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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!
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
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
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
t.
> 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
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.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade