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[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.'"
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?
Carpe meam simiam!
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.
Slightly OT, but I had a Philosophy of Science class where we used The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn and videos of James Burke's Connections.
Great stuff.
Gave us a fine appreciation for how Scientific Discovery is made and how gradual change is punctuated by bursts of creativity.
Of course, then you go talk to people and it takes the wind right out of your sails.
The opposite of progress is congress
He told us that when he was an undergrad, he got a job reading people's palms. Being an intelligent person, he at first thought it was silly and didn't believe it, but he needed the money. His employer gave him a book that described how to read palms by following a simple recipe.
He was of course leary with his first customer. He was sure he'd be accused of fraud. Nevertheless, he followed the recipe and read the guys palm. He was amazed that the customer was so enthusiastic about how accurate the reading was. This filled Ray with more confidence, and in no time he was convinced that this was working. All his customers were convinced by his readings, so he had no reason to believe they weren't accurate.
When he told a friend about how it really worked, his friend suggested that, for his next customer, he give the exact opposite reading that the book suggested. He did so, probably just as nervous as his first reading, expecting the customer to reject what he was saying. But, sure enough, the customer was impressed at how accurate the reading was. He did this again with the next few customers and soon realized it didn't really matter what he was saying. People were always able to connect his vague readings with something in their own lives.
I remember another study where students were asked to fill out a small survey. The professor then reviewed all the surveys and gave each student a customized personality profile. The students were asked the rate the profiles, and all gave them very high rankings.
The professor then asked each student to pass his profile to the student behind them (person in back passes to the front). In an instant, every student realized that they were all given identical profiles.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Similarly, it's becoming clear that humans are sensitive to pheromones, so there could be a whole realm of 'sixth sense' communication that skeptical-correctness has been unwilling to allow for. [some old thoughts on 'vibes']
many people turn to religion to explain the unexplainabkle, but unfortunately religion is flawed, religion can be disproven,
i dont believe the bible because there is proof that many of those things didn't happen, if there wasn't proof that things didn't happen i might be inclined to believe them, personally i think theres some higher power, not necisaraly god, but something
I'm a die-hard atheist and hostile towards religion in general but I'm actually going to have to stick up for religion here. I'm not sure what your definition of religion is but it sounds like you are equating religion with "literal interpretation of the Bible" and that's just plain wrong. My understanding of relgion is that it is really more a way of living your life and contemplating your relation to the world around you. There are scores of Christians who consider themselves religious even though they don't subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Bible. Religion attempts to provide answers for questions that science is not designed to address such as "Is there a God?", "What is the meaning of life?", "Why should I be a good person?" and so forth. Science and religion can co-exist. However, religion should not attempt to explain the natural world and science should not encroach on theological questions.
In fact, I would argue that your "i think theres some higher power" statement means that you are religious (just not a fundamentalist Christian) even though you take great pains too separate yourselves from the faithful. Non-relgious people, such as myself, do NOT believe in any higher power.
but we cant really disprove ufos, ghosts etc
That's true but the burden of proof is on those who believe in such things. And that proof better be damn convincing. As Carl Sagan used to say "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." It's not up to scientists to disprove extraterrestial anal rapes, healing crystals, haunted houses, and so forth.
I'm no big fan of religion (and that's an understandment). But your statements about religion show a pretty big misunderstanding of what religion attempts to do for people.
GMD
watch this
One of my major complaints about the teaching of science in western academia is that it is taught without any reference to the history of science.
As an undergraduate, I was in a class that was mostly full of astrophysics grad students. One day in class, the topic of Galileo's confrontation with Rome came up. An astro student in the class raised her hand and asked "so, are you saying that there was some sort of conflict between religion and science?" Now, maybe I'm just being elitist, but shouldn't someone who is well along the road to becoming a professional scientist be aware of some of the basic history of the field?
Really, though, that's exactly the problem. Not only is the history of science not taught at the high school level, but it is unusual for working scientists to have any knowledge of the history of their own discipline, except perhaps from the last 25 or so years.
Unfortunately, when you have such a near-sighted understanding of science, you tend not to realize that there have been big scientific mis-steps (many within our own century), or that scientific laws get modified or thrown out quite frequently.
