A few days ago the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NMHRC) released a report that reviewed 1800 papers on homeopathic treatments. In what should be a surprise to no one on LW, it was concluded that they were no more effective than placebo.
Even though this particular failure mode of human reasoning (belief in homeopathy) was never that hard to refute, there are other, closely related errors in reasoning that often go by undetected, and I think it’s useful to talk about them and discuss them. I always found homeopathy interesting because it is probably one of the purest manifestations of magical thinking—the belief (knowingly or unknowingly) in the existence of a supernatural essence that exists in objects, animals, and people (or more abstract things, such as events). All of us are guilty of thinking magically once in a while. Some common forms of magical thinking include believing in karma, believing in souls, valuing handcrafted objects over factory-produced ones (without pointing to specific functional reasons why the factory-built objects are inferior), and believing that no machine could ever be as intelligent or moral or conscious as a human could.
Is it possible to identify when magical thinking is taking place? I feel that this is harder than it sounds, and is something that could be of great use in the rationalist toolbox.
Homepathy: One down, infinity to go
A few days ago the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NMHRC) released a report that reviewed 1800 papers on homeopathic treatments. In what should be a surprise to no one on LW, it was concluded that they were no more effective than placebo.
Even though this particular failure mode of human reasoning (belief in homeopathy) was never that hard to refute, there are other, closely related errors in reasoning that often go by undetected, and I think it’s useful to talk about them and discuss them. I always found homeopathy interesting because it is probably one of the purest manifestations of magical thinking—the belief (knowingly or unknowingly) in the existence of a supernatural essence that exists in objects, animals, and people (or more abstract things, such as events). All of us are guilty of thinking magically once in a while. Some common forms of magical thinking include believing in karma, believing in souls, valuing handcrafted objects over factory-produced ones (without pointing to specific functional reasons why the factory-built objects are inferior), and believing that no machine could ever be as intelligent or moral or conscious as a human could.
Is it possible to identify when magical thinking is taking place? I feel that this is harder than it sounds, and is something that could be of great use in the rationalist toolbox.