Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time

Author: Michael Shermer

Rating: ⭐ 4/5

Date Read: 2012/08/07

Pages: 384

“…no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.” - David Hume

What kind of person could deny that the holocaust actually happened? Who could argue against the evidence for evolution? And how do smart people believe such outlandish claims as ESP, alien abductions, and haunted houses? In his book, Michael Shermer explains the logical fallacies and cycles of belief that cause smart people to believe some really weird stuff. This book is worth reading for the in-depth discussion of logical fallacies alone; these fallacies should be taught in high school science classes. Shermer points out that part of the issue with pseudoscience is the way we approach science eduction: as a collection of facts, instead of an imperfect but self-correcting method for discovering the truth.

Shermer treats believers kindly: he does not attack them as ignorant or crazy. Indeed, he claims that intelligence and belief in weird things are completely orthogonal (in other words, statistically unrelated). However, he does compare creationists with holocaust deniers (both fringe groups that use similar tactics to deny a well-established truth), and he certainly counts a belief in God, particularly a belief that God can be proven scientifically, as strange. Shermer’s discussion of [a:Ayn Rand|432|Ayn Rand|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1168729178p2/432.jpg]‘s cult of objectivism is amusingly vitriolic, and one of my favorite sections of the book.