[extropy-chat] Failure of low-fat diet

[Russell Wallace]

On 2/22/06, Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:
>
> I don't have more than a foggy idea of how to account for why people get
> stuck on preconceived expectations, but this is the formula for attacking
> the question.
>

It is indeed.

Consider that in the environment in which we evolved (and to a lesser extent
today), belief has both material and social functions.

If you believe the red mushrooms are good to eat and the blue ones are
poisonous, that had better correspond to a state of affairs in the physical
world or you'll end up poisoned or malnourished.

On the other hand, if tribe A believes in the tree god and tribe B believes
in the rain god, it _doesn't matter_ that neither of those gods exists in
the physical world. What matters is that you'd better believe in the one
your tribe believes in, or your impiety might trigger a "not one of us"
recognizer circuit in the brains of your mates, who might then stick spears
into you.

So we should expect to observe that people have the ability and inclination
to hold elaborate belief systems in their heads while keeping them insulated
from material facts, as long as they (rightly or wrongly) perceive those
belief systems as having social/political significance, as identifying them
as a member of a group.

Never mind low fat diets, millions of people believe in psychic powers,
crystal healing, feng shui and so forth. Why? It certainly isn't ignorance
or stupidity, however much we may reach for those words in exasperation; our
civilization is awash with explanations of why this stuff is bunk, phrased
in terms any 10 year old with a near-normal IQ can easily understand.

Part of it's for obvious reasons like wishful thinking, but a great deal of
it is, in my opinion, because people perceive the cold/rational/scientific
social group and the warm/fuzzy/spiritual one, and given that they're not
interested in being scientists, they choose the second group; and they
perceive that the membership badge is belief in the usual catalog of bunk.

Here's the test: When people get pneumonia or appendicitis or whatever, do
they rely on their healing crystals? No, they go to a doctor. Oh, they use
crystals _as well as_ real medicine, and vocally credit the former with
curing them - but they don't _physically behave_ as though they believed
that. They keep their social and material beliefs separate.

Sure, like any complex evolved mechanism, the separation sometimes fails.
You read about the dozen Darwin awards earned for getting confused and
treating healing crystals as physical rather than social reality. But you
don't read about the dozen million people who took penicillin and were
quietly saved to talk to their friends about how their crystals cured them -
and this is exactly what we should expect.

- Russell
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