Why People Believe Weird Things Ebook

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Read more And how do smart people believe such outlandish claims as ESP, alien abductions, and haunted houses? In France there is a company that provides emergency guests for any dinner party of triskaidekaphobes who discover that they number thirteen at table. Retrieved All in all, he behaved pretty much exactly the way he'd have behaved if he had in fact been behind it. Jun 18, Manny rated it liked it Shelves: donalds-are- trumps. About Michael Shermer. In a subsequent study in Kuhn exposed subjects to an audio recording of an actual murder trial and discovered that instead of evaluating the evidence objectively, most subjects first composed a story of what happened, and then sorted through the evidence to see what best fit that story. Shermer links these fantasies to cultural influences, noting, "Humans are experiencing fantasies and interpreting them in the social context of their age and culture. It would do people well to know it, which is why I'll be including it in this review. All of this leads me to the fascinating subject of fraud which I would have loved to see touched on in this book. Sometimes the patterns we detect are genuine which we either accept or reject as real Why People Believe Weird Things is a meticulously researched and presented deep-dive into the causes and explanations of human irrationality. Stones falling from the sky were once the belief of a few daffy Englishmen; today we have an accepted theory of meteorites. Eighteen hundred years earlier St. Shermer, science historian and true crusader, also reveals the more dangerous side of such illogical thinking, including Holocaust denial, the recovered-memory movement, the satanic ritual abuse scare, and other modern crazes. That is what makes the Hard Question so hard. The process is simple. The name is almost self-explanatory. A couple of the chapters could be condensed into one chapter that contains more focus and sticks to the topic. Will this book enrich you with information and arguments? On the other hand, many psychologists accept the notion of a global intelligence that could be considered domain general. It changed the way I looked at concepts, ideas and the vulgar idea of people who say such trash as "Well I believe X so its how I live. Oct 10, Shhhhh Ahhhhh rated it really liked it. But within any group, as defined by intelligence, gender, age, or education, are there any personality characteristics related to belief or disbelief in weird things? Of course, science contains a special self-correcting mechanism to get around the confirmation bias, and that is that other people will check your results or rerun the experiment. There is nothing about global warming whatsoever. Friend Reviews. According to Reason , "Shermer's episodic book covers a wide range of subjects, in a wide range of manners. One who has started to do it is John Conway at Princeton. Scientology has got to be the funniest religion around. Nobody has done a study for India - but Michael Shermer, a confirmed sceptic, has done so for America and the result is this brilliant and eminently readable book. Details if other :. Independent Thinking Review. In fact, I found most of the book well put together. Apparently, the students were not able to apply their scientific knowledge to evaluate these pseudoscientific claims. Equipment constructs the results: the result of any observation is directly dependent on the equipment used. We simply have not looked inside the most basic structures of science and mathematics, and I would venture to add epistemology, ontology and cosmology. My primary trouble with this book is the title. Scientists, after all, are unlikely to need this kind of primer on logical thinking, and how likely is it that the kind of person who believes in alien abduction, the healing power of crystals, or past-life channeling will actually read this book. They appeared to have been Skeptic Magazines essays that were glued together and, in fact, Shermer pretty much admits that in the foreword. He never actually said that he believed the U. However, I was surprised to find that Martin Gardner endorsed this book as follows In this case the danger passes without harm and the error has no consequences. Promise people this desirable thing and they will buy this supplement, believe that theory, and spend a day screeching their hearts out in a ballroom with cheap chairs and saying the therapy changing their lives. When we accept a pattern as genuine, but it isn't, we are committing a Type 1 error or false positive. Griggs found that belief in such psi phenomena as out-of-body experiences, ESP, and precognition was negatively correlated with classroom performance as measured by grades as belief goes up, grades go down. Of course Shermer is trying to argue is point, but he does not do so at the expense or the humiliation of the believers. Even in judging something as subjective as personality, psychologists have found that we see what we are looking for in a person. Surprisingly, this group scored high in internal locus of control. In addition, I have had tremendous success with Parkinsons Disease patients, hence the need for medical testing. Why People Believe Weird Things Writer

