I've thought about this a lot. I have no definitive conclusions but I do have some observations and ideas.
The human brain has not really evolved for logic or scientific thought. It has evolved largely to make real-time quick and dirty decisions regarding survival. Emotional impetus, generalizations, quick and imprecise pattern recognition, and correlation recognition are its primary tools. These can lead to imprecise and inaccurate but often useful survival strategies.
In other words, our brains evolved to survive. Whether or not our conclusions are truthful and accurate was not nearly as important as how well they affect the odds of our survival. The problem is that as our capacity to acquire and measure information has increased, our ability to accurately process this data properly on a daily basis has not.
Case point:
Q: Which is more dangerous for a child for you to have at home; a gun or a swimming pool?
A: A typical survey reveals that the average American believes that guns are a much larger threat to children than swimming pools. However, the statistics reveal that the average American child is
100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than by gunshot. Not only that but 1 child dies annually per every 11,000 swimming pools while only 1 child dies annually for every
million guns. Clearly swimming pools are FAR more dangerous to own than guns. So why do most people believe exactly the opposite of the truth?
Emotion: Guns are scarier than swimming pools. Guns are designed to kill, swimming pools are not. Guns also kill because of a deliberate act or a mistake in judgment. Pools deaths are almost entirely accidental.
Reliance on testimonial evidence / Inaccurate reporting of data: Due to its emotional content, gun deaths are broadcast much more thoroughly than pool deaths. Everyone with a television, newspaper, or radio has heard testimonial evidence about many gun deaths. How many times have you heard about a child dieing in a swimming pool, particularly on the national news? This unbalanced data gives a gross misrepresentation of the facts. People then found their beliefs on such extremely biased data.
Correlation: Correlation in the two cases is perceived differently. Because guns require a human act to be dangerous the correlation between the gun and the death is perceived as being linked much more directly. Pools are perceived more as existing hazards, more often it is the failure to act (such as watching a child or closing a gate) that is seen as being in immediate correlation. That the swimming pool itself is the causative agent tends to be neglected. How many parents have you heard of starting a nationwide campaign to eliminate swimming pools? How many for guns?
I really can't stress correlation enough. It is the fulcrum on which the whole process swings. When it is off-center the decision will swing in a particular direction no matter how much factual weight is on the other side. (e.g. One believed anecdote of a miraculous healing will offset a mountain of contrary medical evidence.) It is the foundation for all superstitious and magical thinking.
There are two things to note:
One is that being afraid of guns even when the belief that they are more dangerous than pools is inaccurate does improve the odds of survival even if it doesn't help as much as knowing that pools are more dangerous. The strategy works on an individual family level. The problem is that when we act on a broad scale it doesn't work. If our goal is to prevent children from dying, then we should be more concerned at this point with swimming pools than guns.
The second is that in a small tribal society, testimonial evidence is far more accurate. If you know every individual in your tribe of 40 or so people, you will hear every story. Even if the story about the one child dieing by gun death is repeated more often you will still have heard about the 10 others who drowned. This was our environment for the bulk of our evolution. And again, it worked in that environment as a survival strategy.
That's enough to read. I'll leave it here for now and we'll see how the discussion proceeds.
~Raithere