Are paranormal believers thick? nuts? daft?

[jdc324]

Originally Posted by cj.23

Loss of religious belief and education alone do not necessarily make you a sceptic.

On balance, I think this is probably more likely than the covert fundie Christian group hypothesis... <insert smiley here>

I suspect that the only kind of education that might make you a sceptic would be an education that helped you to understand the vagaries of the human mind. You'd need to learn about something relevant - the ways that we can be fooled (the limitations of human memory; the way our eyes and brains interpret, and misinterpret, what they see etc) for example.

Also, I'm not sure people realise how common irrationality is. Then there's the bias blind spot - we can more easily spot when someone other than us is being fooled by a cognitive bias.

[jdc324]

Originally Posted by Dipayan

Apologies in advance since I have not read the complete thread, but I had to respond to the provocative title.

Are paranormal believers thick? nuts? daft?

No, I think human beings are thick, nuts and daft. Some of us tend to believe in a god, some of us tend to not. This default sense of 'intelligence' just because one does not believe in god/s that one thinks is made up, is thick, nuts and daft in itself.

I'd say human beings are irrational rather than "thick, nuts and daft" but I think I sort of agree with your main point. It's not just paranormal believers who are irrational.

In his introduction to Irrationality, Stuart Sutherland writes that his purpose is to “demonstrate that people are very much less rational than is commonly thought and to set out systematically why this is so”. Sutherland points out that no-one (including himself) is exempt. I would suggest that anybody who doubts that people are, generally, irrational creatures reads this book.

[John Jackson]

Regarding the OP.....

I don't think that paranormal (superstitious, magical, etc.) beliefs have much to do with intelligence. There is evidence that lower IQ correlates with a higher propensity for paranormal beliefs but IIRC, the correlation is not large - and there are also other studies that show no correlation.

The inability to judge probability is another one where there is evidence that this is the case, but there's conflicting evidence too - so it's not clear cut either.

As for pattern and agency detection, I think the evidence is stronger. People who are more prone to paranormal belief seem to detect patterns in noise more readily than non-believers and they more readily assign intention to random events.

I'd say that the propensity to detect patterns (even when there are none) and to detect agency (even when there is none) are the best things to look at when trying to understand paranormal beliefs. At least from a cognitive perspective. There are, of course, other factors such as sociocultural influences that mediate any inherent tendency to think magically.

And I agree that the reason that psychologists have a much lower belief in the paranormal than other academics is because they are more likely to understand the the ways that we can fool ourselves through false perception/memory/etc.

[I Ratant]

Yes, many of us wish it were so, and find ways to think it is, about everything, real and imaginary.
"I just know ghosts exist"..."There's a reward waiting for me when I go beyond"..
"I can read minds"..
It's just something that people latch onto for some manner of comfort, and even to fear.

[jakesteele]

http://www.adherents.com/people/100_Nobel.html

http://www.adherents.com/people/pp/Max_Planck.html

Belief in the spiritual, metaphysical or religious aspects of people does not necessarily coincide with stoopidness. I'll bet there are a lot of people who consider themselves skeptical and critical thinkers that ain't the sharpest marbles in the sack.

[Cainkane1]

People believe in the supernatural because they enjoy it. Thirty years ago I was scaring the crap out of the neighborhood children with ghost stories because I was half way afraid of them myself. Now that I'm 65 I couldn't tell a ghost tale if my life depended on it. I gave up the ghost so to speak when I dropped woo woo altogether.

[fuelair]

Essentially, yes, yes they are!!!

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by Cainkane1

People believe in the supernatural because they enjoy it. Thirty years ago I was scaring the crap out of the neighborhood children with ghost stories because I was half way afraid of them myself. Now that I'm 65 I couldn't tell a ghost tale if my life depended on it. I gave up the ghost so to speak when I dropped woo woo altogether.

Shame. H.P. Lovecraft managed to be a very critical sceptic and a famous albeit not commercially successful in his lifetyime horror writer?

cj x

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by fuelair

Essentially, yes, yes they are!!!

