Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer Page A

constructed to be progressive. In technology, useful features are retained and nonuseful features are abandoned based on the rejection or acceptance of the technologies by the consuming public. Technologies, then, are also constructed to be progressive. Cultural traditions (art, myth, religion) may exhibit some of the features found in science and technology, such as being accepted or rejected within their own community or by the public, but none have had as their primary goal cumulative growth through an indebtedness to the past. But in the Industrial West, culture has taken on a new guise: it has as a primary goal the accumulation of cultural traditions and artifacts, and it uses, ignores, and returns to cultural traditions and artifacts as needed to aid the progress of science and technology. We cannot, in any absolute sense, equate happiness with progress, or progress with happiness, but an individual who finds happiness in a variety of knowledge and artifacts, cherishes novelty and change, and esteems the living standards set by the Industrial West will view a culture driven by scientific and technological progress as progressive.
    Lately the word progress has taken on a pejorative meaning, implying superiority over those who "have not progressed as far," namely, they have not adopted the values or the standard of living defined by the Industrial West, because they are either not able or not willing to encourage the development of science and technology. I do not mean progress to have this pejorative sense. Whether or not a culture pursues science and technology does not make one culture better than another or one way of life more moral than another or one people happier than another. Science and technology have plenty of limitations, and they are double-edge swords. Science has made the modern world, but it may also unmake it. Our advances in the physical sciences have given us plastics and plastic explosives, cars and tanks, supersonic transports and B-l bombers; they have also put men on the moon and missiles in silos. We travel faster and further, but so do our destructive agents. Medical advances allow us to live twice as long as our ancestors did a mere 150 years ago, and now we have a potentially devastating overpopulation problem without a corresponding overproduction solution. Discoveries in anthropology and cosmology have given us insight into the origins of species and the workings of the universe. But for many people, these insights and their corresponding ideologies are an insult to personal and religious beliefs and a provocative threat to the comfortable status quo. Our scientific and technological progress has, for the first time in history, given us many ways of causing the extinct-tion of our own species. This is neither good nor bad. It is simply the out come of a cumulative system of knowledge. But flawed as it may be, science is at present the best method we have for doing what we want it to do. As Einstein observed, "One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is I the most precious thing we have."

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    How Thinking Goes Wrong

    Twenty-five Fallacies That Lead Us to Believe Weird Things

    In 1994 NBC began airing a New Age program called The Other Side that explored claims of the paranormal, various mysteries and miracles, and assorted "weird" things. I appeared numerous times as the token skeptic—the "other side" of The Other Side, if you will. On most talk shows, a "balanced" program is a half-dozen to a dozen believers and one lone skeptic as the voice of reason or opposition. The Other Side was no different, even though the executive producer, many of the program producers, and even the host were skeptical of most of the beliefs they were covering. I did one program on werewolves for which they flew in a fellow from England. He actually looked a little like what you see in werewolf movies—big bushy sideburns