"Very smart adults often seem unusually innocent, and I don't think this is a coincidence. I think they've deliberately avoided learning about certain things. C

"Very smart adults often seem unusually innocent, and I don't think this is a coincidence. I think they've deliberately avoided learning about certain things. Certainly I do. I used to think I wanted to know everything. Now I know I don't." This is the most important paragraph of this essay. It's really important for anyone who is curious in general to understand this and I have never heard it expressed before. "The bizarre half is what makes the religion stick, and the useful half is the payload." This is actually a very effective marketing trick if you replace "bizarre" with unusual. Look at reddit - the alien makes it sticky, Google - unusual simplicity makes it sticky, Apple - unusually good looking devices. I do think that with religion as with products, short term stickiness comes from the surface unusualness and long term stickiness comes from the payload - the actual utility (honesty and industriousness for religion, unsually intuitive interfaces for apple products, really good search algorithms for Google, and until recently at least, entertaining stories on reddit) For people who don't find the long term utility in religion, the stickiness that comes from common unusualness is often not enough to maintain their 'belief'. This is truer for products than for religions though - which I'm sure is an evolutionary effect. It's a much harder decision to quit your group or clan than it is to abandon things. Clearly, Apple has managed to cross this product-religion boundary, making it stickier.