How does 'The System' illustrate the features of Science discussed in 'The Truth is Out There'?

In the show, Derren Brown introduced a thing called ‘The System’. He confidently claimed that his system can correctly predict the winner of any horse race. To prove how ‘The System’ works, on the show, he sent anonymous emails to Khadisha giving her his predictions about the winners at difference races, gaining her confidence about ‘The System’. After a few races, she was asked to put in some money for bets. All of us as well as Khadisha were stunned by how ‘The System’ worked and won Khadisha thousands of pounds until the very end of the show.

In The System, four features of Science were illustrated: inductive reasoning, falsification, Occam’s razor, and paradigm shift.

First of all, Khadisha’s total belief was based on inductive reasoning because it was her, experiencing all the races, time after time. Gradually, her belief for The System was full which made her so confident that based on The System she WILL win the next race.

Secondly, she has not experienced falsification as she is the only one out of the 7000 people who has not lost one single race. In addition, Derren Brown strengthened his hypothesis by proving that he could throw one unbiased coin and would land it on head 10 times consecutively. He succeeded. However, in the end, after explaining The System, it turns out he had to throw the coin for over 9 hours to get the streak.

Thirdly, Occam’s razor occurred when he revealed to us about The System. He made us think that there is such thing as The System which will make us wonder how it works. However, in the end, there is no such thing as The System. The simplest explanation has been made just like the definition of Occam’s razor.

Finally, paradigm shift. After Derren Brown showed us the REAL System, it changed our whole view about how it actually worked. The proper theory of a paradigm shift indicates that it will take people quite some time to believe it and there will be a lot of controversy over it, and it might require the next generation to be carried on the new fact. However, when we saw what Derren Brown actually did, we instantly believed it.

How does 'The System' illustrate the features of Science discussed in 'The Truth is Out There'?

Four among many features of science are Inductive Reasoning, Falsification, Occam’s Razor and Paradigm Shift, and these four are all elements of the building blocks, that make up the process that Derren Brown calls, ‘The System’. A System containing a hundred percent guaranteed method, in which horse races can be won one after another, without fail. A System that we later on find out, is a hundred percent, based on belief.

Firstly, Inductive Reasoning is the statement that allows a certain belief to move from singular to universal, in which an example may be: the apple fell to the ground; therefore, all apples in the future will fall to the ground. This feature of science is shown in The System through the confidence of Khadisha and many others, based on the winnings that Brown has somewhat predicted. They had basically started to accept that there is a System out there somewhere, and Brown has found it. Based on the third predicted winnings of the horse races that came true, at this point, to them, “all apples in the future will fall to the ground”. Furthermore, the money that they all won as a result of The System, can somewhat act as proof of this method, as they have actually won quite a sum of money themselves following this System.

However, their beliefs are actually flawed, as David Hume, a well known philosopher, points out that “we cannot rationally justify the claim that nature will continue to be uniform, as justification comes in only two varieties, and both of these are inadequate”. Basically, what he’s saying is that there can be no logical connection across time, and just because something has happened many times, doesn’t mean that it will happen again in the future. These are also predictions made from observation only, with no solid proof of the longevity in the repeated occurrences of an event. Therefore, with no solid proof that certain hypotheses of universal statements are true, only belief would fuel this to become a true fact in some minds. In the end, it is not down to inductive reasoning to discover truths, but the use of falsification.

This is next in-line as an aspect of science illustrated in The System. It is the ability of a theory and such to be proven wrong as Karl Popper states that nothing can prove that universal statements are right, however, truths are reached by the disproval of an idea or thesis. An example would be the hypothesis that all swans are right, this obviously cannot be proven right, as you would have to be able to observe all the swans on the planet to prove that all swans are white. On the other hand, the statement can be firmly disproved by any random person, preferably one who has seen a black swan. Then from this, new and better theories can be made, as knowledge will be increased and put to use from previous falsifications. Until finally a theory can’t be disproved, which will result in it becoming accepted as a truth, but maybe just for the time being.

