by Michael Shermer, Stephen Jay Gould
To be honest, I don't think this book lived up to its title. "Vague writings on weird things people believe", or "Why these people are wrong" was the more common theme. Some interesting content, but very little of what I expected - ie social theory re: how 'weird things' catch on. There are three c...
I have read many of Shermer's articles for Skeptics Magazine but this was the first book by him that I've read. It was probably a good one to start out with. He appears to be setting out his basic ideas on why people often lean to unscientific and illogical beliefs. He goes through these reasons and...
I enjoyed this book, but with a few qualifications. To start, the book should perhaps be titled, "Some of the Weird Things People Believe," since the book doesn't really get into *why* people believe the things they do. With that caveat, I did enjoy the book for the most part.The author's central pr...
An amazing book, I actually listened to it as an audio-book and it was great. Has a lot of facts and clarifies a lot :)
I loved this book when I was a kid. I'd go to the library and check out every book they had on UFOs, ghost sightings and unexplained phenomena, and then I would add every skeptical book I could find to the pile. They were always more difficult to hunt down, but I loved reading about a mystery and th...
This is a joint review of this book and How We BelieveShermer postulates that humans have evolved a belief module that helps us find patterns in what appears otherwise to be a meaningless universe. (Why we feel compelled to find meaning in everything continues to puzzle me.) Until about four hundred...
Really it's a list of logic errors, which is the kind of thing I need to re-familiarize myself with from time to time. Because historically, I've been one of those people who are appalled to hear that "gullible" doesn't appear in the dictionary. I have to work at being skeptical.2007 February 25
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