Explanations Week 10: Explaining the weird and the inexplicable

Today’s questions:

• Why do smart people believe weird things? (discussion led by Ed)

• Can we make sense of suicide missions? If so, how?

• To what extent can the holocaust be explained or understood?

1. Why do smart people believe weird things? (discussion led by Ed)

2. Explaining suicide missions (presentation by Andreas)

3. Explaining and understanding the holocaust (presentation by Yajie)

Outline of session

1. Why do (smart) people believe weird things?

Shermer (2007: 282): what is a weird belief ?

1. ‘a claim unaccepted by most people in that particular field of study’

2. ‘a claim that is either logically impossible or highly unlikely’

3. ‘a claim for which the evidence is largely anecdotal and uncorroborated’

Eg, Alien abductions, levitation, creationism, scientology, ESP, astrology, homeopathy, Loch Ness Monster…

Goldacre (2008): heuristics and biases

• Seeing non-existent causal relationships or patterns where there is only random noise (winning streaks, school lateness)

• Regression to the mean (homeopathy, sports illustrated)

• Overvaluing or only seeking out positive evidence (A,B,2,3)

• Assessing quality of new evidence only on basis of prior beliefs (hypochondriac)

• Availability bias (MMR – risks of cycling)

• Social influence, conformity and communal reinforcement

“for mathematical issues, or assessing causal relationships, intuitions are often completely wrong, because they rely on shortcuts which have arisen as handy ways to solve complex cognitive problems rapidly, but at the cost of inaccuracies, misfires and oversensitivity” (Goldacre 2008: 255).

“We are selectively exposed to information that revalidates our beliefs, partly because we expose ourselves to situations where those beliefs are apparently confirmed; partly because we ask questions that will – by their very nature, for the reasons described above – give validating answers; and partly because we selectively expose ourselves to people who validate our beliefs” (Goldacre 2008: 252).

Shermer 2007 (cont.)

1. Consolation (“what is your position on life after death?”…”I’m for it, of course!”)

2. Immediate gratification (retail therapy v CBT)

3. Simplicity (a convenient untruth v a complex truth)

4. Morals and meaning (threatened by science?)

5. Hope (tyranny of forward-lookingness & optimism) (‘Science does not deal in hope’ / “We go from what the data shows us, not out personal bias”)

So, why do smart people believe weird things?

Intellectual bias and confirmation bias…

…being smart often does not affect what you believe but it does shape your ability to rationalise and defend what you believe once you believe it!

“Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons” (Shermer 2007: 283)

2. Dying to kill: making sense of suicide terror

“ A violent, politically motivated attack, carried out in a deliberate state of awareness by a person who blows himself or herself up together with a chosen target” (Bloom 2006: 25)

“The targeted use of self-destructing humans against noncombatant – typically civilian – populations to effect a political change”

(Atran 2003: 1534)

Theories: (a) rational choice, (b) psychopathology, (c) religion, (d) multi-causal (pluralist)

Theories (1)Rational choice “Agents choose the best means to realize stable desires acting on beliefs that are well-grounded in information that is the outcomes of an optimal search process” (Elster in Gambetta (ed) 2006)

(+) High kill ratio / cost-effective / minimal losses / consistent with instrumental and non-instrumental rationality

(-) Payoff good for group but puzzling for individual? / the way bombers conceptualise situation may be unstable and thus not rational?

Psycho-pathology“Evil cowards” (Bush), “extremist maniacs”, “cowering or unstable” (Atran) or victims of “psychic pain [as a result of] experiencing personal trauma and bereavement” (Hafez)

(+) intuitive pull / simplicity

(-) psychopathy explanation explained by attribution bias (personality over situation) / non violence just as appropriate or immolation/ inaccessibility of mental states/emotional life of bombers / no connection between level of trauma and rise in suicide missions / neglects role of organization

“What research there is…indicates that suicide terrorists have no appreciable psychotherapy and are at least as educated and economically well off as their surrounding populations” (Atran 2003: 1535).

Theories (2)Religion

Religious fanaticism explains suicide missions?

(+) Simplicity / fits overt justification of many bombings

(-) Many SMs are not undertaken by religious groups or seem to concern territorial claims (PKK, kamikaze, Tamil Tigers) / why not non-violent action? / doesn’t explain incident increase?

