Posted on 05/19/2009 7:59:04 PM PDT by BuckeyeTexan
Souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspirators, and all manner of invisible agents with power and intention are believed to haunt our world and control our lives. Why?
The answer has two parts, starting with the concept of “patternicity,” which I defined in my December 2008 column as the human tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. Consider the face on Mars, the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, satanic messages in rock music. Of course, some patterns are real. Finding predictive patterns in changing weather, fruiting trees, migrating prey animals and hungry predators was central to the survival of Paleolithic hominids.
The problem is that we did not evolve a baloney-detection device in our brains to discriminate between true and false patterns. So we make two types of errors: a type I error, or false positive, is believing a pattern is real when it is not; a type II error, or false negative, is not believing a pattern is real when it is. If you believe that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is just the wind (a type I error), you are more likely to survive than if you believe that the rustle in the grass is just the wind when it is a dangerous predator (a type II error). Because the cost of making a type I error is less than the cost of making a type II error and because there is no time for careful deliberation between patternicities in the split-second world of predator-prey interactions, natural selection would have favored those animals most likely to assume that all patterns are real.
But we do something other animals do not do. As large-brained hominids with a developed cortex and a theory of mind—the capacity to be aware of such mental states as desires and intentions in both ourselves and others—we infer agency behind the patterns we observe in a practice I call “agenticity”: the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents. We believe that these intentional agents control the world, sometimes invisibly from the top down (as opposed to bottom-up causal randomness). Together patternicity and agenticity form the cognitive basis of shamanism, paganism, animism, polytheism, monotheism, and all modes of Old and New Age spiritualisms.
Agenticity carries us far beyond the spirit world. The Intelligent Designer is said to be an invisible agent who created life from the top down. Aliens are often portrayed as powerful beings coming down from on high to warn us of our impending self-destruction. Conspiracy theories predictably include hidden agents at work behind the scenes, puppet masters pulling political and economic strings as we dance to the tune of the Bilderbergers, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers or the Illuminati. Even the belief that government can impose top-down measures to rescue the economy is a form of agenticity, with President Barack Obama being touted as “the one” with almost messianic powers who will save us.
There is now substantial evidence from cognitive neuroscience that humans readily find patterns and impart agency to them, well documented in the new book SuperSense (HarperOne, 2009) by University of Bristol psychologist Bruce Hood. Examples: children believe that the sun can think and follows them around; because of such beliefs, they often add smiley faces on sketched suns. Adults typically refuse to wear a mass murderer’s sweater, believing that “evil” is a supernatural force that imparts its negative agency to the wearer (and, alternatively, that donning Mr. Rogers’s cardigan will make you a better person). A third of transplant patients believe that the donor’s personality is transplanted with the organ. Genital-shaped foods (bananas, oysters) are often believed to enhance sexual potency. Subjects watching geometric shapes with eye spots interacting on a computer screen conclude that they represent agents with moral intentions.
“Many highly educated and intelligent individuals experience a powerful sense that there are patterns, forces, energies and entities operating in the world,” Hood explains. “More important, such experiences are not substantiated by a body of reliable evidence, which is why they are supernatural and unscientific. The inclination or sense that they may be real is our supersense.”
We are natural-born supernaturalists.
Note: This article was originally published with the title, "Agenticity".
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S) Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com) and author of Why People Believe Weird Things.
Personally, I find a high degree of "patternicity" in Obama's actions and I don't think I'm making a type I error there. He is a dangerous predator and not just a rustle in the grass.
By himself he’s nothing. It’s all the whackjobs backing him that are making him dangerous.
Souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspirators, and all manner of invisible agents with power and intention are believed to haunt our world and control our lives. Why?
My supersense smells nonsense.
Three words: Bilderburgers!
And Shermer will PROVE that these illogical agents don’t exist using...
Could not agree more.
Will check it out more after a shower.
Thx.
“Why People Believe Invisible Agents Control the World”
—
Well, maybe because the Bible says so... :-)
Invisible agents, my @ss! The evil b@st@rd is on tv every damn day. MAKE HIM GO AWAY!! UGH
Ephesians 6:12-13
12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
The real power comes from what post #10 quotes...
You said — My supersense smells nonsense.
—
Not according to what God tells us in the Bible. See post #10 for one particular quote (not the only reference around to that teaching, though, in the Bible).
Even the belief that government can impose top-down measures to rescue the economy is a form of agenticity, with President Barack Obama being touted as “the one” with almost messianic powers who will save us.
And wrong on the other:
A third of transplant patients believe that the donor’s personality is transplanted with the organ.
There is some evidence to suggest that hormones and other biochemicals secreted by the transplanted tissue have an effect on personality.
My conclusion: The author has made a Type I error. He has connected too many dots and drawn the wrong conclusion, just like his example of an organism thinking there was a predator in the grass when it was only the wind.
“Examples: children believe that the sun can think and follows them around; because of such beliefs, they often add smiley faces on sketched suns”
Well, that proves it! I don’t suppose that children might pick up such ideas from stories written and told by adults.
I once liked to read SA but every so often I’m reminded why I no longer do.
Three more words: Build-A-Bear
As the old poster accurately asserted . . .
Just because you’re paranoid
does NOT mean
that they are NOT out to get you!
Having studied the globalist oligarchy since 1965 . . . there is NO THEORY about it.
It’s simply a fact . . . as their own quotes from 1900 to the present—ref’d in my tagline attest.
If the tendency of imagining patterns where nothing significant exists is
agenticity . . .
Failing to see piles of documented truth proving conspiracy when there IS A DEEP AND BROAD ONE
must
equal
WILLFUL BLINDNESS; WILLFUL STUPIDITY; WILFULL CLUELESSNESS; WILLFUL SUICIDAL TENDENCIES; an addiction to wishful fantasies . . . .
possibly even demon induced blindness.
Simple answer: People are fundamentally spiritual beings (even if they deny it sometimes), and therefore long for a relationship/peace with their creator!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.