Ask A Genius 1356: Fact-Checking Belief in Ghosts, Flat Earth, and the U.S. War in Afghanistan

Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/04/13

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I have something prepared that I can read. This is part two, continuing from the discussion about the not-insignificant minority of Americans who believe in a flat Earth. We already covered every relevant angle. Who actually enjoys watching every one of these arguments play out?

Today, I’ll introduce another factor. Around seven or eight years ago, I came across surveys in a book focused on the United States. It included data on creationism. That was standard, non-intelligent design creationism. Other topics appeared as well. The survey had several belief categories and offered concise, well-researched data from a reliable source.

Rick Rosner: Surveys like that are becoming more difficult. Americans are increasingly resistant to participating. Still, this data provides helpful context.

Jacobsen: You don’t think seven percent of Americans are unsure whether the Earth is round?

Rosner: That sounds plausible.

Jacobsen: Then why the hesitation?

Rosner: You’re going to mention that some percentage of Americans believe in ghosts and other supernatural phenomena. Are they serious? Are they joking? Should they be ignored entirely? 

Jacobsen: There are entire television series about ghosts—some with millions of viewers.

Rosner: True. 

Jacobsen: Everything in America is a market. 

Rosner: These shows never actually find ghosts.

Jacobsen: That was Billy Connolly’s joke. They have all the gear—sound equipment, night vision cameras, audio recorders, so-called experts, and paranormal investigators. They have everything except the actual ghost.

According to the Chapman University Survey of American Fears (2018), 57.7% of Americans believed that places can be haunted by spirits. The same survey found that 39.1% of Americans believed in ghosts.

A 2023 Ipsos poll, conducted for the media platform RealClear Opinion Research, found that 61% of Americans believe in ghosts. A 2019 YouGov poll reported that 45% of Americans said they either “definitely” or “probably” believe in ghosts.

Rosner: Of all the beliefs you’ve mentioned, belief in ghosts is one of the least harmful. It doesn’t inherently contradict the entirety of modern science. It’s irrational, but it doesn’t require a complete rejection of established scientific consensus, as flat Earth belief does.

There’s also a subjective, experiential element. People hear noises at night. They might momentarily think they see someone in a doorway—an instant where the brain misinterprets a visual cue.

I could be married to someone who believes in ghosts, as long as that’s the only unusual belief. That would be acceptable. Still irrational. I buy a lot of vintage items on eBay. I collect antique pins. Sometimes, just for conversation, I’ll joke that a creepy one might be haunted. I don’t actually believe that. But antique dolls on eBay? Every single one of them looks haunted.

Have you seen them?

Jacobsen: Remember that show I told you about called From? There’s a doll that appears occasionally. I forget the name, but they use it so effectively—it’s terrifying. You’re genuinely afraid of this doll.

Rosner: I don’t believe in haunted objects, but if anything were going to be haunted, it would be antique dolls.

Jacobsen: All right. Before this, I had some interviews on women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan.

Rosner: Things must be extremely bad over there now.

Jacobsen: Yes. I checked six international indexes—four of them ranked Afghanistan as the lowest in the world for women’s and girls’ rights.

Rosner: I’m not well-versed in world politics. There’s a lot I don’t know. But from what I understand, the U.S. was in Afghanistan for 20 years. We lost, what, around 5,000 troops?

Jacobsen: Do you know how many Afghan civilians died?

Rosner: Afghan civilians? I don’t know—hundreds of thousands? Do you think it was a mistake for the U.S. to pull out?

Jacobsen: Hundreds of thousands is even conservative. I think it was a mistake for the U.S. to go in. The U.S. entered under a major lie on Iraq and then doubled down on it. The withdrawal wasn’t the biggest mistake—the original decision to go was. Everything that followed was a consequence of that error.

