Fascinating article on why humans hold on to irrational beliefs inspite of evidence to the contrary.
It pretty much comes down to the fact that they are stupider than you but the question is why are they stupider, and what's the mechanism by which this stupidity is propagated?
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I don't buy it.
Where is the the cognitive connection established between complicated belief structures such as superstition and simple forms of reasoning such as syllogisms?
Anyways, my experience seems to contradict their conclusion that stupidity leads to irrationality. There seem to be many extremely bright people (by any meaningful metric; or, in the language of the article, without "limited analytical skills") that still hold plenty of "irrational" beliefs. Witness the large number of natural scientists that still hold to their religious beliefs.
Further, who believes in subatomic particles because they have observed any kind or rigorous demonstration of their existence? Certainly not most (even highly educated) people. The wording "widely-shared wisdom" provides a clue though: most people believe in such things because the scientific priesthood pronounces it so.
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