"WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS: PSEUDOSCIENCE, SUPERSTITION, AND OTHER CONFUSIONS OF OUR TIME" by Michael Shermer, Stephen Jay Gould

• Our patterns of thought and action lead to destruction and brutality as often as to kindness and enlightenment.
• Reason is not only a large part of our essence; reason is also our potential salvation from the vicious and precipitous mass action that rule by emotionalism always seems to entail.
• Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism—and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.
• Our best weapons come from the arsenals of basic scientific procedures—for nothing can beat the basic experimental technique of the double-blind procedure and the fundamental observational methods of statistical analysis. Almost every modern irrationalism can be defeated by these most elementary of scientific tools, when well applied.
• The bane of hypocrisy is not its visibility to others, it is its invisibility to the practitioner.
• The “hypocrite” is the critic who disguises his own failings by focusing attention on the failings of others.
• skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims, in the same way that science is not a subject but a method.
• Depending on the claims, anywhere from one out of four to three out of four Americans believes in the paranormal.
• Humans are pattern-seeking animals. We search for meaning in a complex, quirky, and contingent world.
• One of the reasons why humans continue thinking magically is that the modern, scientific way of thinking is a couple of hundred years old, whereas humanity has existed for a couple of hundred thousand years.
• We evolved to be skilled, pattern-seeking, causal-finding creatures.
• The problem in seeking and finding patterns is knowing which ones are meaningful and which ones are not. Unfortunately our brains are not always good at determining the difference.
• So we are left with the legacy of two types of thinking errors: Type 1 Error: believing a falsehood and Type 2 Error: rejecting a truth. Since these errors will not necessarily get us killed, they persist. The Belief Engine has evolved as a mechanism for helping us to survive because in addition to committing Type 1 and Type 2 Errors, we also commit what we might call a Type 1 Hit: not believing a false-hood and a Type 2 Hit: believing a truth.
• We think magically because we have to think causally. We make Type 1 and 2 Errors because we need to make Type 1 and 2 Hits.
• Critical thinking can be taught. Skepticism is learnable.
• Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
• Humans are pattern-seeking, storytelling animals, in search of deep meaning behind the seemingly random events of day-to-day life.
• The principles of cold-reading are simple: start general (car accidents, drownings, heart attacks, cancer), keep it positive (“He wants you to know he loves you very much,” “She says to tell you that she is no longer suffering,” “His pain is gone now”), and know that your audience will remember the hits and forget the misses (“How did she know it was cancer?” “How did he get her name?”).
• Anyone can learn cold-reading techniques in half an hour. They work because subjects want them to work.
• The intellectual journey matters, not the destination.
• We make connections whether they are there or not. These misidentifications come in two varieties: false negatives get you killed (snakes with rattles are okay); false positives merely waste time and energy (a rain dance will end a drought).
• Skepticism is a provisional approach to claims. Skepticism is a method, not a position.
• Modern skepticism is embodied in the scientific method, which involves gathering data to test natural explanations for natural phenomena. A claim becomes factual when it is confirmed to such an extent that it would be reasonable to offer temporary agreement. But all facts in science are provisional and subject to challenge, and therefore skepticism is a method leading to provisional conclusions.
• The key to skepticism is to navigate the treacherous straits between “know nothing” skepticism and “anything goes” credulity by continuously and vigorously applying the methods of science.
• The flaw in pure skepticism is that when taken to an extreme, the position itself cannot stand. If you are skeptical about everything, you must be skeptical of your own skepticism.
• As an exercise in skepticism, start by asking whether events really happened as reported.
• Skepticism is a vital part of science, which I define as a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomena, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation.
• Induction: Forming a hypothesis by drawing general conclusions from existing data.
• Deduction: Making specific predictions based on the hypotheses.
• Observation: Gathering data, driven by hypotheses that tell us what to look for in nature.
• Verification: Testing the predictions against further observations to confirm or falsify the initial hypotheses.
• Hypothesis: A testable statement accounting for a set of observations.
• Theory: A well-supported and well-tested hypothesis or set of hypotheses.
• Fact: A conclusion confirmed to such an extent that it would be reasonable to offer provisional agreement.
• A theory may be contrasted with a construct: a nontestable statement to account for a set of observations.
• Through the scientific method, we aim for objectivity: basing conclusions on external validation. And we avoid mysticism: basing conclusions on personal insights that elude external validation.
• Science leads us toward rationalism: basing conclusions on logic and evidence.
• And science helps us avoid dogmatism: basing conclusions on authority rather than logic and evidence.
