Why do people believe weird things?

Michael Shermer, 2006, 13.27, REASON

Link
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things.html

About Michael Shermer

Founder of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer spends his life debunking myths, exposing frauds, and
highlighting fallacies. His key assertion is that before you draw on a supernatural cause for something, you
first have to explore all the potential natural causes.

Why is this talk worth watching?

This is an entertaining talk, which highlights how a lack of reason can lead us seriously astray when it
comes to understanding the world. Shermer also consolidates a lot of our TOK knowledge, such as how
science is a way of knowing more than an area of knowledge.

WOKs/AOKs
REASON, natural sciences, human sciences, language, faith

Questions on the talk

1 What is MS’s first example of a ‘bad idea’? 1.20

The Quadro 2000 Dowser Rod, a device to
detect marijuana in students’ lockers,
produced by the Quadro Corporation of
West Virginia. It is sold for $900 to high
school administrators.

2 How do psychic readings (etc.) work – in
contrast to science?
In psychic readings, people remember the 2.15
hits or success and forget the misses or
failures. In science, they keep the whole
database, and look to see if the number of
hits somehow stands out from the total
number you'd expect by chance.

3 How does MS view science? To Shermer, science is not a thing. It's a verb. 3.10
He thinks that science is a way of thinking
about things, and a way of looking for
natural explanations for all phenomena.
4 How does science (via terms such as
‘dark energy’) use language – in contrast
to those who adhere to ‘Intelligent
Design’ and other theories (‘miracle’)?
5 What does MS mean when he says that
science is about finding a balance
between ‘data’ and ‘theory’? Refer to
Galileo and Huygens.
6 Why do we see faces on Mars (and other
similar phenomena)?
Science use terms such as dark energy or 4.10
dark matter when they do not exactly know
about something, and they use those terms
until they figure out what it is. It is the
beginning of the causal chain for science.
However, for intelligent design creationists,
that term would mean the end of the chain.
Shermer says that science us about finding a 5.15
balance between data and theory, which
means when someone came up with a
theory, but does not have the data to
support it, the theory cannot be valid, and
vice versa.
For example, when Galileo was studying
planet Saturn, there was no theory of
planetary rings at that time. In addition to
that, his data was unclear, and he couldn't
quite make out what he was looking at.
Therefore, without a theory of planetary
rings and with only grainy data, he can’t have
a good theory.
In contrast to Galileo’s case, Christian
Huygens had a good theory of planetary
rings and how the solar system operated,
and he also had better telescopic, more fine-
grain data in which he could figure out that
as the Earth is going around faster
(according to Kepler's Laws) than Saturn,
then we catch up with it. And we see the
angles of the rings at different angles, there.
And that turns out to be true.
Cognitive biases are what make us see the 6.50
faces. Even when they finally had the
zoomed in photo of the face on Mars in
2001, we still can see the face because we're
programmed by evolution to see faces, as
they are what we see every day and
important for us socially. It is also because
the data, or picture in this case, is a bit
abstract and if there’s any familiar shape/
outline formed by nature, we would just
assume that it is similar to what we familiar
of, and therefore, call it by the name of
whatever or whoever that we know.
7 How does the power of suggestion
change our perception of things?
It’s just like when Shermer had the audience 10.30
listen to Stairway of Heaven by Led Zeppelin
in reverse and asked the audience to identify
the ‘hidden message’ in the lyrics. The
audience was only able to identify one word
which is “satan”, but when he replayed the
reversed song again while showing the lyrics
of the hidden message that they’re supposed
to hear, everyone noticed and could hear
the words clearly in their ears. This shows
how much power of suggestion change our
perception of things. What the audience has
expected to hear when looking at the lyrics
highly influenced their response of getting
the outcome of the expected. As he also
said that we only can identify something that
we are familiar of, and so, suggesting the
hidden message to the audience help the
audience to identify it.

Related knowledge questions and discussion points

• How does use of language change the way we perceive things?

