Quirky, and mostly scientific
I’m reading a book called Quirkology by Professor Richard Wiseman. He looks at a lot of studies of quirky little things: how good people are at assessing whether or not someone is lying, how easy it is to suggest memories of events that never happened and so on. Oh, and that I was born in the third ‘luckiest’ month of the year.
It’s fascinating reading, particularly for anyone who feels that they aren’t the sort of person who would be taken in by this sort of stuff., that my personality type makes me naturally a better liar (I’m not sure whether to be pleased or offended) although of course I wouldn’t lie anyway. Ahem.
I’ve also discovered that the best ‘tells’ to indicate whether or not someone is lying to you are ones that I already knew about — which might explain why I managed to spot every single truth/lie (and slightly disconcert the GLW) when watching Would I Lie To You? on the telly. It’s quite simple, really. You just…
…naah, if I tell you that, you’ll be able to work out whether or not I’m lying. Although if I’m naturally a good liar anyway, it’d still not be easy…
The book seems to look at all of the oddities (or at least a lot of them) that appear to underly the way we perceive things and in many cases provide a clear answer to why they come across thus.
But, like any source, you should read it with a critical eye, as you might find flaws in the arguments.
Let’s work backwards from the argument:
The message is clear: superstition killsRichard Wiseman
Why?
Because there are more traffic accidents (based on two surveys of traffic accidents) on Friday 13th than on any othr day. One saw a 52% jump in accidents, the other saw a smaller but still significant jump.
The conclusion drawn is therefore that superstitious people are more nervous and therefore more likely to have an accident on Friday 13th.
This may well be the case — indeed I suspect it probably is — but the argument made for it is flawed and not scientific, simply because it starts with the a priori assumption (as in ‘not demonstrated from evidence’) that Friday the 13th isn’t inherently ‘unluckier’ than any other day.
In fact, the evidence would seem to suggest that it actually is inherently unluckier: there are more traffic accidents. However, Richard has started from the assumption that the superstition simply must be nonsense — and so has to present a different reason for the increase in accidents.
Now, like I say, Richard Wiseman’s assumption that Friday 13th is no more ‘unlucky’ than any other day may well be correct. But without somehow demonstrating this, his argument is flawed: he is suggesting that it is the superstition that is causing the accidents, when it could theoretically be the unluckiness of Friday 13th to blame.
This is something that you need to watch for when reading books that present an argument for or against something. The writers will often make assumptions that lead to circular reasoning or a guaranteed outcome. In this case, because of the assumption that Friday 13th is not unlucky, there needs to be some other explanation for the increase in accidents, so superstition is presented as the problem.
Whereas if you start with the assumption Friday 13th may be unlucky, the evidence would seem to back you up. Of course, we haven’t established why it is unlucky (it may well simply be because people expect it to be) but there certainly seems to be evidence that it is…
And certainly Richard goes on to make some other arguments about superstition which again suggest superstition kills — only this time I think he’s on firmer ground (but again sometimes the unchallenged assumption is made that the superstition itself has no basis in reality: although to give him due credit, frequently the validity of the actual superstition is tested).
But, while I might disagree with some of the arguments, that doesn’t mean that I don’t find the book interesting. I enjoy reading books that I can read and mentally argue with. Whether it be a biography (where I find myself arguing whether things actually did happen that way, normally when someone has just painted themselves to have been entirely innocent of any wrongdoing), a scientific book (where I’m normally happy to trust the statistics, provided the research is referenced, but I’ll argue with the conclusions, or the ‘religious historical’ book, such as Graham Phillips Act of God (where I argue with the evidence and the conclusions).
I like books that make me think, I like books that challenge (and that I can challenge back): and this scores on all counts.
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