Why were the ancients superstitious?

Hu Shi said at the graduation ceremony of philosophy department of Peking University193/kloc-0 that the purpose of studying philosophy is "not to be confused by others", which shows how difficult it is to be "not to be confused by others", and you have to study philosophy specially. But in fact, learning philosophy, apart from providing you with a set of clothes and terms that confuse others, is not very helpful for you to avoid being confused.

Our lives are always in lies and mazes, some of which are selfish at the expense of others; Others can't see if they have hurt others, but self-interest is certain. We call the former "cheating", but there is no good word to describe the latter. Many people are convinced that they have seen superpowers or some kind of religious miracle and admire them. A few years ago, domestic imperial doctors were very popular, claiming that they could work hard to cure diseases thousands of miles away. What's more, partition walls and perspective eyes attract many people to hold thorns. It was not until he died that everyone suddenly realized (in fact, even if he died, he would not blame the imperial doctor for being bad, but only the deceased himself for being insincere). After that, clear water turned to oil, hunger strike and so on.

In fact, any so-called ghost behavior can't stand strict scrutiny, such as divination (and all fortune-telling). Its principle is called "depth effect" in psychology, that is, the more vague the meaning of a passage (if you think it is profound), the more people who listen can know themselves, especially in this passage. For example, "Sometimes you are extroverted and sociable; But sometimes you are introverted, cautious and conservative. " If you hear others use this sentence to evaluate you, do you think it is accurate? In fact, everyone will think that this sentence is very appropriate to describe themselves, but in fact, nothing is said. A doctor in France did an interesting experiment. He found one of the most famous astrologers at that time and gave him a large sum of money. At the same time, he attached the date of birth of 65,438+00 people. All this information is true, and he asked for divination for these people. The astrologer quickly sent back the results, and one of the divination results attracted the doctor's interest. The results are as follows:

"This life is in Virgo where Jupiter is located, so it is naturally full of enthusiasm and love. At the same time, this gentleman must be smart, intelligent, honest, frank and extremely capable ... He not only loves wealth, but also devotes himself to public welfare undertakings, pays attention to feelings, knows how to repay kindness, and would rather sacrifice himself for others ... He loves his home and is an excellent man. He is often a place for friends to celebrate and activities. "

In fact, this is a super murderer, birthdates. He always kills 63 people, all for money, and puts the bodies into his own lime corpse pool after killing them. When accused of killing 27 people, he still disdained, saying that he actually killed 63 people. This person is actually considered as a "passionate and caring person" ... caring for feelings and knowing how to repay, willing to sacrifice himself for others ... "and so on. Seeing the success of the first battle, the doctor advertised in the newspaper and was willing to give people free fortune telling. Everyone sent their birthdays when they saw that someone was willing to do it for free. The doctor selected 150 people of different ages from different industries, made a copy of the fortune-telling results of the murderer before, and sent it out intact. Finally, he also asked the other party to evaluate the results. As a result, 94% people wrote back that it was correct, and they and their relatives and friends were satisfied with the divination results. When the doctor published the experimental results, the whole country was in an uproar. In fact, all fortune tellers, fortune tellers and astrologers will not make mistakes as long as they don't say anything particularly positive and say more compliments.

Others believe that telepathy exists in this world. It is reported that a boatman went fishing and was killed in a storm. And that night, his wife dreamed that her husband was swept away by the huge waves. Is this a manifestation of telepathy In fact, as long as a little investigation, you will find a fact: this wife learned the news of a strong wind blowing at sea from the radio, and reluctantly fell asleep in extreme worry, thinking day and night, and dreamed of her husband's death. But those reporters deliberately concealed some facts when reporting this matter, which made people mistakenly think that only telepathy can explain this dream.

In most cases, the so-called special function is magic, and magicians can do it, but they honestly say it is magic, while the master is not so honest. All special functions can be successfully performed, and there is no other way but to cheat. This is the famous special function-taking things from bottles. The performer puts some tablets (such as 20 tablets) in a bottle and seals it. He made a batch of such bottles, but he secretly made a bottle, which only contained 10- 15 tablets. When people are not ready to perform, mix the bottles in the bottle pile, then take some pills out of their pockets and put them in their palms, waiting for him to play tricks for a while and find the pills. Even if you are close, you can't tell whether these pills have fallen out of the bottle, and even if others check these bottles, they will find that they are indeed sealed. His psychic ability is the end of the play.

