast where ‘Citizen D’ ***COUGH*** of the It Can’t Be People substack made the case for some mysterious intelligence influencing and interacting with human crop circle makers as they go about their nocturnal hobby.

We let the interview pass without comment, but were recently amused by a post on the substack where ‘Citizen D’ takes issue with some feedback from the show. It seems, as he really should have expected, that some people cannot handle the idea of people making crop circles:

We understand that humans in the mix will not resonate with some people… although the Occam’s Razor Principle dictates that it is by far the most rational explanation, albeit with its related strangeness.

So, ‘Citizen D’ is saying that the most likely explanation for the crop circle phenomenon is human artistry which, in turn, is tapping into, or related to some greater phenomenon we cannot yet explain.

Now, let’s look at what Occam’s Razor is; namely, a rule of thumb named after the 14th century scholastic philosopher William of Occam. It has been recorded as ‘entities are not to be multiplied without necessity’ and ‘plurality should not be posited without necessity’. In simpler terms, it basically means this: When faced with competing theories, and all other things being equal, the explanation which relies on the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct. 

To return to the argument of Citizen D, we agree with the first part of it. Occam’s Razor does indeed suggest that humans are more likely to be making crop circles than ET, Gaia, goblins or whatever else you want to pluck from the corner of whatever fantasy you choose. That’s not beyond question. It’s with the matter of the ‘related strangeness’ where we have a massive issue:

For all of his annoyance with the idea of aliens making crop circles, ‘Citizen D’ expects us to accept that something equally assumptive is interacting with crop circle makers. Occam’s Razor suggests it is more likely that human circle makers’ misinterpretation of events, or misattribution of the causes of an event, can account for each tale collected on the substack as opposed to assumptive higher intelligences, vampires, faeries and their ilk. By the same measure, straight up lying by contributors to the substack is a more likely solution than anything more fanciful or supernatural.  

Using Occam’s Razor to replace one set of highly fanciful speculation with another is never a good idea. It almost always makes you look stupid. One school of thought would suggest ‘Citizen D’ is using an appeal to reason to win his audience over whilst knowingly concealing a trojan horse full of nonsense. Or, to put it more bluntly, replacing one manure heap of someone else’s creation with that of his own; mystery weaving in a way that brings himself attention and puts the old mysteries behind a cupboard door.

So, who dunnit? The aliens? The humans guided by, and tapping into, a higher intelligence? Probably not.