Weird Beliefs

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Source: Photo art - Flame Face by Paul Dineen. Used by permission

I am fascinated by all the weird beliefs other people have. Where do they come from? Why do people hold them? What can we do about them? Should we do something about them? You have weird beliefs, of that I’m certain, but do I have weird beliefs even though I think I don’t? Let’s begin with some examples. The following are stand-out weird believers I’ve actually known.

1. An aerospace engineer who believed that he could get enough sustenance to skip several meals merely by absorbing bacteria through his skin (he routinely skipped meals).
2. A university geologist who believed that Earth was created about 6,000 years ago and that the Grand Canyon formed in a month from run-off from the biblical flood.
3. A physicist working at one of our nation’s major labs who believed that space aliens visited Earth millennia ago and gave us some of their technology.
4. A philosopher at a prestigious university who believed that psychic surgery was real and who also believed that Shakespeare’s plays were written by someone else: Christopher Marlowe.
5. A computer scientist working for a defense and intelligence contractor who believed that President Kennedy was assassinated due to the work of a large conspiracy.
6. A university philosopher (not me) who believed that the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, was the work of a large conspiracy involving the U.S. government, principally, President Bush and Vice-President Cheney.
7. A well-known philosopher who believes that no human or animal is conscious.
8. A well-known philosopher and logician who believes that some contradictions are both true and false at the same time (see below).
9. Trump supporters. As I argued in a previous post, Donald Trump’s ascendency is a Black Swan — utterly unpredictable, but understandable in retrospect. Human belief and Black Swans go hand in hand. So the unpredictability of the rise of Trump depends in a special way on the beliefs of those who support him. One can make a calm case for supporting Trump (exercise left for the reader), but to many non-Trump people, supporting Trump for president seems starkly irrational in one way or another.
10. And finally, religion. Religion is an example of a weird belief (statistically, you disagree). Most humans are religious. Hence religion plays an enormous role in human behavior and society. So, with religion, we have a weird belief playing an enormous role in human life, and hence in the lives of everything else on the planet.

These 10 and many others led to my interest in weird beliefs.

A first definition of weird beliefs

Michael Shermer, in his excellent book, Why People Believe Weird Things, defines a weird belief as a belief that (1) is unaccepted by most people in the scientific field that studies the topic of that belief (e.g., astronomy, biology, etc.), (2) a claim that is impossible or highly unlikely, and/or (3) a claim for which the evidence is anecdotal. As is clear from his book, Shermer thinks most weird beliefs are false. But his definition doesn’t capture this. Rather, his definition gives properties of those beliefs we call weird — properties often associated with a belief’s being false.

Of course, like most definitions of natural phenomena, Shermer’s is both too broad and too narrow — though it is still useful. In 1916, Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity was a weird belief. It satisfied (1) and (2), and there was no evidence for it, anecdotal or otherwise. That smoking is harmful was a weird belief in the early to mid 20th century: There was only anecdotal evidence for it (the science concerning it didn’t really exist — it was being ignored or suppressed for various reasons). And the cigarette manufacturers — the “experts” — denied smoking was harmful. Yet spacetime is curved by mass and smoking is very bad. So, Shermer’s definition categorizes some beliefs as weird that are not false. Presumably, then, they are not weird — at least not now. (But, arguably, that matter curves spacetime is still somewhat weird. This is accommodated in the new definition below.)

Also, Shermer’s definition is too narrow. A significant number of logicians take paraconsistent logic seriously. A logic is paraconsistent if it allows some contradictions to be true as well as false. So, within the field of nonclassical logic, paraconsistent logics are accepted, they are neither impossible, nor highly unlikely, and the evidence for them is robust and public. Yet, paraconsistent logics remain weird for all that: I bet when the reader read “A logic is paraconsistent if it allows some contradictions to be true as well as false” his or her eyebrows went up. But like I said, all definitions of natural phenomena fall short some way; Shermer’s is no different.

A new definition of weird beliefs

I’m dubious that any belief is objectively weird. Please note: This doesn’t commit me to the claim that no belief is objectively true or false. Let’s define a weird belief as a belief someone has that violates a norm. The norms thus violated come from many different sources. One type of norm is set socially and culturally (e.g., the belief that all technology beyond that of the horse and buggy is evil or wrong is weird relative to modern technology culture). More interestingly, a person’s vast store of beliefs and potential beliefs fix or set a norm for other beliefs that might be added to a person’s belief store. Imagine that your beliefs are represented in a vast web or network of nodes and arcs. The nodes are the beliefs, (Snow is cold), (Snow is water ice), connected by arcs of inference or explanation ((Snow is cold) because (Snow is water ice)). Then a weird belief is a belief that doesn’t fit in comfortably in this network. But the uncomfortable fit is only relative to some other person interacting with the first, not to the person whose network it is.

