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Magical Thinking Is Good For You
Hugh Pickens writes "Natalie Wolchover says even the most die-hard skeptics among us believe in magic. Humans can't help it: though we try to be logical, irrational beliefs — many of which we aren't even conscious of — are hardwired in our psyches. 'The unavoidable habits of mind that make us think luck and supernatural forces are real, that objects and symbols have power, and that humans have souls and destinies are part of what has made our species so evolutionarily successful,' writes Wolchover. 'Believing in magic is good for us.' For example, what do religion, anthropomorphism, mysticism and the widespread notion that each of us has a destiny to fulfill have in common? According to research by Matthew Hutson, underlying all these forms of magical thinking is the innate sense that everything happens for a reason. And that stems from paranoia, which is a safety mechanism that protects us. 'We have a bias to see events as intentional, and to see objects as intentionally designed,' says Hutson. 'If we don't see any biological agent, like a person or animal, then we might assume that there's some sort of invisible agent: God or the universe in general with a mind of its own.' According to anthropologists, the reason we have a bias to assume things are intentional is that typically it's safer to spot another agent in your environment than to miss another agent. 'It's better to mistake a boulder for a bear than a bear for a boulder,' says Stewart Guthrie. In a recent Gallup poll, three in four Americans admitted to believing in at least one paranormal phenomenon. 'But even for those few of us who claim to be complete skeptics, belief quietly sneaks in. Maybe you feel anxious on Friday the 13th. Maybe the idea of a heart transplant from a convicted killer weirds you out. ... If so, on some level you believe in magic.'"
But even for those few of us who claim to be complete skeptics, belief quietly sneaks in.
Nope. Not a bit of it. In my experience, only believers believe that everyone else must secretly be a believer. The rest of us live a fact-based life.
Just because it's adaptive doesn't mean that it is correct.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I believe that sufficiently advanced technology exists that will manifest itself on time to help me. So, I'm, like, totally rational.
Your magical thinking doesnt match the magical thinking of the majority at the time... Then you're an evil satanist and the root of all evil and must be stopped by any means necessary.
Personally i like reality and fact instead. Much more reliable and not likely to change massively depending on what arguement i'm having.
I disagree with that claim, but it certainly is real hard to keep your brain in rational mode.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
IT says the people have a natural predisposition toward accepting the unknown and putting it into a little box, and confusing Correlation with causality.
But you can develop skills to ward against it
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
>hardwired in our psyches
No
People also prefer people like themselves. Unchecked this can turn into an unrecognized racism, a common bias. Bolstered it can become the ideological racism most people abhor.
Thus speaketh Matthew Hutson:
And in nearly every country around the world, the percentage of self-described atheists is only in the single digits.
Which is bullshit. And lies.
And to top that off, he is using the current date (at the time) to peddle this nonsense and his book through the "article" above.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The poor students in Tennesse who had dreams of becoming biologists or much worse women in Afghanistan.
Just 50 years ago it was a very different place before the fundies from the middle east moved in and brainwashed and changed the culture.
http://saveie6.com/
A day doesn't pass on this site without some asshole presenting a debunked, discredited and obsolete idea (hardware virtualization, non-network-transparent graphics environment, free market, now religion and superstition) as something new and useful, without even presenting an evidence that he is familiar with the reason why it is considered debunked, discredited and obsolete. Leave alone, making an argument against those reasons.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The arrogance of this line of thinking always gets me. "I believe in things I have inadequate or no evidence for, so everyone else must too!"
It doesn't work like that, at least not for me. I got married on Friday the 13th and it didn't bother me a bit (and it went off perfectly), and while I do have some objects I like for no other reason than the memories they call to mind, I certainly do not think they are "lucky" or have any especial significance other than to me. Nor do I have any other beliefs based upon anything other than sufficient evidence to support them.
Not all of us are superstitious, just because far too many are.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
The article breif is bias in presentation. Science has a healthy skepticism about it, but also an arrogant pompusness. We must remember that we are searching, always, for the truth -- not just our idealized version of the truth. Maybe these things are true, but we are refusing to accept them in the scientific community because we have not yet figured out how to quanitfy them. Measuring something usually proves it exists, but being unable to measure it does not exclude it.
I would posit: no. Consider, today it is considered magic to say a killer's heart transplanted into your body will cause ill effects. However, this will not always be strictly magical thinking, along with most anything you can think of as magic. It would take me a much longer post to explain, but if you assume nanobots and Artificial intelligence are possible, then an entity with these technologies could actually apply an ill effect to your life because you have a killer's heart transplanted into your chest.
But you would know if someone developed this technology right? Not necessary, of course there is the possibility of an ET applying it to our environment in a stealth fashion, along with humans developing it before you were born then simulating an 'ancient' planet like today's earth and applying such 'magical' constructs as the aforementioned ill effected killer's heart.
Since you can not physically rule out such things (though you can say it's highly unlikely anything would be that childish with such advanced technology) you have to accept that such magic may actually be a physical property of your reality.
And to top it off, there's no sensible way to approach this, the simulators/ET/whatever with AI/nanobots may give you good luck for being smart enough to say there's nothing wrong with a killer's heart, or they may say the complete opposite and say you should know better since so many average people think it's a bad idea. Statistically it might even out, but realistically you wouldn't be able to rely on statistics. Kind of mindfucking isn't it?
"...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
Congratulations, you've taken the first breath into a new way of
viewing life.
You are an immortal spirit, tuned into this physical body.
Luminous beings we are, only containing ourselves in this
crude, dense matter. Countless people through the ages have
experienced out-of-body, or astral travel. Many do so
through frightening near-death experiences that scar them;
they have no wish to experiment with that state. Some have
learned how to invoke this state spontaneously, or through the
twilight of sleep.
Try this experiment: Lay down in a cool, quiet, dark room.. or
whatever enviornment in which you can relax. Think about
your toes, focus your thoughts and do not allow them to wander,
just focus on your toes, or a toe. Keep the image firmly fixed in
your mind. A state of extreme relaxation or meditation makes this
process much easier. Now, slowly move your thoughts to another
area of your body; a finger, perhaps, or an arm. Try and expand
your thoughts to contain parts of your body or your entire body.