Without knowing the history, you can't really understand the method, and without understanding the method, you can't discriminate between good science, bad science, pseudo-science, and fantasy.
It comes down to a point that I kept thinking over and over as I watched the first "Lord of the Rings" movie this past week.
Science is not 'revealed.' It is not a matter of digging up some 'fact' buried in arcana. That's the fatal error that many people make. The Wizard in that movie, digging through the dusty old library, finds the ancient tomes that contain the crucial information. This, while plain romantic and a nice component to a fantasy work, misses out on the plain fact knowledge is not something 'discovered' so much as something that is reasoned out.
Knowledge seekers aren't on a quest to discover the 'lost secrets of our past' (sorry, neo-pagans). We're on a mission to learn, through trial and error, the observation of reality (rather than recorded depictions of reality coded into some language).
One of the "shocking stastitcs" they present is the following:
88% of the population "believes" in alternative medicine.
To lump alternative medicine in with such things as UFOs and ESP clearly displays the problem that most scientists are facing, and the reason that people *prefer* to be superstitious: science is an exclusive club.
If a treatment doesn't involve a synthetically created compound or cutting someone open, it falls into the realm of "alternative medicine" regardless of how effective it may be.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
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.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
A packer treats knowledge as a large collection of disparate facts. These are the people who go spastic if you don't give them step by step instructions. The don't understand systems that require interaction, and get greatly frustrated when you present them with an algorithm, as opposed to the list of steps the require to be able to do a task.
A mapper is someone who has a large number of disparate facts floating around, in the background, waiting for them to fall into place on the map they make of the universe. To them a fact is of very limited value until it has been connected with others, and placed into the map. Mappers are very good at sensing when something doesn't fit, and have a keen sense of "the ring of truth" that resonates when a new fact makes many others suddenly converge into focus.
Packers treat all facts with equal value, or that of the source. They are into such things as credentials, and structured authority.
Mappers know all too well that authority is made to be abused, that systems need a swift kick to get them back on track, and that rules always drift away from the situations for which they were created. Thus mappers have issues with authority. It also makes them great programmers.
I believe that mappers keep a "grain of salt" value linked to everything they know, and are willing to change that value as facts present themselves and change the picture. For example, I believe in ESP, as a vague sort of premonition that may someday be explained by physics. While I don't know how it works, there is sufficient evidence, in my experience, to concede that it probably (not definitely) exists.
Thus, for me, I 80% believe in it. Which doesn't fit the boolean 100% required of a packer.
--Mike--
These stats they quote, or rather the tone and context in which they are used, are ridiculous.
The underlying tenet of this whole article is: "If X has not been proven and approved by the scientific community then you are a laughable ignoramus for believing it might be true."
He doesn't state this overtly, because most people would reject it, but that is the attitude he holds and is trying to convince reader to adopt.
Nothing could be more asinine. That's like the patent officer who said "everything that can be invented has been invented" in 1898 (or whatever, I forget the details). To state that nothing that hasn't been scientifically proven exists, that's living in denial.
Human scientists are still struggling to understand and explain countless things. I think you could build a reasonable argument that we're not even at the halfway point of understanding our world and universe. Just look at the human body. We still do not entirely understand all the proteins in our body and how they interact. DNA, the genetic code, and how it is used to create new complete humans with all the right parts. We don't understand how the brain works, memory, learning, intelligence. How many diseases are there that we don't fully understand yet? AIDS, Alzheimer's, cancer, the list is endless.
To look at all the simple things right in front of our eyes that we don't yet understand and extrapolate that to all the other things we don't know is perfectly reasonable. And to form our own theories about phenomena that are not yet explained by science is reasonable. How else will we ever figure them out?
Also, an expression of belief, or acceptance of something as possible, is not the same as saying it absolutely has been proven. If no one has a proven explanation of a phenomenon there is nothing even unscientific about me guessing about the causes. That's called a hypothesis, and it is the foundation of the scientific method. If sticking a bunch of tiny needles into people in certain spots seems to have some sort of consistent positive result, let us theorize about the possible causes of that, not mock the 88% of people who "accept" that there might be something there.