Multi-causal approach (Moghadam 2006):

1. L1: Individual level (personal motivations &profiles of actors: altruism and duty, kinship, Martyrdom, family status, education/gender/age)

2. L2: Institutional level (role of terror organizations, leaders & recruiters: bidding wars amongst groups, tacit communication with enemies, enhancing support amongst local population, manipulation of evolved emotional commitments to kin)

3. L3: Environmental level (contextual factors e.g. poverty, occupation, religion, history, culture, economy)

3. Explaining and understanding the holocaust (presentation by Yajie followed by group discussion)

• Brockman, J. (ed) (2006) Intelligent Thought: Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement (New York: Vintage Books) (see especially articles by Coyne, Dennett, Attran and Kauffman; and the Appendix on the judgment in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District case (223-56).

• Cohen, S. (2001) States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering (Cambridge: Polity), Ch.1,3.• Coyne, J. (2006) ‘Intelligent design: the faith that dare not speak its name’, in Brockman (ed), pp. 3-23.• Gilbert, D.T., Tafarodi, R.W. and Malone, P.S. (1993) ‘You Can’t Not Believe Everything You Read’,

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65(2), pp.221-33.• Goldacre, B. (2009)’Homeopathy’, in Bad Science (London: Harper Perennial), pp.28-62.• Goldacre, B. (2009) ’Why clever people believe stupid things’, Bad Science (London: Harper

Perennial), pp.242-55.• McGrath, A. (2005) ‘Proof and Faith’, in Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life

(Oxford: Blackwell), pp.82-118.• Monbiot, G. (2006) ‘The Denial Industry’, in Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning (London: Penguin),

pp.20-42.• Monbiot, G. (2008) ‘A Crusade Against Science’, Guardian (G2), 22 July 2008, pp7-11.• Oreskes, N. and Conway, E. (2010) ‘The Denial of Global Warming’, in Merchants of Doubt (New York:

Bloomsbury), pp.169-215.• Oreskes, N. and Conway, E. (2010) ‘What’s Bad Science? Who Decides?’, in Merchants of Doubt

(New York: Bloomsbury), pp.136-68.• Shermer, M. (2006) ’Science Under Attack’, in

Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design (New York: Henry Holt and Company), pp.89-105.

• Shermer, M. (2007) Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: Souvenir Press).(see also http://www.michaelshermer.com/weird-things/excerpt/).

Sources: Why People Believe Weird Things

Sources: making sense of Suicide terror

•Atran, S. (2003) ‘The Genesis of Suicide Terrorism’, Science 299, pp.1534-39.

•Bloom, Mia (2005) Dying To Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (New York: Columbia University Press), Ch.4 (pp.76-105)

•Bjorgo, T. (ed) (2005) Root Causes of Terrorism: Myths, Realities and Ways Forward (London: Routledge) (chapters by Ahmed

and Merari).

•Elster, J. (2005) ‘Motivations and Beliefs in Suicide Missions’, in D. Gambetta (ed) Making Sense of Suicide Missions (Oxford:

Oxford University Press), pp.233-58.

•Hafez, M.M. (2006) Manufacturing Human Bombs: The Making of Palestinian Suicide Bombers (Washington, DC: United States

Institute of Peace Press).

•Margalit, A. (2003) ‘The Suicide Bombers’, The New York Review of Books 50(1), pp.1-8.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15979

•Moghadam, A. (2006) ‘Suicide Terrorism, Occupation, and Globalization of Martyrdom’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29,

pp.707-29.

•Pape, R.A. (2006) Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House).

•Pape, R.A. (2003) ‘The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism’, American Political Science Review 97(3), pp.343-61.

•Pedahzur, A (ed) (2006) Root Causes of Suicide Terrorism: The Globalization of Martyrdom, especially chapters by Moghadam

(pp.13-24); Bloom (pp.25-53); and Hafez (pp.54-80).

•Reuter, C. (2004) My life as a weapon: A modern history of suicide bombing (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

•Waller, J. (2002) Becoming Evil: How ordinary people commit genocide and mass killing (New York: Oxford University Press