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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
 Posted - 10/13/2006 : 14:13:03 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Neurosis
You must mean angel water not angle water, Kill.
I hate when that happens… Kilbonics.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2006 : 13:38:11 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dude
The interpretation, by our brains, of the raw sensory data, is all that we are ever aware of.
But I don't see how that translates into a willingness to ignore evidence and believe blindly.
How do you conclude motive is the cause rather than biology? A desire to believe? Why and how do you test such an hypothesis?
It's too speculative to be meaningful. I'm not buying it. We have a drive to eat, drink, sleep, & have sex. We probably have some equal drives to seek other pleasures. We certainly have a biological drive to be social creatures. And there may be more drives I'm forgetting.
But a drive to believe? Or even a drive to believe in the supernatural? It's not a meaningful statement.
There may be a connection between the drive to survive and belief in life after death. That might include a spillover to believe in Blue Fairies or whatever. My hypothesis would be that if you could educate that believer in why their believed encounter with the fairy was an illusion, they would not continue to believe in order to fulfill a need to believe.
And I have not decided if religion is based on any natural drive or based on indoctrination. That God gene is an intriguing hypothesis. There are certainly people who prefer order and control over uncertainty and may therefore be more susceptible to indoctrination of certain types. |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 10/16/2006 : 06:42:03 [Permalink]
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| Yeah its called laziness, we have a drive to think as little as possible. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 10/16/2006 : 10:55:17 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
My hypothesis would be that if you could educate that believer in why their believed encounter with the fairy was an illusion, they would not continue to believe in order to fulfill a need to believe.
You might succeed in altering a specific belief, but the overall need to believe would still exist. They would just latch onto something else.
I do think we are biologically wired to believe in certain woo-woo assertions, and I think these tendencies are deeply seated in some of the most primitive portions of our brains. The near ubiquity of supernatural beliefs in all human cultures is certainly one good indication that such a drive exists. Or think of the centuries old ad hoc explanations theists regularly employ to maintain their belief in an untestable god. The impulse to believe may very well be intertwined to other drives (our survival instinct, for instance), but I don't think that's the whole story.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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Luke T.
Skeptic Friend
140 Posts |
Posted - 10/16/2006 : 15:13:21 [Permalink]
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I don't know if we are hardwired to believe in the irrational. Actually, I think we are hardwired the other way.
I think we are hardwired to seek knowledge. We have these big brains of which only a small part is necessary to survive. The rest of it needs to be occupied with something. It requires input.
So a caveman is in his cave and lightning strikes nearby. It scares the bejeesus out him, and his survival instinct kicks in to keep away from it. But at the same time, that extra part of his mind is occupied with, "Where the hell did that come from?"
His mind won't rest until he has an answer. Where the hell did that come from? What was that?
As far as I know, a dog doesn't ponder the source of lightning.
With only limited knowledge at his disposal, the man creates an answer. He must if he is going to get some satisfaction.
We observe and contemplate. And in a state of ignorance, we get wrong answers. But somebody's big brain somewhere is always pondering the questions, and so the answers evolve.
People who know that a piece of metal has no healing properties don't buy Q-Ray bracelets. Only the ignorant do.
Some people have a lesser drive for knowledge than others the same way some have a higher sex drive than others.
So like BigPapaSmurf said, some people are lazy and will accept the answers someone else gives them instead of doing the work themselves to find out.
But it is still possible for a person with a high knowledge-seeking instinct to come up with wrong answers and pursue them with the aggressiveness that comes with the high knowledge-seeking drive. Thus the persistence of a conspiracy theory "nut". Once directed, it is damned hard to turn that beam.
Once we have our "answer", we begin the process of confirmation bias to support it.
So in the absence of being all-knowing and having all the answers, we come up with wrong answers frequently. This is not a result of being hardwired to believe in the wrong answer, it is the result of being hardwired to get an answer.
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| Edited by - Luke T. on 10/16/2006 15:18:04 |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 10/16/2006 : 20:53:09 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Luke T.