Rosner: We kept the Taliban from being in charge for 20 years, at least in Kabul. Some of the outlying areas too. Afghanistan, geographically, is shaped like a donkey with a tail—drawn on paper and then crumpled. It’s mostly brutal mountains and harsh terrain. You can’t control the entire country, but at least Kabul was livable for women.

Jacobsen: That’s an answer for Afghan citizens to give. But it’s also telling when you look at who’s in power now—and how they govern. That might be your answer.

Rosner: All right, let me ask. But I know it was a mistake to go into Iraq the second time—the George W. Bush invasion. I feel like Afghanistan was less of a mistake, because it was easy to topple the government. But for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re correct—that we shouldn’t have gone in.

Jacobsen: But once we were in, what was the reason? The reason for going into Iraq was weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. entered under a lie. It lied to the entire global community.

Rosner: Hold on. Let’s be clear. We went into Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. We went into Afghanistan not for weapons of mass destruction. We went in because they were allegedly harboring and aiding al-Qaeda. So that was a different case. The Iraq invasion was clearly based on lies about WMDs. Afghanistan, I think, was somewhat different. But I don’t want to get into all that.

I want to ask: once we had been in Afghanistan for 15, 16, 18 years, wouldn’t it have been reasonable to stay there and continue supporting Kabul indefinitely? So at least the Afghan people had one place where they wouldn’t be terrorized by the Taliban?

Jacobsen: Americans often don’t understand how they sound to people outside their country. The assumption baked into this conversation is that it’s a legitimate question to begin with. But the affairs of a country are ultimately up to its citizens. That kind of decision—whether to stay or not—should have been up to the people of Afghanistan.

Rosner: But we were already in the country. We’d already made whatever mistakes you want to call them. 

Jacobsen: It seems to me—it’s like I break into your house, destroy your living room, and start living in your kitchen. I eat your food. I stay there for a week. I set up camp. Then someone asks me—or your neighbor—”Do you think he was right to be there, because he helped reduce some marital tension?”

Rosner: Right. The Taliban is a terrible regime, and they probably don’t reflect the will of—if not the majority—then at least a significant minority of the Afghan population.

Jacobsen: Yes, it’s a very diverse country, and the Taliban does not represent the will of the majority. They are imposing their rule.

Rosner: We were there. We were down to 2,500 troops, mostly in and around Kabul. We had a massive military base.

2,500 troops weren’t enough to hold the entire country—but as I’ve said, do you even need to hold the whole country? It’s impossible. No invading force in history has ever fully controlled Afghanistan. That’s common knowledge.

But since we were already there, maybe we should have stayed. Maybe not even for Afghanistan’s sake—certainly for the sake of the United States.

Biden was polling well until the withdrawal. The way it happened allowed Republicans to frame it as abrupt and disastrous. His approval ratings went from net positive to, by the end of his term, 20 points net negative—starting with the Afghanistan pullout.

If it weren’t for the withdrawal, we might not have ended up with a second Trump administration.

Jacobsen: There are several things I’ve looked up. In terms of cost, the United States spent approximately $2.3 trillion from 2001 until the withdrawal in August 2021.

Rosner: So that’s roughly $100 billion per year—though it was likely much less per year toward the end, after 20 years of occupation.

Jacobsen: Correct. Military operations alone accounted for approximately $800 billion. Reconstruction and related efforts: $0.45 trillion. Interest on the debt: $530 billion. Veterans’ care: $465 billion, projected to increase to $1.1 trillion by 2050. These are ongoing financial costs.

Rosner: So let’s estimate that staying in Afghanistan would have cost $40 to $50 billion per year. That’s not a small amount—but compared to the political cost and consequences, I don’t know. It’s difficult to judge.

Jacobsen: It’s expensive to stay there. But you do have some support for your Afghanistan point over the Iraq point. On September 12, 2001, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1368 condemning the 9/11 attacks and recognizing the U.S. right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. That implicitly supported military action against al-Qaeda and Taliban hosts.