Here is how this works. Suppose you have a male friend named Smith. In every case in which you have interacted with Smith, he has seemed sensible, just like you, and very much in line with your beliefs and the other ordinary beliefs of the culture you and he share. But suppose that one day Smith surprises you by stating his belief that President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are responsible for the September 11 attacks (if this is not a weird belief for you, pick one that is, and assume Smith has it). You are shocked.

In Smith’s head, something like this is going on.

The September 11 attacks were horrible and diabolical. That the attacks were carried out by some barely trained, lucky airplane hijackers seems incredible, nay, preposterous. The problem then is the contrast between the profound horribleness of the attacks and the all but inept humbleness of the perpetrators. So, another explanation must be found — one more emotionally satisfying. Bingo! Bush and Cheney! They are powerful and sophisticated. They control the world’s largest and most lethal military. They are in command of vast reserves of money and technology. They did it.

So, here we have a network of (relative to you) nonweird beliefs of a (mostly) normal (relative to you) everyday human (Smith), but which also includes the weird belief about the September 11 attacks. This belief of Smith’s is attached to his network by an arc representing how much more emotionally satisfying it is to blame strong, powerful, sophisticated people, rather than a ragtag group of terrorists. Finally, to Smith, his belief about the September 11 attacks is not weird.

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But, and this is the key, relative to you, Smith’s belief is weird. Just as you have cognitive maps of all the parts of your environment, you also have theories of mind of all those you interact with even somewhat infrequently. (For a good introductory explanation of what a theory of mind is, see, Premack, D. G.; Woodruff, G. (1978). "Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 1 (4): 515–526.) These theories of mind allow you to interpret, predict, understand, and interact productively with others you encounter. We start to have robust theories of mind at about 4 years old. Using our theories of the minds of others, we attribute beliefs, hopes, desires, knowledge, emotions, and other complex mental states to people we interact with. The ability to form theories of mind is innate in all normal humans. (In fact, it appears to be innate in all mammals, and possibly all vertebrates, and beyond. The evidence both for and against this is controversial on all sides. See the previous citation.)

Your theory of Smith’s mind contains a small model of some part of his network of beliefs. Using your theory of Smith’s mind, you predict that he thinks radical Muslim terrorists are responsible for the September 11 attacks. SURPRISE! He thinks President Bush and Vice-President Cheney did it. So, relative to you, his September 11 belief is weird.

Here are some advantages of our definition.

1. It allows us to see, perhaps, where weird beliefs come from. This is complicated. But briefly, it is plausible that all people have beliefs attached to their belief networks only by emotionally satisfying arcs. And it is plausible that these emotionally satisfying beliefs are crucial to the healthy existence of all belief networks, and hence the person. Then, after the belief is attached via the emotionally satisfying arc, the person’s inference and explanatory mechanisms find ways to justify rationally, after the fact, the merely emotionally satisfying belief. (Shermer has an entire chapter on a version of this idea in his book, cited above.)
2. The weirdness of a belief is separated from its truth or falsity. Plenty of beliefs are weird — norm violators — without being false, e.g., the belief in the existence of true contradictions, or the inherent badness of cell phones and other modern devices (i.e., Amish beliefs are not obviously false).
3. All weird beliefs seem to be indexed to the person or community holding them. This property is well-captured by norm violation, for norms are themselves relative to some index.
4. The norm violation view allows us to explain that from a first-person perspective, weird beliefs are almost nonexistent. As noted, my beliefs are not weird, yours are. From a first-person perspective, the norms we follow make perfect sense, and any “violations” are explained away by invoking what seem to us perfectly acceptable reasons. Above, Smith’s emotional reasons for believing that Bush and Cheney are responsible for September 11 can be turned into an argument justifying his belief. I gave the skeleton of that argument, above when I pointed out that the September 11 attacks were too sophisticated and diabolical (seemingly) for mere terrorists.
5. Advantage comports nicely with the fact that almost all of us think we are very moral — we (nearly) always follow norms of morality, others may not, but we do.
6. The norm violation view allows us to say that the weirdness of a belief (unlike its falseness) is graded: some beliefs are very weird (number (1), above, about the bacteria absorbing engineer), and some are less weird (that President Kennedy was assassinated by a conspiracy — after all, Julius Caesar was).

Finally, aren’t you grateful that you don’t have any weird beliefs? I know I am.