There is also a joke here, saying that there is a master who carries things from one bottle to another, but the pills in the bottle are pieces of cod liver oil. He still took some cod liver oil in his hand as usual, and then picked up the bottle. Maybe it was too hot, or maybe the master was so nervous and sweaty that a few pieces of cod liver oil melted in his hand. In the end, although the performance was "successful", the master smelled the fishy smell and could only pat people on the back and rub cod liver oil on them.

These are relatively low-level tricks, and some are slightly advanced tricks. For example, a master claimed that he could see things blindfolded and often performed in public, sitting blindfolded on a high platform. Because there were many people at the scene, he was blindfolded and couldn't perform with some small things. The audience in the back row didn't know what to say, so he chose to guess the color of the clothes, let the volunteers run to the stage, let everyone see the color of this person's clothes, and then let the master guess. If you want to play this game successfully, the master's assistant should play a great role. When the assistant saw someone on the stage, he said, "An audience volunteered to go on the stage. Let our great, kind and omnipotent master guess what color his clothes are! " Masters can guess right every time, and some people can even guess more than one color on their clothes. The secret lies in the assistant's words. People who don't know think it's a normal compliment, as if the host is very powerful. However, the adjective "great, kind, omniscient and omnipotent" is not just an expression. People who may meet in red will say this word, those who change into blue will say "kindness, greatness and omnipotence", and those who change into black will drag the word "greatness" into a long sound. As long as the master and his assistant practice hard, it is normal to invent more than 100 sets of different "slang", so that not only the color of clothes, but also anything ordinary can be guessed. In fact, as long as the owner can talk to the assistant, even if the owner is on Mars, he can still guess the color of the audience's clothes.

But then again, why would anyone want to believe in fortune telling, telepathy and anything else? Let's put ourselves in others' shoes. Suppose someone has cancer, which has reached an advanced stage, go and call a doctor. The doctor can only tell the truth, and he will probably live for half a year. If you ask the doctor, he will tell you how to get it and where to go for treatment. This little problem is really a cinch. As long as you are sincere, you will be fine, but if you don't give money, he will say that you are not sincere. It can be seen that people are willing to believe in witchcraft in order to make their hearts feel better, especially in this world where science is powerless. Only witchcraft can fill the hole in people's hearts and comfort him.

Similarly, if you have a relative who died, of course you are sad and hope to see this relative again. Science will tell you it's impossible, but psychics will tell you it's too easy. With a little magic, the souls of your loved ones can attach themselves to you and even talk to you. It can be seen that witchcraft is believed because people are willing to believe, because facts are often too cruel, and illusory things are often more in line with psychology.

It stands to reason that the so-called psychic belongs to the tertiary industry-service industry, because it provides some psychological services for people, but if this is the case, in fact, most psychics rely on the ignorance of others to make money. At this time, science has to stand up. The achievements of science in the past few hundred years are obvious to all. However, in many cases, it still can't get the upper hand in the struggle against this superstition, because the general public sincerely hopes that science will fail and superstition will win. Therefore, they consciously or unconsciously implemented a double standard, that is, as long as science fails once, it will be defeated, and as long as they are superstitious about winning once, they will be won.

Those forerunners don't know how many times their predictions have failed, but as long as they keep predicting, they will always be right once or twice. At this time, it is enough for him to publicize the correctness once or twice, and naturally believers will come to worship him. Once someone asks him why he made a prediction error, he can say that he was not in the state that day and was in a bad mood. What about science? Take the TV set as the crystallization of physics achievements in recent 100 years. Once it is produced and qualified, it must be guaranteed to work. Never say that one or two of the 100 TV sets can work normally. Even if one of them happens to fail to work normally, it will not be inferred that this TV set is just in a bad state and in a bad mood today.

Among all the prophets, there is one whom I admire very much. This man has predicted countless things in his life, but unfortunately few of them can be right. Finally, he became anxious and began to predict his own death, thinking that he could at least control it, so he committed suicide on the predicted day. He is finally a professional prophet.

From: Duan Hongbin's blog.