So why does the empirical evidence (see OP) not support this? Or rather, why have increasingly large surveys failed to replicate earlier claims to this effect?

cj x

[The Shrike]

Raised in a traditional Christian home, this is what you are taught from day one:

1) There is an all-powerful being who wants nothing more than to develop a loving relationship with you so that you will never die.
2) You can have that relationship if you have faith in that being no matter what misfortune might befall you and no matter how the non-believers try to distract you.
3) If you lose that faith, you will not only miss out on eternal paradise, you will boil forever in a lake of lava.
4) Because you believe, you are far superior to all other non-believers. The more unassailable your faith, the greater will be your reward in heaven.

A great many people (not just Christians) are raised under premises like this, and they really color a person's perceptions, as well as their likelihood in accepting the veracity of some claim that cannot be demonstrated.

While still a practicing Catholic, I scored well on the GRE, earned a PhD, published a few papers, got hired as a university professor, earned tenure, etc. I'm no more intelligent now that I'm an atheist; I wasn't daft then and un-daft now. My rejection of those beliefs was just something that took time for me to accept because the indoctrination began while I was a toddler. As the saying goes, I could not be reasoned out of a belief I hadn't been reasoned into.

[rcfieldz]

These things happen and make one question their own beliefs and place in this world. They are a total mystery and we that have had or witnessed an experience usually just go on living not saying anything in fear of the persecution (i.e. people saying one's crazy). But for many like myself it is a culmination of more than one event that makes us believe and possible learn more about ourselves and the whole picture (spiritual being).

[rcfieldz]

very strange...I did not write this Thread title but it is attached to my reply? there is some very good hacking going on here...

[I Ratant]

Originally Posted by rcfieldz

very strange...I did not write this Thread title but it is attached to my reply? there is some very good hacking going on here...

.
Be afwaid.
Be wery wery afwaid.

[rcfieldz]

Originally Posted by I Ratant

.
Be afwaid.
Be wery wery afwaid.

Afwaid of vutts?

[Pixel42]

Originally Posted by rcfieldz

They are a total mystery and we that have had or witnessed an experience usually just go on living not saying anything in fear of the persecution (i.e. people saying one's crazy).

People here are more likely to say that you're honestly mistaken. Indeed if you did share your experiences you'd probably get some suggestions for why they aren't a total mystery, or even a partial one. Which I suspect is the real reason why you don't dare do so.

[Tricky]

In my experience, most people believe in some variety of the paranormal. But I think there's a line between the casual paranormal believer and the fanatical one.

A casual believer, like most of my family, will say something like, "I just feel like there's something out there", or, "You know, there's a lot of stuff we just don't understand." This allows them the pleasant illusion of having magic in the world. Heck, most of us would like some magic in the world. Why else would we go to see illusionists like Randi? But these people are unlikely to spend a great deal of time on their paranormal beliefs. To them, it's a diversion. They have other fish to fry, just like there are many skeptics who don't come to these boards to debunk the paranormal. It's just not that big a deal.

So it is not surprising that the average paranormal believer is... well... average. They fit into the distribution of talents (on any number of scales and measurment systems) about like you would expect the average skeptic to.

But like many things, we form our impressions from the extremists. We see the people from Bigfoot forums foaming at the mouth or from some "psychic hotline" scam and that's what we think of as "paranormal believers". And it just ain't so. My lovely wife, who has been on Jeopardy and is one of the smartest people I know, is a pagan, who believes in "vibrations" that are somehow transmitted to some anthropomorphized forces. But she doesn't cover herself in lamb's blood and chant mantras to Gaia. It's an incidental thing to her, and she enjoys it and finds some comfort in it. Not my thing, but unless she seriously wacks out, it's not likely to have any affect on our marriage, her job or her intelligence.

So these results, if they are even significant, are really no surprise to me. I'll continue to be a skeptic and I expect to interact with, work with and live with some highly intelligent paranormal believers for the next thirty years or so, knock on wood.

[xtifr]

Originally Posted by cj.23

Shame. H.P. Lovecraft managed to be a very critical sceptic and a famous albeit not commercially successful in his lifetyime horror writer?

