Give Me $500 or the World Will End. Trust Me.

When researchers tried putting a value on faith

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” — Oscar Wilde

She wouldn’t drink tea. It had caffeine, and caffeine was evil.

And so were tobacco, alcohol, and other sinful unhealthy substances. Even “hot drinks,” apparently would condemn your soul to the forbidden world.

The Word of Wisdom forbids it. The interpretation du jour defines it. These are many of the strange — at least to me — beliefs of the Mormon church. 

She was the first Mormon I had met in Asia. And also the first Taiwanese friend I had that wouldn’t touch a cup of tea if her life depended on it. 

I couldn’t understand why. 

Tea is f*cking delicious.

The Birth of Religion

The mid-nineteenth century birthed a few new offshoots of Christianity. One was, of course, Mormon, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as they’re referred to these days.

Another was the Seventh-day Adventist Church, being founded just a couple of decades later. One of this group’s beliefs is the world will come to a fiery brimstoney end — they just don’t know when.

A century later, a prolific chap named Harold Camping decided he had THE exact answer to that question. At least five times, in fact. Five times most of us sinners managed to not be raptured and lived to write weird essays like the one you’re reading.

But of course, for most of us, predicting the exact day of the end of the world is a silly matter. It’s clearly next Tuesday.

But several researchers disagreed and decided to test something. Their mission? Discover the true value of a cult’s belief. 

And by value, I mean the other god we all pray to—money.

How Much is Your Faith Worth?

Harold Camping’s fourth prediction of the end times was different. This round, the radio network he ran was funding advertisements all over the world letting people know they’re about to become much hotter. 

While the vainer among us might be pleased with such news, their message was slightly more jarring:

O’Dea at Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Imagine a version of that sign popping up in Idaho. Or Michigan. Or New York.

Or India or France or Russia where a 14-year-old girl reportedly took her life instead of facing the oncoming predicted doom.

That’s what $100 million of marketing spend can do to people, no matter where in the world they live. 

If you spread the reach of a message far enough, some people are bound to believe it, no matter how foolish it is. They call it “audience capture” and it’s making me a bit parched. 

Does anybody have some ivermectin or bleach to add to my afternoon tea? Two shots, please. Hold the 5G.

Testing the Hypothesis

Berkeley researchers caught wind of this prediction and decided to make an experiment out of it. They used previous principles of design to come up with a test.

They asked a group of close followers of Harold Camping and his Family Radio broadcast if they’d want $5 in cash now, or up to $500 in a month.

To keep things equal, they also asked a similarly sized group of Seventh-day Adventist Church members the same question.

Both groups believed the world was going to end in a fiery storm of Jesus fuelled angry earthquakes, but only one of them believed it was going to happen in a few weeks.

This Just In: We’re Still Here

The results were probably as you expected. Almost 100% of the Family Radio followers chose the $5. The Seventh-day people chose the opposite.

I don’t know about you, but if someone offered me $500 to wait a month at the cost of $5 in my pocket now, I’d be jumping on that signature line faster than my girlfriend could figure out how to spend it. It’s the marshmallow experiment on steroids.

But not for the Family Radio people. 

They had no use for money in one month — because no one would have use for money.

This probably explains why their followers “have given up their jobs, sold their homes, maxed out their credit cards,” as Harold Camping’s producer pointed out.

Belief can be a powerful force. It can also ruin the lives of followers believing in the wrong thing.

Belief or Identity?

The study showed an interesting concept. It wanted to see if you could put a dollar value on extreme beliefs. 

In this case, almost no one opted for the logical option. To receive $500 in a month wasn’t logical — to them. A frail 89-year-old kook who was consistently wrong about the main idea he preached somehow seemed like the better option. 

Not just the better option, the better belief. 

The rejection of logic and the entire encompassing passionate idea of something great about to happen — to them. 

Because, of course, these people would be among the few 3% stated to be saved. They were special because they believed and were repeatedly told so to reinforce the idea.

