It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a coincidence

Jason’s post about conspiracies reminded me of several books that support Jason’s argument. 

The first book is How We Know What Isn’t so: the Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life, by Thomas Gilovich (1991). Gilovich points to a number of experiments demonstrating that people strive to find order in the world where there is none.  We don’t find random distributions easy to process.  Rather, we allow our imaginations to run wild on randomness:

With hindsight it is always possible to spot the most anomalous features of the data and build a favorable statistical analysis around them.  However, if properly trained scientist (or simply a wise person) avoids doing so because he or she recognizes that constructing a statistical analysis retrospectively capitalizes too much on chance and renders the analysis meaningless. . . . unfortunately, the intuitive assessments of the average person are not bound by these constraints.

Here’s another good example of people finding order where there isn’t, on Mars.  

People are also “extraordinarily good at ad hoc explanations.” Our motives and fears ignite our imaginations:

Once a person has misidentified a random pattern as a “real” phenomenon, it will not exist as a puzzling, isolated fact about the world.  Rather, it is quickly explained and readily integrated into the person’s pre-existing theories and beliefs.  These theories, furthermore, then serve to bias the person’s evaluation of new information in such a way that the initial belief becomes solidly entrenched. . . . people cling tenaciously to their beliefs in

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Conspiring To Theorize

I've seen a couple of those independantly produced DVD "exposes" about the 9/11 disaster--you know, the ones attributing sinsister intent to the United States government, that, in fact, we "knew" and did nothing in order to promote subsequent insanity.  I've been taking these things with large grains of salt for…

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Scorched-Earth Politics

Greetings to the readers of Dangerous Intersection! My name is Adam Lee, though on the internet I usually go by Ebonmuse, and I’m the owner and proprietor of the weblog Daylight Atheism. Erich Vieth has given me the opportunity to write a guest post here, and I couldn’t turn down his generous offer.

As it happens, there is a topic I’ve been wanting to write about for a while. In particular, I was inspired by Michael Moore’s wonderful op-ed, A Liberal’s Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives, which I came across from a recent post on this very site. Say what you will about Michael Moore – many people have – but his essay, to me, stands out for its compassionate and gracious tone. It contains no gloating over the Republicans’ defeat, no mocking them for their loss. On the contrary, it empathizes with them and assures them that they have nothing to fear.

Especially noteworthy, I thought, was this point:

We will always respect you. We will never, ever, call you “unpatriotic” simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

Now, the question: Does anyone believe for even a moment that, if the Republican party had won these elections, we would be hearing the same tune from their pundits and spokespeople? The answer, which I hope should be obvious to everyone, is: Of course not.

Had the Republicans won, they would be gloating to high heaven, mocking and ridiculing their …

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Surrounding yourself with the not-so-bright does not make you look smarter.

When we were teenagers, my sister and I used to discuss how the people around you affect how you look. She was very short, and a little 'plump' and seemed to have girlfriends that were tall and skinny.  I pointed out (just being argumentative, I was the older sister by a…

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Let’s give thanks for selective memories on Thanksgiving

Everyone knows that the United States was first settled in 1620.  Everyone is wrong.

We celebrate a wildly distorted history of Thanksgiving year after year.  On Thanksgiving, we solemnly give thanks that we have enough food to allow our families to overeat.  For the sake of holiday decorum, we avoid the thought that we could actually be doing something to help millions of people starving to death elsewhere in the world.  We could splurge a bit less on the big holiday meal, for instance, then send life-saving donations to relief agency to save some real lives.  But that would be such a downer on the holiday.  Instead, let’s spend time with those people we love and think happy thoughts about Thanksgiving.

After all, we celebrate holidays to be happy, to bond family and friends.  And it is a good thing to keep in touch with family and friends. To keep the room happy, though, we need to focus mostly on happy things and to avoid thinking about facts, memories or courses of conduct that might interfere with that happiness.  Other than watching our favorite football team lose the big game, what could possibly interfere with the flow of happiness on Thanksgiving?  Here’s one thing: the truth about Thanksgiving.

With Thanksgiving approaching, I decided that it would be good medicine to re-read the chapter on Thanksgiving in James Loewen’s iconoclastic classic, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (1995). It was well worth the …

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