Ok. I read this in bits, starting on vacation, and then finishing at home between novels. Not because it's difficult, but simply because I was busy. Anyway, my point is, I don't have a holistic feeling about it... can't speak well to its overall effectiveness. I *think* I'd like to say that it feels more like articles from >Skeptic magazine
I mean, I already know the basic idea, from neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. To simplify, we hold beliefs because 1. finding patterns (including causation and sequence, etc.) is a survival trait and 2. peer pressure, fads, the need for comfort and/or for adventure, are more influential than our ability to think scientifically and logically, and 3. our neurons & hormones play tricks on us (consider SAD).

I wanted more details about either 1. how I can recognize weird thoughts that I'm thinking, and make sure I more carefully analyze them, and discard them if they're too weird, or, 2. how I can help friends who are victimized by irrational agendas, such as the woman I know who believes in the New Age power of crystal energy. I didn't get so much of that. Instead I got in-depth analyses of a few 'case history' examples: UFOlogy, Holocaust denial, and creationism. Great info. there. If your friend believes any of those weird things, go ahead and read this so you can discuss those with him and maybe even enlighten him.

Otherwise, I dunno. Read >Skeptic magazineThe Straight Dope
Skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims, i[and] science is not a subject but a method."

David Hume is quoted as saying: "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."

Baruch Spinoza is quoted: "I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them."

Re teaching the bible in schools as 'creation science:' "To try to turn a myth into a science, or a science into a myth, is an insult to myths, and insult to religion, and an insult to science. In attempting to this, creationists have missed the significance, meaning, and sublime nature of myths. They took a beautiful story of creation and re-creation and ruined it."

Re evolutionary adaptation: You know the mind puzzle of the infinite number of monkeys on typewriters randomly coming up with Shakespeare's plays? What if it's not random, but operates under the principle of Natural Selection? "Richard Hardison (1988) wrote a computer program in which letters were 'selected' for or against, and it took an average of only 335.2 trials to produce the sequence of letters TOBEORNOTTOBE. It takes the computer less than ninety seconds. The entire play can done in about 4.5 days."

(Ok, if you understand evolution & natural selection better than most folks, you say 'um, no, natural selection is random, it doesn't have a goal...' But consider, that is a selective process, and there is a goal, in the sense that a creature better suited to its current situation is a goal. So, I believe that Hardison wrote this algorithm as if 'Hamlet' is the sequence of letters, aka creature, best suited to its current environmental situation.)

So, I dunno about recommending this to you. Good book if you feel you either need to argue with believers or be more skeptical yourself, especially if you've not read much on the subject yet. I imagine that there are better books available, however, if you want to hunt for them. ( )