So I say Brad Hines, ram your head just a little bit farther up your ass, so it covers not only your eyes and ears, but also your mouth. Then we won't have to hear you spewing this bullshit.
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
Of course, there are some flip sides to the issue.
One, of all the views that someone would deem dumb... which is most of them... some of them are right.
Another is the issue of the fringe. Yes, we may all agree that someone who believes in (some fringe belief) is basically a nut. But there are plenty of issues where we either can't or don't know the answer, and many of these issues are very, very, very importent! Is there purpose to life? Why am I here? Am I special? What is moral? (Is there a "moral"?)
In the end, you're just a human being. Are you really so sure you're right? Why?
Hey, maybe you are right. If you're interpreting this message as a defense of believing in (some kooky thing), you've missed the point. The point is that it's really damned easy to overestimate the strength of your position, and that applies every bit as much to the skeptics as anyone else, as is evidenced by the long list of things that have been skeptically dismissed, then found likely to be true. In general I'd describe myself as a skeptic, but I'm also a Christian. The odds that you hold some belief that somebody else would call kooky (and to add a bit of fairness, a person that you would not consider kooky, to avoid the obvious mutual-kooky-opinion scenario that really doesn't count for much here) are quite high. (That ought to be rewritten, but hey, this is Slashdot, and who cares, I'm about to be flamed for claiming both "skeptic" and "Christian", so why try too hard?)
Thus, while the article may be true in general, and probably is true in general, it is incorrect (in the mathematical sense of the term) to try to apply this observation directly to the world in any but a statistical manner.
> It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany.
Of course, Orwell was writing with the benefit of hindsight. The outcome of the war was not at all obvious at the time.
> I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.
Of course, we've all heard similar silly rants from anti-intellectuals. Really: how many times did you hear that Clinton had signed an executive order that would let him set aside the constitution if X happened [X varied with the telling], and how many of those times did you hear it from someone in the intelligentsia.
Orwell's quoted statements should be viewed as a political rant rather than a penetrating insight into human nature.
> It's amazing how stupid some of the stuff the human brain comes up with when common sense is left behind in favor of over-rationalization.
I'll gladly grant you that, though.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
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.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
> Well, that's apparently a myth [physiology.org]. A lot of people (including doctors) have taken it on faith.
Notice that (a) I didn't say the doctors specifically recommend the 8x8 policy that your link reviews [they generally just say "lots of water", though they may be more specific when there's a threat of dehydration], and (b) the cited link reviews the 8x8 policy as normal practice for healthy individuals, which isn't the normal circumstances for visiting the doctor's office.
The point remains that drinking lots of water (or other fluids with a high water content) is important in certain situations, such as when you have a flowing nose or behind, and it's not dismissed as "alternative medicine" even though it doesn't involve synthetic drugs or surgery.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
How did he leave the house when the sliding glass door was locked? Was it locked but not closed or something?
I decided to look up the actual survey because I found myself rethinking holding too firm of an opinion with out the actual questions. So, here is the page that links to the actual questionaire. They have it in PDF and word formats. Here are some of the questions referenced:
Question: H16
Some of the unidentified flying objects that have been reported are really space vehicles from other civilizations.
Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree?
1>strongly agree
2>agree
3>disagree
4>strongly disagree
Question: H17
Some people possess psychic powers or ESP.
Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree?
1>strongly agree
2>agree
3>disagree
4>strongly disagree
Question: H18
There are some good ways of treating sickness that medical science does not recognize.
Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree?
1>strongly agree
2>agree
3>disagree
4>strongly disagree
There is no "don't know" or "no opinion" option for any of these questions, so some people err on the side of probably by agreeing with something that they might not particularly agree with.
Further down:
Now, a new subject. Do you ever read a horoscope or your personal astrology report?
1> yes
2> no
Question: P2 Ask if P1 = 1
Do you read an astrology report every day, quite often, just occasionally, or almost never?
1> every day
2> quite often
3> just occasionally
4> almost never
Question: P3
Would you say that astrology is very scientific, sort of scientific, or not at all scientific?
1> very scientific
2> sort of scientific
3> not at all scientific
Question: P4
Have you heard of magnetic therapy, or the use of magnets to cure pain and illness?