When you build up someone with your words, they tend to believe you more. Especially if it’s something you care about. And something you want to improve about yourself.

The same paper wrote that experiments have shown: 

“subjects tend to give more weight to materially self-serving information and to positive…information about a quality they directly care about, such as intelligence or physical attractiveness.”¹

It points to a simple recipe we keep seeing all over the world in our day and age of misinformation.

1. Find a way to broadcast your message to as many people as possible

2. Make a promise that the information you hold will improve the life of the listener

3. Tie the promise to a quality people care about

Now, look around you. 

Not physically, but virtually. “Into the Meta” as several douchebags are about to popularize in the coming years. 

The Internet is Full of Cults

From conspiracy theorists saying only believers are in the know: 

“We are not being told the truth. Why??…We ARE the news now. We can’t trust the news.”—DeAnna Lorraine

To Self-Help Guru’s proclaiming they have a secret way to accomplish impossible lofty goals:

“The Only Way To “Wake Up” And Become Unstoppable”

To discredited now-famous doctors on Oprah leveraging their expertise in one area (brain surgery) to pseudo-science in another:

"For centuries, we have used astrological signs to examine our personality and how we interact with those around us However, these signs may reveal a great deal about our health as well." —Dr. Oz

To the Intellectual Dark Web promoting ‘manliness’ as a justification for spreading misinformation:

“Secure, honorable men have always been a grave threat to power. That’s why they end up on the list of people the public is definitely supposed to hate.”—Bret Weinstein

There are countless more examples. The far-left and the far-right are too numerous to mention. The crypto-HODL-believers perpetuating a giant Ponzi scheme in the name of recreating a ‘just’ society while 0.01% of Bitcoin holders own 33% of the entire amount.

MAGA and CNN and QAnon and Fox News and quirky Starbucks corporatists who act like they’re ‘against the man’ while consuming $49 chemically determined pumpkin flavored milk powdered water and taking no less than 83 selfies to find the one that is juuuuuust right.

Pick a prominent online group and point your phone-addicted-already-have-arthritis-at-30-years-old finger at it—it’ll likely fit the mold.

A Million Tribes to Rule Them All

People have seemingly — in my own likely ignorant perspective — become more and more accustomed to listening to their people. To their tribe. To their leaders. 

At the expense of listening to any other voices. Like the voice of reason, per se.

In many cases, the listening has turned to belief. A kind of belief not so dissimilar to those Family Radio members in the study. A belief that doesn’t have a dollar value attached to it. A scary belief that encompasses a person’s identity through and through.

A belief that can lead to the physical harm of oneself or their loved ones, all in the name to protect the group identity above all else. And usually to line the pockets of those running coordinated marketing campaigns promoting their group in the first place.

Our Tribe is Our Identity

We go to war for our country. We march in the streets for our people’s rights. We go on strike to defend our co-workers. We lick the boots of billionaires telling us “Tax Man Bad!” because of course, we will soon be billionaires ourselves and stop taking a vaccine because they want to keep their factories burring.

It’s why we end up seeing terrible headlines like this:

“Between 80,000 and 180,000 health and care workers may have died from COVID-19 between January of 2020 and May of this year, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.”

Our group identity is our identity, and it should be no surprise people are willing to die for it.

We are all just apes in the end.

Perhaps you’d like to support that statement by buying one of the $1 billion market cap Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs that are definitely not a giant Ponzi scheme, too.

But, of course, you and I, dear reader, don’t fall prey to such things.

We aren’t bored apes. Our beliefs are sound and strong and based on logic. They have developed over decades of intensive reading, learning, and active listening. They are tenable and firm and will stand the test of time.

I know this to be true.

Because The Flying Spaghetti Monster told me so. He also said I can take $500 if you offer it, too. Or, at the very least, that you sign up for my free newsletter.

Or else —  “The world will end.”

Trust me, I’m a tea-drinking stranger on the internet.

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J.J. Pryor

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Photo credit: Photo by Inna Lesyk from Pexels

Note 1: The referenced studies were removed for easier reading but are available in the original study.