Above that, this book does not provide raw material as much as it makes use of it, kind of gives you the fish instead of teaching you how to fish. I actually came to resent your boring book so much, that I had to throw it out. Blaming evolution for all the evils in society - as some ultra-right Christians do - is still mind boggling and new to me. The author says that as a culture, we seem to have trouble distinguishing science from pseudo- science, history from pseudo-history and sense from nonsense. Readers also enjoyed. Sep 20, Michael P. The same goes for the chapter on Ayn Rand and how her appeal to rationalism through her philosophy of Objectivism eventually led to a weird 'cult of personality'. Recognizing the flawed justifications in these examples can also help one recognize them in as yet unexplored topics. Through vast experience they know, fairly quickly, which new ideas stand a chance of succeeding and which are obviously wrong. View all 12 comments. He follows the trope of the wounded believer, someone who was once fully into a poorly supported belief or system of belief and, upon being disabused of that illusion, became somewhat irrationally skeptical. In an entirely new chapter, "Why Smart Pe Description: In this age of supposed scientific enlightenment, many people still believe in mind reading, past-life regression theory, New Age hokum, and alien abduction. Categories : non-fiction books Books about Holocaust denial Books about the paranormal Books by Michael Shermer Criticism of creationism English-language books Henry Holt and Company books Popular psychology books Science books Scientific skepticism mass media. All the elections in India are rigged to support the Narendra Modi government. You can start off with the number you seek and try to find some relationship that ends in that number, or one close to it. Paperback , pages. May 14, Kinga rated it liked it Shelves: pub They include: 1. Suspicious or what? It is a relatively unbiased and thought provoking view on the beliefs that many people hold. Jacobs, who earned his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin and subsequently published his dissertation as The UFO Controversy in America through Indiana University Press, 75 in wrote Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions even landing a mainstream trade publisher in Simon and Schuster, one of the largest and most prestigious publishing houses in the world. In addition, I have had tremendous success with Parkinsons Disease patients, hence the need for medical testing. If all ideas have equal validity then you are lost, because then, it seems to me, no ideas have any validity at all. He spoke like an academic, explained his theory and evidence with the cool dispatch of a seasoned scholar, and acted as if this claim were no different than discussing some other aspect of twentieth- century American history, which he teaches. People who don't read generally ask me my reasons for reading. It's long-winded and directionless for most of the book. Science fiction, I think, would more adequately describe this entire field. This is a joint review of this book and How We Believe Shermer postulates that humans have evolved a belief module that helps us find patterns in what appears otherwise to be a meaningless universe. This is, in large part, the explanation skeptics offer for the consistency of the abduction stories — the memory motifs come from these commonly experienced cultural inputs. In that case, we can't It is also important to pay attention to the tactics the deniers use to cast false doubt, as they all show evidence of flawed reasoning. Other editions. Independent Thinking Review. The latter is a weird thing worth debunking even when Schemer wrote. To put it simply: for the majority of humanity, deeply ingrained beliefs are not the result of logical ratiocination but rather due to "genetic predispositions, parental predilections, sibling influences, peer pressures, educational experiences, and life impressions". In like manner did the multi-millionaire Silicon Valley business genius Joe Firmage respond when I interviewed him on the radio. Dewey Decimal. The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, for example, discovered that among the Trobriand Islanders off the coast of New Guinea , the further out to sea they went to fish the more they developed superstitious rituals. In this age of supposed scientific enlightenment, many people still believe in mind reading, past-life regression theory, New Age hokum, and alien abduction. It makes me even more skeptical than ever about endorsements and reviews of a book on its back flap! I have a simpler definition which I use myself. I think not. Why People Believe Weird Things Reviews

