March 28, 2010
Why We Believe in the Unbelievable
Bruce M. Hood
Bruce M. Hood discusses why so many people believe in the supernatural despite the lack of evidence, explaining that it may have something to do with how our brains are wired. He draws a distinction between religious supernatural beliefs, which are culturally determined, and more universal secular supernatural beliefs such as mind-body dualism and causality. He explains how such magical thinking may be socially advantageous and how even skeptics engage in supersense thinking. He also warns against the unscrupulous individuals who take advantage of what is a natural disposition in the majority of people.
In this week’s Honest Liar segment, Jamy Ian Swiss explains what he learned at the 1964 World’s Fair.
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Listener Reactions
Hi, great episode.
I was wondering, whats the name of the second effect that Jamy Ian Swiss talk about in his section?
As you may already noticed, English is not my native language.
Yay new episode! Yay Jamy Ian Swiss is back!
My only comment about this one is the idea about getting your books signed.. For me, it’s not something magical. It’s something to mark the event of meeting the person and sharing a moment. Then later when I look at the book it makes me think of that moment. A form of sense memory.
I don’t think it gives the book any special power, or meaning, except to me. But not in any supernatural or mysterious way.
I agree Travis,
I think it’s wrong to equate rituals that do not rely on supernatural belief with rituals that do.
Participating in the cosmonaut ritual of pissing on the tires, you needn’t be anything more than an act to humorously recognize those that came before, and create a good feeling among the community. You might be able to claim it irrational, but then, is having sex with a condom on irrational too?
This conversation was framed in such a way that it made it sound like Bruce Hood and Richard Dawkins were in disagreement on the problem of indoctrination, but it doesn’t sound like that at all. When Richard Dawkins talks about the problem of indoctrination of children, he’s talking about indoctrination into supernatural belief systems of the type that take advantage of people - the same type that Bruce Hood condemns. Dawkins’ is not saying (I don’t think) that superstition would necessarily be eraticated all-together if only there were no indoctrination of children, he’s saying that religios indoctrination is a wicked thing to do (e.g. it is a wicked thing to scare children with the threat to eternal hellfire).
Hood is saying that objective truth doesn’t matter, and that false beliefs don’t matter as long as they don’t cause anyone any harm. Problem with that is that the first part goes against the main purpose of science; second part is wrong because beliefs cannot be separated from behavior in most cases - beliefs directly cause behaviors.
His approach seems lacking in care about other people in general. I like that he’s trying to educate people about psychology, but I think he could be doing more. He’s sure to tick off both scientific skeptic activists and supernatural believers with his current approach. He has a pessimistic, apathetic “give-up” approach to bogus beliefs - thinks they can’t be eliminated (or nearly eliminated), even though many scientific skeptics have done so. I would the best scientific skeptics have none of the “supersense” beliefs he describes, except what he calls “causality”, which is not harmful to possess. It’s a mental short cut that’s fine as long as one recognizes that it may produce the wrong conclusion if not tested sufficiently.
John
Hey admin guys, it’s not letting you download the episode- either on this website or on iTunes.
Jay it works for me.
Was a good interview. I don’t agree with his views about skepticism though. It does not matter where the belief comes from because if it is wrong it needs to be corrected. I do not care if it makes you feel good because I fervently believe in stopping people from living lies. If I was living a lie I would want someone to tell me. Yes, even in the case that he gives of a family member dieing.
I quite enjoyed this episode of The Honest Liar. I was especially entertained at the thought of we humans heralding the pseudo-accomplishment of handwriting analysis over the true technological triumph of optical character recognition. Hooray for the machines!