The Dragon in My Garage

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?

LLAP
RR