One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is how much outright wrong things float around in our society. It is sort of the cost of doing business, of course, being animals having a human experience. Our brains are designed for the ancestral environment more so than precise evaluation of truth and falsehood in the real world around us. We believe people we like more than we should, we find patterns when they don’t exist, we pay much more attention to emotional issues than statistical analysis. In his book Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely explores why human beings believe the crazy things that we do (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/ariely-tt0409.html).
One of the classic places we see this is suspicion of science-there is no better way known to humans to determine what is really real than the scientific method and large scale statistical analysis. Scientists make lots of mistakes-many untrue things get published, but anything that endures the long term rigor of statistical evaluation is almost certainly true. Yet suspicion of real things like global warming, evolution, and other scientific results are widespread.
Our politics are filled with completely bogus arguments, with significant national figures saying things that are fundamentally untrue, and this week, we got a Doozy, when Missouri representative Todd Aikin explained pregnancy from rape “is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
To be clear, no part of this is true at all. It’s just a lie, made up by pro-life activists, because it makes us feel bad to insist that a woman who has been raped must bring that child to full term.
So, in honor of representative Todd Aikin,
A top 10 list of things no one should believe:
10) space aliens (not that intelligent life on another planet is impossible, just that no one has ever seen it here).
9) Most people with same sex attraction can be ‘cured’ of their desires.
8) Immunizations cause autism (not to suggest you can't be allergic to immunizations created with chicken eggs. Just that autism is not one of the side effects).
7) it is OK for someone who has abused children in the past to be left alone with a child again (please, don’t do this. Even if someone is ‘fully recovered’ there is no good reason to let this happen).
6) President Obama was born somewhere other than Hawaii.
5) someone other than Al Qaida was responsible for 9/11.
4) slavery wasn't the primary cause of the civil war.
3) global warming doesn't exist (I'm willing to moderate this to something softer, like "the chances that man made global warming is happening right now and will continue in the future are less than 95%").
2) the moon landing was a fake.
1) women have magical ovaries that protect them from getting pregnant when raped (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/08/how-often-does-rape-lead-to-pregnancy/261307/).
I’ve got lots more-
Jewish bankers secretly control the world.
women 'ask for' sexual assault.
There are significant innate intellectual differences between African Americans and white Americans.
there are significant holes in the theory of evolution.
JFK murder theories, other than the Lee Harvey Oswald.
tax cuts raise revenue.
cutting government spending in a recession helps the economy.
I don't need anybody.
Mayans could predict the end of the world.
putting people in jail helps rehabilitate them.
President Obama is a socialist in some significant way that Mitt Romney is not a socialist.
Any I’ve forgotten?
If you believe these things, mark your beliefs to market, and quit it.
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