But Lovecraft generally tried to make his horror scientifically plausible (by the standards of the time). While his entities may have been referred to in some cases as "old gods" and such, he generally made it clear that this was the mistaken idea of primitive men, and that these entities were actually Sufficiently Advanced Aliens.*

In other words, he was trying to reinvent classic horror tropes with a scientific basis this time. (Despite what some later writers did with his Mythos.)

* Warning! Visiting the TVTropes website may cause you to be lost for hours, and stress the tab-bar of your browser to the breaking point. You have been warned.

[I Ratant]

I caught the last part of the South Park episode on Scientology last night.
Generally I ignore SP as being just badly drawn kids talking dirty on tv...
They did explain the core beliefs.
And the S guys promised to sue.
When the credits rolled, everyone involved with -that- episode, from the inker of the drawings to the (poorly) simulated celebrity voices to the producer... it took only two people to do that episode!
John Smith and Jane Smith.
That was funny!

[dafydd]

deleted

[dafydd]

Originally Posted by rcfieldz

These things happen and make one question their own beliefs and place in this world. They are a total mystery and we that have had or witnessed an experience usually just go on living not saying anything in fear of the persecution (i.e. people saying one's crazy). But for many like myself it is a culmination of more than one event that makes us believe and possible learn more about ourselves and the whole picture (spiritual being).

This ''persecution' means ''asking for proof''. Such as asking for proof of us having a spiritual being.

[Jodie]

I have had paranormal experiences but I have no idea what any of it means. I don't think we ought to assume that a spirit world had anything to do with the phenomena even if one has spiritual beliefs.

[John Jackson]

Originally Posted by Croydon Bob

Surely, by definition, people who believe in things that aren't real, that have no evidence, are dafter than people who don't?

No, that's just begging the question (a fallacy) and such an approach shows a complete lack of understanding of the issue.

The question is whether people who believe in the paranormal/etc. have some form of cognitive deficit compared to those who don't.

The only way you can do that is through research. You can't simply define anyone who believes in the paranormal as 'daft' a priori and conclude anything from that.

Whilst some 'believers' do score higher on psychometric scales for things such as neuroticism etc., the overall picture doesn't support the cognitive deficit model well at all - i.e. it is not necessarily the case that people believe because they are 'daft'.

[mutile]

Originally Posted by John Jackson

The only way you can do that is through research. You can't simply define anyone who believes in the paranormal as 'daft' a priori and conclude anything from that.

Sure you can just apply the scientific principle of stupid is as stupid does.

[John Jackson]

Originally Posted by mutile

Sure you can just apply the scientific principle of stupid is as stupid does.

Thanks for that.

[Ocelot]

Originally Posted by John Jackson

No, that's just begging the question (a fallacy) and such an approach shows a complete lack of understanding of the issue.

I don't see this as begging the question, though I'm will to listen to you break it down for me.

For me it's a Fallacy of Division. Similar to: "Months that begin with J are on average hotter than months that don't. Therefore January is on average hotter than other months."

Lets say that the group of people who believes things that aren't true has (as a group) property P. This doesn't mean that members or subsets of that group
will necessarily have that property.

Even if we grant Bob's definition of "daft" as "believing things that aren't true." The group of people who believe in things that aren't true include more than just the superstitious.

There's moon hoaxers, ufo chasers and birthers to name but a few of the ways that the non superstitious can be just as "daft" as the believers in the paranormal if not more so.

Were all these characteristics distributed randomly and independently we would expect to see the same proportion of antivaxers amongst paranormal believers as others. The common skeptic cliche is that one someone demonstrates a lack of critical thinking in one area then they are liable to fall for every other falsehood out there. This is another area that warrants further investigation. I've seen way too many counter examples to even think about accepting that one.

[Croydon Bob]

Originally Posted by Ocelot

I don't see this as begging the question, though I'm will to listen to you break it down for me.

For me it's a Fallacy of Division. Similar to: "Months that begin with J are on average hotter than months that don't. Therefore January is on average hotter than other months."

