We wondered about that too, but by that time we were disinclined to ask them any questions.
So if someone has a harmless wacky belief, it might be better for their mental health to just let it be?
My mother believed in the existance of the gas wireless before they got around to using electricity instead. It seems quite mild compared to almost any of the above.
I did enjoy the idea that the music going off might be due to the pilot light going out though. 
I was just thinking about that!
I have a friend who is very smart, absolutely brilliant – but he’s a 9/11 Truther.
I have a couple of friends who believe that they are psychic. Funny thing is, though, that their “reads” on me are very accurate.
I have a very intelligent friend who believes that bad things only happen to you if you want them to. This belief is most shocking in his approach to STDs… he not only believes that HIV isn’t sexually transmitted, he also believes you can only get AIDS if you unconsciously want to get AIDS. This is his explanation for why he doesn’t use protection (and he is one hell of a man-whore.) He will believe practically anything he reads, if it sounds controversial and conspiratory enough.
One of his friends said it best. ''Dennis, you’re like a Fraggle. Weird and colorful and afterward I begin to wonder if you’re real."
Is he an African dictator who believes only gay people or those who don’t wear a charm get it? But really, he’s not lowering his chances of avoiding the worst STD of them all, childbirth.
I once had a neighbor who was convinced that overpopulation would destroy the world. Not civilization, not Mankind, but the entire freaking planet.
You see, an average adult human weighs about 150 pounds, so every time someone is born, it adds that much weight to the Earth. Eventually, the slowly accumulating weight of billions of people would cause the planet to shift its orbit and send us all hurtling into the Sun. He’d drawn up numerous charts and diagrams to ‘prove’ his theory.
I never bothered trying to persuade him otherwise. You just can’t argue against that much crazy.
Good gosh, I had almost the exact argument with my high school friend, word for word, but minus any mom participation. I never convinced her.
We had another argument, too, about those little bee-like flies you sometimes see buzzing around flowers. She said her dad said they were “baby bees”. I said that bees were fully-grown when they left the hive, having passed their infanthood in the form of larvae and pupae. She instantly got pissed that I would doubt anything that her dad said. FTR, her dad was an ignorant, bullshitting alcoholic.
The people who launch them presumably believe they will fly, so they’re covered.
I’m not sure it’s what you’re looking for, but my wife is a sixth grade teacher. She just had her class write essays on what their goals for the future were. One girl said she wanted to go to school to learn to be a “psychic investigator.”
I had an old friend who was absolutely convinced that the Goodyear Blimp was MUCH bigger than the Graf Zeppelin or the Hindenburg. He believed that the Goodyear Blimp was the largest flying object in human history.
We showed him encyclopedia articles. We took him to the local Air and Space Museum and chatted with a docent. No good. He was absolutely convinced.
To this day, I have a strong antipathy, almost a phobia, when I encounter anyone who exhibits that level of absolute conviction. It seems to me that anyone who is that certain of something is showing symptoms of some form of mental illness.
Most of us are comfortable enough with our own fallibility to be “pretty sure” of our facts, but not “certain beyond any degree of doubt whatever.”
Passenger planes. 747s, etc. She really believes that it is the passengers belief that keeps them in the air. Her fear of flying is centered on the fact that she might be riding with a doubter. When I questioned her about aerodynamics, she rolled her eyes at me.
How do you respond to something like that? The mind boggles…
You could try scientific models and experiments…
My mother went through a big “vibrations” phase. She would hold up a small pendulum, and watch how it started to swing “all by itself.” I tried to explain the microscopic muscular movements that were the actual cause: we are not capable of holding our hands “perfectly still.” That didn’t wash: she insisted that psychic vibrations were moving down the string and influencing the weight at the end.
So…I tied the pendulum string to a nail in the wall, and said, “Okay, let’s see if the psychic vibrations can make it swing now.”
Of course they didn’t…and she was furious with me. Didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day. AND she still believed in psychic vibrations. (“They were diverted by the nail and drawn into the wall.”)
As I noted earlier, this kind of obsession goes so far beyond ordinary rational thought, it’s scary.
Recently my daughter had a bad week at school. We were talking about it with her teacher and the teacher said at one point that you had to expect some of the kids would have a wild week because, after all, the full moon was up. That part of the conversation didn’t last long but it was clear the teacher really, truly believed that her class got wilder when the full moon was up.
What was funny about this was that it was a full moon on the day we were talking… but the Small One had had her few bad days a week and a half earlier, and had had a good week the week we were actually talking. So in fact if the teacher’s hypothesis was correct, The Small One’s behaviour was precisely the opposite of what would be expected.
I know some people believe this full moon shit but the Small One’s teacher is a terrific teacher who is otherwise really on the ball.
[hijack]
Nowadays?
Before “food companies” did this, actual human cooks in their home kitchens did, too. For as long as humans have liked sweet stuff.
[/hijack]
There’s a common belief that anything that is natural is good for you, or at least not harmful. To that, all I have to say is: strychnine and hemlock are natural.
I was into that kind of stuff at that age, too. I grew out of it. Not everybody does, of course, but at least some kids that age who are interested in being a psychic investigator are not going to grow up to be total woo types.
He’ll want to be careful with the selenium. Too much of it is toxic. People have gotten selenium toxicity from dietary supplements.
Woman at work explained that the increased incidence of tornadoes was due to cars passing each other on the road at high speeds. It caused wind vortexes that became tornadoes.
Now, she was not an educated person…
One of my coworkers who was once a police officer thinks that cop means Citizen On Patrol.
For me it’s the whole psychic thing. It’s been debunked time and time again ad nauseum but still people believe it.
I used to argue with my ex and her daughter, both believers. After they had read one of Sylvia Brown’s crappy books in which she claims to have solved murder/missing person cases and offered this as proof of her powers I tried to explain that any of these charlatans could claim anything they wanted to. For a rational look at her claims they should at least read Robert Lancaster’s “StopSylviaBrowne” site.
Of course they didn’t. Nobody wants their cherished beliefs excoriated.
I’ve given up now. You want to pay good money to some daft old bat who says that given a photo she can telepathically communicate with your dog and tell you what it’s thinking? Go right ahead.
But, but, the stupid it burns!
I’m a journalist and was recently held at gunpoint by my editors (ok, so it was my paycheck held at gunpoint, but you get the idea,) and forced to write a column on young earth creationism in the US. To quote Brando: ‘the horror, the horror.’ Anyway, I wasn’t amazed by the ludicrous pseudo-science these people use to defend their arguments. I really wanted to interview Hovind, but the BoP denied my requests, but I digress. In the course of my research I found this: http://www.fixedearth.com/ and at that point I was finally awestruck by what someone believes.