Analysis Of Michael Shermer: The Pattern Behind Self-Deception

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Ted Talk Michael Shermer: The Pattern Behind Self-Deception Michael Shermer writes for Septic magazine, which investigates many different scientific and quasi-scientific controversies. He begins the talk by demonstrating a device called ADE 651. The ADE 651 was sold to the Iraqi government for 40,000 dollars each. It was said to work by electrostatic magnetic ion attraction. Shermer explains how that was simply a big bunch of crock. He discusses how there is a danger to pseudoscience that we can be made to believe in any little thing such as the ADE 651. Shermer’s thesis of the talk is “that belief is the natural state of things.” We make the decision to believe or not believe. As human beings many of us want to believe in something. Our beliefs many not all be the same, so that explains why some people choose to believe that UFOs exist. We make different between different things in order to justify our belief. For example, the old saying we said as a child “step on a crack break your mama’s back” or “break a mirror you have seven years bad luck.” Those type beliefs are superstition, which we may always have among us. Shermer referred to the process as “Patternicity.” Shermer explained Patternicity as “the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise.” With Patternicity there is a …show more content…

Watson. During Pavlov’s experiment to determine the role salvia had in the digestive process of dogs, lead to his discovery of psychic reflexes. After pairing the meat powder with a bell, Pavlov realized that his dogs were salivating after hearing/seeing the bell even without the presence of the meat powder. In Pavlov’s experiment, the meat powder is an unconditioned stimuli and the salivating is the unconditioned response. Eventually, the bell becomes a conditioned stimuli that brings about salivation (a conditioned

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