That one spooky thing (continued) January 21, 2014
Posted by Ubi Dubium in Brain Glitches, Responses.Tags: atheism, Cognitive Biases, conman, critical thinking, evidence, faith healing, glory cloud, hoax, James Randi, Peter Popoff, power balance, religion, Richard Feynman, Skepticism, stupidity
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(In this series: Part 1 Part 3 Part 3.1 Part 3.2 Wrap-up )
Okay, more on this. If you have deconverted from religion, and have gotten rid of most or all of your superstitions, what do you do with that one strange experience that you can’t explain? How do you work that out?
My list of possibilities looks like this:
- It’s a natural occurrence that’s rare or unfamiliar to you
- It’s technological
- It’s somebody deliberately tricking you
- It’s a problem of faulty perception and/or faulty memory, perhaps combined with some of the above
- It’s “supernatural”
And last time I talked about natural and technological things that might be misinterpreted. So lets continue with
Deliberate Hoaxes
People like to think that they are hard to fool. And often they are completely wrong about this. As Richard Feynman so famously said:
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
So let’s look at an example of a time and place where people are willing to be fooled – faith healing.
Question With Boldness 