Now attempt to move or expand your thoughts to something or
some place else. Are your thoughts contained in your body, or do
they reach outwards? You can meditate on a place, or person, or
memory, or anything. These are the first steps to the understanding
and enlightenment bespoken of many sources, from venerable
monks to native shamans and priests of all cultures. All life is energy
and vibration, all perception and thought are frequency. Dreams exist
outside your body, but you do not remember them, or the spirit before
your birth - your memories are artificially 'destroyed'.
But nothing, nobody, truly dies.
Anything and everything exists to touch, taste, see, the poles of
which are two things we define as emotion - Love and Fear. All else
slides between: Time, Space, and the Self. Everyone can do this,
even from within our bodies of flesh.
Welcome, brother, sister, in the name of light and love. You and your
belief has been given a great gift that is and always was yours,
it is only up to you to reach out and embrace it.
The link to "Hugh Pickens" leads to a page written by Hugh Pickens that pushes EW Marland as an oil industry pioneer. Regardless of your politics, the link is irrelevant to the article content.
That doesn't mean they are good for us.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
While it is true that people are hard-wired to see agency in almost anything, it is a giant leap to then claim "magical thinking is good for you". A bit of caution when in a new situation is a good thing. To believe, fervently, fairly tales and then base your actions and morals on those fairy tales often leads to bad things. We now know enough about how the universe really works that we can discard the fairy tales of ancient history. We now have GOOD reasons to believe what we believe. We now have good reasons for our morality. A person that needs a rational reason to act is very unlikely to want to kill their neighbours for wearing the wrong clothes which is exactly the sort of thing "magical thinking" leads to.
Anarchists never rule
You may be confusing belief in imaginary nonsense with the figure of speech known as apostrophe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe_(figure_of_speech)
Can't recall ever thinking that an inanimate bottle cap is somehow venting some sort of rage against me by magically altering its physical properties such as hardness and tensile strength just so lucky ol' me has a hard time removing it from the bottle to which it is affixed. Can't say I've ever understood this primitive "instinct" that inorganic material objects somehow develop personalities and violate the fundamental laws of physics just to vex me of all beings. I call BS.
Want a great example of magical thinking being nearly universal? Go to the first 5 people you see and ask them what their suggestion on a cure for hiccups is. You will get 5 different answers with absolutely no reasoning propping them up. They usually come in pairs, too: hold your breath vs. breath deeply. Sip water vs. drink it rapidly, etc. Nobody can explain why their method of choice works (most of them don't), but they believe them nonetheless.
I daresay you haven't had much practice.... Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
What the fuck is this bullshit? Fuck you Hugh Pickens - if that's even your real name.
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=9344 Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills
Professor Novella does a very good job of explaining *why* humans are hardwired to believe.
I'm not sure if this qualifies, but some of the consequences of quantum mechanics are pretty much just "magic" if you think about them at the classical level.
Take quantum-entanglement for example, If you "observe" something, a non-newtonian, special-relativity violating consequence occurs somewhere else? But even if it does, it somehow can't violate causality? So if you believe all this stuff happens at the quantum level, but not at the classical level, are you a believer in magic? Especially if (like most of us) you, haven't actually performed any experiments, nor the experimental error of historical experiments, and don't fully understand the mathematics, and are merely trusting of a written account from someone you don't know and probably will never meet?
Of course some may just chalk this up to advanced technology appearing to be magic, but most folks don't currently have any real-world experience with this entangling stuff in technological devices (unlike the equally strange QM-tunnelling effect which many folks depend on daily in flash memory devices embedded in smartphones and ipods). So it seems to me just really a belief in QM-entanglement, not an actual concession about advanced tech like QM-tunnelling. Does that imply a belief in magic (or just simply putting faith in integrity of scientific publishing)?
Perhaps it takes a bit of a belief in magic at some level for a lay-person to really understand some apparent consequences of QM. Or perhaps we just concede like Richard Feynman conceded "that nobody [today] understands quantum mechanics.", but "maybe someday, that after all, it isn't as horrible as it looks"...
I think those who are smarter can imagine more magical things
Forgive me for posting anonymously. I have some comments I'd like to make, but for practical reasons I'd rather not attach my name.
I am a graduate-level student who has been a life-long agnostic, pretty close to an atheist. Last year, I began hanging out with a Christian religious group. At first it was for the free food (which is excellent, much better in quality and quantity than any other organization on campus I've tried. Apparently they get funding from Christian donors), but over time I've come to enjoy the companionship and philosophical discussions -- I just have to sit through the occasional anti-abortion presentation and such. I make no effort to hide my religious stance, and to them, I have become something of the "token disbeliever" in the group.
To me, religion is irrational, verging on madness. But what I have come to realize is that their "madness" is stronger than our rationality. Compared to their peers, they are more likely to form relationships and to marry -- it's how eHarmony manages such high levels of marriage out of their dating arrangements (try signing up for their service and identify yourself as an agnostic or atheist, and see how far you get through the vetting process). Their strong bonds allow them to coordinate effectively and gather/distribute resources (like the donor network that funds their free food), allowing them to host events and bring in speakers at a much more often than that of other student organizations, including some really big-shot speakers on non-religious topics that have drawn quite a few listeners from outside their group. They network very effectively, forming relationships with Christians they bring on-campus, including some rather highly accomplished individuals (think CEO-level) who serve as mentors.
It would offend them for me to say that Religion was invented (or worse, to say it memetically evolved), but increasingly I can see the benefits for why it would have been so. I still can't force myself to Believe, but at this point, I am seriously considering converting sheer practical benefits (hence why I'm posting anonymously).
It's completely true if you define everything as magical thinking. Emotions? Magical thinking. Figures of speech? Magical thinking. Jokes? Magical thinking. Not believing you're trapped in the Matrix? Magical thinking! See? It's true!
With the aid of an Electric Monk, I'll believe it.
Some of them link to other statistics, like this one.
And I'm not about to recreate the entire Wikipedia here.
Besides, I can only give the links to you, can't make you click on them or read the text there.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
with huge holes in the thought train...
No Wonder the West has repeatedly killed its magical people...
the sociologist James Henslin reported that gamblers will often throw dice harder when they want a high number," Hutson writes in his book, "as if the amount of force translates into the quantity of dots showing on a die." And that's logically equivalent to throwing darts at a picture of your nemesis, or sticking pins in a doll.
The reason I don't gamble for money especially in casinos is that the casinos are there to take my money and unless I am very good at working out the odds I will loose my money.
It doesn't seem logical for me to do this.
