The Science Of Why We Don’t Believe Science
Wondering how evolution developed us into creatures who don’t believe in evolution? Mother Jones explains why large numbers of people tend to believe things that make no sense, and why the human brain is averse to evidence and reasoning:
An array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called “motivated reasoning” helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, “death panels,” the birthplace and religion of the president (PDF), and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.
The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF): Reasoning is actually…
Top 10 Logical Fallacies in Politics
Aristotle.
And all this time I thought politicians just spoke a different language that only sounded like English. E. Magill writes in Open Salon:
The human brain is wired all wrong. Those not versed in logic are blissfully unaware of how much our brain messes up the most basic of arguments, leading to the mess of random thoughts, non-sequiturs, cognitive dissonance, white lies, misinformation, and syntax errors that we call consciousness. Luckily, there is one place where all of these logical misteps can be exemplified: politics. What follows is a crash course in some of the most prevelant fallacies we all make, as they appear in modern American politics. And though I consider these the “top 10″ logical fallacies in politics, they are not in order, for reasons that should become clear rather quickly.
#1.
IGNORATIO ELENCHI
The man who invented Western philosophy, Aristotle, considered ignoratio elenchi, which roughly translates to “irrelevant thesis,” an umbrella term…
Porn Causes Tsunamis and Earthquakes
The interesting PZ Myers writes on Pharyngula:
Powerful stuff, that porn. The Indonesian Minister of Communication and Information (who must be very smart to have a title like that) has determined that recent natural disasters in his country are a consequence of the ubiquity of pornographic DVDs. His logic is something like this:
1) it is a fact that one can easily buy porn in local markets, and
2) it is a fact that the Padang earthquake killed over a thousand people and that the Aceh tsunami devastated an entire region, therefore
3) it is a fact that the two are causally related.
Well, point 3 is a little shaky, but 1 and 2 are so strong it must make up for the absence of a causal relationship. Right? Right?
Anyway, you must all now unplug the internet and go through your magazines and DVDs and dispose of anything that might stir the wrath of gods.…
