And Slaters Go Plop

Coming up later today is a post about the misuse of skepticism (and, yes, I know this is the American spelling but it’s one of the words I’ve compromised on despite the fact I get a red wiggly underline every time I type it) and this is a good opportunity to highlight one of the many traps for the critical thinker.

I find that when someone genuinely believes something to be true, regardless of how illogical it is, I have a strong in-built urge to believe them. It’s almost like we have bullshit detectors that are heavily biased toward genuineness over prior experience or reasonable explanation. I suspect it’s probably somehow tied to the way in which our mirror neurons work.

When a magician performs a trick with a wink and a nod we don’t feel too tempted to believe that he really used magic to make the card appear but when the magician (or conjurer or faith healer or neurotic FBI target or wild-eyed prophet) genuinely believes in what they are saying I personally find that it takes a lot more effort to apply logic to the situation. Perhaps this is because I not only have to come up with a reasonable explanation for their claims but also a reasonable explanation for why they believe their claims. And I have a bullshit detector which has a default setting of “impassioned claims are true”.