At the beginning of The System, we are shown only Khadisha’s point of view and therefore start to believe in The System ourselves, as it seems that Brown actually has a guaranteed method to predict the winnings of a race horse. So falsification was not carried out then, because we weren’t shown the fact that there were actually another 7776 people in the exact situation as Khadisha. Which is basically falsification of The System, as Khadisha’s winnings are actually purely based on luck. As she is the only one that survived the so called System and ended up being in every group that was destined to win. This shows that falsification was carried out; even at the start when 5/6 groups of people were eliminated due to them not being in the winning race horse’s group. Those 5/6 people, and counting, have witnessed the falsification of The System.

Moving on to Occam’s Razor, named after William of Occam, a medieval philosopher, this is a straightforward principle that is “the simplest explanations are the best”. Which is in the case of The System is that, it simply does not exist. But a lot of people started to believe in it while they watched the show, as Brown has lots of tricks up his sleeve like the coin flips and Polaroid test. People actually started to doubt their disbelief in The System, as they did not know that it took nearly a whole day to actually get 10 consecutive heads for the coin flip, and the Polaroid test was never even explained.

Finally, a Paradigm Shift is a dramatic revolution where everyone has accepted something to be a truth, but when a new revolution occurs to that truth, everything changes, as many theories could then be disproved. In The System, this occurs when we were shown that the disbelieving experts, all somehow related to the race horse tracks, were clearly baffled by the (extremely creepy) results of the Polaroid test that they agreed to carry out. When this happened, a lot of things suddenly change, including the increasing amount of belief in The System after witnessing the event, as experts know a lot better that most people about their specialties, and if they believe in The System, then why shouldn’t we?

How does 'The System' illustrate the features of Science discussed in 'The Truth is Out There'?

We were given the task to watch a show based on ‘The System’, where we see a person called Darren Brown introducing ‘The System’ to the viewers. ‘The System’, he claims, is a way to predict the winning horse of the horse race. He pushes his own belief of ‘The System’ onto a randomly chosen participant, which happens to be Khadisha. Brown randomly chose Khadisha by sending her an anonymous email to a person who has to record in gambling. He sends the correct predictions of the winner of the horse race five times in a row and convinces Khadisha to put in a large amount of money for the sixth race. This shows that ‘The System’ illustrates Inductive Reasoning.

Inductive Reasoning is one of the features of science that are observations that go from a simple statement to a universal understanding, and it is usually believed in after having a repetitive observation. Khadisha’s confidence of ‘The System’ is entirely based on inductive reasoning, since ‘The System’ has predicted the right winner of the horse races 4 times in a row, this makes her believe that ‘The System’ will be true the fifth time. If the results were not accurate e.g. the first two times, Khadisha wouldn’t have believed in ‘The System’ and would not have taken part betting in the next race. However, just because ‘The System’ was right the first few times does not mean it will be right the next time. This means that most of the participants believed in ‘The System’ until there was some Falsification.

Falsification is the next feature of science where the scientific facts can’t be found verifying them, but falsifying them. In other words, it needs proof to falsify a statement – otherwise it’s not a fact. So far in ‘The Truth is Out There’, there has been nothing to falsify Khadisha and the audience’s belief of ‘The System’ since there has been no evidence to ‘falsify’ the theory yet. However later on in the show, Brown reveals the truth of ‘The System’. The viewers of the show as well as Khadisha were lead to believe that she was the only participant of the show, which made ‘The System’ seem 100% fool-proof. Brown later reveals that Khadisha was one of the 7700 participants on the show who were not mentioned until Brown revealed the ‘truth’ of ‘The System’. Khadisha was the only one that didn’t experience falsification but the other participants did, since the predictions for them were incorrect. This is evidence to show that ‘The System’ is a deception and that inductive reasoning is logically flawed.