Lets say that the group of people who believes things that aren't true has (as a group) property P. This doesn't mean that members or subsets of that group
will necessarily have that property.

Even if we grant Bob's definition of "daft" as "believing things that aren't true." The group of people who believe in things that aren't true include more than just the superstitious.

There's moon hoaxers, ufo chasers and birthers to name but a few of the ways that the non superstitious can be just as "daft" as the believers in the paranormal if not more so.

Were all these characteristics distributed randomly and independently we would expect to see the same proportion of antivaxers amongst paranormal believers as others. The common skeptic cliche is that one someone demonstrates a lack of critical thinking in one area then they are liable to fall for every other falsehood out there. This is another area that warrants further investigation. I've seen way too many counter examples to even think about accepting that one.

You are correct that I was not "begging the question". This is the second time that John Jackson has shown that he doesn't understand this fallacy.

As for "fallacy of division"; perhaps, I don't disagree with any of the further points you make. But I was answering the somewhat light-hearted and superficial question "Are paranormal believers thick? nuts? daft?" So it wasn't me who had lumped all the different believers together into one basket that excludes certain other daft people.

Having considered the responses, it still seems reasonable to me that if you are going to lump a group of people together and call them "paranormal believers" then you can also call them "daft". Although I am less happy with "nuts" and wouldn't say "thick".

[John Jackson]

Originally Posted by Ocelot

I don't see this as begging the question, though I'm will to listen to you break it down for me.

It occurs when the premise of an argument is also the conclusion of the argument.

So, if you want to investigate whether people who believe in the paranormal are 'daft' and you begin with the definitive premise that "anyone who believes in the paranormal is daft" then your only conclusion could be that "anyone who believes in the paranormal is daft".

That's why it's question-begging or circular reasoning in this instance.

[Ocelot]

Originally Posted by Croydon Bob

But I was answering the somewhat light-hearted and superficial question "Are paranormal believers thick? nuts? daft?" So it wasn't me who had lumped all the different believers together into one basket that excludes certain other daft people.

Well it was the OP that lumped ghost hunters, astrologers and and healers etc together into one groups, believers in the paranormal. I've no quibble with them doing so.

However by offering an answer that referred to "people who believe in things that aren't real" you widened consideration to include much more than that from cancer cure advocates to illuminati crackpots.

And I have no quibble with you doing that either. However inferring a property of the super set to apply to the subset is a logical error. So it's only right I should point it out and you can join our club of imperfect logicians.

Also I do recognise that your answer was light hearted and superficial. For that reason I wouldn't usually expend such effort in analysing it but John's efforts seemed to lacking a certain clarity and I hate to see the man struggle. Not so sure the OP was intended to be seen as superficial though. Did you mean to suggest that?

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by Ocelot

Well it was the OP that lumped ghost hunters, astrologers and and healers etc together into one groups, believers in the paranormal. I've no quibble with them doing so.

Yes I did. I thought I posted this clarification soon after but no sign of it so I must have posted it in wrong thread. Luckily I did post it on RatSkep, so here it is -

A few caveats from me, from the JREF Thread

I think we have to distinguish between different sorts of believer. Firstly, though a very serious caveat: I'm deeply suspicious of most measures of intelligence. It's a very difficult concept, and I'm not even sure how meaningful it is. Second a further caveat - I have not read all the papers through (some but not all). As such I don;t know what was measured, who by, and where. The USA for cultural reasons as I hinted above will have a very different pattern of paranormal belief to the UK I think: and most of these studies were UK based. (The basic thing is that lack of religious belief correlates with presence of paranormal belief in the USA - I can provide references to the Skeptical Inquirer article and Martin Gardner's piece on this if anyone interested). So if generally a college education in the USA is liable to make you less religious, it is likely to correlate with more belief in ESP, ghosts, etc, etc.)

Right on with business. People who come to post on this forum are probably not representative of paranormal believers in general, just as the atheists who post here are not typical of atheists generally, the Christians ditto, and so forth... Many people who hold a belief system will not be bothered about discussing it, defending it, or advocating it. It is a purely private matter. As such some persons are unlikely to seek out the JREF. I have no evidence for this assertion, but I would argue it is plausible.