So using people who, by my reasoning, don't think logically as an example of how we all don't think logically doesn't really seem, well, logical.
There's great deal of evidence that our mind generates causal explanations for almost anything and that the slower rational mind is very bad at filtering these out. Read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow or watch his Google Tech Talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVQJdIrDJ0&context=C476fca8ADvjVQa1PpcFO5Md3nBcGBLbvoCdA7c_n4yXmeOadMOtw=
Bull.
if man is to surmount the insurmountable, there must always be magic to inspire him the world needs magic, magic cannot die. in another point the same wizard says "Imagination is the most potent of all magics." My favorite movie.
Stupid people say stupid things. How is this news?
Like believing that "the rich" are responsible for all the ills of the nation, or that voting for some random Chicago Machine pol is going to fix everything.
Magical Thinking at its finest.
Hope and Change!
I find the daily missive from one Dr. Wallace Breen sums this up nicely:
"Let me remind all citizens of the dangers of magical thinking.
We have scarcely begun to climb from the dark pit of our species' evolution. Let us not slide backward into oblivion, just as we have finally begun to see the light. "
Dr. Wallace Breen.
"Maybe the idea of a heart transplant from a convicted killer weirds you out. ... If so, on some level you believe in magic."
Either that or I believe that the death penalty will over time be seen as a source of harvestable organs.
Well, here's the puzzle I face...
Its my senses...and what mathematical and physics I take to be true.
I observe the complexity of biochemistry. The physics of life astounds me..
A reading of "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael Behe cemented my beliefs. Francis Collins' "The Language of God: a Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief" gave me what I consider undeniable evidence for belief in a creation - and a creator ( God ).
The "Big Bang Theory" reeks of "let there be light" to me. My knowledge of thermodynamics - especially the concept of entropy - tells me the Universe, left to its own, should run down.
In short, everything I see seems to demand a creator.
Whatever this is... its big... and nothing like me - I have way too many constraints and way too little intelligence - I can barely scrape up enough stuff to even have a belief, much less explain just how this stuff around me came to be.
Now, here's the rub... I have taken much flak for this.
The most compelling evidence I have, by far, that God is nothing more than a figment of the imagination.. superstition.. a "palm reader" for the gullible. A moneymaking plan.... comes from people who profess to know God!
As a scientist type, insanely curious, it drives me up the wall to see the wonders I do, then communicate to what I consider superstitious palm reader types whose prime function seems to be erecting toll booths on the "highway to heaven" to collect tithes. They get to rocking back and forth in the pulpit, one hand wagging in the air like some Hitler scene, and the other gripping the microphone so he can just about swallow the thing - and that forced pious look on their faces,. and I am supposed to take them seriously?
This is worshipping God? It looks more like a bunko scheme to me. They get a bunch of people worked up in a fervent frenzy reminiscent of a pyramid meeting, then pass the plate. If they could not hide behind "freedom of religion", I am sure they would all be facing bunko charges of defrauding the public like a bunch of gypsy fortunetellers.
Their favorite chant seems to center on whether I place my belief in science or God. I tell them there is no difference. God is Truth, and the whole purpose of science is to reveal/discover that which is true.
My tagline for years has displayed my belief. Its THEM I have little confidence in.
Maybe I worship the God of truth through study of his work ( scientifically ) and they worship Him by throwing parties in his name at someone else's expense,
I am one confused puppy.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
It's magical imagination that allows us to have healthy fears and paranoia. "Magical thinking" is when your imagination takes over and completely derails your ability to think rationally. That's not good for you or anyone around you.
Unfortunately the human mind hasn't evolved in a way that makes it intuitively able to handle maths and a strict naturalistic approach to problem solving. It takes a lot of work and education to make that mode of thinking automatic. It doesn't help that we are constantly exposed to magical thinking from birth; it greatly confuses the issue.
Magical thinking is simply error and a way of avoiding the hard work needed to solve problems using more sound approaches.
You know what--I realized magical thinking really can help people. No, I'm not talking about the contents of the article, but the headline made me think of the often-dismissed placebo. A person takes something with absolutely no medicinal value and his condition actually improves simply because he thinks it should! Just by thinking a certain way, someone can improve his health, and not solely within the limits of feeling less pain.
All the time, I hear 'oh, it's only the placebo effect', but have people considered how incredible that effect really is? Personally, I have to say, if there's anything that might make me consider that there is such a thing as 'magic' in the world, the placebo effect just might be it.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Technically, you probably should worry about getting a heart from a serial killer.
It has been proven that emotions can damage your body, including organs, and there has been shown to be some hints about anger and heart disease.
Hmm. What's that about magical thinking, now?
It's better to mistake a boulder for a bear than a bear for a boulder
This is true if you are out walking in the woods. Its a matter of survival and something we have inherited from our ancestors. But it doesn't help if you are trying to do research on bears (or boulders). We can understand these built-in biases without having to believe them. Much as we understand optical illusions and don't go running towards that shimmering pool in the middle of the Sahara. Our perceptions are the product of millions of years of (imperfect) evolution in one environment. Only in the past few thousand years*, we have switched environments and we can't expect to unlearn that stuff so rapidly.
*Or maybe only hundreds. It wasn't that long ago that people still had to worry about being eaten by bears on a daily basis. Now its only on the weekends.
Have gnu, will travel.
Call it the placebo effect if you want, but if something influences the way you act and feel, it's as real as it needs to be.
Sometimes I run defrag and delete my temp folders when weird issues show up. It seems to work enough times that I keep doing it. I can't tell if that's a fact-based decision or just superstition.
This was supposed to be a non-fat soy latte, no foam, 160 degrees. But that's OK, don't worry about it, I'm just letting you know for next time. I know all those knobs and levers and pressure gauges can be tricky, with all of the different beans you guys sell. No, really, I don't need to speak with your manager, it's nothing. Seriously, don't worry about it. I'm not actually allergic to dairy, I just like the consistency of the soy milk better.
I can never know, and NEITHER WILL YOU.
I love Harry Potter to a breaking point. The magic described, elaborate plots and characters make for a fantastic read (and movie-watching). If Hogsmeade was real, I'd be there everyday, sticking my head in a cotton candy machine at Honeyduke's, slurping butterbeer and buying magical-pranks from Zonko's.
But here's the kicker: it's NOT real. I'm not expecting a letter from Hogwarts, or magical candy. I'll never be able to clean my house with a mere wand-wave. And I won't have to deal with Voldemort, either. Kind of a fair trade.