Occam’s razor is the third feature of science where the simplest explanations are the best and that the more complicated explanations are most likely to go wrong. The ‘simplest’ explanation of ‘The System’ is that it doesn’t exist. If it did exist, everyone would know ‘The System’, since it’s been broadcasted all over UK on channel 4, and that everyone would end up rich, which results to the extinction of horse races.

The fourth feature of science is ‘Paradigm shift’. This is a change in theory that can be around for some time. In ‘The Truth is Out There’, the experts are being convinced that ‘The System’ could possible exist by Brown claiming that ‘The System’ is highly improbable, not impossible.

Brown also reveals to Khadisha and the viewers, the secret behind the working of the show. When we truly understand the work of ‘The System’, we also understand that Khadisha was simply allocated to the winning horses and that she didn’t win because of ‘The System’. At the end of the show, Khadisha lost, since she was assigned to the losing horse, which results her to lose the £4000 she used up just because she had a lot of confidence in ‘The System’ before Brown reveals the ‘truth’ behind it to her. However, it turns out that Brown actually placed the £4000 on the actually winning horse, and not the one ‘The System’ recommended. This once again, confuses the viewers and Khadisha herself, leaving us to wonder, “How the hell did he do it?”

How does 'The System' illustrate the features of Science discussed in 'The Truth is Out There' (inductive reasoning, falsification, Occam's Razor, Par

The System illustrates the features of Science discussed in ‘The Truth is Out There’ as the experiment which Derren Brown presents the features of inductive reasoning, falsification, Occam’s Razor and Paradigm Shift. In ‘The System’, Kadisha’s confidence in the system is based purely on inductive reasoning, as it is her previous experiences with winning in the horse races that boost her confidence that she will win with the next race- her doubts slowly dissolve as she wins, and her bets get higher and higher as she assumes she will win the next race.

In addition, there has been nothing to falsify Kadisha’a confidence in the system, as every time she bets on the horse that is predicted for her to win, she has always won. Kadisha was also the only one out of the 7000 people who was involved with the experiment who did not experience falsification, and although we think that she does in the end of the video, she still wins. Brown carried out and repeated his hypotheses and tests in order to reach a scientific ‘truth’, as shown when he explains how he was able to flip a coin and have it land heads 10 times in a row, and the whole process of eliminating 6999 people from the experiment until one was left who was able to win consecutively.

Next, ‘The System’ also illustrates Occam’s Razor, because the simplest explanation for the ‘system’ was that it simply did not exist. Paradigm shift is also presented, as the experts who firstly, and strongly, did not believe that the concept of a system existing was impossible, started to open up to the idea that perhaps the system could possibly exist. This not only started to change the experts’ perceptions, but also the viewers, as they started to be amazed at how Derren was able to predict which photographs the experts were going to pick, and in which order they would stand in.

How does 'The System' illustrate the features of Science discussed in 'The Truth is Out There'?

Inductive Reasoning is illustrated in The System when Khadisha, as well as many of the other participants, came to believing in Brown’s ability to predict the outcome of any horse race. This universal statement is arrived at, based on past observations which was the seemingly 100% accuracy of all the results he had given to them anonymously. The participants’ confidence in the existence and efficiency of ‘The System’ was based on the correlation between Brown’s guesses and the actual outcomes as well as the fact that they had won hard money by betting on what Brown told them to. Their beliefs however, were logically flawed as with inductive reasoning, just because the results came out 100% accurate every time the experiment was carried out, does not mean that it will definitely be true for the subsequent test. However, the participants still believed, at least somewhat, in the system until there was some falsification.

