Occasionally I am challenged about the harm of people embracing superstitions, along the lines of: “Oh, come on, Shermer, let people have their delusions. What’s the harm?” Setting aside for the moment the playful reading of one’s astrology chart in the newspaper or one’s fortune in an after-dinner cookie, my general answer is that it is better to live in a real world than a fantasy world. The harm, in fact, can be deadly serious when our patternicities are of the Type I false-positive type. What’s the harm? Ask the victims of John Patrick Bedell, the gunman who attacked guards at the entrance
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