I used to have unrealistic fears involving everything from bogeymen and supernatural beings. I'd have constant nightmares, ones that would ruin my entire day after waking up. That was when I was religious. When I began questioning religion, I started thinking logically instead of being irrationally afraid of nothing. One important realization/turning-point was when I sifted through too many pictures, vids and documents related to JFK's death, which included autopsy pics. Late in the night when my mind went into overdrive thinking of zombified former presidents, I stopped everything and thought, "It's more likely that Arnold Schwarzenegger will bust in and make a political speech in my bedroom than Kennedy's corpse wandering in."
So no, there's no magic in my life. Pretending, imagination? Always. Delusion? Nope, and I'm better for it.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
Often what poses as causes, facts, etc. are themselves primitive inferences of agency. This is due to the importance of choice/agency/control in the world as filtered through our perceptions. However, there is little basis to believe that such analogies are fundamental at the level this article pretends to be an authority. If we're talking about simple causes, fine. But usually some much larger scope is implicit in these claims. My favorite pet example to expose the pontificating neo-carl-sagonists is entanglement. It is the pinnacle of scientific achievement & nearly purely magical by definition. That is, assuming one somehow manages to penetrate the formalism designed to defend it from inquiry. Any attempt amongst the peasants to explain entanglement through polite, socially acceptable causal means is superluminously chided from the ranks with a lesson in relativity, the definition of information, & general derision. Houston we've got a problem.
Until this well worn & thoroughly documented example--going on a hundred years old--is addressed squarely, I see little point in throwing nuts to the science & religious squirrels running circles around the inherent righteousness of cause over magic in more squishy realms of inquiry.
I had a - what probably counts as - preliminary hearing, in a custody battle this morning, Friday 13th. And my daugther didn't loose. Her mother did, though - all of the mother's claims were dismissed, while all of mine were accepted. I just read through my statement (which, BTW, I wrote myself, my laywer just pointed out the important differences between my and my dautgher's mother's statements) to the court, and I (still) conclude the same thing - chance, good luck, or faith, doesn't make a difference. Good preparation does.
I think it is important to better define magic- is magic something which inherently is imposible to explain, or something we just cant explain? I hate to be an armchair philosophy troll, but if your anything but a nihilist you believe in magic.
But belief exists everywhere, most people believe in science now even if the majority doesn't know how science works. We are so specialized in our individual fields that we have to believe that the other fields arre doing their part properly.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
believe it!
Didn't "magic" help bring on the Dark Age? How did that help mankind?
Um, m-f's are not women, they are guys, as in really bad-a$$ed dudes. I mean, a seriously morally depraved dude could have carnal knowledge with his mom, but why would a chick do that, or if she did, what would it mean. The ornery m-f's are the dice, not the casino babes. The dude talks to the dice, man.
Pretty much anyone who buys a lottery ticket or cheers for their team while watching TV is trying to use magic.
two criteria:
a) It's based on interpretations of "empirical" sense data (and the interpretations, as well as which data to use, are based on their present context), and
b) It's a non-trivially complex system, and more or less adheres to an internally-consistent set of principles and rules.
The main difference between theism and science (to generalize this somewhat) with respect to point a) is the nature of the "sense data." Theism's has a flaw—it is not inherently replicable, something the diversity of religions (and the existence of atheism) is a testament to. In contrast, science's is replicable; the results of all properly done studies are theoretically capable of being reproduced. I assume, of course, that we are discarding solipsistic and brain-in-a-vat-type viewpoints. It follows, then, that science is a "belief system" of a different sort—it is based on many individuals' "sense data."
Note that many clinically insane patients adhere to belief systems that meet the above criteria. It makes total sense to them, but since their beliefs are not aligned with the beliefs of the majority, society is quick to dismiss them.
As you have correctly pointed out, many cases of insanity are caused by the sufferer experiencing a different reality. This is exacerbated by the fact that we are incredibly inclined to trust our senses, even when it might be irrational to do so. This being the case, consider the following scenario. Consider an individual, arbitrarily male, whom it befalls to contract a mental disorder—in particular, let the result be vivid hallucinations, which he, on account of their nature, perceives to be as real as his former reality. Let the man have previously possessed rationality and have lived long enough to be aware of the nature of such disorders. Suppose, then, that the man is able to overcome the severe pressure of his disturbed senses and reasonably consider the possibility that the changes in the landscape of the world around him are the result of his contraction of the disorder. As many characters around him are undoubtedly pointing out that he is losing his grip on reality, that should reaffirm his suspicions, allowing him to resist accepting his hallucinations as reality.
In this scenario, the most improbable part is the man's denial of his own senses. However, if he is capable, it seems that he, and thus all who would really consider the possibility of their own illness, should be able to prevent his insanity.
With that point made, it is worth nothing that he denies his senses on account of his (prior) senses. How, then, would he be able to come to the correct conclusion if he was originally born in the Matrix and was taken to the real world? It seems reasonable that some evidence would be able to be offered to him to illustrate the fact. However, we can equally well imagine that a sufferer of hallucinations believes he has been taken out of the Matrix and shown evidence demonstrating his normal existence in the Matrix. The way out of this most apparent to me is that the proffered evidence be knowledge of what he could not possibly otherwise know, as confirmed by individuals he is fairly certain are not just products of his possibly deranged mind.
In conclusion, then, it seems that a rational individual should be able to select which of several different realities his mind presents him with is most likely the true reality through reason, granting that he can doubt his senses. Specifically, rational hallucinating individuals should be able to realize their condition and avoid insanity.
To reconnect this with the quotation, I believe this lumps your example of insane individuals in with theism, as someone who is insane is, unlike with science, basing his view of reality mainly on his own "sense data." Thus, I maintain that science is, to repeat, a "belief system" of a different sort.
TL;DR: Science is not really a belief system, at least not in the sense that theism is.
Utter drivel. I've stopped reading the summary at that point. The author clearly doesn't understand evolution at all. Humans aren't evolutionarily successful. We have been around a very short time compared with other species, and the jury is definitely still out. Moreover, the idea that some habits of human minds (of which it isn't even clear if they originate naturally or merely socially) can be identified as success factors is ridiculous. What other species are we comparing with? None, that's what.