There is absolutely no way to prove that something is completely true so we result in trying to prove that things are false instead. In this case of ‘The System’, it was impossible to prove that Brown truly came up with a system which could accurately predict the outcome of horse races, something with results that are unforeseeable by nature. This means that the only way to determine whether or not it can be classified as an accepted truth or not was to find out whether or not it can be falsify. As we follow the documentary, unaware if the actual workings and secrets behind it, we were led to believe - along with Khadisha herself- that she was the only participant of the show and hence making Brown’s predictions appear to be 100% accurate. It wasn’t until close to the end of the show when Brown finally revealed that falsification had actually occurred to the other 7699 participants of the show who we were not aware about. Falsification occurred at the participants lost when they placed their bets on the horses Brown told them would win. This is the proof needed to certify that the existence of ‘The System’ was not a truth.

Occam’s Razor states that the simplest explanations are the best and that the more complicated people view things, the more chance they have of going wrong. In this case, as Brown used smooth strategies and well kept secrets to baffle the participants, experts and the viewers, he had caused everyone [except those participants who had saw the falsification] to gradually move from their state of disbelief to amazement in the supposedly system. Their minds, instead of looking for simpler explanations, had been guided to seek out more unlikely justifications such as that Brown was a sort of psychic. However, Occam’s Razor had proven itself true when the truth came out from Brown that the simplest explanation was correct: there was no system.

There were two main paradigm shifts in the documentary; the first was when Brown mystified the viewers as well as the experts using the Polaroid photos and the numbers. It was not revealed to us how Brown managed to do this, excluding the possibility that the whole scene was scripted and it was all just an act. This had caused the idea that Brown had some sort of supernatural ability to predict things before they happen to be unconsciously imprinted into our minds and become the basis for our subsequent views and beliefs of ‘The System’. The second Paradigm Shift was when Brown revealed to Khadisha, as well as the viewers, the secrets and details behind the working of the documentary that were not shown to us before. This had completely changed the way we thought about the accurate outcomes and showed us that the real reason Khadisha won all those bets was simply because she happened to be the one who was assigned with all the winning horses and not because of an amazing system that Brown came up with. However, at the end of the show, Brown once again puzzled Khadisha as well as the viewers by actually betting on the winning horse instead of the one he suggested before the race. This left us to reason and make our own speculations as to how he managed such a stunt, scaring Khadisha greatly but winning her an enormous sum of money in the end.

How does 'The System' illustrate the features of Science discussed in 'The Truth is Out There' (Inductive reasoning, falsification, Occam's Razor, Par

The System is a Channel 4 special in which D. Brown shared his "100 percent guaranteed" method for winning on the horses which illustrates the features of Science discussed in the article "The Truth is Out There"

At the beginning of the show Brown introduces us to "The System" claiming that there is a way to predict which horse wins in a horse race. He tries not only to convince the audience but also Khadisha, who he randomly selected and anonymously emailed because she had no history in gambilng. He sent her correct predictions of five races in a row, before encouraging her to place as much money as she could on the sixth race. That is when "The System" illustrates Inductive reasoning. Inductive Reasoning is one of the features of science and a kind of reasoning that makes a prediction based on past experience and assumes that that prediction could be applied to all cases. It is logically flawed and impossible to deliver absolute truth. Khadisha's confidence is based solely on inductive reasoning. Because "The System" predicted the horse winner correctly 4 times in a row, she believes that "The System" will be correct the fifth time.

There has been nothing to falsify her confidence. At this stage, she has not experienced falsification. Falsification is a scientific feature and involves proving something wrong. It is the opposite of verifying statements. We may never be able to prove absolute truth through falsification but we may disprove something. Therefore the statement is known as "accepted truth" until it is proven false. It is important in science as it develops hypothesis and therefore increases scientific knowledge.

Later Brown reveals that "The System" does not exist and proves it by falsification. He mentions that the audience saw "The System" only from one perspective, Khadisha's perspective. After Brown had placed a bet of £4,000 of Khadisha's money on a horse in the final race, he explained that "The System" did not really exist, which is an example of Occam's Razor. This states that simple explanations are the best-or that the Universe elsewhere obeys the same laws of physics. Simply, "The System" does not exist.

