Discover more from Overcoming Bias
People famously tend to disagree more about politics, religion, and romance, Which makes sense – I’ve argued that disagreement is due to by a near-far bias, and that politics, religion, and love are far topics. It should be especially clear that religion is a far topic, dealing with fundamental values and big grand things like Gods over vast space and time scales.
Since creative metaphor is far, and analysis is near, it shouldn’t be surprising to hear that inducing an analytical frame of mind tends to induce “religious disbelief”, i.e., disbelief in gods, devils, and angels:
Individual differences in the tendency to analytically override initially flawed intuitions in reasoning were associated with increased religious disbelief. Four additional experiments provided evidence of causation, as subtle manipulations known to trigger analytic processing also encouraged religious disbelief. (more)
You could point to this as evidence against religious beliefs, but the same analysis primes probably also induce more skepticism on common political and romantic beliefs. They might even induce more skepticism on the mulitverse, string theory, or the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, all of which have big grand aspects.
Analysis Is Far Skeptical
Robin may have some bizarre beliefs (and LW sure does, which I don't follow), but the fact that we tend to be stupidly idealistic about far mode topics is pretty solid observation. As soon as people get to talk about some far-topics such as politics or religion, they start saying all these things they would not if they actually got a rationality boost (like betting). This is why I don't like to portray my amateur opinions as final truths as you do.
Are you saying witch doctors and shamans who - at least for the argument - lack analytical skills (as opposed to say physicists), are much better at far-mode topics like religion as opposed to people who excel analysis? Physicists are generally highly skeptical of religion which should be typical of example of Robin's point here.
I'm quite sure there're lots of people with strong analytical skills, high IQ and modest views on everything. At least I've observed understanding of mathematics highly correlates of how much useful things a person has to say.
I put in that you have a distinct lack of any supporting evidence for that claim. What makes you think that is the case?
All the "smart" people believing weird things? ;)