Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.
This topic has come up a few times in the comments section of the Captain's Log, so I felt it was time to write a proper article about it.
Imagine I invite you over to my garage and, with as much seriousness as a late-night History Channel host, announce: "Behold, my invisible dragon!" Of course, you can't see it. Or hear it. It floats, so you can't touch it. Its fire doesn't even burn, so, sorry, no s'mores. But trust me - it's there. The fun question: do you believe me, or do you need more than my enthusiasm as proof?
Carl Sagan, one of my all-time science heroes and a master of skeptical curiosity, coined this exact scenario. His point - aside from giving garage tours a new twist - is that untestable claims can't be meaningfully distinguished from pure fiction. If someone invents rules that make their claims impossible to prove or disprove, it's indistinguishable from simply making things up. I love Sagan's dragon because it so perfectly strips a claim down to its bare logic: either you can show it, or you can't. (No magic wands, cloaks of invisibility, or plot twists required.)
I have lost count of the tech support calls where clients assure me, "The bug only happens when there's a full Moon... but you'll never catch it in action." I once had a customer ask why their Access database "mysteriously" crashed on Tuesdays at 2 a.m., supposedly due to a "ghost in the server room." That ghost would have gotten along well with Sagan's dragon - both being remarkably shy around evidence.
This gets to what philosophers and logicians call the burden of proof. If I claim my Access database automatically fixes bad data because elves live in the backend, it's not your job to debunk elves in general. It's on me to provide solid, testable proof - say, an elf leaving change logs in the Event Viewer. The late and great Christopher Hitchens boiled it down even further: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." This isn't just snark; it's the guardrail that keeps tech, business, and life from spiraling into endless debates about invisible dragons, elves, or divine bugs. (Though "summoning elves" would definitely liven up most user-group meetings.)
In the "Devil's Due" episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, an entity named Ardra claims to be the devil (not the job I'd want, honestly) and tries to hoodwink the entire planet with special effects and sleight of hand. Captain Picard isn't impressed with her smoke and mirrors - he demands real proof, not just flashy illusions and dramatic entrances. Had Ardra tried the invisible dragon routine on the Enterprise, Data would have started scanning for thermal emissions before you could say, "Set phasers to skeptical."
And yet, so many online debates - especially on social media - still play the game backward. Someone drops a bombshell claim, demands the world prove them wrong, and then produces nothing but squid ink and Reddit memes. It happens in politics ("prove there wasn't fraud!"), business ("my startup will totally disrupt the industry, just wait!"), even in Access user groups ("Access corrupts databases randomly, trust me, my cousin said so!"). It's magical thinking, dressed up as common sense - like insisting your pet hamster is an undercover agent, but refusing to show his badge.
And of course, there's the classic principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If I tell you I have five dollars in my pocket, that's entirely plausible - you probably wouldn't expect me to produce a bank statement to prove it. But if I claim I can fly like Superman, suddenly the bar for evidence is much, much higher - at the very least, you're going to want to see me actually take off. I've written about this before, but it's well worth repeating here: the more remarkable or outlandish a claim, the stronger and more convincing the proof needs to be before we treat it as anything but a story.
With apologies to Douglas Adams, who once suggested always bringing a towel, maybe we should all bring a little Sagan-style dragon detector to every conversation. Ask for evidence. Ask for ways to test it. If the answer is "you just have to believe," feel free to change the subject - or at least keep one hand on your wallet.
So, do you have your own invisible dragon story - something you've been asked to believe with zero evidence? And more importantly, how do you (politely) ask for the proof?
Oh, and of course, the number of fictitious beings that one could give is vast, just like the flying dragon. You've got the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you've got the Celestial Teapot, and tons more.
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 2 months ago
Oh, I guess I never shared my client's crashing computer, on most days, around 3pm story here.
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 2 months ago
I've mentioned this briefly in a few places, I was a field software engineer for a computer manufacturer, in the 1980s. I got called in because the field maintenance engineers couldn't find a reason that a certain supermini computer at a client site kept crashing regularly around 3:00 PM. The maintenance engineers had replaced several components including the power supply to no avail.
