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Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time is a 1997 book by science writer Michael Shermer.
In Breaking the Spell, philosopher Daniel Dennett focused on the question of "why we believe strange things". In The God Delusion , biologist Richard Dawkins discussed religion broadly. In God Is Not Great , journalist and polemicist Christopher Hitchens claimed religious forces attack human dignity and wrote about corruption in religious ...
He has presented at several TED conferences with "Why people believe strange things" in 2006, [67] "The pattern behind self-deception" in 2010, [68] and "Reasonable Doubt" in 2015. [69] [70] Shermer has debated Deepak Chopra several times, [71] [72] including on the ABC News program Nightline in March 2010. [73]
Additionally, some people personally believe that this orientation brings good fortune, regardless of cultural norms. [12] [13] [14] Historically, blacksmiths—a trade long associated with luck and protection—often hung horseshoes upside down as a symbol of their craft. A superstitious blacksmith and apprentice believe that the luck from the ...
Why people believe weird things: pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company. ISBN 978-0-7167-3090-3. Thagard PR (1978). "Why astrology is a pseudoscience". PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. 1978 (1): 223–234.
"Oftentimes, the things that made people believe that vampires were real, back in the day, they also attributed to werewolves. And that was often before they understood science," Hafdahl tells ...
The backfire effect is a name for the finding that given evidence against their beliefs, people can reject the evidence and believe even more strongly. [138] [139] The phrase was coined by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler in 2010. [140] However, subsequent research has since failed to replicate findings supporting the backfire effect. [141]
From UFOs and flying snakes to smoke from Canadian wildfires bathing U.S. cities in a postapocalyptic glow, 2023 had more than its share of weird news.Here are just some of the strange things that ...