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On 12/29/2011 1:17 AM, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott<sel### [at] npgcable com> wrote:
>> and "Quirkology", which covers some seriously
>> goofy studies that have been done over the years, which do a fair job of
>> dispelling the suggestion that the average person is *at all* rational,
>> outside of where they have to be to get something accomplished (and not
>> even always then).
>
> It indeed is so that the innate way of thinking for the human brain is
> *not* rational skepticism. Rational skepticism is something that has to
> be learned via years of study and the willingness to understand how the
> world really works.
>
> The innate instinct of the human brain is to be naive, to believe what
> you are told. This actually makes sense from an evolutionary perspective:
> If a child is told "don't eat that plant, it's dangerous", this child had
> a significantly higher chance of survival if he took that claim at face
> value instead of being skeptical and testing it. Hence humans have been
> naturally selected to be naive, especially in matter concerning dangers.
> (It's no wonder that so many conspiracy theories are related to things
> that are ostensibly dangerous. For example "vaccines are dangerous",
> "fluoridated water is dangerous", "chemotherapy is poison", "the government
> is out to get you", etc.)
>
A better analogy, perhaps (given the tendency of children to test damn
near anything once) is that, "Its better to a assume that the rustling
in the bush is a pouncing tiger, than to have to look, to find out for
certain."
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