HN Books @HNBooksMonth

I was quite amused by the description of the cult she "managed" in "Why People Believe Weird Things":

http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscie...

Michael Shermer, who has a Ph.D. degree in history, does a good job of reviewing historical evidence for the Holocaust, and responding to claims of deniers, in his book Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time

http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscie...

which is well worth a read.

You must be a good bit younger than I am if you don't personally know Holocaust survivors, or at least much more socially isolated from Jewish people of European heritage than I am.

⬐ Tichy

Unfortunately, living in Germany I don't know any Jews personally :-( The nazis killed or expelled most of them.

The book sounds interesting, will take a look.

I have read biographies by Jews, for example Marcel Reich-Ranicki is very famous in Germany and I trust his words.

Smart people aren't immune to brainwashing.

If anything--they're more susceptible. http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscie... is a great book on the topic.

⬐ jamesbritt

Years back I used to go to Mensa meetings in NYC and found that the most distinguishing feature of the crowd was not what the thought or believed, but how they expressed themselves.

Overall, the Mensa folk (for the sake of argument, "smart people") believed much the same things as the average person on the street, but they had a much better vocabulary.

(Actually, one thing else was interesting: beliefs held seemed to be more extreme. E.g., higher numbers of hard-core socialists and libertarians than mainstream population.)

⬐ grandalf

interesting...

I have always wondered about the correlation between intellect and the decision to make huge life decisions based on one's own beliefs.

Simply having a consistent set of beliefs (or seeing the inconsistency in mainstream beliefs) will make someone seem more like a hard core libertarian or socialist.

But what does it take for such a person to hit the street and start trying to make change happen? Are such people ever revolutionaries? Or are they content to have a logically consistent worldview but sit on the sidelines?

⬐ swombat

Historically, most famous revolutionaries, from Che Guevara to Ghandi or Trotsky, were well educated, often coming from solid middle-class backgrounds (e.g. Che Guevara was the son of a doctor).

⬐ grandalf

So you think intellect is not correlated with revolutionary-ness?

⬐ tome

Che was a doctor himself, according to

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/g/u.htm

⬐ swombat

Sure, but being a doctor himself doesn't mean he was from a middle class background. The fact that his father was a doctor, though, does.