My own story of rationality overcoming fear involves, ironically, belief in ghosts. Long after I was a devoted rationalist, I still had a lingering fear of hauntings and ghosts. You see, I’d been constantly told as a child that I had lived in a haunted house when I was too young too remember.
There was documented proof. Every time we had occasion to pass by the house, it would constantly have a ‘for sale’ or ‘for rent’ sign on it over the course of years, changing hands every time. Two suicides and a number of deaths occurred there (including one double suicide/homicide) and my mom had newspaper clippings. Surely, even I couldn’t contest that.
More salient were the personal stories. Everyone in the family would see apparitions in the night, like nightmares made real. Other times the whole family would all be overcome by fear simultaneously. They would sense spirits but feel paralyzed to move. They’d see other people in the corner of their eye, but they’d disappear before they could talk to them. Sometimes they would lose time as if possessed in a trance. Othertimes the spirits would possess members of the family and make them do odd things or unable to move well or at all.
So while I had grown up a rationalist, I still had a phobia of spirits and haunted houses. It took finally doing research on that house to understand what really happened. You see, carbon monoxide poisoning has all of those effects. It was mysterious in magical back then, but looking back it’s just sad. Several lives lost, other lives ruined, and massive negative utility all because somebody probably messed up the gas piping and nobody thought to install a CO detector. And part of that was because idiots (my family included) thought the place was haunted instead of trying to solve an unexplained problem with science.
This also implies that it’s a good idea to avoid houses with a history of mysterious deaths. The deaths were no longer mysterious when carbon monoxide poisoning was figured out, but before that?
Wow, this is a powerful story. I’m more and more sympathetic the more I think about it… Did you manage to convince your family about your findings? Did you alert someone of the danger (like the current owners perhaps)?
My own story of rationality overcoming fear involves, ironically, belief in ghosts. Long after I was a devoted rationalist, I still had a lingering fear of hauntings and ghosts. You see, I’d been constantly told as a child that I had lived in a haunted house when I was too young too remember.
There was documented proof. Every time we had occasion to pass by the house, it would constantly have a ‘for sale’ or ‘for rent’ sign on it over the course of years, changing hands every time. Two suicides and a number of deaths occurred there (including one double suicide/homicide) and my mom had newspaper clippings. Surely, even I couldn’t contest that.
More salient were the personal stories. Everyone in the family would see apparitions in the night, like nightmares made real. Other times the whole family would all be overcome by fear simultaneously. They would sense spirits but feel paralyzed to move. They’d see other people in the corner of their eye, but they’d disappear before they could talk to them. Sometimes they would lose time as if possessed in a trance. Othertimes the spirits would possess members of the family and make them do odd things or unable to move well or at all.
So while I had grown up a rationalist, I still had a phobia of spirits and haunted houses. It took finally doing research on that house to understand what really happened. You see, carbon monoxide poisoning has all of those effects. It was mysterious in magical back then, but looking back it’s just sad. Several lives lost, other lives ruined, and massive negative utility all because somebody probably messed up the gas piping and nobody thought to install a CO detector. And part of that was because idiots (my family included) thought the place was haunted instead of trying to solve an unexplained problem with science.
This also implies that it’s a good idea to avoid houses with a history of mysterious deaths. The deaths were no longer mysterious when carbon monoxide poisoning was figured out, but before that?
Wow, this is a powerful story. I’m more and more sympathetic the more I think about it… Did you manage to convince your family about your findings? Did you alert someone of the danger (like the current owners perhaps)?