[jonottawa]

Societies have come down hard for centuries on people who don't buy into the commonly held 'crazy ideas' of the day. My guess is that 10,000 years ago the 'skeptic gene' was relatively common in humans and a long succession of bullies, tyrants and 'confederacies of dunces' mostly eradicated it.

[Vampyr]

jonottawa, on 2013-July-23, 09:55, said:

Societies have come down hard for centuries on people who don't buy into the commonly held 'crazy ideas' of the day. My guess is that 10,000 years ago the 'skeptic gene' was relatively common in humans and a long succession of bullies, tyrants and 'confederacies of dunces' mostly eradicated it.

I doubt that there is anything to this theory, but if there were the opposite is more likely. Tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago, believing without question what you were told by parents or other figures of authority was key to survival.

[dwar0123]

helene_t, on 2013-July-23, 06:56, said:

I used to have the feeling that I would like to believe in extra-terristrial intelligence and reincarnation.

If I didn't believe in extra-terrestrial intelligence then I would have to believe in a religious creation myth.

If intelligence has happened once by chance, then the chance of it happening is non zero. I believe that in a Universe this big the probability that the non zero chance is so small that it still only occurred once is trivially insignificant. The Universe is freakishly large, it may even be infinite.

On the other hand, if intelligence didn't occur by chance, if it were created by design and the designer decided to create it only once... Well then the ego centric creation myths may have a point, creating a Universe this large for just us seems like a shockingly massive waste of space and it would be hard to not feel a little ego centric about it.

Don't confuse my belief in extra-terrestrial intelligence with a belief in UFO's, don't even confuse it with the notion that I seriously believe we will ever have contact with another intelligence during the existence of our species. The Universe is huge, it is so absurdly huge that billions of different stars in the night sky could have planets orbiting them each with their own intelligent species and we will never know it because the Universe is just that freaking big.

[mycroft]

Retrophrenology; my favourite pseudoscience.

(and now we know who are the PTerry readers)

[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2013-July-23, 10:16, said:

I doubt that there is anything to this theory, but if there were the opposite is more likely. Tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago, believing without question what you were told by parents or other figures of authority was key to survival.

Exactly. Which is why small children will believe just about anything -- they're so clueless that they have to depend on their parents for their safety, and that means taking them at their word on everything.

By the time we're old enough to make critical decisions on our own, we're indoctrinated with lots of stuff. Some things, like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, are just for play and society doesn't reinforce them on older children. But religion has a strong foothold in society, so it continues to get support, making it harder for children to discard these notions. For instance, we don't send children to special classes to learn about Santa, but most religions have institutionalized schools for their teachings. This makes it seem more legitimate.

Humans are social animals. Giving in to peer pressure is part of human nature -- being a renegade tends to get you shunned, unless you're very powerful or charismatic (which may allow you to start a new sect).

[blackshoe]

kenberg, on 2013-July-23, 08:21, said:

I often walk on the (springy surface) race track at the high school or the marked out naturally giving dirt surfacecross-country trail. I sometimes walk on the pavement. I can definitely tell the difference. Walking is a great exercise, but older knees need a little consideration.

I hear ya about the knees.

kenberg, on 2013-July-23, 08:21, said:

I have heard this quote before. In fact it occurred to me that astrology would indeed be a "touchstone". My thoughts on astrology are roughly the same as a view I saw attributed to Asimov about the existence of God. Something along the lines of "I can't prove that it is false but it seems so unlikely that I don't plan on wasting time thinking about it". I don't know if Heinlein would have approved. I also don't waste tiem worrying about whether Heinlein would have approved. Or Asimov.

I don't know either if Heinlein approved. I'm pretty sure he knew about it, and I suspect he did approve. As for caring about their approval, I don't waste time on that either.

[FM75]

A successful colleague (electrical engineer and MBA) once told me that everything that he was taught in business school was obvious, false, or both! He was not joking.

I appreciate the Santa Claus stuff. I had not thought about that. I had an interesting hypothesis:

Indoctrination of "bias" while young is sufficient, but not necessary, for the persistence of bias.

Santa introduces a "testability" element - and refutes my hypothesis.

The Monkey, Banana, and Firehose. Community learning.
http://wiki.answers....ever_take_place

More fun reading:
http://www.parenting...evelopment.html

Can you understand what other people think given their experience, or do you tend to use your own experience to predict what others will think?

[Codo]

Isn't this whole stuff quite simple psycology?

We life in a very complex world, but we like to understand what we are doing and why something works the way it does. And usually, if we understand something, it tends to work better for us. And it does not matter, whether we really understand what is happening or whether we just think, that we have a reasonable explanation.

Sometimes it is usefull to know all details, sometimes it is not. F.e. it is VERY helpful to know which pedal to use if you want to stop your car. It is quite useful to know which factors make your breaks work better or worse, so that you will reduce your speed in winter. It is not very useful to know how the pressure on the pedal will force your car to stop.

So, what do we all do, if the situation is too complex to understand? We search for easy explanations, for a quite easy picture of our life. And we search for easy solutions. And: If an authority tells us "the truth" we want to belive them, because it makes life much simpler. This authority can be your political or religious leader, maybe big companies, your old aunt, your father or the neighborhood bully. And of course we believe that anybody else must come to the same conclusion then we do.

So, if someone gives us some homoepathic medicine, we believe that this well help- and so it does. Placebos rate to help in 40 % of all cases.

But maybe there is even more to it. Nowadays, the science is not able to check that homeopathic or acupuncture will help in double blind tests- it can just proofe their failure. I do believe in double blind tests. But can we be sure that they are always right? Maybe there is something more in the world and we just had not been able to develop measurements for these vibrations? Maybe there are some vibrations which let acupunture et all just work in special enviroments, but not in double blind tests?
Yes unlikely, for sure.
OTOH: Just a little more then 100 years ago,the idea that time is not stready had been silly. That nothing is faster then light had been a brand new idea...
Nowadays, we still do not know whether light is a wave, a parttical or both. Maybe our grandchildren will laught about this missing knowledge.

Times do change, but all of us want an easy life with easy explanations. So if we have one, we tend to stick to it. There are already so many changes in our life, we like to stick to at least some traditional ideas, so that we do not have to change anything.

[onoway]

Codo, on 2013-July-24, 03:49, said:

<snip>

Times do change, but all of us want an easy life with easy explanations. So if we have one, we tend to stick to it. There are already so many changes in our life, we like to stick to at least some traditional ideas, so that we do not have to change anything.

Times not only change but they are changing quicker than ever before. People have to decide where they are going to put their energies to keep up. I think often it's a matter of people not even thinking about a lot of stuff that they were brought up with, they are so busy trying to keep up with the changes they have to keep up with. If someone is worried about their job or if they are in constant pain then they are unlikely to be spending a lot of time pondering whether or not everything they believe is "true".(presumably as decided by science.)

Also, science has a bit of a bad rap right now as with such things as climate change and GMOs it's very clear that science is often as divided (publicly at least) as any religious group touting their own version of the "truth". As a minor example, there are even arguments about whether or not a honey locust tree is nitrogen fixing, with scientists firmly on both sides of the argument. That would SEEM to be a fairly simple matter to resolve.

Also, it often appears ,correctly or not, that whatever result someone wants to pay for, science can justify. As an example we get some of the drugs which have been released supposedly after rigid scientific study only to be withdrawn after causing a lot of damage. Science most decidedly does NOT have the reputation of knowledge for knowledge's sake anymore - if it ever did -, everything seems to be geared to some agenda, and thus is suspect. I think that many if not most people now regard science with jaundiced eyes just as any agnostic regards religion.

Psychology suggests that you cannot take away a belief without offering something to replace it. People are not comfortable with a vacuum (that they are aware of, on some level) in their lives and depending on the cumulative circumstances of how they experienced their environment - from the time they were born onward - they fill it with something which is usually synchronistic with their experience and their needs. To change their beliefs, you have to offer something which will also resonate at least with one or the other.

I also think that some of your "bad ideas" examples are highly arguable, but you specify you don't want any discussion about that.

[dwar0123]

Codo, on 2013-July-24, 03:49, said:

Maybe there are some vibrations which let acupunture et all just work in special enviroments, but not in double blind tests?
Yes unlikely, for sure.

Shi, er stuff like this falls so far down the list of things so unlikely as to be not worth thinking about. It is just as likely that everyone in the world can fly by their minds power alone but they are all successfully hiding it from me. Planes are just part of a really elaborate hoax to convince me I'm not the only sad sac that can't fly.

You can always invent some wild implausible scenario to rationalize the irrational, but to what end. What does it gain you.

Science on the other hand...


Source: http://xkcd.com/54/

[onoway]

dwar0123, on 2013-July-24, 11:13, said:

Shi, er stuff like this falls so far down the list of things so unlikely as to be not worth thinking about. It is just as likely that everyone in the world can fly by their minds power alone but they are all successfully hiding it from me. Planes are just part of a really elaborate hoax to convince me I'm not the only sad sac that can't fly.

You can always invent some wild implausible scenario to rationalize the irrational, but to what end. What does it gain you.

Science on the other hand...


Source: http://xkcd.com/54/

Ah t'ís a good thing to have faith. Are you familiar with this site? http://www.badscience.net/

[dwar0123]

onoway, on 2013-July-24, 15:06, said:

Ah t'ís a good thing to have faith. Are you familiar with this site? http://www.badscience.net/

The definition of faith is to believe without proof which proves* you don't understand how science works.

*Ok it only suggests it, we should devise an experiment to test this hypothesis.

[jeffford76]

dwar0123, on 2013-July-24, 11:13, said:

It is just as likely that everyone in the world can fly by their minds power alone but they are all successfully hiding it from me. Planes are just part of a really elaborate hoax to convince me I'm not the only sad sac that can't fly.

I did tell everyone you would catch on eventually.

[Antrax]

Are we seriously doing this discussion? I don't want to be offensive, but Descartes pretty much cornered the market on that one, and Hume took what little was left. Yes, logic is a faith like any other, yes you can't really prove much, no it's not a very interesting discussion unless you want to troll an Ayn Rand fan.

[Codo]

dwar0123, on 2013-July-24, 11:13, said:

Shi, er stuff like this falls so far down the list of things so unlikely as to be not worth thinking about. It is just as likely that everyone in the world can fly by their minds power alone but they are all successfully hiding it from me. Planes are just part of a really elaborate hoax to convince me I'm not the only sad sac that can't fly.

You can always invent some wild implausible scenario to rationalize the irrational, but to what end. What does it gain you.

Science on the other hand...


Source: http://xkcd.com/54/

So sciences works?
Do you really believe that?

You may compare all the errors made in science work, all the truth which had been told.
Think about medicines which had caused worse problems then they healed.
Think about truths which had been true for centuries but are abandoned now.
Think about all the tests which had been made and which had undoubtly show that kids have or don't have this or that ability at the age of 3 or 4....
Sciences does develop and our knowledge will continue to explode in the future. Many things which we take as given today will be remote in the future...

And you believe that our current knowledge will stand the test of time?

You are a real true believer.

[blackshoe]

It is the essence of science that what we believe to be true today may will turn out to be false tomorrow, no matter how much we wish to cling to our current belief.

"Si, il mouve." -- Galileo Galilei

[gwnn]

Codo, on 2013-July-25, 02:27, said:

So sciences works?
Do you really believe that?

You may compare all the errors made in science work, all the truth which had been told.
Think about medicines which had caused worse problems then they healed.
Think about truths which had been true for centuries but are abandoned now.
Think about all the tests which had been made and which had undoubtly show that kids have or don't have this or that ability at the age of 3 or 4....
Sciences does develop and our knowledge will continue to explode in the future. Many things which we take as given today will be remote in the future...

And you believe that our current knowledge will stand the test of time?

You are a real true believer.

I think someone already linked this essay when you made this point before, but maybe they didn't, or you didn't have a chance to read it.
http://chem.tufts.ed...vityofwrong.htm

[helene_t]

onoway, on 2013-July-24, 15:06, said:

Ah t'ís a good thing to have faith. Are you familiar with this site? http://www.badscience.net/

There is science and there is science. On a scale where astrology is zero and relativity theory is 98, maybe many clinical trials are between 20 and 30 (just two numbers i pulled out of the sleeve).

Also, there is a difference between saying that science holds the absolute truth, and saying that science "works".

[Fluffy]

I have one, but since I am the only one who thinks its wrong maybe it is me who is wrong, let's see what you think:

In my country between 1000 and 2000 people die every day. Yesterday 80 people died on a train accident, 80 people means really nothing, so people and media grossly overreact to it updating info several times/hour and feeling very concerned, etc.

[helene_t]

well, the 80 people are largely people who could have lived for decades otherwise so it's a bigger loss than many of the 1000 other people whose life couldn't have been extended more than a few years even with optimal care and prevention.

The government could do something to make trains safer. It can't do much to prevent people from getting older.

People who watch the news may decide to avoid risky travel (although I admit that if the news make them take the motorbike instead of the train it has had an adverse effect). People can't decide not to get older.

So I can see why the 80 people are more newsworthy than the 1000 or 2000.