I would also speculate, and note this is speculation, that those who do post here are very firmly committed in many cases to some principle, whether paranormal belief, paranormal disbelief, or philosophical skepticism. I do not think JREF posters are representative of any larger community for these reasons.

Next up is what constitutes paranormal belief? I'm guessing Thalbourne's New Australian Sheep/Goat is the most commonly employed measure of paranormal belief in these studies: but the Paranormal Belief Scale Revised and Anomalous Experiences Inventory might have been employed, as well as many other surveys. All rely on self-report: but there can be a huge gap between what I think my beliefs are and my actions. You would have to look at the breakdown by category of paranormal (a term I regard as almost meaningless) belief. Are Bigfoot fans less educated than UFO believers? Ghost believers less so that astologers? And so forth. Note the survey on randomness looked at ESP believers. They may not be typical.

There is of course a huge variation in believers - and even between believers in psi, John Beloff and Bernard Carr are very different to the self-proclaimed psychics I meet on Facebook. There is almost certainly as Resume pointed out equal variation in non-believers. This need not be an issue of intelligence - it is possible that some psychics are brighter in some ways than Beloff, or that Sagan is an idiot in comparison with some very outspoken non-believers on this forum: but in type and sophistication of the beliefs held and ability to articulate and defend them. I don't regard myself as overly bright, but I am educated in specific fields useful on the forum, so can occasionally make a small contribution.

Anyway I had best get on with some work, and if I have time I'll keep pushing through the literature later, but do bear in mind my own doubts on all this

cj x

[Ocelot]

Originally Posted by cj.23

The basic thing is that lack of religious belief correlates with presence of paranormal belief in the USA

I do enjoy the special pleading on display when the religious campaign against supernatural beliefs whilst excluding, intercessory prayer, life after death and other so called miracles from that category.

Yet I think it's probably fair in that the etiology of religious belief is typically very different from other aspects of the supernatural.

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by Ocelot

I do enjoy the special pleading on display when the religious campaign against supernatural beliefs whilst excluding, intercessory prayer, life after death and other so called miracles from that category.

Yet I think it's probably fair in that the etiology of religious belief is typically very different from other aspects of the supernatural.

Yeah defining religion and supernatural belief gets complex very quickly, but yep. Actually most of the papers I have seen deal with "superstition" as a category. If I can finish my Skeptics in the pub talk today I'll get back to posting more on the literature of the subject.

[Croydon Bob]

Originally Posted by John Jackson

It occurs when the premise of an argument is also the conclusion of the argument.

So, if you want to investigate whether people who believe in the paranormal are 'daft' and you begin with the definitive premise that "anyone who believes in the paranormal is daft" then your only conclusion could be that "anyone who believes in the paranormal is daft".

That's why it's question-begging or circular reasoning in this instance.

You are correct that what you have described above is "begging the question". Unfortunately for you I did not beg the question.

What I wrote was: Surely, by definition, people who believe in things that aren't real, that have no evidence, are dafter than people who don't?

I didn't ask WHY people who believe in things that aren't real are dafter than people who don't, which would have been begging the question. I was asking IF people who believe in things that aren't real are dafter than people who don't.

If I hadn't put the word "surely" on the front and a question mark on the end then it would have been a statement and would not have been begging the question. BY adding "surely" on the front and a question mark on the end I was turning the statement into a question asking IF the statement was correct. No circular reasoning in this instance.

Sentence construction in English is often complicated and it can be quite difficult for daft people to understand this stuff.

[I Ratant]

You two guys.... get a room... far from here.. and don't link to it!

[rcfieldz]

I hope that clears up some things...

[John Jackson]

Originally Posted by Croydon Bob

You are correct that what you have described above is "begging the question". Unfortunately for you I did not beg the question.

What I wrote was: Surely, by definition, people who believe in things that aren't real, that have no evidence, are dafter than people who don't?

I didn't ask WHY people who believe in things that aren't real are dafter than people who don't, which would have been begging the question. I was asking IF people who believe in things that aren't real are dafter than people who don't.