"Oh look, we are more evolutionarily successful than dolphins, because we believe in magic while dolphins... er... don't. No, wait. We're more successful than ants, because our brains and everything's the same but... uhm... we believe in the supernatural. Would you believe a comparison with pigs?..."
It's pure mental wankery to pat ourselves on the shoulder and claim we're Nature's best and brightest, and by golly it's all because we're the Chosen People!
I really do not care about friday the 13th or serial-killers organs but actually our most common beliefs are not usually irrational or have anything to do with religion. In fact they are very reasonable and part of our normal functioning, let me give you two examples.
For example, when you go to mall for shopping or out at night, you have a belief that you will get back home alive. Otherwise it's like going for a suicide mission. Life would be very hard without this healthy belief.
When you are choosing a product, your lunch in a restaurant for example, you don't sample and review each meal but choose the meal according to your beliefs. Even if you know it was good last time, it doesn't actually mean it always is so it's a belief.
Before one would procede to discuss such vague terms, one might hope that the discussion would include a definition of those terms, in the context of the discussion. Failing that, one might dismiss it as a lot of interpretive imgaination.
This discribes perfectly the likes of SONY, TEPCO, KANSI-E, OLYMPUS, the Japan Governnment, South Korea Government and North Korea Government.
Each thinks itself the land of Oz and the head of each thinks himself the Wizard of Oz.
People like these should have never been born to plague the living.
Some time soon some will just nuke them all and be done with them.
LoL
Many of us do not care about friday the 13th or serial-killers organs but as a matter of fact, our most common beliefs are not usually irrational or have nothing to do with magic or religion. In fact they are very reasonable and part of our normal functioning, let me give you two examples. For example, when you go to mall for shopping or out at night, you have a belief that you will get back home alive. Otherwise it's like going for a suicide mission. Life would be very hard without this healthy belief. When you are choosing a product, your lunch in a restaurant for example, you don't sample and review each meal but choose the meal according to your beliefs. Even if you know it was good last time, it doesn't actually mean it always is so it's a belief. So is a magical belief really more useful than non-magical? Not necessarily - only if it still serves some beneficial purpose for the believer.
... are the same one who never experience any "Magical Moment" in their lives
I'll only say this --- I feel sad for them
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Is it not the rejection of a "magical" explanation that leads to the greatest realizations?
Magical explanations are a statement of a problem - one builds on known factual statements to eventually eliminate the magical one, and thus new known factual statements are born.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
Sure, I believe in a God that both created human beings with free will and the ability to use science and other tools to better our lives, and also sent his only begotten son to die for our sins so that even the worst among us may ask forgiveness and enter into the kingdom of Heaven. Do I know what Heaven is? No. Do I think I have the right to tell you what to believe or do (as long as it isn't messing with my life)? No. So obviously I have some sorts of "magical" beliefs in my life, or I wouldn't bother praying or reading my Bible. And I've studied almost every major religion before having a serious spiritual experience (one that saved my life and completely changed the way I view the world - literally saved my life, not just "saved me from myself" or whatever...I was looking at spending the next 40-50 years in prison for something that I did do, but was taken completely out of context [it was self-defense, but race and all kinds of other bullshit was thrown into it and the DA wanted to nail my ass to the wall]).
On the other hand, I have nights like tonight, where no amount of prayer or whatever can lift my spirits or do much more than keeping me from going completely off the deep end. I just got turned down for a job that I had invested a lot of time and effort into pursuing (including a nightmarish trip across the U.S. on a shitty airline that made my life hell by completely screwing up every flight, changeover, and whatnot - and then making me pay for a hotel stay overnight, and having to find another way home from Philly because they overbooked a flight and then left me and about a dozen people stranded), my on-and-off girlfriend (who just got out of prison for a drug charge) pulled another disappearing act despite knowing that tonight is about the worst time she can just wander off to get high for a few hours and then expect me to come pick her up, and a variety of other things have my spirits so low that the only thing that's keeping me from doing something that would ultimately lead to my death (as well as quite a few other peoples') is the fact that I don't want to give any satisfaction to all those fucks in high school or my asshole family who all said that I would never amount to anything and be a complete failure. I know it has to get better as some point, since it can't really get any worse (or not by much), but the struggle to keep going is hellish right now.
So I live in a world with magical characteristics but a very realistic set of beliefs and consequences. And I'm venting. Feel free to ignore this bit of bullshit.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
There's a utilitarian argument for not being a complete deconstructional existential nihilist.
Perhaps there are better cultural memes available but getting rid of culture (which is entirely synthetic) isn't an advisable position.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It is natural therefore it is good is the naturalistic fallacy.
Saying something is unavoidable and immoral is a contradiction. That which is outside the province of choice is in the province of morality.
Rationality is not automatic. You need to will it. Rationality is not necessary. The default state of the mind is fatalistic. But the default is not the good in this case, because reason is our tool for survival. We must use reason if we must survive.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
Correction: Magical Thinking WAS Good For You In A Prehistoric Age, Today It's A Maladaptive Anachronism
Oops. The paragraph starting "With that point made" should read "it is worth noting", not "it is worth nothing".
I'm on board with the spirit of your comment, but I can't help but pick nits anyway. In a way I want to sharpen the argument you're trying to make, but I guess it can also serve as a caricature of the purely rational.
Anyone who uses the sentence "It is raining.", when asked about the weather is accepting the existence of some nebulous magical "it" that creates the rain. If somebody was really, consistently avoiding all magical thinking acts, they would carefully correct themselves and say "There is rain." instead.
A lot of the figures of speech used as examples in the comments here can fairly be considered "magical thinking", but I think this one misses the mark. "It" is always shorthand; in this case "it" is shorthand for "the weather", which in turn is shorthand for "the observable climactic events in my vicinity" (or the vicinity being discussed). "There is rain" plainly doesn't mean the same thing—it just means "rain exists". Or, since we're going to absurd lengths in analyzing figures of speech, "rain is there", wherever "there" is. And this sort of absurdity can recurse through each rephrasing as all language is abstraction.
On learning that the days of the week or months are named after supernatural beings, they would consistantly attempt to correct that fact.
I'm not sure why this would be the case. Weeks are entirely arbitrary in the first place, and apart from their social utility there's no rational basis for having them or naming their days at all. Given their utility, I suppose "oneday" and "twoday" and so on might be more appropriate in a vacuum, but I doubt anyone considers the original meaning of the weekdays' names, in which case any naming scheme would be arbitrary; I'd argue that rationality would favor familiarity over a renaming with no benefit. And a purely rational redesign of the week might tend toward a ten-day week (to align with our most familiar number system), but the social harm that might do is probably not rational either.