1>yes
2>no
Question: P5 Ask if P4 = 1
Based on what you?ve read or heard, would you say that magnetic therapy is very scientific, sort of scientific, or not at all scientific?
1>very scientific
2>sort of scientific
3>not at all scientific
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
Mr. Shermer's list is very interesting, and is missing a few of the more controversial ones that he could have said. However, had I been given a survey with those flimsy descriptions, I would have answered, "yes" to several of the items.
Let's go down his list, shall we?
No, not really. There have been so many hoaxes and misinterpreted natural phenomena that my natural reaction to UFO reports is, "nah". However, the rules of logic say that if "X is true most of the time" it does not follow that "X is true all of the time". I accept that there is a slim chance that we have been visited, beause I have not been able to personally discount each and every case. So, depending on how vague the wording on the survey is, I may have had to answer "yes".
First, you have to define "ESP" before this question makes sense. Although many forms of ESP have been discredited over the years, I have nagging doubts that there may be *something* that is valid somewhere in the whole morass, so I have not fully discounted the possibility of ESP. I do, however, happen to agree with Dr. Feynman about ESP - it would take a lot of convincing for me to start believing in a specific form of ESP - maybe 10,000 tests with identical results, and surviving scrutiny of the Amazing Randy.
Yet still, I have not discounted ESP entirely, because I have suddenly decided to drop down to the speed limit several times, only to see the police with the radar gun a few minutes later. So I started keeping track - and to date, my "urge to slow down" ratio of "with police to no police in the area" is running about 3:1. So, I do believe.
I am quite convinced that, with 6 billion people on the planet, there will be at least one person who always chooses a number, and wins more often than an average distribution accounts for. For that person, there is a "lucky number". And, although I am not that person, his life does affect mine, as he shows up on the news, or she shows up and wins the pot, or whatever.
It is a vague connection, but again, it depends on the survey question. I do believe in lucky numbers, for a very tiny number of humans, since statistically, there *should* be at least 1 such person.
There is well-documented medical research that indicates that a patient's attitude can drastically affect their recovery from certain illnesses. Magnetic Therapy can easily stumble into this, "the patient believes that they are better, and as a result, they are better" category.
Now, having said that, I suspect that there may be something to magnetic therapy in certain cases. The trick is figuring out what those cases are. One of my teachers in engineering school proved that, as you move, you generated a slight voltage difference between your head and your feet (due to movement through the earth's magnetic field, and due to the curvature effect that causes your head to move slightly father than your feet do). Magnets will disrupt that slight field.
Is it a tiny effect? Sure. Does that tiny effect have an impact? I have no idea - I do not have the equipment necessary to tackle that kind of experiment. Can we ignore it? Well, doesn't humankind have a history of ignoring "tiny effects" as "negligable" and finding out several hundred years later than those "tiny effects" are really important? Oops, I would have to answer, "yes" again.
And with this one, he nicely cripples his own argument. There have been too many conflicting scientific studies in the medical profession; too many times the "answer" one month has become the "laughing stock" of the next.
Well, as a result, I accept that today's "alternative" medicine can, in fact, become tomorrow's "accepted practice". ALl you have to do is look back at the political cartoons that were drawn around the time that cowpox was shown to prevent smallpox - it was completely against the medical practices of the day to intentionally infect someone with a disease. Yet, as a result of someone's brazen foray into an "alternative", that disease is basically wiped out.
Hmmm. I may think that 90% of alternative medicines these days are bunk, but that leaves the others.
-------
So, here I am at the end of my rant, and I have answered a kind of a "yes" to each one of his points. I guess that I just believe in weird things.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
I can only tell you what I've personally experienced. I and members of my family have occasional precognative dreams. I used to get them about once a month or so when I was a kid and a teenager. They never predicted anything important nor did the future event last for more than 10 seconds. Curiously, I never say or do anything significant in these events -- I'm always playing a passive role, mostly because of the disturbing realization that I've seen these events before in a dream.
A precognative dream feels like having deja vu in reverse. I have a dream, I know at the time that it's a precognative dream, and I wake up in the middle of it feeling strange. It's like you're feeling the same emotion that you will feel when the event plays out in front of your eyes later. After I wake up, I forget about it like all other dreams minutes moments aftewards. (No, I've never successfully been able to keep a dream journal. My dreams fade too quickly.)
