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Don't Believe

Entry 595, on 2007-08-28 at 10:10:13 (Rating 2, Skepticism)

I've made many entries in this blog in the past expressing frustration at the beliefs of some of the people I have had discussions with by email and on discussion forums. I have often wondered what it is about these people which leads them to believe such weird things and to apply such obviously unreliable methods of establishing facts.

After listening to a recent Point of Inquiry podcast which interviewed a professor from an American university who recently completed a book titled "Don't believe everything you think" it could be that the answer isn't such a mystery. It seems that everyone (including me, no doubt) is susceptible to making errors in their reasoning and that the people who do have a better understanding of reality only do that because they constantly correct their inherent biases by using techniques such as skepticism.

This makes a lot of sense because science works in a similar way. Even supporters of science would concede that it makes a lot of mistakes, but the methods in use ensure these mistakes are corrected. Repeatability, peer review, and reliance on objective evidence and well defined experiments means mistakes are usually corrected quickly.

So what are the major types of mistakes that people make? First, they want to believe certain things without good justification. These beliefs might originate from parental or peer pressure, societal norms, or something which just fits the individual's personality. These people then seek out confirmation for the belief while ignoring or minimising anything which contradicts it.

Most people also prefer to take notice of stories instead of looking at statistical evidence. They also have a lot of trouble understanding and accepting chance events. Many people believe in the power of prayer (for example) because they know instances of where it has "worked". The fact that statistics suggest it actually doesn't work and that random chance leads to a certain rate of positive outcomes is either misunderstood or ignored.

Memory is also a problem to all humans. Numerous experiments have shown that people's memories, even of important events, are very inaccurate. Not only that, but they usually have confidence their memory is correct even when its wrong. Recovered memory and other pseudo-scientific beliefs have little merit, yet people can't be convinced what they remember is wrong. For example, I'm sure that many UFO reports would be a lot less convincing if we knew the facts instead of what people think they remember.

But am I just exhibiting all of these symptoms myself when I have such an incredulous, skeptical attitude to everything? Well, as I said above, everyone is guilty of this to a certain extent, but I think part of my skepticism is self examination. I always deliberately research both sides of each topic I am interested in and this leads to me having a good handle on reality (well I think so anyway - maybe I'm totally deluded).

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