Months are similarly arbitrary. Their basis in the lunar cycle has been undermined by aligning them to an unrelated solar cycle, and ultimately their only purpose is also social utility. And again I doubt anyone considers their names' meaning in regular use. And again it's conceivable that we could implement a lunar month system with a numbered naming scheme, but again I think it would cause social harm (especially as it encourages cognitive dissonance when squaring it with the solar year; in which season is Oneuary this year?) and again undermine its own rationality.
You keep using that word. i don't think it means what you think it means.
Seriously, people keep using irrational as though rationality does not allow presuppositions like the existence of God. If fact, it requires presuppositions. Mathematics, and therefore logic, is based on certain presuppositions; which, by definition, are unprovable. What you really mean is unempirical or some such. We rationalists would likely take you much more seriously if you sounded less like Vizzini in The Princess Bride and more like someone who actually uses words correctly.
Or maybe not. That is fucking stupid.
Appeal to nature and evolutionary psychology. We're not cavemen. Just because cavemen had to mistake boulders for bears in order to survive doesn't mean we have to. It's not a situation we commonly find ourselves in. Instead, we are surrounded by people and technology that is out of sight, and grow up experiencing electromagnetic transmission of information; through wires or waves. We grow up knowing that humans communicate by language, and can communicate effectively instantly all over the world.
When we don't see a biological agent, we can safely assume that the unseen agent (if it exists) is out of sight or is automated, like the sliding doors at a grocery store.
Real potential agents abound for every observance. Where once it was safer to make up an agent than conclude its absence, it is now safer to look for a real agent than make one up.
Everything that exists is a part of nature, and is therefore by definition natural. However, that does not mean that we can claim to know what is real, and what is not, until we've actually tried to find out.
What I mean is this...
Just because it is politically incorrect to believe in ghosts, surviving dinosaurs, chi, etc... does not mean that they don't exist. But because they are politically incorrect, no serious scientists would ever sully their reputations on even considering researching such things.
That is a shame, because that kind of unscientific thinking (ie. not trying to prove/debunk assumptions) may have us miss out on some really nifty discoveries.
Some examples:
1. St. Elmos Fire was first thought by sailors to be angels harkening the end of long lasting storms. With todays all too common attitue that no serious scientist would consider testing for angels, sailors would probably still be considered superstitious. Luckily that's a relatively easily repeatable fenomenon, so people were able to study it and work out how it happens. (Cause: Electromagnetic.)
2. Some people claim to have heard clicking sounds from Auroras. However, not everyone hears them and recording them has been unsuccessful. So, does that mean that "some" people are just plain wrong? Unlikely, in my opinion, given that there's no benfit to making such claims. (Side note, an uncle of mine once heard it one bitingly cold night when walking.) Alaska Science Forum Explanation of Auroral Sounds (Cause: Unknown)
3. The Third Man Factor is when people in extreme conditions sense/see/interact with a “spirit” who eggs them on to think rationally and survive. In a book by Geiger a hypothesis is proposed: In an accidental discovery a girl had the left side of her skull open, and as doctors prodded a particular spot, she had a feeling of a presence next to her. Geiger’s hypothesis is that in extreme situations the brain might trigger this effect to give itself company in a lonely and stressful time, thus increasing the chance of survival. If so, then perhaps this could used deliberately on travellers to Mars and other hard to reach places. (Cause: Possibly psychosomatic.)
4. Apparitions have apparently been seen all over the world. However, when you look closely, you’ll find that aside from people scaring themselves, there are those who are certain of what they saw (though they won’t tell just anyone for fear of ridicule). All the stories that I’ve come across have certain elements in common. A hypothesis I have is best described as an analogy to magnetic storage: When active, we give off signals that can be recorded into surrounding materials. Later, when we’re passive (ex. at night when we’re no longer heavily distracted by day to tasks) some of us might be sensitive enough to read those recordings enough for the brain to conjure up an image (ie. a hallucination based on what’s recorded in the surroundings). Perhaps some materials are better recording materials than others, which may be partly why some areas are thought to be more “haunted” than others. It would also explain why hauntings can never be recorded, and also why some old places have a certain “feel” to them. If so, then perhaps in a few centuries time, this could possibly be harnessed to create new forms of information storage. (Cause: Unknown)
Do I believe in any of these? To be honest, I’d like to but, but must admit to being agnostic.
However, my point is simply to be more open minded, and critical, at the same time. But simply disbelieving outright is both disrespectful and cl
What I'm hearing is "Paranoia is good for you, and magical thinking is a symptom of paranoia." But then, the magical thinking itself isn't good for you, but a symptom of paranoia. If you can be sufficiently paranoid without having weird beliefs other than the paranoia itself, you should be able to get all the benefits without all the bullshit.
Even this is a stronger statement than the article claims -- it's saying paranoia was *once* good for you. It seems very possible that this whole mechanism of religion, ultimately founded on paraonia, may be a vestigial construct.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Author seems confused about evolutionary history vs. present usefulness.
Most who research these topics are well aware of why the known human shortcomings have developed - namely that they were evolutionary useful under specific circumstances. Our preference of false positives over false negatives is certainly a survival trait if the price of a false positive is a short moment of fear while the price of a false negative is being eaten by a lion.
But that doesn't mean these traits are still of advantage today, in the context of a modern world.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
See, there is what we say, and what we really meant. Language can be flowery and beautiful, and when we say "people always think the grass is greener in other place" we don't *really* mean the garss is a shade of green different, but figuratively meant people think the living is better.
The same way when we fee anger and curse while we can't open a bottle of beer, we do not think the bottle is sentient and refuse us to open, which WOULD be magical thinking (well most people anyway) in reality we curse because we suspect that the machine bottling the bottle botched the job, but since the bottler is not there so that we curse him, we just vent our anger. This is not magical thinking.
Magical thinking on the other hand would be when we TRULY believe that praying to a car to start *HELP* the engine start. Or when we *PRAY* (be it to a god or to a jug of milk, in both case giving the same results). All religion are based on magical thinking. There is no evidence whatsoever a god ever existed.
Ergo, you would lose your bet.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
So called "agnostic" are in reality agnostic atheist. Let me explain. Atheism is the belief there is no god. It is opposed to theism. The middle ground is not agnosticism. Its middle is you don't know whether god exists or not.