As pattern-seeking animals, the matter of the apparent good design of the universe, and the perceived action of a higher intelligence in the day-today contingencies of our lives, is a powerful one as an intellectual justification for belief. But neither the smarts nor the money alter one iota the fact that there exists not one piece of tangible evidence of alien visitation. Almost any kind of bizarre unrelated event then becomes "evidence" for the conspiracy. The data then confirmed those expectations. He profiles the main Holocaust deniers and presents the ways in which they ignore scientific fact to stubbornly support their claims of precognitive bias. Often in search of a particular phenomenon, scientists interpreting data may see or select those data most in support of the hypothesis under question and ignore or toss out those data not in support of the hypothesis. The author provides arguments against those things and refutation to the arguments for them, relying on critical thinking and science. October This in a nutshell is why human beings have a bias for seeing patterns that aren't really there. He led off early in the book critiquing people's beliefs, but not only those of 'true believers' but also of people who has allowed their skepticism to grow to unruly proportions, requiring exorbitant proof of everything. He also discusses the cult of Ayn Rand and her theory of Objectivism of which Shermer once considered himself a believer , but disproves it by claiming, unlike the scientific method, the process is not self-correcting. Like many people, I could hardly believe my eyes when Donald Trump, in the wake of the Orlando shooting, actually went as far as to insinuate that President Obama could in some way have been complicit in causing this appalling hate crime and act of terrorism. In one study of men and women in New York City, for example, scientists found that more women than men believed that knocking on wood or walking under a ladder brought bad luck. An interesting twist to this effect, however, was found by James McGarry and Benjamin Newberry in a study of strong believers in and practitioners of ESP and psychic power. Further, we find magic where the element of danger is conspicuous. Understandably, journalists inquire whether women, therefore, are more superstitious or less rational than men, who typically disdain such mediums and scoff at the notion of talking to the dead. For me, the introductory remarks on science and skepticism, and the final two chapters were the most interesting sections. Equipment constructs the results: the result of any observation is directly dependent on the equipment used. Jun 29, Celena O'brien rated it really liked it. Shermer goes into detail about 25 fallacies that encourage people to believe weird things, including a whole slew of logical and psychological problems that lead inevitably to false conclusions. Otis found that belief in various paranormal phenomena was correlated with lower critical thinking skills. In Chapter 3 I discuss a study conducted by psychologist David Perkins, in which he found a positive relationship between intelligence and the ability to justify beliefs, and a negative relationship between intelligence and the ability to consider other beliefs as viable. John, from December 12th at pm. Other patterns such as drawing images and magical thinking may reduce anxiety but are essentially meaningless or irrelevant from a survival standpoint. Even as an introduction to logical fallacies it is worth reading. John Mack is smart enough to realize that the data and data collection techniques he and others use in drawing out these abduction narratives are questionable to say the least. Until about four hundred years ago, when the process of science gave us a method to determine the difference between patterns that are real and those that are mere illusion, the tautologies myth and religion, a tautology e This is a joint review of this book and How We Believe Shermer postulates that humans have evolved a belief module that helps us find patterns in what appears otherwise to be a meaningless universe. Scientific and secular systems of meaning and morality have proved relatively unsatisfactory to most people. It's a way of bringing order to what appears random. For more see Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic "Only religion could rival astrology as an all-embracing explanation for the vicissitudes of life. Rather, such variables as genetic predispositions, parental predilections, sibling influences, peer pressures, educational experiences, and life impressions all shape the personality preferences and emotional inclinations that, in conjunction with numerous social and cultural influences, lead us to make certain belief choices. In part two Shermer explains paranormal thinking and how one comes to believe in things without evidence. Not woman. Books by Michael Shermer. When we accept a pattern as genuine, but it isn't, we are committing a Type 1 error or false positive. The search for meaningful relationships in various measurements and numbers available in almost any structure in the world including the world itself, as well as the cosmos , has led to numerous observers to find deep meaning in the relationship between these numbers. Schermer's writing style is clear, lively, if a bit undisciplined at times. Jun 23, Mark Hartzer rated it really liked it. I found him to be bright, articulate, and completely committed to his belief. A lot. Is it a utopian fantasy? To me, an even stronger counter-argument is cui bono. But Brand is quick to point out that only when this type of intelligence is modified by a liberal education does one see a sharp decrease in authoritarianism. All the evidence suggests that everyone, even "smart" people, is hard-wired to fall into these cognitive traps. Gordon Liddy said that two elements were required for a conspiracy: competence, a rare commodity, and secrecy, a secret can be kept among two people only if two of them are dead. Although this was ruled against, it was brought up in Louisiana and brought to the supreme court.

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The intellectual attribution bias then kicks in, especially in smart people, to justify those beliefs, no matter how weird they may be. I read almost all the genre but YA, Fantasy, Biographies are the most. Then have 50 of them eat extract of seaweed and 50 take the placebo. My favorite series is, of course, Harry Potter but then there are many more books that I just adore. He does convincingly demonstrate that Objectivism is a failed philosophy in some of its clams and that Rand and her followers fit the criteria of a cult if you leave the religious criteria out of it, but in the end he agrees with a lot of what Objectivism teaches and so does not challenge some of its tenants such as laissez faire capitalism. Jul 19, David rated it really liked it Shelves: read-in I did enjoy the history of the evolution theory denialism in the US which from the European perspective is really shocking. You have to laugh in a sort of raised-eyebrow way don't you? The observer changes the observed: sometimes, the act of studying an event changes the event. Aug 01, Casey rated it really liked it Shelves: knowledge-is-good , relevant-for-teachers , cognitive-scientists-do-it-in- lab. Community Reviews. When Harvard marine biologist Barry Fell jumped fields into archaeology and wrote a best-selling book about all the people who discovered American before Columbus America B. The effect of locus of control on belief is also mitigated by the environment, where there is a relationship between the uncertainty of an environment and the level of superstitious belief as uncertainty goes up so too does superstitions. There are exceptions I'm sure. We then sort through the body of data and select those most confirming what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that are disconfirming. We are to pick a borderline scientific topic and then find the appropriate sources to support or disconfirm it. Failures that disprove a theory are rationalised 2. If you want to read about the history of holocaust denial, that's in here. In survival terms, it pays to be watchful for patterns even if your conclusions are wrong much of the time. Levin, by contrast, in analyzing the General Social Survey data, found no significant age trends in mystical experiences. And Asians, several hundred thousand years ago probably came out of Africa, so we should really replace "Native American" with "African-Asian-Native American. The publisher and editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine, Shermer is the founder of The Skeptics Society. Apr 26, Fraser rated it really liked it Shelves: critical-thinking , non-fiction. Recognizing the flawed justifications in these examples can also help one recognize them in as yet unexplored topics. These mixed results are due to what is known as person-by-situation effects, where a simple linear causal relationship between two variables rarely exists. This first foray into skepticism and critical thinking taught me that there is no understanding in magic, no answers to my love life in the alignment of stars. Science is a social process, where one is trained in a certain paradigm and works with others in the field. Because they have to believe things, and the weird […]. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Further, we find magic where the element of danger is conspicuous. I hardly think this book will sway anyone who is not a sceptic.

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