• At its most basic level, curiosity about how things work is what science is all about.
• Virtually every field of learning shows such an exponential growth curve.
• Scientific progress is the cumulative growth of a system of knowledge over time, in which useful features are retained and nonuseful features are abandoned, based on the rejection or confirmation of testable knowledge.
• Each of us may have a different view of history, but they are not all equally valid.
• pseudohistorians and historians do not treat their audiences equally and they use data differently.
• Science and history are cumulative and progressive in that they continue to improve and refine knowledge of our world and our past based on new observations and interpretations. Pseudohistory and pseudoscience, if they change at all, change primarily for personal, political, or ideological reasons.
• Science actually depends upon duplication for verification.
• Science has made the modern world, but it may also unmake it.
• In my opinion, most believers in miracles, monsters, and mysteries are not hoaxers, flimflam artists, or lunatics. Most are normal people whose normal thinking has gone wrong in some way.
• “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”
• The Copenhagen interpretation eliminates the one-to-one correlation between theory and reality.
• The equipment used in an experiment often determines the results.
• Anecdotes—stories recounted in support of a claim—do not make a science. Without corroborative evidence from other sources, or physical proof of some sort, ten anecdotes are no better than one, and a hundred anecdotes are no better than ten. Anecdotes are told by fallible human storytellers.
• Dressing up a belief system in the trappings of science by using scientistic language and jargon, as in “creation-science,” means nothing without evidence, experimental testing, and corroboration.
• The moral is that the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinarily well-tested the evidence must be.
• The person making the extraordinary claim has the burden of proving to the experts and to the community at large that his or her belief has more validity than the one almost everyone else accepts.
• In other words, it is not enough to have evidence. You must convince others of the validity of your evidence.
• Many people are overconfident enough to think that if they cannot explain something, it must be inexplicable and therefore a true mystery of the paranormal.
• As Hume taught us, the fact that two events follow each other in sequence does not mean they are connected causally. Correlation does not mean causation.
• We forget most of the insignificant coincidences and remember the meaningful ones. Our tendency to remember hits and ignore misses is the bread and butter of the psychics, prophets, and soothsayers who make hundreds of predictions each January 1.
• Emotive words are used to provoke emotion and sometimes to obscure rationality.
• Like anecdotes, analogies and metaphors do not constitute proof. They are merely tools of rhetoric.
• In science, belief should come from positive evidence in support of a claim, not lack of evidence for or against a claim.
• The goal of an ad hominem attack is to discredit the claimant in hopes that it will discredit the claim.
• If your theory is indeed superior, it must explain both the “normal” data explained by the old theory and the “anomalous” data not explained by the old theory. A new theory needs evidence in favor of it, not just against the opposition.
• Reductio ad absurdum is the refutation of an argument by carrying the argument to its logical end and so reducing it to an absurd conclusion.
• Scientific and critical thinking does not come naturally. It takes training, experience, and effort,
• In day-to-day life, as in science, we all resist fundamental paradigm change.
• When it comes to estimating the likelihood of something happening, most of us overestimate or underestimate probabilities in a way that can make normal events seem like paranormal phenomena.
• Consciousness has two characteristics: “1. Monitoring ourselves and our environment so that perceptions, memories, and thoughts are accurately represented in awareness; 2. Controlling ourselves and our environment so that we are able to initiate and terminate behavioral and cognitive activities” (Kihlstrom 1987, p. 1445).
• This is a typical NDE, characterized by one of the three most commonly reported elements: (1) a floating OBE in which you look down and see your body; (2) passing through a tunnel or spiral chamber toward a bright light that represents transcendence to “the other side”; (3) emerging on the other side and seeing loved ones who have already passed away or a Godlike figure.
• To extend life significantly, we must understand the causes of death. Basically there are three: trauma, such as accidents; disease, such as cancer and arteriosclerosis; and entropy, or senescence (aging), which is a naturally occurring, progressive deterioration of various biochemical and cellular functions that begins early in adult life and ultimately results in an increased likelihood of dying from trauma or disease.
• The maximum life potential is the age at death of the longest-lived member of the species. For humans, the record for the oldest documented age ever achieved is 120 years.
• Extreme sleep deprivation breaks down the wall between reality and fantasy.
• This is curious because we often think that science displaces superstition and so one would expect belief in things like witches, demons, and spirits to have decreased as science grew. Not so. As modern examples show, believers in paranormal and other pseudoscientific phenomena try to wrap themselves in the mantle of science because science is a dominating force in our society but they still believe what they believe.