Then, on September 28, 2001, Resolution 1373 called for global cooperation to combat terrorism, including freezing terrorist assets. So yes, you’re right—we didn’t go into Afghanistan based on the Iraq lie. We went in with legitimate intelligence.

Not only legitimate intelligence—it was also backed by legitimate international support at the highest level, specifically through Resolution 1368 at the UN Security Council.

Then, in December 2001, Resolution 1386 authorized the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), led by NATO, to secure Afghanistan. That signaled ongoing UN backing for stabilization efforts. So the U.S. entered Afghanistan with broad international support, unlike Iraq, which was built on false claims about weapons of mass destruction.

It was a very different context. 

Rosner: We were there for 20 years. Trump wanted to pull everybody out, but his generals convinced him not to. Still, he negotiated with the Taliban and promised a withdrawal by around April 2021—three months into the Biden administration.

Biden held off for a bit. He could have reassessed and said, “We’ve reviewed the situation, and we don’t think withdrawal is the right move right now.” But he didn’t. He followed through and pulled the troops out by, I think, May.

Withdrawal was always going to be difficult, but the way it was executed was disorderly. Thirteen Americans were killed by a terrorist bombing at the airport, along with many Afghans.

We also left behind many Afghans who had helped us—people we promised to evacuate. We left behind military equipment that was supposedly sabotaged, but still amounted to billions of dollars in hardware.

In retrospect, Afghanistan’s economy would be in better shape if we had stayed. Women would be in a better situation. Maybe neither outcome was good—but still, the alternative seemed worse.

Jacobsen: That’s all “what if” thinking—and this isn’t Marvel. The more important question is how the U.S. stayed, not whether. That depends on how Afghans wanted Americans to stay.

It wasn’t just a matter of the U.S. pulling out. I checked: the ISAF coalition had more than 40 contributing countries. This wasn’t a unilateral American operation. So when Biden—or Trump—signed a withdrawal order, it wasn’t just about U.S. troops. Forty nations had deployed forces. Saying “America pulled out” ignores the complexity of the coalition.

Rosner: All right.

Jacobsen: What I think is important to recognize is that after 9/11, global sympathy for the United States was incredibly high. The world stood with the U.S. at that moment.

Rosner: Maybe this is the part people are not talking about. What can anyone actually do about Afghanistan at this point?

Jacobsen: They’re not going to respond to economic sanctions the way a country like Japan or Germany might.

Rosner: It seems like the only thing they responded to—25 years ago—was being invaded. And they folded quickly, because they didn’t have the means to resist.

Jacobsen: These men have known nothing but war for 40 years. They are deeply traumatized. The Taliban enforces a harsh, fundamentalist religious system—control of women, control of the state, control over what people are allowed to say, and severe penalties for violating those norms.

This rigid structure provides a sense of order to people who have lived through extreme instability. In that context, one reflection that came up during my interview was that maybe the most traumatized people in Afghanistan are not the civilians under Taliban rule—but the Taliban leadership themselves. Their trauma has metastasized into authoritarianism. That’s not an excuse—it’s a description.

Rosner: All right, but still—it would be better if we described it for what it is, because it sounds like excusing it.

Jacobsen: I disagree with the idea that describing something is the same as excusing it. When we describe how the U.S. lied about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq, we’re not excusing it—we’re analyzing what happened.

Rosner: Fair. But there are bad people in charge of Afghanistan, and it’s probably unfixable without military intervention. Otherwise, things are just going to keep deteriorating, right?

Jacobsen: I don’t know. The person I interviewed. They said it might seem hopeless now, but it felt even more hopeless before.

Rosner: Before when?

Jacobsen: Before now—apparently this person was born after September 11, 2001. They’ve only known the post-9/11 world.

Rosner: All right. We should move on. I don’t really know what I’m talking about, and we both agree conditions in Afghanistan are terrible. There are lots of opinions, but I’ve said I’m not qualified to have them. Let’s move on. Let’s talk about ghosts. 