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As far as I know, a dog doesn't ponder the source of lightning.
This is a common assumption for which there is no basis to know one way or the other.
Dogs have REM sleep suggesting they dream. They have consciousness, they learn. I would think one could speculate they also have some free space in their brains from which to ponder why some days they get to eat leftovers and other days they don't. Who knows?
Jane Goodall had an interesting film of a chimp dancing around alone with a tree branch and watching a waterfall. Had to be contemplating something. Could be imagining himself as the alpha male or perhaps wondering what made that water move or where did it come from. |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 10/16/2006 : 20:59:56 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by H. Humbert
You might succeed in altering a specific belief, but the overall need to believe would still exist. They would just latch onto something else.
I do think we are biologically wired to believe in certain woo-woo assertions, and I think these tendencies are deeply seated in some of the most primitive portions of our brains. The near ubiquity of supernatural beliefs in all human cultures is certainly one good indication that such a drive exists. Or think of the centuries old ad hoc explanations theists regularly employ to maintain their belief in an untestable god. The impulse to believe may very well be intertwined to other drives (our survival instinct, for instance), but I don't think that's the whole story.
I do think there was/is evolution of thought as our brains evolve. We also pass on information to each subsequent generation which has accumulated over time. There appears to be some specific areas where myth fulfilled a purpose. And right now, it still does for a majority of people on the planet. That might be a specific version of the "overpowering desire to believe" but I wouldn't label it as such. The more commonly accepted hypotheses are that people wanted to live on after death, want contact with dead loved ones, wanted to control the uncontrollable such as floods and droughts and so on. The motive was a specific outcome, not a drive to believe in itself. |
| Edited by - beskeptigal on 10/16/2006 21:00:30 |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 10/16/2006 : 21:20:12 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
I do think there was/is evolution of thought as our brains evolve. We also pass on information to each subsequent generation which has accumulated over time. There appears to be some specific areas where myth fulfilled a purpose. And right now, it still does for a majority of people on the planet. That might be a specific version of the "overpowering desire to believe" but I wouldn't label it as such. The more commonly accepted hypotheses are that people wanted to live on after death, want contact with dead loved ones, wanted to control the uncontrollable such as floods and droughts and so on. The motive was a specific outcome, not a drive to believe in itself.
Perhaps labeling the tendency to believe in the supernatural a "drive" or a "need" is incorrect. I think that perhaps that phrase was said less literally than you're taking it.
All I mean is meant to point out is that there exists evidence which suggests there are mechanisms in our thought processes that make adopting beliefs in the "supernatural" all but inevitable for the great majority of people. The way our brains process sensory information is prone to these types of errors. I believe the things you bring up--a desire to live longer, stay with loved ones, etc.--are secondary factors which serve to engrain the errors. The only method I've discovered for preventing these errors is critical thinking and applied skeptcism.
Skeptic magazine has an online article written by James Alcock and entitled The Belief Engine which may be of interest.
quote:
It is because our brains and nervous systems constitute a belief-generating machine, an engine that produces beliefs without any particular respect for what is real or true and what is not. This belief engine selects information from the environment, shapes it, combines it with information from memory, and produces beliefs that are generally consistent with beliefs already held. This system is as capable of generating fallacious beliefs as it is of generating beliefs that are in line with truth. These beliefs guide future actions and, whether correct or erroneous, they may prove functional for the individual who holds them. Whether or not there is really a Heaven for worthy souls does nothing to detract from the usefulness of such a belief for people who are searching for meaning in life.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 10/17/2006 : 10:05:22 [Permalink]
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I think it is just a drive to understand what we experience, for most people all they need is an explination they can comprehend, its accuracy is not as important as just having an answer. The more confusing the answer (unfortunately reality is extremely confusing) the less likely they are to latch onto it.
So in conclusion
If people are given the option of 'God did it' or 10 million pages describing in detail all that exists. 'God did it' will win the majority vote. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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