Agnosticism on the other hand is about whether it is possible or not to ever know/provide evidence of gods existence. The reality is that the one calling themselves agnostic, are betetr called agnostic atheist (see list below) as they live their live as if no gods existed. Gnosticism is about knowledge , theism is about belief. They are perüandicular.
So you see you can be a :
* gnostic theist (basic believer faithful and think god can be proved formally (kalam argument) or similar)
* agnostic theist (most people, believing but not believing it can be proved)
* gnostic atheist (believe atheism can be demonstrated relatively rare)
* agnostic atheist (atheist thinking that the burden of proof on theist side is not doable).
It's not "Paranoia", or "Irrationality", it's "Magical Thinking".
No, it's NOT good for you. It's a hold over from evolution's response to a different environment. It's not helping in our modern world. Unless of course you really do believe global warming was caused by piracy.
"I think you are thinking of a complete belief in magical thinking, whereas this is talking about the "magical" type of thought that "this car does not like you to use full throttle until its warmed up", or feeling anger at a beer bottle with a top thet "doesn't want to come off". If you stop and reflect of course you know its nonsense, but I bet you sometimes have those thoughts anyway."
Neither of which are relevant to what is being talked about, it doesn't make you a happy fulfilled person to "believe" "this car does not like you to use full throttle until its warmed up"
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I believe in God, Jesus Christ, but that doesn't mean I would then be required to believe my car has feelings. The intro of this article tries to lump the plausible with the implausible. Just think how 'Magical' most of Einstein theories were before people came to understand them. Similarly you would also need read the Bible and study it unto a sufficient level of understanding to even know what it is all about. That said I would agree with the article in that if I didn't know where I was going when I die I would be take every setback in life quite badly.
"Another favorite type of magical thinking is empathy. "
Bullshit, if you think empathy is "magical thinking" then you don't know what it is.
Now to say ALL humans have empathy, THAT would be magical thinking.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh, come on, all you naysayers. Every engineer worth his salt believes in PFM.
The belief that Apple computers are easier to use than their competitors or Gender Studies which is based on the misuse of statistics that women, sorry wimmin, earn 75c for every male $ or the belief that blacks suffered under Apartheid whereas it kept them safe from predatory Africans.
What people forget is that science is a tool, and not a religion or a world view. It's a set of practices for discovering useful models. It says a lot about descriptions and mechanisms. But it never says "why" in an absolute sense. It can say why in a causal sense, but the causal chain is endless. And thus, we know that electro-magnetic radiation exists, and what leadas to its appearance and behaviors, but not WHY or HOW it exists at all. that shit is magic!! Trying to say anything final about our infinitely detailed reality is like trying to pinpoint a discrete object in the mandelbrot set. You can't. At the core, reality is magic, and science is a tool for exploring the world and codifying approximate models of the phenomena we encounter.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
even the most die-hard skeptics among us believe in magic. Humans can't help it
That's not true for me.
For example: I still don't really understand what "spirituality" is. Of course, I can recite the dictionary definition -- but I am unable to really comprehend what it means, or to experience that phenomenon for myself. When someone talks about "magic" or "miracles", my mind instinctively searches for an explanation based on the physical sciences. To me, a "god" is a totally abstract meme that some people seem to nurse with ferocious intensity, yet I have never been able to muster any interest in the concept.
It has occurred to me that I might have a neurological deficit that prevents me from understanding or experiencing such things. Therefore, I don't know if I am a fully-functioning human -- and so I can't say whether my experience can reasonably be extrapolated onto humanity in general.
But even if I do have a neurological deficit, I am still human. And so my condition does, in fact, conclusively disprove the assertions of this writer.
Shameless plug: I've just finished a book on this topic titled 'God, Theology & Cognitive Modules' (search Amazon.com).
I'm doing research in cognitive science, and I have developed a model of the mind based in interacting high-level cognitive modules. Two of these modules appear to function emotionally (there are two amygdalae in the mind, which function as emotional processors). One emotional module associates emotions with experiences (eg. bacon tastes good, country music makes me feel bad, etc.) The other emotional module appears to attach an emotional label to theories (usually verbal) based upon generality--the more general the theory, the greater the emotion. (What motivates the egg-head? Obviously not experiential emotion because he's often socially inept. But, when he grasps how things fit together by coming up with a general theory, then he feels good.)
When these two emotional cognitive modules start interacting, then religious and/or magical thinking emerges. Thus, it appears that one can use a cognitive model to analyze the mental effects which are being discovered by the cognitive science of religion. In simplest terms, a mental concept of God appears to emerge whenever a universal theory applies to personal identity.
This mental effect appears to occur even if the universal theory explicitly states that no God exists. The person holding on to such a theory will say that there is no God while at the same time ascribing attributes to his universal theory which are god-like. For instance, one book on cognitive science and religion which I recently read used the term 'design' almost fifty times to describe the 'work' of evolution (I counted).
Emotions motivate behavior (Why does a person eat bacon? Because it tastes good.) Because a concept of God appears to emerge when two of the primary forms of emotion intersect (universal theory and personal identity), religion has emotional power and can motivate behavior. And, because an image of God emerges when theoretical emotion overlaps with experiential emotion it is easy to confuse one with the other, or to use one to substitute for the other. Think, for instance, of the mystic who feels that he is 'one with the universe', or the worshipper who says 'God is awesome' and then uses experiential fervor to make these words feel universal.
If you wish, think of religion as a computer virus. The tendency is to treat religion the way that Apple treats computer viruses, by pretending that they don't exist and attacking the person who points them out. The average religious believer may be like a script kiddie who cuts and pastes his beliefs, but some interesting cognitive programming is occurring behind the surface.
Interesting. Maybe I should write something from the perspective of a rational magical realist though. I believe in magic, but do not subscribe to this notion of "meaning" or paranoia. Magic and God are simply metaphors for the infinite realities in complexity. Why is this so radical? and why must I choose between pure objective rationalism and theistic fatalism when it comes to super cool magic? The gods are laughing at us!
Friday the 13th, a heart from a killer? No, I can say with certainty I believe in nothing of the sort. I have no beliefs in anything, yet, and this is a big "yet" I am an Agnostic, not an Atheists' rationalist. Atheism is a belief system, an requires to large of a leap of faith. We are products of our evolution, which in an infinite context - is inherently limited. To assume there is nothing greater than us in time an space is supremely naive. Therein lies " Magic"
Is it?!