Jacobsen: This is more fun. Based on recent surveys, we’re seeing a range from 39% to 61.4% of Americans who believe in spirits or ghosts to some degree.

Rosner: One more thing—believing in ghosts isn’t a belief system. Being a flat earther is.

Jacobsen: That’s true.

Rosner: Being a flat earther is a comprehensive belief system. It consumes your mental space. You’re constantly thinking you’re being lied to, that the world is not what it seems. It’s pervasive. Your brain has been infected with something.

Belief in ghosts, for most people, is casual. Like belief in astrology. You might vaguely enjoy reading your horoscope. Or you just like a good ghost story. It’s not all-consuming.

Jacobsen: What do you call a horoscope that always gives you bad news?

Rosner: What?

Jacobsen: A horrible-scope.

Which could also be the name for a horse that can’t jump very high.

Rosner: I don’t know. Either way, believing in ghosts is pretty benign for most people. It’s not typically a strong belief.

Jacobsen: Horoscopes can lead people to make major life decisions—like marriage. But we’re not talking about astrology believers. We’re talking about people who believe in ghosts. Let’s define ghosts here as spirits or apparitions of the deceased.

Argument one: Millions of people claim to have encountered ghosts, reporting sightings, unexplained sounds, and even physical sensations. These firsthand accounts are vivid and emotionally compelling. What do you say to that?

Rosner: Either you thought you saw something, or you’re making it up. I know people who have lied about seeing ghosts just to get on TV.

Jacobsen: Did they get on TV?

Rosner: One of them did. If you’re producing a segment on ghosts, you’re going to feature people who claim to have seen one.

Jacobsen: Next argument: Belief in ghosts spans nearly every culture and historical period—from the spirits in ancient Egyptian tombs, to haunted castles in medieval Europe, to Japanese yūrei in modern times. This universality of the ghost experience must indicate some truth behind it. What do you say to that, Rick?

Rosner: That’s a weak argument. Think about the common features of ghost sightings. They usually happen in old houses that creak at night. Things make noise. Animals run around. Beams shift. It’s just the environment.

There are squirrels in your attic. You can wake up and think you see something out of the corner of your eye. You can sleepwalk. You can mistake a dream for reality. There are countless ways people can believe they’ve seen a ghost—and these experiences are common across all cultures and times.

That does not argue for the existence of ghosts. It argues that there are consistent ways to mistakenly believe you’ve encountered one—whether seen, heard, or inferred.

Take dementia, for example. Once people begin to suffer from it, I don’t know the exact percentage, but well over 80% report that someone is entering their room or home and stealing things. That’s a consistent symptom.

Does that mean, throughout history, people have actually been sneaking in and stealing from the elderly with dementia? No. It’s just a common feature of dementia: you forget where your belongings are or that you even owned something, and then you believe someone is messing with you.

That is not an argument for the existence of a secret society of elderly thieves operating across time and geography. It’s a misinterpretation based on a common mental condition.

Jacobsen: Ghost hunters use EMF meters, thermal cameras, and audio recorders. They capture anomalies like spikes in electromagnetic fields, unexplained heat signatures, and so-called electronic voice phenomena. These are interpreted as signs of ghostly activity. That’s considered hard evidence. What do you say to that?

Rosner: It’s not evidence. It’s nonsense.

We don’t have a single case where someone has actually caught a ghost—the way we think of a ghost—as a human presence outside of a human body.

If you ever caught something undeniably human in nature—something you could talk to, that could understand and respond, follow simple commands like “move this candlestick” or “knock three times”—then maybe you’d have something.

But there’s never been any convincing evidence of a presence like that. And without that kind of presence, we can’t say what physical phenomena should accompany it. We’ve never caught one.