But you followed that with...

Originally Posted by Croydon Bob

if I see a light in the sky and say "I don't know what that was, it might have been a helicopter, or a balloon, or something else." Then I am less daft than the UFOnut who says it was a flying saucer, the "paranormal investigator" who says it was a ghost and the Christian who says it was an angel.

Which clearly shows that you were making the argument that believers are 'dafter' (i.e. stupider, less intelligent, etc.) than non-believers.

Originally Posted by Croydon Bob

You are correct that what you have described above is "begging the question".

I know.

[blutoski]

Originally Posted by cj.23

Yeah defining religion and supernatural belief gets complex very quickly, but yep. Actually most of the papers I have seen deal with "superstition" as a category. If I can finish my Skeptics in the pub talk today I'll get back to posting more on the literature of the subject.

I think that's one reason the field has a challenge building a coherent body of literature: there is no over-arching system of classifying the domain yet. Study scope seems to be very sensitive to the interests of each head researcher, and combining studies (much less meta-analysis) is usually impossible.

A few years ago I tackled skeptical domain definition from a different angle, focusing on the claim categories. I had this published on the BCSkeptics website, but the site has been deleted.

The idea was to suggest a standard or index for investigating public awareness or adherence to paranormal claims, and their regressive interdependences, and external predictiveness.

For example, rather than a vague category of 'religion' (which could include anything from Raelians to Buddhists to Animists to ancestor worshipers) I suggested that investigators inventory specific paranormal claims such as 'believes independent soul resumes in afterlife' or 'believes independent soul reincarnates in another living thing' &c.



In addition, I always felt there is a mix of sincere investigation but also hostility in the pursuit of information that compares believers and skeptics - and this is conducted by both communities unfortunately.

Part of the reason I have drifted away from organized skepticism is that I have seen far to little of the sincere pursuit of truth and far too much interest in painting believers as inferior. It's juvenile, tiresome, and destructive... ultimately it comes across as bigotry, and I have no tolerance for it.

Sorry if this comes across as a rant, but I think this systematic bias is difficult for skeptics to identify and accept, and that it is a serious barrier to progress toward accepted goals for the established organizations.

[blutoski]

Oh, also... my thoughts on what generates the difference between skeptics and believers... my impression is that it boils down to who we've learned to treat as trustworthy information providers.

Generally, people can't figure most stuff out for ourselves. I do not personally understand Reimann Tensors. But I trust that my math prof does, and he trusts he learned it properly from his prof, who learned it from his prof, and all the way back through 150 years of the mathematical community. Based on this bucket brigade of who-knows-how-many trust steps, I accept that General Relativity works out mathematically.

My perception is that believers have a lack of expertise that they attempt to backfill but find the wrong resources. New contrary facts generate resistance, because nobody likes to be proved wrong. This inertia needs to be overcome, and the mechanisms of conversion are worth investigating.

It is consistent with what we've discovered already: it is useless to simply pass along facts - skeptics need to understand why facts are necessary but totally insufficient in the process of changing opinions. My impression is that the real battle is to help people identify reliable vs unreliable sources of information, rather than the facts themselves.

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by blutoski

Sorry if this comes across as a rant, but I think this systematic bias is difficult for skeptics to identify and accept, and that it is a serious barrier to progress toward accepted goals for the established organizations.

I comes over as sound sense to me.

cj x

[Croydon Bob]

Originally Posted by John Jackson

But

In other words: You were wrong. No need to apologise. I know that believers find that hard to do.

Originally Posted by John Jackson

Which clearly shows that you were making the argument that believers are 'dafter' (i.e. stupider, less intelligent, etc.) than non-believers.

It wasn't what you quoted as "begging the question" and it was a statement not a question. So, still wrong.

Originally Posted by John Jackson

I know.

See, you has learned somefing! Well done. We'll make a skeptic of you yet.

[John Jackson]

Bob, that post is even worse than your question-begging one in its irrationality.

The point has been made clear to you but if all you can do is come back with school-yard type responses then there's nothing more I can say.