Intro
There are about 7000 different (known) languages in the world in which people use to
communicate ideas and share knowledge. Every language may be different in structure, vocabulary, or
tenses, which also means that the way people communicate ideas and share knowledge is different,
depending on what language they speak. Language can also be a way of expressing thoughts, feelings and
also knowledge. As some language may not have a certain way to express something that another
language can, and people’s perspective and mind are shaped by what they know and are familiar of, this
could affect the way they perceive and think about things. And if someone learns a new language which
allows that person to access new information and ways to communicate thoughts differently, their
perception of things would also most likely change. Therefore, language, depending on how it is used, can
change the way we perceive things.
Language can be a powerful tool to shape the way someone thinks and perceives things. As Lera
Boroditsky, an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and symbolic systems at Stanford
University, says: “Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak
profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives.” For example,
teaching an English speaker a new language that has grammatical gender, such as French or Spanish, is
able to change one’s view of an object as more feminine or masculine when before that, it would not
cross the mind of an English speaker. This can even affect an artist’s mind when they paint. As their
language classify objects and many other things into gender, German artists are more likely to paint death
as a man, while Russian painters are more likely to paint it as a woman. Another example is a language
that does not have expressions or words for numbers. This does not allow the people to know
mathematics and they would have a different way of seeing a group of things and they are unable to
identify it. Therefore, if they learn a new language, they will be able to count and do mathematical
calculations, which is able to change their way of perceiving their surroundings and groups of things. This
shows how powerful language is and the way it is used is able to change the way people perceive things.
However, Professor Steven Pinker, a member of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
at MIT, and director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Center at MIT, stated, “I don't think that we think in
language, or think in words. I think we think in visual images, we think in auditory images, we think in
abstract propositions about what is true about what.” Using Pinker’s way of thinking, it means that even if
there was no language at all, one can still have thoughts but isn’t able to express it in words. For example,
babies are not able to talk but they can still have their own thoughts and way of perceiving things, or in
other words, they have their own language of thought. Therefore, based on Pinker’s point of view,
people’s thoughts and views of things exist and are able to change on its own even without the help of
language, but the language’s role is just to help us express and communicate our thoughts to other
people.
Boroditsky’s claim shows that different languages can change the way we perceive things, such as
how grammatical gender is able to change one’s perception on objects. This also shows that different
languages allow different amount and types of knowledge to be accessed or transferred to people. Thus,
it is able to change one’s perspective things through the different use of it. However, it makes sense that
according to Pinker’s perception that even babies have their own thoughts before they learn any language
in their lives. As language is invented by humans, it means that thoughts come first before language and
so, language is shaped by our thoughts and not vice versa. So, language is just a way for us to express our
thoughts. Nevertheless, as different cultures have different language, they also share different knowledge,
which means through the different structures and rules of each language, it can change the way someone
perceive things.
From this, we can conclude that language does have the ability to change the way we perceive
things as knowledge are shared through it. We can also clearly see that even though babies do not know
language yet, they still have their own language of thoughts. And while according to Pinker’s theory that
our thoughts are there even without language, and that our thoughts shape the language, learning other
language which comes from a totally different culture can still change the way we perceive things, as
different cultures have different shared knowledge and communication system that are applied to their
own languages. Therefore, we are able to have a different perspective based on the language that we
learn and the one that we know now by knowing how it classifies things, such as the grammatical gender,
the different structural systems, and the shared knowledge that is passed on through the different
languages.

References:
- Boroditsky, L. (2018). Transcript of "How language shapes the way we think". [online] Ted.com. Available at:
https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think/
transcript#t-838476 [Accessed 15 Apr. 2018].
- Perry, P. (2018). Does the Language We Speak Affect Our Perception of Reality?. [online] Big Think. Available
at: http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/does-the-language-we-speak-affect-our-perception-of-reality
[Accessed 15 Apr. 2018].
- Shermer, M. (2006). Why people believe weird things. [online] Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/
michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things [Accessed 15 Apr. 2018].