Hardwired To Be Wrong

“Anthropologist Pascal Boyer, who studies the psychology of religion, argues that our brains have evolved with an overactive agency-recognition system: We look for—and find—individual intention and design behind any pattern, even when none exists. After a bad harvest, we wonder how we have angered the gods; after a trend goes viral, we wonder what special person could have made it happen.”

There are so many examples that fit this ‘agency-recognition system’, it’s ridiculous.

For instance, conspiracy theorists. The conspiracy theorist is confronted with an event (JFK shot) and their brain will concoct an explanation (it wasn’t Lee Harvey Oswald), and they’ll misguidedly attempt to prove their contention with any data point that fits their story while ignoring any data point that doesn’t.

Scientists often do the same. Instead of searching for an undetermined truth, whatever that truth may be, the cocksure scientist designs his experiments in order to achieve a certain preconceived outcome at experiment’s-end. The experiment is not truth-finding; it’s not science. It’s manufactured opinion masquerading as science.

Perhaps we should focus on logic and reason, and leave behind our predisposition to irrationally hypothesize about what could have been.

Ars Technica – Tipped Over: social influence “tipping point” theory debunked

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