“But since we live in a world where people constantly offer anecdotal evidence to support their claims of unexplained subjective experiences rational people tend to ignore them.”
Stanley Jaki tells this story:
Laplace shouted, “We have had enough such myths,” when his fellow academician Marc-Auguste Pictet urged, in the full hearing of the Académie des Sciences, that attention be given to the report about a huge meteor shower that fell at L’Aigle, near Paris, on April 26, 1803.
I presume this would be an example of Laplace being rational and ignoring this evidence, in your view. In my view, it shows that people trying to be rational sometimes fail to be rational, and one case of this is by ignoring weak evidence, when weak evidence is still evidence. Obviously you do not assume that everything is necessarily correct: but the alternative is to take it as weak evidence, rather than ignoring it.
“But since we live in a world where people constantly offer anecdotal evidence to support their claims of unexplained subjective experiences rational people tend to ignore them.”
Stanley Jaki tells this story:
I presume this would be an example of Laplace being rational and ignoring this evidence, in your view. In my view, it shows that people trying to be rational sometimes fail to be rational, and one case of this is by ignoring weak evidence, when weak evidence is still evidence. Obviously you do not assume that everything is necessarily correct: but the alternative is to take it as weak evidence, rather than ignoring it.
You are right!
I have edited the opening paragraph and conclusion, to present the idea as a bias. Let me know if you notice issues with this formulation.