Later, some event happens and through the entire event, I realize that I dreamed about it before, and I'm powerless to interfere or do anything different from the dream until the scene has finished playing out.
In my first precognative dream, I was a terrified kindergardener being slammed up against the fence of my school playground by a first grader. This didn't make any sense to me, I remember, because first graders were allowed on the playground at the same time as us to prevent us from being bullied by larger kids. Three days later, they let out some first graders on the playground early or kept us out later, and I ended up accidentally running into one of them while playing. When he got up and I recognized him and the color of his Izod shirt, the dream came back to me, and I was too stunned to do anything to stop being shoved up against the fence a second or two later.
This is one of the few childhood memories from that time period that is still burned on my memory. I remember the emotions involved distinctly and that I asked my mother about such dreams for the first time later that day. It's also one of the few memories where I can remember how small I was as a child instead having to think about it relative to the items around me in the memory. I even remember the little alligator logo on his shirt.
The most recent dream event that I can remember was at a TGI Fridays two years ago. In the dream, I didn't recognize where I was, but I distinctly remembered the red and white checkered table and the plant behind one of my friends. I remember waking up and being puzzled because in the dream, I was dining with two groups of friends that I figured would never meet each other. 2-3 months later, I've forgotten about the dream, and we're all at the restraunt when the conversation from the dream takes place. I was literally biting at the bullet to say something about it, but I couldn't actually interrupt the conversation to say anything until the scene had finished playing out.
I guess nothing I say will convince anyone otherwise, though. Precognative dreaming is something that has to be experienced to be understood. I don't really care if you do call it an "uncritical anecdote." I've been there. I've experienced it. I can tell you however, that when a precognative dream happens, you learn to know it for what it is. I never remember waking up from a dream that never happened, and I don't remember precognative dreams happening until I've cleared the last one. Maybe that's why I haven't had one in a couple of years. Maybe the event hasn't played out yet.
There is no vagueness whatsoever for me in these "premonitions." The events are crystal clear at the time of the dream, for those foggy moments after waking up, and for the duration of the event. This is unusual for me, because I'm not a very visual thinker generally and I tend to rely on intuition more than concrete imagery for memories.
I'm not the only one in my family to experience this. On both my mother's and father's side, I have a few relatives who know exactly what I was talking about when I described it to them. Some of us believe not because of the anecdotes of others but because we've been there.
Not that I'll ask you to do the same on just my "uncritical anecdote," though... <g>
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
SciAm used to be a pretty good collection of science /. article is consistent with my gestalt of
reportage and mathematical/mathemagical entertainment
for the intelligent layman. I haven't read the rag
since it became a political tool, but the vibe of
this
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. It is not
science. It is not even secular. It is just as
much of an atheistic religion (and just as
counter-factual and deluded) as orthodox Marxism.
SciAm is now a vehicle for hoovering the wallets
of those pathetic co-religionists who need a
crutch to prop-up their rapidly decaying world-view.
It still manages to publish some ripping good
science articles, 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.
But then libraries really ought to be obsolete
now, eh? So too SciAm, which has outlived its
usefulness and credibility by becoming a political
organ.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Best answer I've seen on this topic in a long long time.
Bitter and proud of it.
I've been on /. a loooong time, and this *always* happens to me.
/. in the morning, there'll be a story about it.
I'll be thinking about some sort of technology thing, or I'll make a note to myself to look something up on the web, and sure enough whenever I get to
Freaky!
But I've just learned to live with it now. It's no big deal.
(And no, I can't think of any examples right now to back this up. That's also weird. But really, it does happen!)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
This is oversimplified to the point of being utter rubbish. Everyone learns partly by rote, partly by integrating learned facts into explanatory theories. Sure there is variation, and there are a few extreme individuals on that curve for some selected tasks. But all this metaphor (I won't deign to call it a theory) is, is a geeky way to 'prove' that I am 'better' than you.
That's my map of it, anyway. I don't need to know the details, as I've already evaluated it to being worthless.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog