Comments on: Smart People Believe Weird Things

By: w_nightshade

w_nightshade — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:51:08 +0000

Smart people believe weird things because they are PEOPLE. Everyone is susceptible to confirmation bias.

By: vivek v raykar

vivek v raykar — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:19:44 +0000

Smart people believe weird things because they can bend their language, reasoning power and persuasive skills to better effect.Their skills are so great that they can deceive themselves.

By: Steve Young

Steve Young — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:22:31 +0000

Smart people believe weird things because there are fewer of them, and any minority belief is ‘weird’. Any attempt to analyze deeper simply limits perspective and misses this obvious conclusion.

By: Dustin

Dustin — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:14:05 +0000

One thing that is being overlooked is the possibility that many people, regardless of intelligence, have had at least one or more episode in their lives where strange things happened that they could not explain. Regardless of their origin, you can’t negate the possible impact such an event could have on a person. A possible way to answer this question would be to perform the study while also asking if the subject has ever had any of the aforementioned things (i.e., UFO sightings, treatment with alternative medicine, etc.) to look at their exposure to unscientific things. Does anyone know if this has been done yet?

By: Dr. Robert Galloway

Dr. Robert Galloway — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:36:43 +0000

I have literally sat through hours exceeding 100 in lectures on “scientific method”. These addressed how to set up double blind, controlled studies, worthy of funding, and using the appropriate statistical methods to accurately interpret the results of the studies. We learned techniques that work great to test a fuel additive or an antibiotic. How does one apply these techniques to societal policies? You end up reading opinion by individuals you respect and then going with your gut. How to structure a society is not really fully susceptible to the scientific method.
Sincerely,

RHG

By: Robin (not Collins)

Robin (not Collins) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:22:52 +0000

It seems to me that saying “88 percent [of adult Americans] accept alternative medicine” is not a very… um… scientific way to talk about a category (alternative medicine) that could include such disparate practices as astrology, chiropractic, acupuncture, movement therapy, Rolfing, Reiki, Jin Shin Jyutsu — the list goes on and on. Let’s have a more disciplined approach to this particular measurement, which is probably several measurements in reality.

By: Kenn

Kenn — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 03:06:00 +0000

Robin Collins:

To air is human.

By: Kenn

Kenn — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 03:05:05 +0000

Vulcan:

Yep. In sales and marketing I find people will by-pass better deals to buy what “feels right.” The challenge is to make them feel good about what we sell. A greater challenge is to make them feel good after they buy.

Reminds me of Shermer’s book.

By: Jim Stewart

Jim Stewart — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 01:53:34 +0000

The claim that “Students are taught what to think but not how to think.” is hardly scientific. Also what they [& we, as life-time learners] learn is all that really matters.
Scinece has proved that the first things we learn include recognition within the womb of our mothers’ voice and even her use of language!

Surely a more relevant is how our early environments form our learning processes. Those processes expressed in language, particularly in our mother “tongue”, which is distinct from written “words” and text like these, seem to be settled before any institutional teaching by “authorities”.

By: Peter Johnson

Peter Johnson — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:40:11 +0000

my two cents, “alternative medicine” is not the best term, I think it is misleading, a better term would be “unproven medicine” or maybe “disproven medicine”.