Conclusions of a logical rational argument are only as good as the foundational assumptions on which they're based. In science and maths circles this isn't a problem, but when one gets beyond, to the rest of life, the fact that, as you dig down, you reach a point where you have to rely on bind faith matters. Also a problem with logic and reason is the unmanageable complexity of arguments that handle reality in its full glory rather than a greatly simplified model (which makes many unprovable and untestable assumptions). Logic and reason have their place, but the way the aggressive secularists and ultra-rationalists want us to believe in them is irrational and illogical: magical thinking just makes more sense when you actually get down to it and think about your thinking.
John_Chalisque
>The main difference between theism and science (to generalize this somewhat) with respect to point a) is the nature of the "sense data." Theism's has a flaw—it is not inherently replicable, something the diversity of religions (and the existence of atheism) is a testament to. In contrast, science's is replicable; the results of all properly done studies are theoretically capable of being reproduced. I assume, of course, that we are discarding solipsistic and brain-in-a-vat-type viewpoints. It follows, then, that science is a "belief system" of a different sort—it is based on many individuals' "sense data."
There is some fascinating data out there that appears to invalidate that interpretation, but the data is not widely known in the U.S.. The Tibetan Buddhist monks are able to create tulpas, or thoughtforms made solid. They can create objects, animals, people, biologically improbable deities from their pantheon and, according to their texts, "the elixir of immortality". Through about three months of seclusion and intense visualization, these things take on solid form and become perceptible to those around them. People and animal tulpas begin showing up unbidden, and acting on their own cognizance. A few westerners such as Alexandra David-Neel have learned to form tulpas themselves.
I hesitate to state that these tulpas have become "real", but they are as real as anything else around us. This makes an interesting case for the whole world being one giant tulpa itself, kept manifested into apparent solidity by the day-to-day beliefs and choices (acts of Will) of the population.
Additionally, David Hawkins has adapted a technique of applied kinesiology to tap into non-localized consciousness. The mechanism is theorized to work in the following way: Consciousness is non-localized, with the body's nervous system acting as an interpreter and actualizer, in addition to passing along sensory data back to it. Through muscle-resistance tests, the nervous system is queried for "strong" and "weak" responses. Unhealthy stimuli typically cause a "weak" response. These include saccharin, an apple grown with pesticides, and alcohol-based perfume. Healthy stimuli produce a "strong" response: sugar, an organically-grown apple, a smile, and even a kind and loving thought. Test subjects can successfully distinguish between a conventionally-grown apple and an organically-grown apple, despite not knowing which is which.
Interestingly, false statements also produce a "weak" response - even if the accuracy of the statement is not known to the subjects. Verifiably true or false statements were written on various 3x5 cards, sealed individually into envelopes, shuffled, and passed around a lecture room. A roomful of people would get the same responses, despite not even knowing which statement was in which envelope. This applied kinesiological technique has since been used to distinguish between original works of art and art forgeries, legitimate business offers and scam attempts, and even used to pare down potentially suitable fabrication materials by dividing the possible materials into two groups, checking for a "strong" response, and then repeating the process to pare down the possibilities. The R&D potential of this is amazing. The technique has since been used to narrow down the possible location of a number of items "20 Questions"-style, to check on the level of integrity within various ranks of the CIA remotely, and to research matters that had previously lacked scientifically-objective data; the levels of consciousness have apparently been calibrated, with higher levels possessing a stronger influence on the world around us than lower levels by orders of magnitude. I recommend Hawkins' book, Power vs. Force, which goes into better detail on this.
Taken in combination, these things present quite a non-st
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
Denying that we are fundamentally emotional creatures with reasoning ability kludged on is, ironically, most often emotionally motivated.
It's our feelings that drive us. We make up our minds before we invoke reasons for why. (There are studies on this, check 'em out.) Our reasoning ability is called in afterwards to explain why we feel the way we do, to fit our decisions about things (our feelings about things) into the language of logic. "The facts are being made to fit the policy."
It's kind of horrific, this idea, especially if you're coming across it for the first time. Quite aversive. (Quick, come up with reasons why it's wrong.)
We start with a lot of receptivity to facts, and early experiences influence our feelings strongly. Over time our experiences forge ever stronger emotional reactions to various stimuli, including concepts. How well we manage/navigate our biases, how well we can cope with having emotional urges, these skills heavily influence our ability to objectively take in new information.
If you think you're not fundamentally emotional, that your reasoning isn't emotion's weaker cousin, you're already losing the battle. Reasoning has to understand its position if it wants to drive the process. It can't go head to head with emotion, without any sort of battle plan. (The good news is that emotions have their own logic which can be understood and employed to manipulate our feelings, and that we can, if we practice, be aware of when our emotions are driving us strongly, so we know when to pay special attention.)
This is the underlying mechanism at work here. With this core process churning out beliefs you can see how the results, especially of more complex and subtle thoughts, end up warped to suit our personalities.
I know, and I'm working on it. What it comes down to is that I have terrible memory, and so can only really hold two irrational beliefs in my head at any given time. If I try to put another one in, it just pushes one of the others out.
I am John Hurt.
Language probably has magical thinking built into it already. The words, idiomatic expressions, habits of where to find different forms of transitivity, or implications of or the ability to omit subjects or objects of various types, all have habits of the way people have thought about the world already built in to a great degree, so whenever you use words you are involuntarily conforming to the thought processes of those who have come before you and shaped the language you are using.
I believe in God, watch Fox News, vote republican.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
search for: Bruce Lipton - The New Biology - Where Mind and Matter Meet.
Not entirely. There are two cases where magical thinking can help:
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I agree with you, and I think there's an easier way to get the point across.
A human cannot be perfectly rational. We have to rely on emotions (and other, not yet understood processes) to make decisions that shape our actions and choices.
Antonio Damasio explains how this works in his book - "Descartes' error" , he calls it "the somatic marker hypothesis": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis
Basically, the idea is that "100% absence of magical thinking" is impossible by design, due to the constraints imposed by the design of the brain.
I once analyzed a related problem, a simplified review is posted here: /. story is about, but it provides the background necessary to understand the role of somatic markers.
http://railean.net/index.php/2010/10/21/human-brain-decisions-randomizers-data-structures. This is not exactly what this
The saddest poem