A Comment on Shermer on Thinking

Michael Shermer, who writes the "Skeptic" column in Scientific American, has an article in the August 2008 issue focusing on "a habit of human cognition—thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not." He holds that this is a result of our evolutionary history, since (he feels) false assumptions of positive causality between co-occurring events is seldom fatal, while false assumption of no-causality between such events may be.

I am surprised by such an unscientific leap by a scientific skeptic. How does he know that the superstitious thinking is not a social construct more than a biological one? How does he know what has or has not been selected for by an eons long evolutionary process.

Of course, I agree with his more fundamental point that thinking anecdotally far too often leads to superstitious behavior, and that scientific epistemology is a great advance that offers great promise to improve our thought processes.

His specific example, of the foolishness of the superstitious belief in Switchgrass based drinks as a sovereign remedy for all ones ills seems well taken. The photo of Shermer and his two colleagues tasting the stuff is worth the price of the magazine!