Michael Shermer - Why People Believe Weird Things - Part 2/11

Ever wonder why people believe in UFO abductions, mind-reading, reincarnation, urban legends, not to mention "scientific creationism" and the pernicious myth that the Holocaust never happened? Dr. Michael Shermer, the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, is a genuine ghost-buster, a relentless crusader against superstition and pseudoscience. Based on his bestselling book, Why People Believe Weird Things, Dr Shermers lecture will debunk junk science, bad science, voodoo science, pathological science, pseudoscience, and plain old nonsense. The event will be filled with humour,insight, and personal anecdotes - a highly entertaining wake-up call that has proved a hit on college campuses.

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, and Adjunct Professor of Economics at Claremont Graduate University.

Dr. Shermers latest book is The Mind of the Market, on evolutionary economics. His last book was Why Darwin Matters: Evolution and the Case Against Intelligent Design, and he is the author of Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown, about how the mind works and how thinking goes wrong. His book The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Share Care, and Follow the Golden Rule, is on the evolutionary origins of morality and how to be good without God. He wrote a biography, In Darwins Shadow, about the life and science of the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. He also wrote The Borderlands of Science, about the fuzzy land between science and pseudoscience, and Denying History, on Holocaust denial and other forms of pseudohistory. His book How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, presents his theory on the origins of religion and why people believe in God. He is also the author of Why People Believe Weird Things on pseudoscience, superstitions, and other confusions of our time.

Dr. Shermer received his B.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University, M.A. in experimental psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and his Ph.D. in the history of science from Claremont Graduate University (1991). He was a college professor for 20 years (19791998), teaching psychology, evolution, and the history of science at Occidental College (19891998), California State University Los Angeles, and Glendale College. Since his creation of the Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, and the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, he has appeared on such shows as The Colbert Report, 20/20, Dateline, Charlie Rose, Larry King Live, Tom Snyder, Donahue, Oprah, Lezza, Unsolved Mysteries (but, proudly, never Jerry Springer!), and other shows as a skeptic of weird and extraordinary claims, as well as interviews in countless documentaries aired on PBS, A&E, Discovery, The History Channel, The Science Channel, and The Learning Channel. Shermer was the co-host and co-producer of the 13-hour Family Channel television series, Exploring the Unknown.

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[alphakraker]

The things the people dismiss as foolishness today will be reality tomorrow...this is shown historically...believing that we are the only sentient beings in the universe is irrational. Yet people in their boundless stupidity and ignorance choose to follow the crowd. You may as well believe god exists if you think aliens don't exist.

[SpellboundSolution]

Step 1: collect underpants

Step 2: ?

Step 3: profit

I think the underpants gnomes need to be a bit more explicit in step 2.

[dragnet53]

@Apostasy4Ever

Sadly though technology is making our ability to have common sense and socializing thrown out the window. social network websites don't count. I am talking about human to human contact. But I believe in weird things and I have intelligence and common sense. I just partially don't agree with Shermer on certain things.

[Apostasy4Ever]

@dragnet53

We're saying similar things in a different way. But I don't think the point of this talk is to compare the creativity or intelligence of Shermer to Kaku, nor is Kaku the only scientist that's making 'science fiction' a reality. We make synthetic life now after so much time of thinking we never would. The cool thing about technology is it affords us the ability to learn more about the world around us and it advances exponentially, so in turn our understanding of the world may also.

[dragnet53]

@Apostasy4Ever

No the real reason why it is always being rewritten is because new things are being invented that changes mainstream science. They say lasers or cloaking device is impossible to create and is dubbed science fiction. Now science fiction is becoming reality according to Dr. Michio Kaku.

[Apostasy4Ever]

@dragnet53

It is always being rewritten because it is constantly under the scrutiny of skeptics such as yourself so it is always being reevaluated. From a philosophical standpoint, the whole of truth will never be known. For example when two people are fighting and you speak to each person individually you will get each persons side of the story and they will likely be a little different. The truth is somewhere in between. Science tests to its greatest ability given the technology of the times.

[dragnet53]

Hey Shermer why is science always being rewritten? Even Dr. Michio Kaku believes in weird things and he is smarter than you.