If a lot of crazy people believe in UFOs, it’s probably not because every crazy person picked a random page in the dictionary and said “I’ll have a crazy belief about that”. Rather, it’s probably because the human mind has intrinsic flaws for which characteristics of the UFO meme happen to be a good match. If I conclude that UFOs exist, it is more likely that my reasoning process was corrupted by these intrinsic human flaws and therefore that my argument has an unnoticed flaw than if I conclude something else which isn’t a subject of cult behavior. Of course, if I assume that my mind is unflawed, this doesn’t apply, but I really shouldn’t go around assuming that my mind is unflawed.
And even if I assume that my mind doesn’t contain any UFO-leaning flaws, I can’t assume the same about other people. Any evidence they provide is more likely to be biased. Even if I just try to analyze the arguments made by other people for UFOs, that set of arguments will contain a larger proportion of bad arguments than a similar set of arguments for a non-cultish proposition. Assuming that I am equally good at detecting bad arguments for UFOs and for the non-cultish proposition, it is then more likely overall that a bad UFO argument will slip by my filters than a bad argument for the non-cultish proposition. Again, if I assume that I’m perfect at reasoning and never let bad arguments of any type pass my filters, this doesn’t apply, but I can’t assume that.
If a lot of crazy people believe in UFOs, it’s probably not because every crazy person picked a random page in the dictionary and said “I’ll have a crazy belief about that”. Rather, it’s probably because the human mind has intrinsic flaws for which characteristics of the UFO meme happen to be a good match. If I conclude that UFOs exist, it is more likely that my reasoning process was corrupted by these intrinsic human flaws and therefore that my argument has an unnoticed flaw than if I conclude something else which isn’t a subject of cult behavior. Of course, if I assume that my mind is unflawed, this doesn’t apply, but I really shouldn’t go around assuming that my mind is unflawed.
And even if I assume that my mind doesn’t contain any UFO-leaning flaws, I can’t assume the same about other people. Any evidence they provide is more likely to be biased. Even if I just try to analyze the arguments made by other people for UFOs, that set of arguments will contain a larger proportion of bad arguments than a similar set of arguments for a non-cultish proposition. Assuming that I am equally good at detecting bad arguments for UFOs and for the non-cultish proposition, it is then more likely overall that a bad UFO argument will slip by my filters than a bad argument for the non-cultish proposition. Again, if I assume that I’m perfect at reasoning and never let bad arguments of any type pass my filters, this doesn’t apply, but I can’t assume that.