>> Antiscientific and pseudoscientific attitudes will get corrected; it’s just a question of how painful that process is going to be. Not necessarily true. Th

>> Antiscientific and pseudoscientific attitudes will get corrected; it’s just a question of how painful that process is going to be. Not necessarily true. Things like astrology, alternative healing, etc. have been there for thousands of years and they just don't seem to be going away. Roger Penrose makes some very interesting remarks on origins of these in his book "The Road to Reality". He says that ancient humans observed the influence the Sun had on their lives (day/nights, seasons, etc.) and also of the moon (tides, etc.). And there came a wrong inference that "all" heavenly objects have such an influence (astrology). He also speculates ancient humans figuring out geometrical shapes and finding naturally occurring crystals having those perfect shapes. And there came another wrong inference that such perfect natural objects must have powers to cure all that is not perfect (crystal healing). More than a few thousands of years later, going from development of first scientific thought process in human beings (e.g.: astronomy) all the way to today, plenty of people still believe in these things (e.g.: astrology). The third thing Penrose mentions amongst some of the first things humans learned is earth being flat, which again was a wrong inference (looks flat at human scales, must be flat at larger scales too). It took so much pain to fix this and that could only be done because a very simple evidence could ultimately be produced that everyone could see and understand by seeing a single photograph (of the round earth taken from the space). (Aside: And now humans wonder if the universe is flat. Penrose has beautifully connected some most ancient things in the human thought process to the most modern ones.) I doubt such simple evidence is ever going to come against astrology and alternative healing, for one that it would be a lack of evidence instead. What was a "photograph" of a "round" earth there, would here be a "plot" of an uncorrelated variable (say improvement in health) against dependent variable (use of crystals) showing a "round" blob (no correlation) instead of a round earth. Just that this time, majority of humans are not able to follow (what some of us call) such simple a plot!