Michael Shermer: Why people believe weird things
Michael Shermer: Prečo ľudia veria divným veciam
Michael Shermer debunks myths, superstitions and urban legends -- and explains why we believe them. Along with publishing Skeptic Magazine, he's author of Why People Believe Weird Things and The Mind of the Market. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
director of the Skeptics Society,
som riaditeľ Spoločnosti skeptikov,
o paranormálnych javoch,
and claims of all kinds between,
a všetko možné medzi tým.
and non-science and junk science,
zlá veda, neveda
bad science, non-science,
čo je dosť negatívne označenie.
which is kind of a negative term.
of the police departments out there --
boja s nezmyslami.
the Ralph Naders of bad ideas,
bojujúci proti nezmyslom.
with good ideas.
by NBC Dateline to test.
nech to vyskúšame.
Corporation of West Virginia.
v Západnej Virgínii.
administrators for $900 apiece.
za 900 dolárov za kus.
Shack antenna attached to it.
ku ktorému je pripojená anténa.
ale konkrétne túto
to dowse for marijuana
v skrinkách študentov.
is you go down the hallway,
idete po chodbe a sledujete,
toward a particular locker,
a potom ju otvoríte.
ukážem vám.
a overíme pokus.
so we'll do a controlled experiment.
your pockets, please, sir?
find marijuana in students' lockers?
marihuanu v skrinkách študentov?
if you open enough of them, yes.
samozrejme.
of the misses, not just the hits.
aj neúspechy, nielen úspechy.
to my short talk here:
z mojej krátkej prezentácie.
tarot card readers and so on.
vykladači tarotu a podobne.
na neúspechy.
and forget the misses.
of hits somehow stands out
ktoré by sa dali pripísať náhode.
you'd expect by chance.
marijuana, and one with nothing.
druhá bola prázdna.
ako keby ste si hádzali mincou.
with a coin-flip model.
here of the sorts of things we do.
čomu sa venujeme.
Each one has a particular theme.
napríklad budúcnosti inteligencie.
alebo hlúpejší?
because of the business I'm in,
are getting smarter.
as a thing, or science as a thing.
and plumbing compatible?
„Je veda zlúčiteľná s inštalatérstvom?“
Je to spôsob premýšľania o veciach.
explanations for all phenomena.
vysvetlení pre všetky fenomény.
or multi-dimensional beings
alebo viacrozmerné bytosti
medzihviezdneho priestoru,
of interstellar space
field in Puckerbrush, Kansas
farmára Boba v Puckerbrush v Kansase,
našej stránke skeptic.com?
of "Skeptic" did this with Photoshop?
vo Photoshope.
že niečo nie je z tohto sveta,
is out of this world,
that it's not in this world.
že to nepochádza z tohto sveta.
in his run for the governorship,
pri voľbách mimozemšťania?
makes stuff up?
here in this Sidney Harris cartoon.
„Potom sa stane zázrak.“
it says here: "Then a miracle occurs.
by ste mali byť konkrétnejší.“
explicit here in step two."
the intelligent design arguments.
inteligentného dizajnu.
anything or offer anything.
Nič sa na tom nedá testovať.
sa tu končí debata.
for intelligent design creationists.
terms out as linguistic place fillers --
používajú pojmy ako jazykové barličky
something like that --
len kým nezistíme, čo to je.
we'll call it this.
chain for science.
it's the end of the chain.
čo je pravdepodobnejšie?
what's more likely?
zmyslové klamy, či dokonca podvrhy?
cognitive mistakes, or even fakes?
in Altadena, California,
v Altadene v Kalifornii,
hubcap, it's because it is.
to je preto, že to tak je.
nepotrebujete sofistikované vybavenie;
or high-tech equipment,
Kodak Instamatic camera.
jednorazovým fotoaparátom.
with a hubcap ready to go.
na boku s puklicou, hodí ju,
že väčšina týchto vecí
that most of these things are fake
a niektoré sú skutočné,
and that some of them are real,
že všetky sú podvrhy
are fake, like the crop circles.
Vo vede sa snažíme o rovnováhu
we're looking for a balance
he had two problems
theory of planetary rings.
o prstencoch planét.
boli nepresné a nejasné,
was grainy and fuzzy,
na čo sa pozerá.
what he was looking at.
že najvzdialenejšiu planétu
planet has three bodies."
concluding that he saw.
rings and with only grainy data,
a s nejasnými údajmi
that catalogs all the mistakes
kde zhrnul všetky omyly,
what was going on with Saturn.
ako to je so Saturnom.
and how the solar system operated,
a o tom, ako funguje slnečná sústava.
more fine-grain data
a teda presnejšie údaje.
as the Earth is going around faster --
podľa Keplerových zákonov okolo Slnka
than Saturn, then we catch up with it.
Preto vidíme prstence pod rôznymi uhlami.
at different angles, there.
it may be loaded with cognitive biases.
množstvom kognitívnych klamov.
veria divným veciam?
why people believe weird things
ktoré chcelo od NASA,
to get NASA to photograph that area
lebo ľudia si mysleli,
architecture made by Martians.
to coarse-grain,
the quality of your data.
