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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.
I believe that sufficiently advanced technology exists that will manifest itself on time to help me. So, I'm, like, totally rational.
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
Indeed not—but it does mean we need to change our rhetoric towards the unenlightened. "This whole 'god' thing was nice for all those thousands years and all that we kept re-inventing religion, but it's time to move on from old instincts; you're smart enough to grow beyond that system of social control" comes across a lot more pleasantly than "you're stupid and you should reject everything that you believe because it's all made-up trash."
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
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
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.
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
It's impossible to persuade most of religious people no matter what you do. The only realistic way to get rid of religion is to prevent religious people from infecting the next generation and waiting for the current one to die off.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
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.
...and human minds are engineered to be molded by our culture.
See what you did there?
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
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).
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.
"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]
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
That's not really the point he was making.
Lots of people go about their lives with absolutely no understanding of how things work. Even things they might use on a daily basis.
And if you try and explain how these things work they just cannot comprehend it. So for them, in some respects, these things are magic.
In general it's important to show which definition of magic people are using when they talking about the subject.
-) Something that can't be explained with current scientific knowledge (but maybe explainable in the future)
-) Something that, by its very nature, can never be explained scientifically
-) Something that the specific person cannot understand or comprehend.
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
I make an effort to be deliberately irrational in certain cases. I am a Discordian Atheist. I have Faith in the existence of the Goddess Eris, but I know she doesn't exist. I have Faith in the Golden Apple, and I know it never existed. I do not have Faith in the existence of the Earth; I can see it, touch it, walk on it, and I have empirical knowledge that it exists. While I cannot touch a proton I don't need faith in it, since I can perform various experiments that will strongly indicate its existence. Faith is wasted on real things. Believing in the impossible is fun, and so I do.
Of course, this means I have to be careful not to confuse belief with reality. Just because I believe in something doesn't mean it's true. That's the real danger of magical thinking, not the belief in the unreal itself. You are correct that it takes effort to be rational. It also takes effort to know when to be rational, and when to abandon that and just have fun with your imagination. Getting that wrong can lead to some very bad situations like, the Crusades.
Not a sentence!
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.
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.
... 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 !
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.
Correction: Magical Thinking WAS Good For You In A Prehistoric Age, Today It's A Maladaptive Anachronism
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.
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