Interesting article in Scientific American.com September 2002 issue about how people may end up of “interesting” beliefs. I have spent a good deal of time help explain why magnet therapy is snake oil hokum to my mother-in-law, but she is as dumb as a box of rocks (but means well). Interesting quotes:
Check out these stats:
Here is the link to the full story:
What do you think?
You really ought to check out this appropriately-titled book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733870/qid=1029252707/sr=12-1/103-6534474-8164649
I think that people will believe in anything.
Or maybe this one: Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid
That’s a good one. Carl Sagan’s Demon Haunted World is another.
Just look at the popularity of John Edward. I saw where James Van Praagh (sp?) is getting a syndicated show. He’s been claiming to talk to dead people since JE was a ballroom dance instructor.
Don’t get me started.
Great Salon review. 
Taking this to a GD level (sorry, wrong forum, I know…):
I have a problem with the whole question, actually. The question assumes that belief SHOULD be based on reason. The beliefs in question often don’t have anything to do with reason, and many people know it. I don’t think all beliefs should necessarily be based on reason, because there is more than one type of belief.
I (personally) separate these into ‘technical’ belief and ‘functional’ belief. Some people separate them into logos and mythos, or in other ways divide them into the logical belief and the emotional belief, or the factual belief and the faith-based belief, or the material vs the mystical, etc., etc. The article might as well have included belief in a Higher Power along with astrology in the strange things people believe without any evidence to support it. I noticed that the issue of belief in God was bypassed entirely in the article. Why? The other items qualify under the same heading - things people believe because it makes them feel good, it adds to the mystery of life, it expands their sense of place in the universe… some items mentioned cross the lines, but most seem to me to be a fundamentally different KIND of belief, one that doesn’t fall under the heading of logic and reason in the first place.
Allow me to provide some examples of my ‘functional’ and ‘technical’ systems;
Functionally, I believe in prayer. It helps me, from my perspective. Technically, I do NOT believe that my words are transmitted to any being who then changes the world for me.
Functionally, I do NOT believe that extraterrestrials are responsible for UFOs, or that they are visiting us here, or even that they must exist somewhere - no evidence that support them visiting us, that I can tell, and only probability arguments that they exist elsewhere. But I do technically believe that there could be other life out there. Prove it, and I’ll functionally believe it, too. But until then, whenit comes to ETs, functionally, I don’t, technically, I do.
Functionally, I believe in souls, and that the souls of my three sons (two now born) contacted me when I was a child, and again, later. The experiences were profound, and moving, and helped me survive some truly horrible experiences. Some of the experiences happened to my friends (my son contacting them while I was pregnant, etc.). Enough coincidence to freak out ‘rational’ people. Technically, could I prove it? Nope. Technically, the experiences could easily be misfires in some lobe of my brain, compounded by the mysteries of the brain and coincidence. I don’t expect anyone else to take the experiences as factual events. But I do believe in them, on a functional basis, as I believe that the Universe provides what I need when I need it. I don’t need logic or reason for those things, and those things are not relevant to logic or reason. I value them nonetheless, because I don’t think that logic and reason are the only measures of the value of something I believe.
Even the belief that there is more value to logic-based belief is a matter of ‘functional’/emotional/faith-based process (since we have some good logical/factual studies that show that participating in a faith-based religious practice is good for your health, etc.). If non-logic-based belief is measurably valuable to humans, then believing that only logical belief is valuable is not a logic-based belief…
People try to prove the weird things they believe (or choose to believe bad science ‘supporting’ those things) simply because they think there is only one valuable kind of belief (that is, logical) and try to categorize their mythos or their emotional or their faith-based beliefs in the more-highly-valued category of ‘logical’ belief. If you qualify purely emotional/mythos-based belief as useless or pointless or meaningless, then you can’t rationally retain the things you carry under those headings. But many people (of not most) need (or want, or are comforted by) their mythos and their emotions and their faith. If they have been taught that only logic-based belief is valuable, then rather than dumping the beliefs that feed them at a different level, they attempt to categorize them as ‘logical/rational’. THEN, the argument of the article begins to apply - at that point, yes, you have to fool yourself about the facts, discard proof and evidence, etc. But the real issue is not that people do that, but WHY.
If people were more comfortable with the paradox of functional vs. technical belief (or logos vs mythos, or however you choose to categorize it), they wouldn’t have to try to support the unsupportable, they could simply use it as it served them. Snake oil sales might skyrocket, but I suspect that if we were more comfortable with the idea that these things are not logic-based, not reason-based, and that this was OKAY, we’d pay for them the way we pay pledges or tithes to churches - support because we choose to believe, not because the belief is necessarily logical or rational or provable. We would also not be trying to pay for our snake oil with public funds, health insurance, etc., any more than we pay our church with those funds, even if they pray for our health. And we’d be more comfortable being challenged on the facts, too - because we’d understand that proving it isn’t always the point.
And smart people are just as likely to need their emotional/mythos/mystical (etc) beliefs just as much as non-smart people. They’re just more likely to want to prove that their non-logic based beliefs are logical, IMHO, because being educated (and/or smart), they recognize the real value of logic and scientific process - and they’ve been taught that the provable is superior to the experiential/emotional/non-provable. But I don’t buy it. Both sides add value, and it is really much easier to deal with when you don’t try to force one into the other category - they don’t fit, and one cannot use the processes of one to define the other (as one can see by searching for the VAST numbers of threads that try to prove or disprove the existance of God…)
The question really should be “Why do people try to rationalize non-rational-based beliefs?” As for why we believe them at all, it seems to be a basic human trait for a large part of the population, the attempt to find meaning beyond ourselves. My biggest concern in this area is that people are trying to PROVE these things at all, or trying to rationalize their value by saying that there is proof for them. Yeah, sure, and I can prove God exists… just let me get out my God-measuring device, and I’ll show you.
BTW, ‘functional’ belief tends in my case to be the ‘day to day’ physical/experiential process, ‘technical’ is the logical/argued process. It may not make sense at first read that I don’t believe in ETs on a functional level because of lack of evidence - but really, it is whether I need to bother, regardless of evidence. If ET belief added value to my existance, I’d functionally believe … but for me, they don’t, so they go into the ‘nope’ category, until proven to exist.
Sorry, I think that’s still convoluted, but wasn’t sure how to explain it.
At the risk of sounding all “Cafe Society”, I’ll take that as a recommendation: thanks! Why People Believe Weird Things is a good one–especially the first few chapters–and I’ve been ready recently for something on the same topic.
I guess I’ll be pedantic and note that Michael Shermer wrote the SciAm article and the book. He’s also head of the Skeptic Society, which you can find at www.skeptic.com.
The book is pretty good. His journey from believer to skeptic is interesting, and parallels mine in some ways, though he was more thoroughly into junk science than I was when I was younger.
You might also like James Randi’s site at http://www.randi.org/. Randi is putting together a Skeptic con in Ft. Lauderdale in January. I’ll be there!
Well, I too deny that reason is the sole tool in the box for man to apprehend the universe.
But
I believe that dishonesty is far more common than true mysticism, and the number of cheats and frauds in the world is a lot bigger than the number of true wizards.
My psychic friends call me, just before I have troubles, and they don’t charge me by the minute.
If you subtract the people who want to make a living out of the mystic secrets they claim to know, and then have another look, guess what? Hobbyists. I have no problem with them. I don’t share the hobby, but they don’t bother me.
“In my opinion, there’s nothing in this world,
Beats a '52 Vincent, and a red headed girl.” ~ Richard Thompson ~