čo máte hľadať, stále by ste videli tvár,
you'd still see the face,
naprogramovaní vidieť tváre.
by evolution to see faces.
faces of all kinds are easy to see.
asi by uvideli Kermita.
perhaps they'd see Kermit the Frog.
v roku 1996.
to come see the nun bun
from Mother Teresa's lawyer.
Matky Terezy.
Lady of Watsonville, just down the street,
a Pannu Máriu z Watsonville,
alebo opačným smerom?
because it's nice and grainy, branchy,
pretože je zrnitá a rozvetvená,
get the pattern-seeking --
a dobre sa v nej hľadajú obrazce.
of a glass window in Sao Paulo.
sklenej budovy v Sao Paulo.
na syrovom sendviči,
her appearance on a cheese sandwich --
v jednom kasíne v Las Vegas,
hold in a Las Vegas casino --
zaplatilo 28 500 dolárov.
on eBay for the cheese sandwich.
The Virgin Mary?
tak v štýle 40. rokov.
puckered lips, 1940s-era look.
Veriaci prichádzali
and crutches, and so on.
o barliach a podobne.
ja, a Úžasný Randi,
me and The Amazing Randi,
dva a pol poschodia.
two and a half story-sized image.
tam ľudia zapálili na počesť tohto.
people had lit in tribute to this.
to see what was going on.
aby sme zistili, čo sa tam deje,
ostrekovač a palma,
a sprinkler head and a palm tree,
which they started to wipe off.
ktorú už začali zotierať.
one miracle per building.
len jeden zázrak na budovu.
alebo skôr zázrak Marge?
or is it a miracle of Marge?
with another example of this,
ďalší príklad tohto javu,
Hlas smrti (White Noise)
with Michael Keaton,
ktorí s nami komunikujú.
to the dead is not that big a deal.
nie je ani také ťažké.
aby odpovedali.
back that's the really hard part.
skryté v elektronických fenoménoch.
are hidden in electronic phenomena.
where I downloaded this stuff.
odkiaľ som stiahol toto.
of all of these.
of the very famous song.
don't be alarmed now.
for the May Queen.
can go by, but in the long run,
the road you're on
messages that are supposedly in there.
ktoré tam údajne sú.
Audience: Satan!
Objavili sme aspoň slovo "Satan".
part of your brain
vášho mozgu, čo máte počuť.
to hear, and then hear it again.
when I tell you what's there.
keď vám poviem, že to tam je.
with a positive, nice little story.
pozitívnym príbehom.
educational organization.
vzdelávacou organizáciou.
good things that people do.
ktoré ľudia robia.
in England today, Katie Melua.
speváčok v Anglicku, Katie Melua,
"Nine Million Bicycles in Beijing."
"9 miliónov bicyklov v Pekingu".
of the Norah Jones of the UK --
a pesnička je o láske,
bicycles, and so forth.
a tak ďalej.
od okraja. ♫
light-years from the edge
At least she got it close.
"Sme 6 000 svetelných rokov od okraja".
"We're 6,000 light years from the edge."
časticový fyzik, dnes popularizátor vedy,
physicist now turned science educator,
"The Big Bang," and so on,
na propagáciu kvalitnej vedy.
to promote good science.
in "The Guardian" about Katie's song,
komentár o tejto pesničke.
how far from the edge.
od okraja vesmíru.
and it's not a guess.
a to nie je odhad.
error bars how close it is.
aj keď to nie je absolútna pravda,
true, it's pretty close to being true.
after this op-ed piece came out, and said,
po uverejnení tohto článku zavolala
I was in the astronomy club.
mala som to vedieť.“
a my si tú novú verziu pustíme.
pozorovateľného vesmíru ♫
s presne stanovenou odchýlkou.♫
with well-defined error bars.
dostupným informáciám ♫
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Michael Shermer - SkepticMichael Shermer debunks myths, superstitions and urban legends -- and explains why we believe them. Along with publishing Skeptic Magazine, he's author of Why People Believe Weird Things and The Mind of the Market.
Why you should listen
As founder and publisher of Skeptic Magazine, Michael Shermer has exposed fallacies behind intelligent design, 9/11 conspiracies, the low-carb craze, alien sightings and other popular beliefs and paranoias. But it's not about debunking for debunking's sake. Shermer defends the notion that we can understand our world better only by matching good theory with good science.
Shermer's work offers cognitive context for our often misguided beliefs: In the absence of sound science, incomplete information can powerfully combine with the power of suggestion (helping us hear Satanic lyrics when "Stairway to Heaven" plays backwards, for example). In fact, a common thread that runs through beliefs of all sorts, he says, is our tendency to convince ourselves: We overvalue the shreds of evidence that support our preferred outcome, and ignore the facts we aren't looking for.
He writes a monthly column for Scientific American, and is an adjunct at Claremont Graduate University and Chapman University. His latest book is The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. He is also the author of The Mind of the Market, on evolutionary economics, Why Darwin Matters: Evolution and the Case Against Intelligent Design, and The Science of Good and Evil. And his next book is titled The Moral Arc of Science.
Michael Shermer | Speaker | TED.com