I think that, to a certain extent, if you know that a large number of people in your tribe have come to a specific conclusion based on available evidence, then even if you haven’t come to that same conclusion, there is a natural tendency to “keep an open mind” about it, to keep a working hypothesis of a model where they are right and you are wrong, and to occasionally test that hypothesis.
Even though you have rationally worked out that there are no ghosts through a process of rational thinking, you do know that a lot of people have come to the conclusions that there are ghosts through non-rational thinking, and there is some non-zero chance that somehow their methods of reasoning might turn out to be correct. That is, there is always a possibility that in some fundamental way your entire method of looking at the universe and analyzing data might be somehow flawed in a way theirs is not.
It’s hard to ever set a precise probability value on that, although it seems very unlikely, but your survival instincts are keyed to avoid low-possibility danger events (in a way that your resource-gathering instincts are not). It’s fundamentally much easier to knowingly gamble with your money then to knowingly gamble with your life, in other words.
I think that, to a certain extent, if you know that a large number of people in your tribe have come to a specific conclusion based on available evidence, then even if you haven’t come to that same conclusion, there is a natural tendency to “keep an open mind” about it, to keep a working hypothesis of a model where they are right and you are wrong, and to occasionally test that hypothesis.
Even though you have rationally worked out that there are no ghosts through a process of rational thinking, you do know that a lot of people have come to the conclusions that there are ghosts through non-rational thinking, and there is some non-zero chance that somehow their methods of reasoning might turn out to be correct. That is, there is always a possibility that in some fundamental way your entire method of looking at the universe and analyzing data might be somehow flawed in a way theirs is not.
It’s hard to ever set a precise probability value on that, although it seems very unlikely, but your survival instincts are keyed to avoid low-possibility danger events (in a way that your resource-gathering instincts are not). It’s fundamentally much easier to knowingly gamble with your money then to knowingly gamble with your life, in other words.