"1500 years ago everybody knew the earth was the center of the universe,
500 years ago everybody knew the earth was flat, and 15 minutes ago you knew that people were alone
on this planet... imagine what you'll know tomorrow." Before we get into James Jani
the skeptic and youtuber behind videos like these, let me be perfectly clear about one thing:
skepticism is good. It helps us to look at ideas before we accept them as true. It helps us spot
lies and dishonesty. But at what point does it cross over into something toxic? Into what we
might call cynicism? Because when it's taken to the extreme, cynicism completely shuts us off to
new ideas. And it's this narrow-mindedness that can stop us from making progress.
One of the most horrifying examples of this comes from Dr Ignaz Semmelweis who was a Hungarian
doctor in the 1840s at a time when hospitals battled a disease called "childbed fever."
For new mothers who had just given birth, it was so deadly that it took the lives of one in six
mothers who got infected by it. Semmelweis noticed that if a doctor delivered a baby,
the mothers would get childbed fever much more often than if a midwife delivered the baby.
Why? At the time, the entire medical community dismissed this as "just a coincidence." But
Semmelweis also noticed that many doctors delivered babies after doing autopsies and
handling the bodies of mothers who had died from childbed fever. This led him to theorize that it
was actually the doctors who were spreading the disease, and he proposed that this could be solved
simply by having doctors wash their hands before delivering a baby. This seems obvious to us today
but in the 1840s scientists didn't yet know that diseases were spread by tiny microorganisms we now
know as germs and many doctors were offended at the idea that they should wash their hands at all.
Semmelweis' ideas were unpopular and damaging to his reputation. He became more and more isolated
and he suffered a nervous breakdown. Until one day his colleagues put him into an insane asylum
against his will. It was there that he was beaten so badly that he would die from his injuries
fourteen days later, at the age of forty-seven. Semmelweis' discovery was forgotten for years
until Louis Pasteur eventually confirmed that the germ theory of disease was true. Which means that
it wasn't a coincidence at all. Ignaz Semmelweis is a story of skepticism taken to the extreme,
and his life-saving work was never recognized in his lifetime.
But it also shows us one of the most common patterns we find
throughout history. It's often said that all truth passes through three stages:
first it's ridiculed, second it's violently opposed, and third it's accepted as self-evident.
And this brings us to James Jani. If you don't know who he is, he's the face behind these videos.
The slick production, the visual effects, and the cinematic impact are hard to deny. But recently he
made this video where he asks "law of attraction: fact or fiction?" And his thumbnail which promises
to tell the "disturbing truth." And his basic argument is that any benefits you see from the law
of attraction are also "just a coincidence." But does James Jani actually deliver on his promise?
For reasons i'm about to go into, I believe the answer is no. And as we'll see, his video contains
what I believe to be logical inconsistencies and mistakes in reasoning. So it's with this question
that we proceed with the rest of this video: are James Jani's arguments an example of skepticism?
Or is it cynicism? In this video, I'll give four major objections to James Jani's arguments.
But before I do, I have to clarify that nothing in this video is meant to incite any kind of
harassment against James Jani or anyone else. This video is simply about discussing ideas.
To give a counterpoint and to give a balanced picture of the debate, so that people can make
a more informed choice having heard both sides of the issue. So let's get into it.