He had started by contacting a large number of people and split them into six groups, giving each group a different horse. As each race had taken place 5⁄6 of the people had lost and were dropped from the system. Brown had a different person backing each horse in each race, and one individual, Khadisha, won five times in a row. This was similar to the coin flipping earlier: rather than having a predictive technique, Brown had tossed a coin repeatedly until ten heads had come up in a row, taking over nine hours to produce the required film. He explained this to the audience and to Khadisha and falsified her belief that "The System" exists which she based solely on Inductive reasoning. This also proves that Inductive reasoning is logically flawed.

Paradigm shift, a scientific feature, was also illustrated in "The System". Paradigm shift is the term used by Kuhn who suggested that science does not develop by the orderly accumulation of facts and theories, but by dramatic revolutions. The worlds before and after a paradigm shift are utterly different. "The System" illustrated this when Brown convinced experts that "The System" is possible. He claimed that it was only highly improbable, not impossible. When the experts were convinced, the worlds before and after became different which is the result of Paradigm shift.

How does 'The System' illustrate the features of Science discussed in 'The Truth is Out There' ?

In “The Truth is out there”, we're trying to define the term “science” and deciding whether or not science tells us the truth. The way in which we can tell the difference between science and non-science is to collect realistic evidences, not just state theories, to support the beliefs that we state are true.

Inductive reasoning, falsification, Occam's Razor and Paradigm shift are the main features in human science. By using definitions of these terms we can illustrate their power to everyday life situations in this case, winning a horse racing bet five times in a row. For some people, applying the Arctic circle law in mathematics to win all of the bets is virtually ludicrous. But for Kaniesha, the woman who would risk everything winning every single bets to raise his father's salary, she's completely confident in “The System”.

“The System” is a new type of science involve in harvesting logical thinking to make accurate predictions which are out of this world. Losing any bets is a big frustration. According to Darren Brown, the founder of The System, in order for her to win the bet, The System use inductive reasoning, which is making a decision using past experiences, by dividing all random people participate in the bet (approx. 7,700) equally into the names of difference horses taking part in the race (start with Race 1 and finish at Race 5, each race 4 or 5 different horses) and select the horse where Kaniesha is put together with other people in a column. This is similar to putting a deck of playing cards into two columns red and black, or put them into 4 suits, could be in separate red and black. The results? The horse which suggested by The System to Kaniesha did win the race!

So what does this mean? All the people, including Kaniesha, who won the 1st bet is again being separated into the names of the horses in the 2nd race. The horses represent playing cards and the cards of people who won the race is divided evenly onto the four. Astonishingly, this method of elimination works for Kaniesha all the way through the bet. Until the last race, when Darren falsify his prediction and Kaniesha was shocked that her great investment journey ended. Somehow, Darren changed his decision in the end and bringing home ₤3000 for Kaniesha, that's a heck of cash !!

For those who lost the bet, there was a falsification, which basically means that science could be proved wrong not by verifying statements but by giving false and unclear statements. These people weren't believe in The System. Does it exist? We do not know, Basically is just an Occam's Razor (the simplest explanation are the best) If anyone would accepts one particular reason for doing something, for example flipping a coin head face up ten times in a row, or suggesting that the moon has an egg shape and drifting 4cm away from earth every 10 years, then it must be a revolution in scientific thinking and justify true beliefs in the laws of the universe. This is also known as Paradigm shift. 7,700 took the bet, 7,699 have falsification, only Kaniesha made it. 50/50 change of winning or losing varies on a seasaw, but what is the actual percentage of winner and losers? How did he chose the exact champion for Kaniesha? What makes Darren alter his prediction at the end?

A famous quote from Einstein: “We don't play chess with the universe” It is impossible to hire a psychic to predict the future. The universal law is there revolving around us, we've holding our own knowledge of the universe itself. The rules were set by god, and we cannot change it. The elements must follow a systematic order, birth of planet Earth, colonization and evolvement of species for thousand of years, extirpation, regeneration... the process keeps on...