Richmond Area Free Thinkers Society

Certain athletes are notorious for having certain routines or rituals they do because it’s “lucky”. Some people believe that “psychics” like Sylvia Browne can speak with the dead. Others still believe that eating immediately before swimming is dangerous, even life-threatening.

The common thread between all of these things is irrationality - a bizarre glitch in the part of our brains that processes reality into the stuff of thoughts. For the purposes of this post, we’re using the definition of “irrationality” that means something that lacks “a sufficient ground of explanation or of logical defense.” In other words, it’s something we believe in spite of there being any sufficient explanation for it.

But what does that even mean?

The Athletes

In the first case above, regarding the athletes: They fall into the “lucky charm” trap. One athlete might say: “Every time I wear these white socks, I hit a home run, so if I continue to wear these white socks, I should continue to hit home runs.” This is technically a testable statement — with his participation we could secretly put socks of varying colors (including white) on him and show that there is no correlation between his home run frequency and whether or not he is wearing white socks.

But, after seeing this data, if he still believes that the white socks is the “lucky charm” for hitting home runs, then he is exhibiting irrationality.

Psychics

What about “psychics”? There have been many people that have insisted that the psychics are simply doing a parlor trick called “Cold Reading“. “Crossing Over”’s John Edwards, Sylvia Browne, Uri Geller — all of these self-proclaimed psychics lack any actual evidence to support their claims that they can know the unknown through supernatural revelation.

James Randi, renowned skeptic and critic of Uri Geller (among others) has shown specifically how to do some of the Parlor Tricks that Geller has done publicly, including his famous “spoon bending” trick. Sylvia Browne has made testable claims on a number of occasions that turned out to be completely false.

How many times does a psychic need to be completely confident in a prediction that turns out to be dead wrong before they stop being credible? The fact that this charlatan’s profession is still successful clearly shows irrationality.

Swimming

And swimming after eating. How many of our parents told us that? I remember hearing it when I was young — “Wait at least a half an hour before swimming or you’ll get cramps and drown!”

Nothing was ever said about how much you could or could not eat — would a single peanut be too much? How about half a sandwich? A full plate of food? A three course meal? With dessert? Or how long you were supposed to wait: 20 minutes? Half an hour? A full hour? Half a day? Get 8 hours of rest first?

I’ve even heard all kinds of reasoning behind it, when people attempt to reconcile reality with bizarre ideas like this: “Between breathing, digesting food, and physically exerting, your body can only do two of three at once.”

Did you know that no one has ever drowned from eating before swimming? No one’s even come close. Every time I go swimming I pay no heed to this adage. Heck, sometimes I’ll get out of the pool, go and eat a candy bar, and get back in and do a few more laps, just to live on the wild side. (Note: if you do know someone that drowned, and they did eat beforehand, that does not necessarily imply causality.)

So, in spite of understanding that the drowning/eating link is completely groundless, if you still hesitate to go swimming after having a sandwich, that’s irrationality at work!

Why?

The common thread here is that beliefs that are irrelevant (case 1), disproven (case 2), or groundless to begin with (case 3) are not inherently irrational (they’re just plain false). Rather, it’s our tendency to continue to believe these things in spite of being shown that they are irrelevant, disproven, or groundless that is irrational. Superstitious people commonly realize that there is no rhyme or reason for the number 13 to be unlucky, but feel compelled to see it (and its concentrated form: Friday the 13th) as an onus of misfortune.

We are creatures of habit, and it is often difficult to rid ourselves of our habits without replacing the void with something else. So superstition endures, in spite of itself. Think it’s just harmless good fun to spice up life? Check out whatstheharm.net, a collection of articles, accounts, and anecdotes of individuals that have been significantly affected by theirs or others’ irrational beliefs.

If you’ve got a superstitious, supernatural, or irrational belief, how much proof would you need to see before you finally let it go?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 10:49 am and is filed under Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.