Let's start by explaining what the law of attraction is: the basic idea is that having a
positive growth mindset attracts positive outcomes into your life, and having a negative mindset
attracts negative outcomes into your life. According to psychologist Denice Fournier,
when you focus your attention on something you want, and you attract it through the things that
you say think and do, that is manifestation. And there's actually a lot of support for this concept
in psychology. But if you only watched James Jani's video you wouldn't know that, because
he never actually mentions or addresses any of the psychological research. He simply dismisses
manifestation as a pseudoscience. But Dr Tchicky Davis from the Berkeley Well-being Institute is
a psychologist who explores science-based ways to manifest. And she argues that manifestation is not
pseudoscience. She points out that there's a lot of research that shows that our expectations tend
to manifest themselves in reality, whether they're positive or negative. To see this, a meta-analysis
of more than 200 scientific studies on 275,000 people found that positivity, happiness,
and having a growth mindset, led to success in almost every domain of life. From marriage,
to health, to friendships, and even our careers. Of course James Jani dismisses every example where
the law of attraction works as survivorship bias. Which is basically another way of saying
"it's just a coincidence." But research shows that it's not a coincidence. One study followed
a cohort of people who kept a journal over the course of 50 years they found that the level of
positivity you had at age 20 predicted how healthy and productive you would be decades later. These
results and many other studies show us that having a positive growth mindset leads to success much
more than success leads to a positive mindset. And this is something that law of attraction believers
have been saying all along. That our expectations matter. That the things you focus on expand, and
that your mindset has tremendous power. The fact that James Jani doesn't raise any of this research
is surprising because at the outset of the video he says this: "it's important that before we fully
begin to understand the problems with the law of attraction we understand what its fundamental
claims and beliefs are, and so allow me to give you an overview as unbiased as I can possibly be."
But if that were really true, why is he only presenting one side of the research
that just so happens to support his position? And why is he completely
ignoring the other side that doesn't? The bias in James Jani's video is obvious.
One of the biggest myths of manifestation is the idea that you're never allowed to
be sad or feel negative emotions. James Jani takes this view when he says this: "consider
emotions and thoughts through the lens of an individual who believes in the law of attraction,
we would never expect someone to be feeling great all the time, or at least we would never
try to place that burden on someone else, we understand that it's okay to feel bad and
guilting ourselves for feeling this way doesn't seem to be practical nor does it seem healthy,
underpinning much of the law of attraction community is this notion of blame."
Here's the problem: the law of attraction actually doesn't say this at all,
in fact it says exactly the opposite. If you visit the law of attraction.com
you'll find this article which says that trying to be upbeat all the time when you don't really feel
like it can really backfire. It's so important to feel free to express difficult feelings,
whether in a journal or in person, with a therapist or a close friend. Be honest and
congruent about where you are emotionally, pushing it down only makes it more toxic.
Does this sound like it's telling you to suppress negative feelings? Clearly not. It's telling you
to express them in healthy ways. What this means is that James Jani has attributed to the law of
attraction something that's not even true. This is an example of what's called the straw man fallacy,
which is where someone changes the argument to make it easier to attack.
And whether it's exaggerating, misrepresenting, or just completely fabricating someone's argument,
the result is the same. It makes it easier to tear down the other side while making one's own
side seem more reasonable. Which is odd because if James Jani was really presenting the law of
attraction "as unbiased as I can possibly be" then why would he have to resort to tactics like this?
James Jani rightly points out examples of figures who have taken advantage of innocent people,
and for this he deserves credit. But the problem is that James concludes from this that all
beliefs that fall under the law of attraction umbrella are therefore "dangerous ideas." Why?
He says in part because it uses spirituality, and he elaborates on this here: "positive thinking,
having set goals, visualizations, affirmations, meditating, they all have their own place,
the law of attraction takes these things and adds an element of spirituality to it all."
But James Jani's entire argument rests on a fundamental misunderstanding
of what spirituality is. Spirituality is actually essential to a healthy life,
and you don't need to believe in the supernatural or in a higher power to understand this.
Take for example Sam Harris, one of the most prominent atheists and skeptics in the world.
He wrote this article making a plea for the importance of spirituality.
In it, he writes that many atheists now consider the word "spiritual" poisoned by its association
with medieval superstition, but I do not share these semantic concerns, and Christopher Hitchens,
another atheist, didn't have any problem with spirituality either. He believed that it was
something that we could not do without. And of course spirituality and meaning are necessary.
