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A review by sistermagpie
Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief by Lewis Wolpert
3.0
The book's about the evolutionary origins of belief, which Wolpert ties to tool use, which is apparently not that common a theory, but it made sense. The basic idea is that human's ability to have causal beliefs, to wonder why something happened, is what gave us the ability to make complex tools and also leads to us having causal beliefs on which we base our lives. There's chapters on different types of beliefs people have in their lives that are common.
The one downside is that it killed a lot hope I had for people who seem to have crazy political beliefs. People will do almost everything to not believe what they don't want to believe. They will insist someone is psychic even when told they're being tricked, and prefer holistic medicine that makes no sense because science goes against common sense. Given how often I hear people calling for elected officials with common sense it leaves me feeling we'll just never going to deal with reality.
But the book was cool!
The one downside is that it killed a lot hope I had for people who seem to have crazy political beliefs. People will do almost everything to not believe what they don't want to believe. They will insist someone is psychic even when told they're being tricked, and prefer holistic medicine that makes no sense because science goes against common sense. Given how often I hear people calling for elected officials with common sense it leaves me feeling we'll just never going to deal with reality.
But the book was cool!