Fortunately, the system administrator had started a log on the days it was happening, so we knew what days and times. I went in, analyzed the situation, and figured the best thing to do based on the field maintenance engineers' insistence that it must be a software issue, was to log everyone off between 10 minutes before 3 PM and 10 minutes after and see what happened.
I was at this military contractor, very secure site for several days; it was a sensitive national security application and believe it or not the computer itself was in a room, with other computers, that was a giant Faraday cage. One afternoon I was outside with the system administrator, he was taking a cigarette break, and about a 1/4 of a mile away a local commuter train roared by while the lights started flashing and the crossing arms came down. We ran back inside, he hadn't finished his cigarette, and sure enough the computer had crashed.
After more analysis and renting a very expensive power conditioner/monitor (the corporate suits really resisted this expense) it was determined that some underrated component in our system's power supply couldn't handle the spike that was created by a late summer-afternoon train 1/4 of a mile away.
Wow, that's a pretty cool story. I'm surprised you couldn't just get a simple UPS with a power conditioner in it or active battery backup.
I had a similar situation where one of my clients ran his own networking cable and he ran it over the fluorescent lights in his office. Over the drop ceiling. And normally it was fine, but whenever they turned the lights on or off, that little bit of a spike was just enough to kick everybody off the network. And with Access databases, you know how troublesome that can be.
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 2 months ago
Richard There wasn't much in the way of UPS back then. Hence renting the expensive power analyzer. Those minis, with a whopping 64kb core memory and 10Mb drive, drew close to 18 amps when running, which was why you could keep a pizza warm on the top of the cabinet, even with the a/c on full blast. Fluorescent lights were always a problem then too. We had to run special shielded cables for the RS232 devices, even if they didn't run right over the fixture. Ground loops were also a common problem between connected RS232 devices. I'm dating myself.
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 2 months ago
This was at a time that Russians were feared to be spying on all defense contractors, even trying to read the CPU chips via radio waves. So, even though we later found a "harmonic" disruption from the train crossing control panel, the FBI had their fingers in the investigation too.
Michael Olgren
@Reply 2 months ago
So what do you do when literally tens of millions of people in the US don’t believe you need proof? If a charismatic person can just say whatever and face no consequences for it?
That example spurs others to follow: Here on Cape Cod over 100,000 people are without power following a blizzard that functioned more as an ice storm. The electric company said we’d have power 20 hrs ago, which I’m fairly certain was an outright lie, since almost nobody has had their power return [I get constant updates from Ring Neighborhood that are consistent with that observation]. Now, with power still out on day 3, the power company *promises* everyone will have power by midnight Friday. He’s promising to fix the entire Cape in 2 days. BECAUSE HE CAN, with impunity.
My point is, with loss of “the stick,” i.e. punishment or ramifications, people will continue to make statements without facts to back them up.
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 2 months ago
Michael I remember in some psychology study, how they discovered that "normal" people tell an outrageous number of lies every day without thinking twice about it. Mostly they are those little "white lies" that grease the wheels of social interaction. Perhaps that's the reason there are no consequences?
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 2 months ago
Two final points for this thread. First, sometimes the dragons in the garage are real, they're just very well hidden. You might have to be diligent, and with some luck, they appear.
Second, I remember being so excited to buy my first PC (used), an IBM with a port on the back for a cassette player, one floppy drive and no hard disk. Then adding a 20Mb drive, for a total cost of about US$ 5,000 ($15,000 in 2026$). That meant I could program at home without having to go to the office, with cold pizza to warm, late at night to do my personal ADS programming. Now, I can touch four Windows based computers with thousands of times the computing power just by swiveling my chair, and I can throw a ping-pong ball at another two. Not to mention two smart phones, again with amazing abilities by comparison.
Matt Hall
@Reply 2 months ago
Michael , as a contractor, I work for a utility. They charge liquidated damages for every contract not fulfilled on time. That promised reconnection date should be treated like a public contract.
If the damage is primarily to switchyards and not individual service drops, that could be a reasonable prediction. A large switch yard can serve thousands of homes. If not, your utility would lie because it gets the press of its back for a couple of days, without penalty.