So all these so-called “physical effects” are just unexplained events being attributed to ghosts without any foundational reason to do so. The ghost “scorecard”—as in actual captured, undeniable ghost encounters—is still at zero.

Therefore, we don’t know what a ghost would do physically. All this high-tech gear is meaningless—it’s just smoke and mirrors so people can make money and get on TV.

Jacobsen: Now, people have had near-death experiences. People say they’ve seen deceased relatives. They’ve felt a spiritual presence. This is used to support the idea of consciousness after death—and therefore, the existence of ghosts. What say you, Mr. Jacobsen?

Rosner: Near-death experiences have been studied for a long time. Most of the phenomena people report—seeing a light, having their life flash before their eyes—can be explained by what happens in the brain as it shuts down. These experiences don’t convincingly fall outside the realm of natural neurological activity during extreme stress or trauma.

Next, people point to supposed evidence like the 1945 Coventry Cathedral ghost photo or the 1917 Cottingley Fairies hoax. The latter literally has “hoax” in the name. When you look at the photos, what might have seemed eerie or convincing a century ago is obviously fake now.

Today, with billions of cameras in the world and likely a hundred million photos taken every second, you’re bound to get a few with weird visual effects. People cherry-pick these anomalies and call them ghosts. Others actively fabricate these things. None of it is compelling.

Now, onto quantum physics and consciousness. Some speculate that phenomena like the observer effect or quantum nonlocality could explain ghosts or spiritual energy. But that’s either a misunderstanding or a cynical misuse of quantum physics terminology. There’s no credible connection between established quantum science and the idea of ghosts.

That said, there’s one scenario where I’d allow for the theoretical existence of ghosts, magic, or any supernatural phenomenon: if we’re living in a simulation. If our universe is a simulated reality—whether digital or based on some other mechanism—and some external agent is orchestrating the rules, then that agent could allow exceptions.

In that kind of world, supernatural phenomena could be introduced—ghosts, magic, anything—because the underlying physics is being artificially generated. But even in that case, I’d argue it’s unlikely. If someone went to all the effort of creating a deeply realistic simulation governed by consistent laws, why ruin the illusion by randomly breaking those rules just to throw in a ghost or a magic wand that actually works?

Jacobsen: Fair enough. Now, let’s talk about mediums and psychics. They claim to communicate with spirits.

Rosner: When mediums and psychics are interviewed—at least the ones who are not outright frauds—some openly admit that what they do is a form of highly sophisticated guessing. They say they’re skilled at picking up clues from the people they’re reading, using context, body language, and leading questions to create the illusion of psychic insight.

Some professional psychics even acknowledge this is how it works. They’re good at drawing information out of people without the person realizing it, and they make educated guesses based on what’s most statistically likely. So if even psychics themselves admit they’re not actually psychic, why should anyone believe in supernatural powers?

That said, a lot of psychics are essentially people who offer comfort and sometimes even helpful advice to those seeking it. Not all are malicious. But others are predatory—they’re full-on fraudsters looking to exploit vulnerable people for money.

All right—next. 

Jacobsen: Poltergeist activity: moving objects, knocking, unexplained damage, allegedly caused by restless spirits.

Rosner: That’s mostly, if not entirely, explainable by other means.

Take my childhood home in Colorado. It had a cracked ceiling, and I was told it had something to do with an atomic bomb—which sounded absurd. But in 1969, under the “Plowshare Program” for peaceful nuclear explosions, there was an actual project in Colorado called Project Rulison. They drilled a mile-deep hole and detonated a nuclear bomb underground to try to release natural gas.

They did it three times. It worked—the explosions fractured the bedrock and released usable natural gas. But the gas was slightly radioactive, which scared people off from continuing the program. Also, the underground detonations caused earthquakes.

One of those earthquakes, I was told, may have cracked the ceiling in our house. So yes, there are strange things that happen—but they often have completely natural explanations. You don’t have to invoke ghosts to explain creaks, cracks, or mysterious noises.

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