Irrational (Magical) Thinking

[Bee]

Irrational thinking springs up everywhere. Some irrational beliefs are passed on to us. But others we find on our own. Survival requires recognizing patterns - night follows day, berries of a particular colour that will make you ill. And because missing the obvious often hurts more than seeing the imaginary, our skills at inferring connections are overtuned. We look for patterns because we hate surprises and because we love being in control. In the real world, meaningful coincidences often incite unfounded suspicion about a mystical tinkerer behind the scenes.

And yet... It feels like there should be more to it.

[Side note: Notice, I said feels. I've noticed that when I am talking about a concept/theory or idea which is rooted in logic, then I would tend to say "I think", but if I am on 'fluffier' ground, I tend to go with "I feel". Why?]

"There are many layers of belief," psychologist Carol Nemeroff says. "And the answer for many people, especially with regard to magic, is, 'Most of me doesn't believe but some of me does.'" People will often acknowledge their gut reaction and say it makes no sense to act on it - but do it anyway. Other times, they'll incorporate superstition into their worldview alongside other explanations. This is something I am aware that I do - even though it is highly irrational. Seeing causality in coincidence can happen even before we have a chance to think about it; the misfiring is sometimes perceptual rather than rational.

Wishing is probably the most ubiquitous kind of magical spell around, the unreasonable expectation that your thoughts have force and energy to act on the world. Who has not resisted certain thoughts for fear of jinxing oneself? Made a wish while blowing out birthday candles? Who are we to say the dreamers have it wrong?

 

[Jon]

The atheists are the ones who say the dreamers have it wrong. The dreamers include those who are religious. The scientists don't necessarily say they have it wrong, because there are many religious scientists. They have a dual channel in their head, where they keep each separate. Evidence and reason on the one side, faith and practice on the other. I remember sitting on Brighton beach many moons ago speaking to a physicist. He was Christian and explained his believe in physics but also how that clashed with his religion.

Maybe you say "feel" because you have no logic to back up the "magic" and so rely on right brain thinking, as opposed to rational left brain thinking.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Man always seeks explanations because having a workable explanation is a type of control - and a survival trait. People who have the best way of thinking or best explanation tend to survive better and even thrive. And since Man learned to talk, Man became the animal capable of passing along the greatest amount of valuable survival knowledge to his offspring.

As Bee points out, we see coincidence as a sign of some connection - and most of the time, that IS true. Animals behave the way they do because it is their nature, and it is NOT a coincidence that two predators will do similar things. Rain comes when it comes in seasonal patterns because of sunlight impinging on different areas at different angles during the seasons, and it is NOT a coincidence that the pattern is repetitious - and therefore easily exploited. Hunters succeed in bringing back food animals by poking holes in them. They all "bleed out" and die, and it is NOT a coincidence that such things work the same for anything on the animal side of the phylogeny tree of life. None of those are coincidences - but those apparent coincidences led primitive Man to make the generalizations.

Where "magic" comes in is when there IS a connection between two things but someone makes the wrong mental connection because they didn't have the science to explain the right connection: "I do X and Y happens. Effects have causes. I wonder if some magical being I haven't met yet is able to do macro-X and thus causes macro-Y to happen. Maybe THAT is why rain comes when it does." And, since it took us many millennia (probably triple-digit numbers of millennia) to get to the point when we finally understand air masses, inter-tropical convergence zones, planetary angles, etc., our understanding of weather was still magical for a long time.

We are only now getting to the time when we have working scientific explanations for things like rainbows and tornadoes; two-headed snakes (one was in the news recently) and other types of conjoining; eclipses and comets; diseases and the immune system; ... the list goes on. We have a chance to explain SO much more - but the "magical" explanations are so deeply ingrained that people shy away from the scientific ones.

Another thread was recently started about doing things that are good for us vs. things that aren't so good. The point was discussed that some kinds of thought are easier because cortical thinking is a blood-intensive and nutrient-intensive activity. But the issue is simpler. The "real" explanation is always more costly in terms of brain power than the magical "Goddidit" explanation. And even in this day and age, some people just can't be bothered to think very hard.