Why People Believe Weird Things

The title of this article is also the title of a book by a friend of mine, Michael Shermer. It’s a book for people who are sick of credulous nuts. On the back of the book is a little Penn & Teller quote (we’ve written a few books ourselves), where we rant against the epistemological hedonistic (if it feels good, believe it). It’s a great book that debunks. (Shermer hates that word. He and James Randi research; I, however, debunk. I ridicule. I guffaw. If Michael and Randi ever find that any of this garbage is true, I’ll eat my words, but . . . hey, I’m not staying hungry.) It debunks everything from Holocaust denial, creationism, and ESP to the recovered memory movement, alien abduction experiences, and the satanic ritual abuse scare.

Shermer indirectly attempts to answer the question the title poses. He offers a list of common thinking mistakes people make but the real "why" is much deeper.

We believe these nut things because it’s part of our little monkey brains to try desperately to make patterns. That’s the genius of humans, the quality that lets us learn. Pattern recognition has moved us off the hostile savanna and into the much safer condominiums. When you see your cavemate die shortly after a snake bite, it’s probably a good idea to avoid all snakes. Of course, this over-simplification also leads to racism, religion, and all kinds of magical thinking. These human qualities are as natural as rape and just as undesirable.

Civilization and science fight against the natural mistakes of our brains. It’s a wonder of our species that we’re learning to use our brains to fight our brains. If you feel it, but it isn’t right, don’t do it and don’t believe it. We can be better than natural -- we’re human.

The answer to why people believe weird things seems to be one of those topics that‘s either too hard or too easy for a book. The "too hard" part would involve a detailed analysis of the evolution of our monkey brains. But it’s also "too easy," because many people are just lazy and don’t bother to make the time to learn the truth. It’s so easy to get that wonderful "a-ha" rush from some TV schlock about our big bad government -- of course, it’s partially the government’s fault for really being big and bad -- holding back information on extraterrestrial gray people. (It’s funny that these aliens never look African. They always look like Caucasian children and that tells you a bit about our evil little monkey brains.)

It’s much harder to get the "a-ha" with the understanding of a real discovery. After all, it takes a lot of genius and effort to be Richard Feynman. Any ignorant drunk can see lights in the sky and get on TV to talk about them.

In the September 4 issue of "Nature, "John C. Marshall made a great point in his review of Shermer’s book. (I didn’t read the review; "Nature" is way too hard for me. Even the pictures in "Nature" are too hard for me. A smart friend told me about the article.) The great point is that Michael’s book isn’t even about "weird things." It’s not weird to believe that uber-people are coming down from the skies to take care of us. It’s not weird to think that some other weirdos can read minds. It’s not weird to think that one’s race is superior to other races. That’s simple stuff. That is, sadly, majority thinking. Those are the evil, stupid, thoughts we’ve been believing for 150 thousand years.

The real weird stuff is that disease is caused by invisible critters. Real weird is the idea of the whole universe starting out smaller than a piece of gunk in your contact lens. Real weird is that light is both a wave and a particle and flies along at 186,000 miles per second. Real weird is that I was able to type that last number without looking it up.

And those of us who believe those weird things believe them (maybe tentatively) because there’s some evidence. How weird is that?