[Why] Smart People Believe Weird Things

LeBain writes "This Sep. 2002 Scientific American article on 'confirmation bias' and why people believe in the paranormal reminds us, 'we need to teach that science is not a database of unconnected factoids but a set of methods designed to describe and interpret phenomena.'"

Comments

Depends

[lowtekneq]

Most "smart" people i know ( and i include myself :P ) aren't religious at all yet believe in extraterrestrials and other unexplained things. The reason for this in my case is, that there is proof that we didn't come from Adam and Eve, and that jesus could not heal the blind/walk on water/ect. Maybe we just believe everything unless we can prove it wrong?

Why?

[Violet Null]

Same reason people believe in coincidences -- it's because they want to feel that their lives _are_ special, rather than the alternative of being essentially meaningless.

Belief in a god gives some meaning to life. Belief in prayer gives the ability to control the uncontrollable. Belief in precognition gives the ability to know the unknowable. Etc.

Random Phenomena

[dmorin]

There are some people that believe when you have a question or a problem, you open randomly to a page in the Bible, and the answer will be on that page. This, of course, just demonstrates the power of the human mind to interpret phenomena as they feel fit.

True story - last last week, just before lunch, a coworker and I were discussing a Java design problem and how I hated our reliance on needing a database guy to write up some stored procedures for us. We discussed the possibility of going to JDO, and whether an XML database would do anything for us. I sat back down at my desk, reloaded slashdot, and got this. Coincidence my ass. Slashdot is the center of the universe.

Easy to explain.

[Telecommando]

2 factors the author didn't take into account:

1. Half of all people are of below average intelligence. (By definition)

2: The average probably isn't that high.

So it shouldn't be too surprising that most people believe some pretty weird stuff.

Re:Easy to explain.

[t]

An easy way to convince someone that (2) is true is that it takes considerable effort to make a smart person. You are either born with the neural goo to be really smart or you are not. Losing intelligence on the other hand is very easy. If you don't believe me then smack your head against the wall. Thus there is a nonzero probability that you will get really fscking stupid at some point in your life but a zero probability that you'll wake up tomorrow smarter than Einstein.

t.

Another reason why people "believe" in things

[Lars T.]

According to this article (in German) (here is an English abstract), what makes the difference between a believer and a sceptic is the dopamin level in the brain.

Re:Alternative Medicine?

[t]

To boost topham's argument it should be noted that some common everyday herbs are lethal. Saffron, the "yellow rice" spice is considered lethal in quantities of several grams. Combine those types of spices with Americans more is better attitude and you'll die.

t.

Re: Full-wallet Bias

[Black Parrot]

> I haven't read the rag since it became a political tool

You may be surprised to learn that SciAm isn't the only science outlet that's becoming politicized. Unfortunately, this seems to be an antibody reaction to the fact that lots of special interest groups are using pretend-science to support their social and political agendas, and real science is pretty much being forced to fight back to keep itself distinct from the pseudosciences. (As the rest of your post shows, you have already lost track of the distinction. Others will surely follow, if we just sit back and let it happen.)

At any rate, other, more respectable science magazines have started covering things like the problems with new-wave creationism, and recently I've even seen a CS article that directly addresses one branch of the pseudoscience being peddled by the Discovery Institute (a neocon group that wants to use religion to control the masses, as they admit in their own writings, and is trying to use pseudoscience to wedge creationism into the public school curriculum). The relevant claims are so silly that scientists have traditionally prefered to simply ignore them, but they are being pushed on the public so vigorously that more and more scientists feel a need to speak up.

So unless your own views are merely political, don't single out Scientific American for participating in a more general cultural phenomenon.

> but the vibe of this /. article is consistent with my gestalt of a general problem with SciAm' new editoral policy of propagandizing scientific materialism, and gives me a great pretext to rip on it. Scientific materialism is an IDEOLOGY.

Actually, science isn't married to materialism; it's married to evidence. We study all manner of phenomena that are invisible to the senses and might well have been considered supernatural if they could have been demonstrated 200 years ago. And if you ever find evidence for your favorite deity, science will gladly study that as well. The concept of "materialism" is irrelevant to science, and serves only as a bogeyman that science-deniers can invoke to justify ignoring the findings of science that they don't like.

> but I cancelled my subscription long ago, when it started bleeding Gaia-worship from the editorial aorta all over my nice clean carpet, so I generally don't see those unless I stop by the library.

Sadly, you don't leave the impression that you spend a lot of time in the library.

And see a doctor about that knee jerk.

ps - Dismissing science as a religion, ideology, philosophy, etc., is a very common practice among groups whose beliefs are contrary to the findings of science. Which group do you belong to? Your reference to "Gaia-worship" suggests that you object to the findings about the influence of pollution on the environment.