Open-minded vs. Gullible and Easily Manipulated

[dalebert]

Excellent video. To immediately accept a particular explanation and reject other possible explanations is actually rather close-minded and means you're particularly vulnerable to being manipulated. If only people would apply these sorts of open-minded thought processes to statism and a number of other irrational beliefs. I've always found the word "supernatural" to be rather silly. If ghosts exist, then they're natural. If we have some "psychic" ability, then that's natural.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI

[ByronB]

Great video... it has always been a hobby of mine to try to figure out why people believe the things that they do, I've come to the conclusion that the majority of people usually, instead of doing their own critical thinking, merely rely on the consensus of their peers.

I think I tend to be a notorious skeptic of everything (one of my coworkers calls me THEE skeptic and maintains that NOONE is as skeptical of things as I am... of course I told him that he has only met a tiny-tiny fraction of the worlds total population and that there are probably many people out there more skeptical then me; then I realized I had just gone further to prove his point to him), I blame this on my religious upbringing... I wasn't really "forced" to believe any particular thing it's just that I socialized mostly just with others of the same religion and when I turned 18 and moved out (I always liked to be very independent for some reason I'm not sure of) I learned that lots and lots of things I had always accepted as fact simply were not very true at all and that even the very intelligent people I know and respect have without a doubt accepted quite a few things as fact that there is no proof for, in other words the best that the "best and brightest" could do was to feed me a bunch of regurgitated shit... it doesn't upset me though, it just taught me a valuable life lesson on just how vulnerable the human mind is.