New Scientist - USA (2021-12-11)

11 December 2021 | New Scientist | 49

Some of our national founding myths
may fall into that category. Some religious
beliefs too, and believers are sometimes
offended by the idea that they should be
subject to empirical scrutiny. For them,
belief in God is a kind of belief you hold for
its moral benefits, not for its factual accuracy.
It’s a different kind of belief.
I quote Bertrand Russell, who said it
is undesirable to believe a proposition
when there are no grounds whatsoever for
believing it is true. And what I note is that
this is at odds with the way that most people
think. It’s a product of the Enlightenment
that we think that every question ought
to be put in the realm of reality and tested
for its literal veracity.

That seems to imply that some beliefs
are beyond criticism and impervious
to evidence. Is that right?
There is a tendency to protect these beliefs
or at least to take them out of the realm of
evidence, but the boundary between the
real and the mythical can be changed. The
origin of fortune and misfortune may once
have been attributed to fate, but we now
consider it an empirical question. We want
to know what gives you Alzheimer’s. It’s not
divine retribution.
I think the general tendency since the
Enlightenment has been to try to bite
off chunks of the mythology zone for the
reality zone. I say the more the better, and in
particular areas, we can try to persuade people
that, no, you can’t just believe anything you
want. There really is a fact of the matter.

Can that boundary between reality and
mythology shift in real time, say with something
like covid-19 that starts as an abstract threat,
but then becomes horribly real?
You would think that vaccine hesitancy
would crumble in the face of covid. It has
not, although it has declined. What I suspect
happens is that with any mythological belief,
there are the true believers who will go to
their graves believing, no matter how high
the evidence piles up. But there are always
some who are more open to the evidence.

Yet it seems that the mythological zone

is expanding right now, at least in Western

democracies. Is it?

It’s all too easy to come to a conclusion based

on our own availability biases, and on an

understanding of the world from anecdotes,

which is basically what journalism consists

of. Unfortunately, we don’t have the good

evidence over an extended period that

would settle it. I cite a study that looked for

conspiratorial content in letters to the editors

of major American newspapers over a span

of more than a century and found no increase.

The data I found on belief in paranormal

phenomena among Americans – astrology,

crystal power, haunted houses – is pretty

much flat over 50 years, too.

So humanity isn’t losing its mind today

any more than it has in the past?

No. But we are squandering some of the

tools that could make us more rational if they

were more widely applied. It’s not that people

are saying more unfounded or outlandish

things, but we’re more cognisant of the

higher standards that we ought to apply, and

so the lapses are all the more salient to us.

In terms of the moral statement of what we

ought to do, it’s now accepted that we ought

to prioritise rationality. ❚

Interview by Graham Lawton, a staff writer

VU at New Scientist

K^ V

AL

CIC

/SO

PA

IM

AG

ES

/SH

UT

TE

RS

TO

CK

“ Conspiracy theories,

paranormal views

and fake news are

not new – they may

be the default mode

of our species”

The San people

of the Kalahari

use rationality for

pursuit hunting

An anti-vaccination

protest in London,

earlier this year

KA

RIN

DU

TH

IE/

AL

AM

Y