And according to this study, even atheists seem to believe that everything happens for a reason,
even if they won't admit it. James Jani also assumes that spirituality means that you have to
go to a single source in order to learn about the law of attraction, and he talks about this here:
"it's my opinion that the addition of spirituality and channeling is actually an incredibly clever
marketing device because now they must go to the source, this creates scarcity around answering
humanity's burning questions, and the scarcer the product, the more valuable it becomes."
But again this is not accurate at all. No one has ownership over the law of attraction concepts,
and it's actually based on sources that are way older than the movement itself.
Having its origins in traditions as diverse as ancient Greece, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism.
And the vast majority of information on the law of attraction is freely available online.
You don't have to go through an intermediary or talk to a specific person to learn it.
There's even a subreddit containing a huge amount of information on the law of attraction, which is
completely free. Which brings us to what just might be the biggest problem with his argument:
James Jani argues that the law of attraction is a so-called "dangerous idea." because some
people have done bad things in its name. The example of motivational speaker James Arthur Ray
who was convicted of negligent homicide is an especially horrific example.
James concludes from this that it's not just the cases of criminal conduct that are bad,
it's the ideas themselves. But is this argument valid? To see this more clearly, let's use
this same logic and let's consider scientists who have been found guilty of serious misconduct.
Take for example Dr Evan Dreyer who was a former professor at Harvard University Medical School,
who falsified experimental results in his studies and in his grant applications.
Or let's look at the example of Dr Mark Straus a professor of medicine at Boston University
Medical Center, who admitted to using false data, using ineligible patients in his studies,
and violating informed consent. Or even the example of Dr Scott Reuben a professor of
anesthesiology at Tufts University. He fabricated clinical trials for painkiller medications
and he pled guilty in 2010 to healthcare fraud and was sentenced to six months in prison. In fact, if
you simply search the phrase "list of scientific misconduct incidents" you'll find a huge list of
scientists doing terrible things. Does this mean that therefore all scientific ideas are dangerous
and that science itself is invalid? Obviously that would be a lazy and incompetent argument,
but if we accept James Jani's logic on this then he would have to admit that it's true.
This is what's called a non-sequitur fallacy. This happens when a conclusion doesn't follow logically
from its previous statements. And this reveals another problem with James Jani's argument. He
lumps all of the most extreme versions of what he calls "grifters" with ordinary law-abiding people
who just happen to believe in manifestation. And he really does nothing to distinguish between
someone like James Arthur Ray who has multiple criminal convictions, from someone who's just
making content at home on youtube in their spare time. And the vast majority of that content
is made by youtubers just like James Jani for free without any grifting whatsoever.
James Jani accuses believers of the law of attraction
of using motivated reasoning. He elaborates on this here:
"it seems like much of the law of attraction world applies motivated reasoning to their logic,
they start with a conclusion and work their way backwards attempting to find anything
that they could use to justify it, whilst throwing away any evidence of the contrary."
And yet that's basically what James is doing in his video. He's using the same faulty logic
that he accuses of his opponents. And it's only when we take the time to dissect his arguments,
that it becomes clear that he's working backwards to get to the conclusion that he's already decided
that he wants to arrive at. But as we've seen, James Jani has completely ignored
science-based evidence for manifestation. He's ignored sources that contradict his position.
And he's made logical inconsistencies like the straw man fallacy and the non-sequitur fallacy.
And much like the scientific community in the times of Ignaz Semmelweis,
James Jani dismisses the evidence that doesn't fit his position as "just a coincidence." And so
in the next video we'll look at four more objections to James Jani's arguments. We'll look
at his claims about the Dr Emoto water experiment, falsifiability, the Baader Meinhoff effect,
and the use of words like law and quantum. Once this video becomes available to watch,
you'll see it appearing here on the left. If that video is not yet available, then I
invite you to watch this video on the right, which explores synchronicity and the idea of meaningful
coincidences. If you like this video, please show your support by hitting the like button.
As always thanks so much for watching, take care of yourselves, and i'll see you in the next video.