On 10/18/2010 6:30 PM, nemesis wrote:
> Orchid XP v8<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> On 18/10/2010 07:20 PM, Warp wrote:
>>
>>>     I have noticed a curious pattern that, in average, people who believe in
>>> one kind of pseudoscience or paranormal phenomena are very likely to believe
>>> in a whole array of such claimed phenomena.
>>
>> Presumably it takes some kind of mental disorder to actually believe any
>> of this nonesense.
>
> It actually requires being exposed to it from a tender age, plus general society
> acceptance.  In pre-scientific-method societies, it could be perfectly
> acceptable for mentally sane people to theorize the most ridiculous theories to
> explain unexplained phenomena -- the ancient greek philosophers were quite good
> at logic, but some of their reasoning was based on false promises not quite
> based on evidence.
>
> Today, it still goes on based mostly on cultural inheritance.
>
>
Not even that always. Mind.. religion tends to help, since usually it 
emphasizes authority and the same sort of pre-scientific thinking about 
its own premises, so that gets carried over into other areas. But, as 
someone put it a while back, logic is hard, applying it in such a manner 
that you avoid confirmation bias even harder, and nothing about using it 
is *natural* in any sense of the word for the brain. It has to be 
learned. Instead, lack of real understanding of the process leads to 
leaps, errors, confirmation via popularity/"common sense"/wish 
fulfillment, and the like. None of which lead to valid results, since 
they all rely on the person opting for the answer on the basis not of if 
its true, but if it seems it should be, or feels like it should be, or 
would upset something they care about, if it wasn't.

Any good magician can show that "everyone else saw it", or, "that seems 
like the most reasonable answer", never mind, "I really wish it worked 
that way", are all really bad ways to figure out reality, but very 
**very** good ways of keeping people from seeing reality, which is, of 
course, the other problem. Second oldest profession in the world, right 
after, "I will give you this banana, if you suck my...", was, "I promise 
that this will help you, just look how happy all the other people I 
scammed into this ritual look doing it!"

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message