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wrong knowledge
Sep. 4th, 2008 12:58 pmI have a lovely friend who phoned me up last night to tell me excitedly about a way to deal with my infection. She told me about medieval medical explanations of illness that have been disproven hundreds of years ago. Further she believed that bacteria, protozoa, viruses, fungi and prions could be banished from the body using what amounts to wishful thinking. I wonder why an intelligent person like her would believe such stuff.
One of the nicest people I have ever met enthusiastically believes all manner of nonsense about aliens and crop circles. When given the choice that the two guys who owned up to making the early crop circles for a bit of a drunken lark are telling the simple truth, or that aliens are among us and choosing to "communicate" with us by drawing stupid circles in fields, he unhesitatingly chooses the latter. Why?
Many people still believe in astrology. All claim to any validity has been demolished so many times it gets tiresome. Even Gauguelin, a professor of astrology, utterly disproved the field while attempting to give it scientific credibilty with a huge, careful study. But millions still opt to believe in the unbelievable. How can this be so?
I have many friends who believe in one or another religion. There is not one whit of evidence to support any religion. In fact, all of the thousands of religions clearly contradict the real world. What causes people to believe in something that runs absolutely counter to reality?
I have a number of otherwise intelligent friends who denounce all medical drugs (despite the fact that some actually are reliably useful substances) yet these same people will happily swallow "herbal" preparations based on nothing more than hearsay and containing ingredients they know nothing about. How can people be so skeptical of things that are known, yet be so uncritical of things unknown?
Why do people choose weird fantasy over the real world? Where is the sense in that?
What drives people to believe in myth, superstition, and flights of fancy instead of information right before their eyes?
One of the nicest people I have ever met enthusiastically believes all manner of nonsense about aliens and crop circles. When given the choice that the two guys who owned up to making the early crop circles for a bit of a drunken lark are telling the simple truth, or that aliens are among us and choosing to "communicate" with us by drawing stupid circles in fields, he unhesitatingly chooses the latter. Why?
Many people still believe in astrology. All claim to any validity has been demolished so many times it gets tiresome. Even Gauguelin, a professor of astrology, utterly disproved the field while attempting to give it scientific credibilty with a huge, careful study. But millions still opt to believe in the unbelievable. How can this be so?
I have many friends who believe in one or another religion. There is not one whit of evidence to support any religion. In fact, all of the thousands of religions clearly contradict the real world. What causes people to believe in something that runs absolutely counter to reality?
I have a number of otherwise intelligent friends who denounce all medical drugs (despite the fact that some actually are reliably useful substances) yet these same people will happily swallow "herbal" preparations based on nothing more than hearsay and containing ingredients they know nothing about. How can people be so skeptical of things that are known, yet be so uncritical of things unknown?
Why do people choose weird fantasy over the real world? Where is the sense in that?
What drives people to believe in myth, superstition, and flights of fancy instead of information right before their eyes?