• According to psychoanalysts, projection is the process of attributing one’s own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people or objects—the
• The fallacy in Objectivism is its belief that absolute knowledge and final Truth are attainable through reason, and therefore that there are absolutes of right and wrong knowledge and of moral and immoral thought and action.
• A cult is characterized by Veneration of the leader: Glorification of the leader to the point of virtual sainthood or divinity. Inerrancy of the leader: Belief that the leader cannot be wrong. Omniscience of the leader: Acceptance of the leader’s beliefs and pronouncements on all subjects, from the philosophical to the trivial. Persuasive techniques: Methods, from benign to coercive, used to recruit new followers and reinforce current beliefs. Hidden agendas: The true nature of the group’s beliefs and plans is obscured from or not fully disclosed to potential recruits and the general public. Deceit: Recruits and followers are not told everything they should know about the leader and the group’s inner circle, and particularly disconcerting flaws or potentially embarrassing events or circumstances are covered up. Financial and/or sexual exploitation: Recruits and followers are persuaded to invest money and other assets in the group, and the leader may develop sexual relations with one or more of the followers. Absolute truth: Belief that the leader and/or the group has discovered final knowledge on any number of subjects. Absolute morality: Belief that the leader and/or the group has developed a system of right and wrong thought and action applicable to members and nonmembers alike. Those who strictly follow the moral code become and remain members; those who do not are dismissed or punished.
• Morals do not exist in nature and thus cannot be discovered.
• Myths are not about truth. Myths are about the human struggle to deal with the great passages of time and life—birth, death, marriage, the transitions from childhood to adulthood to old age.
• With faith one can believe anything because God can accomplish anything.
• Creationists and religious fundamentalists will go to absurd lengths to protect their beliefs from science.
• There is no ladder of evolutionary progress with humans at the top, only a richly branching bush with humans as one tiny twig among millions.
• Science is a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomena, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation.
• Natural selection is not random, nor does it operate by chance. Natural selection preserves the gains and eradicates the mistakes.
• radiometric dates for different elements from the same rock will all converge on the same date.
• Scientists do make mistakes aplenty and, in fact, this is how science progresses. The self-correcting feature of the scientific method is one of its most beautiful features.
• Nature is not perfectly designed, nor is this the best of all possible worlds. It is simply the world we have, quirky, contingent, and flawed as it may be.
• Just because science has been enormously successful in the past does not mean that it can or will solve all problems in the future.
• Weird things are like pornography—difficult to define but obvious when you see them.
• As a culture we seem to have trouble distinguishing science from pseudoscience, history from pseudohistory, and sense from nonsense.
• Credo Consolans. More than any other, the reason people believe weird things is because they want to. It feels good. It is comforting. It is consoling.
• Immediate Gratification. Many weird things offer immediate gratification.
• Using cold-reading techniques, the psychic begins broad and works toward specifics.
• Such trite statements are true for almost everyone. If your psychic chooses the wrong one, the psychic only has to say it will happen—in the future. And the psychic only has to be right occasionally. Callers forget the misses and remember the hits, and, most important, they want the psychic to be right.
• Simplicity. Immediate gratification of one’s beliefs is made all the easier by simple explanations for an often complex and contingent world.
• Scientific explanations are often complicated and require training and effort to work through. Superstition and belief in fate and the supernatural provide a simpler path through life’s complex maze.
• Morality and Meaning. At present, scientific and secular systems of morality and meaning have proved relatively unsatisfying to most people.
• To most people, science seems to offer only cold and brutal logic in its presentation of an infinite, uncaring, and purposeless universe. Pseudoscience, superstition, myth, magic, and religion offer simple, immediate, and consoling canons of morality and meaning.
• For the most part, what I mean by a “weird thing” is: (1) a claim unaccepted by most people in that particular field of study, (2) a claim that is either logically impossible or highly unlikely, and/or (3) a claim for which the evidence is largely anecdotal and uncorroborated.
• Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
• Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational belief, regardless of what we previously believed.
• Instead, the facts of the world come to us through the colored filters of the theories, hypotheses, hunches, biases, and prejudices we have accumulated through our lifetime.
• For the most part intelligence is orthogonal to and independent of belief.
• In fact, empirical studies have repeatedly shown that the single most powerful predictor of eminence within any creative domain is the sheer number of influential products an individual has given the world.”
• That is to say, smart people are better at rationalizing their beliefs with reasoned arguments, but as a consequence they are less open to considering other positions.