Recently in Human Nature Category

More than half of randomly surveyed adults -- 57 percent -- said God's intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile.

I'm not even going to try to argue against this stupidity. I say that anyone who wants to put their faith in the healing powers of the divine should simply do so ... and never see any doctor... ever, including a dentist. In fact, they shouldn't even take aspirin.

In a few generations that 57 percent number should drop waaaaay down.

I spent some time this morning in the laundromat, reading about witch hunts in fifteenth century Europe. The hunts originated when Pope Innocent VIII commissioned the writing of the Malleus Maleficarum - a how-to manual for identification of witches with horrific details on how to exact confessions via torture. This book, along with plentiful funding for witch-hunters, led to a massacre of countless innocents; not to be confused with the Pope who started it all.

One particular village slaughtered around 150 people - mostly women, many of them children, amazingly well documented - for the crime of witchcraft in a single year. Disturbingly, such was the norm for villages all across Europe. Multiply 150 witches per year by all the villages in Europe for a few years and you get (as a rough order of magnitude) ... hundreds of thousands? Millions?

Pope Innocent VIII died in 1492, the allegedly illegitimate father of 16 children. As his death neared physicians attempted 3 "transfusions" to save the ailing pontiff, resulting in the death of three young boys who "donated" blood. (See here, last paragraph).

And that was the same year Columbus discovered the Americas.

When my wash came to a stop I put my book down and loaded my wet things into the dryers. An older woman came pretty much out of nowhere to advise me that dryer number 5 ran hot and would dry my clothes off faster, thus saving me a few quarters. I had my doubts - because I always have doubts - but loaded my clothes into machines 5, 6, and 7, just to see what would happen.

Human beings, in general, believe what they're told far too easily. On the one hand, there is some benefit. When someone is told "don't eat the red fruit because they're poison," it's beneficial to believe the source without checking. Even if the source is wrong, no real harm comes from believing the bad information. On the other hand, failing to check facts for oneself leads to an abundance of bad information floating about, like "the earth is flat", "witches cause rain storms", or "Barack Obama is a Muslim."

Or for that matter, dryer 5 runs hot.

After 8 minutes dryers 6 and 7 stop spinning, but dryer 5 is still going strong. In fact, I have time to paw through my laundry from the other two dryers, extract the dry pieces, and combine what's left into a single dryer before dryer 5 completes.

The woman's advice wasn't bad, but her facts were wrong. Yes, it's advantageous to use dryer 5, but not because it runs hot. It runs long, giving one a few extra minutes of drying.

It was not long enough to save me any quarters, however. I still needed to run the vaunted dryer five a second time.

Nevertheless, the issue remains - people fail to check the facts. When presented with a supposed truth people are more likely to simply accept it, rather than verify it first. Failing to test the validity of supposed truths can result in horrible consequences, like the slaughter of a hundred thousand witches.

For years I've asked myself, "Why do people believe utter bullshit?" The list of things that could be defined as utter bullshit is, of course, enormous: UFOs, faith healing, ESP, psychic readings, fortune tellers, tarot cards, etc. Only Carl Sagan from The Demon Haunted World) has provided anything resembling a decent answer:

Pseudoscience speaks to powerful emotional needs that science often leaves unfulfilled. It caters to personal powers we lack and long for (like those attributed to comic superheroes today, and earlier, to the gods). In some of its manifestations, it offers satisfaction of spiritual hungers, cures for disease, promises that death is not the end. It reassures us of our cosmic centrality and importance.

Wow. Way to hit the nail right on the head.

Human beings are not in control of the universe. We are tossed around by fate, powerless in the face of hurricanes, illnesses, sudden downturns in the economy, and random events that can only be categorized as bad luck. If only we had some special powers to overcome these terrifying forces that are beyond our control. If only we could take solace in knowing that the whole universe was created just for us, and despite these terrors our place in the cosmos was paramount. If only we had a special relationship with a divine force that promised that we were chosen, elevated among the species or even among our own people. If only we could influence events through magic, psychic powers, or prayer!

That's all it really is. Belief in the absurd is nothing more than an easy coping mechanism to combat our feelings of powerlessness (sometimes manifested as power fantasies) in the face of a big, powerful, and ultimately indifferent universe.

Carl Sagan really was a genius. I hope more people get the message.

Awhile back I wrote an entry about the nature of free will.  The conclusion: free will is limited, although no clear delineation exists between what a person does and does not have control over.

For example, we know that certain chemicals are simply addictive.  A person quite literally loses all ability to make ration decisions while under the influence of an addiction.  This inability goes beyond the need for consumption of the addictive element, as other behaviors can be affected.  A dramatic example is an addict turning to crime, but other personality changes can manifest, such as no longer engaging in social activities.

"Chemicals" do not need to be narcotics, or other illegal drugs.  We know that abnormal brain chemistry can alter personality, and may be a "natural" state - such as depression or anxiety.

Physical trauma can also modify behavior.  A person who undergoes a brain injury resulting in dramatic personality changes has not changed his personality out of "free will." 

Hence free will has inherent limitations.

The question is, and may forever be, what are those limitations?

For example, can an impoverished person simply "choose" to no longer be poor?  This notion is at the core of the myth of the American Dream: by working hard enough, one achieves success.  Those who do not achieve success, according to the myth, have only themselves to blame; they chose not to work hard enough.

After living here in Vermont for a few months, I am leaning toward believing that poverty is not a choice at all.  One simply can't decide to work hard, or study hard, and suddenly elevate oneself out of poor conditions.  For example, here in Vermont, there is simply nowhere to go.

There are poor small towns everywhere in this state, with financially strapped school systems as well.  Big businesses are not attracted here because there are no resources here that appeal to them (now that logging has lost its appeal).  If a typical Vermonter wanted to rise up out of their conditions, they really don't have a lot of options.

Yes, they could do well in school and go to college, but many of the schools around here just aren't that great.  That high school diploma isn't going to get you into an Ivy league school - well, unless you went to one of those private high schools, but for that you needed the money in the first place.  As a result, even the brightest, most motivated kids have limited choices that no amount of hard word is going to overcome.

The notion that people have control over their lives really fades fast under scrutiny.  It might even be classified as an absurd notion.

That doesn't mean that our lives are fated, or other such mystical nonsense.  It might, however, mean that our lives are boxed in.  We are born with boundaries.  There are certain things one cannot do, and no amount of will can change that.