A strange experiment conducted by a person who believes in the paranormal, makes you wonder how differently each of us perceives this world. We know that faith can blind people, but can unbelief do the same?
Arthur Ellison, a professor of electrical engineering and a joke lover, decided to end the lecture with a game. He asked a group of volunteers (some of them his fellow professors) to focus on an iron flower vase on the table. They had to look at her, repeat "om" and try to force the vase to levitate with an effort of reason. And they succeeded: the vase soared over the table. True, it immediately broke up when the group, due to the strongest surprise, stopped singing.
Allison was not surprised - he was helping the vase levitate with an electromagnet. He was actually not interested in levitation, but in the reaction of the participants. One man approached and told him that when the flowers were already floating in the air, a gray substance rose from the floor, crawled across the table and crawled under the vase. Another participant claimed that nothing happened and the vase did not budge. Both were wrong.
This story, however, can be treated with some mistrust. Ellison, despite his achievements in science, was a supporter of the theory of the paranormal - he believed that science was too narrow to explain some things.
This story suggests that unbelief can also cause us to judge things with prejudice. It doesn't matter if the erroneous opinion is based on faith or skepticism. To know something for sure, you need to analyze all the facts, all the available information - such an analysis, at least, will allow you to take a sober look at things.
A convinced skeptic, if he had taken the trouble to analyze the situation, he would have learned about the magnet and said: "Yes, I was wrong, the vase can levitate." And the one who unconditionally believed his eyes and saw some kind of gray substance, could understand that there was no trace of it, and at the same time try to realize why he saw exactly this - if he thought a little, of course.