This review is based on the Blinkist version of the book...thus a summary and my review needs to be qualified as such. Presumably the original full text has much more details and research.....but it also takes much longer to read. If I like the Blinkist version, I might seek out and read the full book. Actually, I have read his much later book “The believing BVrain” and it covers much of the same ground as this book. Meanwhile, here are some snippets that caught my attention:
What separates real science from pseudoscience? Pseudosciences like astrology or creationism claim to be “scientific,” but they actually reject scientific laws and methods.
Science is based on laws that can be measured.
Consider the law of gravity. We can test it again and again, and confirm that it’s always true.
A scientific theory can also be tested, but it’s different from a law, because it’s possible to prove a theory wrong......Anyone can research a theory, and correct and improve it if necessary......Pseudoscientific theories, however, aren’t based on facts. They’re based on belief, which also means they can’t be proven wrong,
Divination, for instance, is based on the assumption that certain people have innate psychic powers.....Yet throughout human history, no one has ever been able to prove that psychic powers exist......Because divination isn’t based on evidence, it can’t be tested.
A scientist would say, “x is true because I can prove that x is true,” whereas a pseudoscientist would say, “x is true because you can’t prove that x is wrong.”
Scientific knowledge always grows and improves, whereas pseudosciences are static. Science is always correcting itself, as people filter out the good and bad ideas, and replace the bad ones.
If creationism were a true science, creationists would either have to successfully dismiss Darwin’s theory of evolution with empirical evidence (which they’ve failed to do), or accept it. And of course, they can’t accept it, because if they did they’d have to admit the Bible is wrong. So creationism can’t claim any scientific rigor for itself.
If you watch a mind reader or psychic at work you might be surprised at the accuracy of their information. Accurate readings, however, don’t mean that divination is real. Psychics use tricks to fool their audience into believing them, just like magicians. There are two methods that psychics or other mystical people use to fool people into believing them.
The first is to give a cold reading, For example, the psychic might start out with, “Do you have problems in your relationship?” If they keenly observe how their client reacts verbally and physically to leading questions, they can make further educated guesses about their personal life and situation. [I once put this into practice at a school fete...as a “fortune teller” at the American School of Madrid ...charging a pittance as a fund raiser. But I was literally stunned at how easily people were impressed......had a huge queue outside the “tent”... For example, I asked somebody their name and later in the session I purported to come up with their name by looking into the crystal ball.......they were really impressed with my psychic powers but had forgotten that they had told me their name themselves....What was especially frightening to me was that some people were asking me things like....”will I recover from this cancer” and “should I divorce my husband”....whoa!!! what are you expecting for 50 cents?.....clearly people wanted to believe]
the client will remember the hits much better than the misses. Fortune tellers also usually try to keep it positive, by saying things like “You’ll find your true love soon.”
Psychics will often arrange informal meetings with certain spectators before a performance. It may seem harmless, but it’s actually a good opportunity for the psychic to get personal information about people through small talk, then use it to wow the audience later.
In many cases, all it takes to be a “psychic” is access to someone’s Facebook or Instagram.
Some hallucinations caused by chemicals are remarkably similar to reports of near death experiences. “Out of body” sensations can be induced by dissociative drugs such as ketamine or LSD. People feel they’re leaving their body, and they might even watch themselves from across the room.
The fact that we have receptors in our brains for these artificially produced chemicals means that our bodies must produce them as well. So we can deduce that near-death out-of-body experiences are probably similar to those that people experience on drugs.
The common vision of the tunnel can also be explained. Many people who’ve experienced this tunnel (and some of those who haven’t) believe it’s a transition between life and death. However, the tunnel isn’t a gate to heaven. We can actually explain it biologically. It’s caused by abnormal cell activity in the visual cortex–the area of the brain where information from the retina is processed......Hallucinogenic drugs or a lack of oxygen can interfere with the nerve cells in the visual cortex by making them fire at different rates....and giving the effect of spirals with our vision The nearest thing we have to these moving spirals is a tunnel–hence all those tunnels to the afterlife.
Many alien encounters are actually caused by not getting enough sleep. “White-line fever” is a sleep disorder that’s often experienced by truck drivers.....People who’ve experienced white-line fever report seeing bushes that turn into animals, or mailboxes that look like people. Of course, this sort of sleep deprivation can also lead to hallucinations about aliens.
During sleep or hypnosis, memory and fantasy can sometimes mix so much that it’s impossible to sort them out afterward......Alvin Lawson, a psychologist, once put some students into a hypnotic state and told them they had been kidnapped by aliens. After the students woke up and were asked about their alien kidnapping, they could provide very detailed stories–all untrue.
From time to time, some kind of mass hysteria is triggered. People get falsely accused of a crime, the media goes wild and people become convinced that an innocent person is guilty.
Newspapers ran headlines like “Anesthetic Prowler on the Loose,” and the offender became known as the “Phantom Gasser of Mattoon.” Investigations soon revealed that the entire story had been made up. The police spoke of people’s “wild imaginations” and the newspapers characterized the story as “mass hysteria.”.....This is exactly how witch hunts in the Dark Ages started. Someone made a false accusation, others became scared, the truth became irrelevant, and hysteria spread.
The flipside of the witch hunt is the cult–when one unusually charismatic person is elevated above others, and their political or philosophical views accepted without criticism.
Followers of the atheist novelist Ayn Rand have a similarly hysterical devotion to their figurehead: they think they are rational “Objectivists,” but won’t tolerate any questioning of Rand.
In 1994, Frank J. Tipler released a book called The Physics of Immortality, which initially received a lot of attention. It might be tempting to believe we have proof that immortality is real, but Tipler’s pseudoscientific theory is untenable......Tipler’s theory also relies on many hypotheticals. The construction of his super computer lies far in the future, meaning many things need to occur in just the right way for it to happen. If one of these hypotheticals doesn’t occur just as Tipler predicts, the computer might not be constructed at all...
In reality, creationism is an attack on science. If creationists wanted to prove that God created everything, they’d have to first disprove much of our knowledge about biology, geology or paleontology. Needless to say, they haven’t had any success with this...The wealth of scientific evidence speaks against creationism....With so much evidence piled against them, creationists have the burden of proving their theory right. Naturally, they can’t, so they focus instead on proving existing theories wrong. They fail at this, too.
Holocaust deniers acknowledge there was anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, but insist that there was no planned extermination of Jews in Europe during World War II. They’re emphatic: they just want to know “the truth.”...Holocaust deniers know that there must be some inaccuracies in that mountain of evidence, so they concentrate on their opponent’s few weak points, and if they find an incorrect statement they’ll conclude that all their opponent’s facts must be wrong.....A commonly used example is the story that Nazis manufactured soap from Jewish corpses, which is a myth. Holocaust deniers argue that if the soap story is historically wrong, the gas chambers must be a myth as well.
The key message in this book: Pseudoscience isn’t comparable with real science. It isn’t based on facts, but rather on superstitious belief or manipulation. Yet many people still believe in pseudoscientific or supernatural theories, some of which can be harmful, such as creationism or Holocaust denial. We need to stand up against pseudoscience by using rational, scientific arguments against them.
My take on the book: Fairly powerful stuff. Now a little dated and superseded by his book: “The Believing Brain” but still good. Four stars from me. ( )

To be honest, I don't think this book lived up to its title. "Vague writings on weird things people believe", or "Why these people are wrong" was the more common theme. Some interesting content, but very little of what I expected - ie social theory re: how 'weird things' catch on. There are three chapters entirely devoted to debunking weird things, which, again, is interesting, but not what I was expecting. Some fascinating footnotes, though. ( )

Shermer helps me understand why so many people believe so many weird things. ( )

Brings up important ideas about epistemology, does a good job of describing methodologies that can tackle pseudoscience in a persuasive fashion. It does not give me a lot of optimism about the ordinary person's ability to follow such a program. We rely on other experts to evaluate pseudoscience. When our experts and leaders are motivate to reason to support pseudoscience, we are stuck again with lots of people being willing to believe weird things.

Technically, the book shows its history of being a bunch of long magazine articles, it has below average cohesion, some chapters were much stronger than others, some had odd overlap.

One flaw I found in this book and the entire genre is that they tackle ideas that are way out there- like a cat pushing small objects off the edge of a table. It is very satisfying, but what is amazing is that people believe bunk, not that it can be debunked to a more objective observer, sometimes easily. So people at the end of the book can feel good about themselves because they don't believe in aliens or fictional alternative histories, yet have unexamined beliefs about more mundane things like their seeming centrist political opinions and we cling to these ideas with the ferocity of a ufologists belief in UFOs. ( )