As a corporation, the only actual penalty option for damages is monetary. If the monopoly utility were forced to give an energy credit like $200/day to each customer without continuous service, that would change the internal calculus on funding maintenance and repairs. Doubling that for the days after the promised restoration date would hold the utility accountable for false promises. The truth is that ice doesn't affect underground electrical lines. Around here, most homes are fed from overhead power lines. That is why our gas and water still work when we lose electric.
Personally, I believe all public officials paid with tax dollars should be considered perpetually under oath for all statements made in the capacity of their job. Elected officials, especially, should face perjury charges for lying to the public. Some exceptions could be made for undercover police, non public-facing intelligence operatives, etc. This would make public office a dangerous job for pathological liars.
Michael I get what you're saying, and I think the core issue comes down to accountability. When public officials, utility executives, or anyone in a position of authority makes public statements, especially during emergencies, those statements carry weight. People make decisions based on them. Businesses plan. Families prepare. So when timelines or assurances turn out to be wildly inaccurate, it erodes trust fast.
The bigger problem is when this pattern becomes normalized. If leaders learn they can say whatever sounds good in the moment with no professional, political, or legal consequences, the incentive to stick to verifiable facts goes out the window. Repeat something often enough and it starts to form its own narrative bubble, whether it is grounded in reality or not.
I am a big believer in free speech, but free speech has never meant consequence-free speech. We already recognize liability in cases like fraud, false advertising, defamation, or making materially misleading statements that cause harm. It is not unreasonable to expect a similar standard of accountability when campaign promises or public emergency statements are made with no intent or ability to follow through.
At the end of the day, credibility is currency for anyone in leadership. Once people believe you are just delivering sound bites instead of facts, that credibility is gone, and it is very hard to earn back.
As far as your first sentence goes, what do you do when tens of millions of people do not think proof is necessary? That is the harder problem. At a baseline, we have to start with education. Kids should be taught from a very young age that claims require evidence, and that the bigger and more extraordinary the claim, the stronger the evidence needs to be. When someone builds a belief system that is not grounded in logic, science, or basic reasoning, it becomes incredibly difficult to reach them with facts later on.
Like we have said in the forums before, you cannot logic someone out of a position they did not logic themselves into. That is not just a political issue, it is an educational one. We need better scientific literacy, better critical thinking skills, and better training in how to evaluate sources and spot nonsense. Call it logic, call it science, call it a well tuned bullshit detector. Whatever you name it, it has to be taught and practiced.
Kids should not grow up believing something simply because an authority figure says it. They should be encouraged to ask how we know something is true, what the evidence is, and whether the explanation actually makes sense. That is how I raised my own kids. When they asked the big questions like "is Santa real?" I didn't just hand them an answer. I told them to think it through and reason it out. Teaching people how to think is far more important than telling them what to think.
Thomas Yeah, sometimes the dragon might be real, but you believe in it for the wrong reasons.
Your comment actually reminded me of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called "The Wounded." There was a Federation captain, Benjamin Maxwell, who started attacking Cardassian ships because he was convinced they were secretly violating their treaty and transporting weapons. Everyone thought he had gone off the rails and was acting out of personal anger from the war. Picard was ordered to stop him, not necessarily because Maxwell was wrong, but because he was acting outside protocol and risking another conflict. In the end, Picard discovered Maxwell was right. The Cardassians really were moving weapons. But it did not matter, because Maxwell had no proof he could present and no authority to act on his suspicions the way he did.
That is the distinction that matters. Being correct is not the same thing as being credible. If you jump to conclusions without evidence, or you get there through emotion, bias, or conspiracy thinking, then even if you land on the truth by accident, you have not actually demonstrated anything. You still have to show your work. Otherwise you are just guessing, and guessing is not a reliable path to truth, even on the rare occasions when it hits the target.
What's the old saying? If you throw a pile of crap at the wall, at least some of it is gonna stick.
Matt I agree with you wholeheartedly. That would mean that 90% of the politicians currently in office likely wouldn't run for re-election, and that's a good thing.
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