> At that age, I didn’t yet understand why some people are incapable of changing their point of view. To be honest, I still don’t fully understand how ideology can cloud the mind so thoroughly that only a single way of thinking remains possible.
Are you describing Erich von Däniken's inability to change his mind when evidence clearly contradicted his theories?
Was it inability or simply calculation? He made a livelihood out of making up stories about ancient aliens. He was financially motivated to keep telling his stories.
I think a large part of it is wishful thinking. As a scifi fan, I think it'd be great to find out that we were aliens seeeded on Earth by some advanced civilisation. To weigh up the facts and realise that there's all the evolutionary evidence to show that we did just evolve from fish is a bit more boring.
Okay, maybe "boring" is the wrong word. But just think how cool it'd be if there were bits of alien technology lying around waiting to be found rather than just a non-rusting lamppost, lines in a desert and a few pyramids?
Interestingly enough, but as a teenager, I classified his stories as sci-fi. And I was absolutely into sci-fi(that was the genre I kept reading right after Fairy tales... yes, Ive read Bible in my early teens as well - nobody asked me to do so) - it made me learn English, as I have read all the ~100 sci-fi books in my language and there was nothing else to read for me.
> Are you describing Erich von Däniken's inability to change his mind when evidence clearly contradicted his theories?
He wasn't that unwavering. About the iron pillar of Delhi he said in his first book that it doesn't rust and thought this being a proof for alien interference. Later he turned around and said "By now this damn thing is rusting!".
But he never changed his opinion on his basic premise. I guess it's easy to not change your theory if it can't actually be disproved. There are so many unknowns and gaps in history that you have enough space to fit a few ancient aliens in there.
> Are you describing Erich von Däniken's inability to change his mind when evidence clearly contradicted his theories?
Roughly 80% of the planet has an inability to change their mind regarding their religious beliefs.
In reality, there is more evidence of ancient aliens that there is of almost every other religion, and yet the people who follow religion aren't being vilified the way the ancient alien believers are.
I mean, look at your own question - do you routinely ask people (IRL and online) why they can't change their religion based on evidence?
> Roughly 80% of the planet has an inability to change their mind regarding their religious beliefs.
What makes you think so? Most people don't really have strong religious beliefs that they are testing against evidence, I suspect. It's mostly just a way to connect with their communities for most people.
> Most people don't really have strong religious beliefs that they are testing against evidence, I suspect.
Okay, lets go with that: that is still a lower bar than EvD theories, because he at least has some evidence while everyone else has none.
Doesn't matter if the evidence is insufficient, or if the theory has been tested and found to be wanting, what matters is that it's still operating at a higher bar than many of the people on the planet who are not drawing such ire.
I think you are quite correct to put Däniken in the corner of belief and religion, and not expect followers of his ideas to be open to rational argument by default.
Exactly - that was my point! Why do those followers get so much vitriol but we give actual religions a free pass when they have even less evidence to support their beliefs?
Yes, but the main question is into which direction the arrow of causalality points for the main part:
Does an individual trust their image of the world, because it summarizes the evidence well? Or do they grade all evidence based on the image of the world they want to be true?
In reality it has to be of course always a mixture of the two, even for the most reflected person. We cannot go through our days questioning everything all the time if we want to remain functional, some things we will have to take for granted.
IMO the whole thing keeps boiling down to two questions:
1. Do you want to believe or do you want your world image to accurately represent the world as it is, even if there might be no such thing as objective truth in some cases?
2. Are you aware of the breadth of evidence you have (or the lack thereof)? E.g. when I develope software, I encountered grown, adult people who would talk about computers with superstition, as if it was some angry deity that had to be calmed. Now in their world there absolutely is evidence their rituals worked. But their evidence was based on an entirely wrong world model, where they treated a computer as a person, instead of treating it as a totally predictable automaton. Turns out praying doesn't help resolving a network issue, especially not if you click away the message explaining why it doesn't work without reading it.
The von Däniken question fundamentally boils down to: If you have 1 billion pieces of evidence pointing one way and one piece pointing in the way of a fantastic fantasy novel, do you go with the "boring" 1 billion pieces or do you hyper-fixate on the one piece, build a theory that explains it in the most exciting way and then ignore all points where that theory collides with the 1 billion pieces of evidence?
Right. For people who don't know the wealth of evidence we are talking about here, the Egyptians left very detailed records including wages of the people working on the pyramids[1], paintings showing the numbers of people needed to move heavy objects and how they lubricated the sand beneath the skids[2] etc
[1] They weren't slaves, they were salaried workers, and there are records of how much they got paid and how many of them there were.
[2] and the numbers check out when you do the standard "block on an inclined rough plane" thing you learn in 1st year mechanics. Check out https://sites.uwm.edu/nosonovs/2017/11/05/about-djehutihotep... where you can clearly see the pains they have gone to in order to ensure the numbers of workers are accurately portrayed
Thank you. This was well-written and made a point I think I needed to see set out in this form.
> We cannot go through our days questioning everything all the time if we want to remain functional, some things we will have to take for granted.
On reading this, it struck me how much of the world we engage with on these terms. And how much of the information soup we live in seems designed to persuade us of things being just so.
It being designed is what also should give away that it could also be designed differently.
People who create, be it artists, designers and engineers can sometimes develope that insight from their daily practise. We create, thus we have a deeper than avarage awareness that the world is created and which factors play into it being this way and not a slightly different (better?) variation on the same theme.
That’s not an argument against * any * current evidence, only sloppy thinking trying ignore evidence.
What replaces evidence is better evidence, not fairy tales that ignores reality.
And statistically, if you take all knowledge, and look at all the claims that have failed to displace it, you’ll find the vast majority of alternative claims are simply wrong.
Are you describing Erich von Däniken's inability to change his mind when evidence clearly contradicted his theories?