That’s definitely the proper naïve reaction to assume in my opinion. I would say with extremely high confidence that this is one of those things that takes dozens of hours of reading to overcome one’s priors toward, if your priors are well-defined. It took every bit of that for me. The reason for this is that there’s always a solid-sounding objection to any one case—it takes knowing tons of them by heart to see how the common challenges fail to hold up. So, in my experience and that of many I know, the degree which one is inclined to buy into it is a direct correlation of how determined one is to get to the bottom of it. Otherwise, I have to agree with you that there’s no really compelling reason to be convinced based on what a casual search will show you. That, as well, seems to be the experience of most. Those who really care tend to get it, but it is inherently time-and-effort prohibitive. I really don’t feel like asking anyone to undertake that unless they’re heavily motivated.
Stevenson’s greatest flaw as a researcher was that he didn’t look terribly hard for American and otherwise Western cases, and the few he stumbled into were often mediocre at best. Therefore, he was repeatedly subjected to justified criticism of the nature “you can’t isolate your data from the cultural environment it develops in”. However, this issue has been entirely dissolved by successors who have rectidfied his error and found that they’re just as common in non-believer Western families as anywhere, including arguably stronger ones than anything he found. This is definitely the most important data-collection development in the field during the 21st century.
I must say I’m not at all interested in belief systems as an object of study, though—my goal is more or less to eradicate them. They’re nothing but epistemic pollution.
That’s definitely the proper naïve reaction to assume in my opinion. I would say with extremely high confidence that this is one of those things that takes dozens of hours of reading to overcome one’s priors toward, if your priors are well-defined. It took every bit of that for me. The reason for this is that there’s always a solid-sounding objection to any one case—it takes knowing tons of them by heart to see how the common challenges fail to hold up. So, in my experience and that of many I know, the degree which one is inclined to buy into it is a direct correlation of how determined one is to get to the bottom of it. Otherwise, I have to agree with you that there’s no really compelling reason to be convinced based on what a casual search will show you. That, as well, seems to be the experience of most. Those who really care tend to get it, but it is inherently time-and-effort prohibitive. I really don’t feel like asking anyone to undertake that unless they’re heavily motivated.
Stevenson’s greatest flaw as a researcher was that he didn’t look terribly hard for American and otherwise Western cases, and the few he stumbled into were often mediocre at best. Therefore, he was repeatedly subjected to justified criticism of the nature “you can’t isolate your data from the cultural environment it develops in”. However, this issue has been entirely dissolved by successors who have rectidfied his error and found that they’re just as common in non-believer Western families as anywhere, including arguably stronger ones than anything he found. This is definitely the most important data-collection development in the field during the 21st century.
I must say I’m not at all interested in belief systems as an object of study, though—my goal is more or less to eradicate them. They’re nothing but epistemic pollution.