The Demon-Haunted World

Takeaways

Anti-science thought is an historical force that predates the current climate – we can trace it back to witch hunts and likely far before that. That said, Carl Sagan wrote this book just before the internet, which really multiplies the effects of echo chambers. In the past, there was a friction to surrounding yourself with people who agreed with your marginal views; you’d need to fly to conferences or seek out groups or sign up for mailing lists. This friction served as some inoculation against the virality of fringe views – laziness and inertia as the firebreak to their adoption. But the internet engenders an effortless self-selection for group membership that allows people to fashion their identity on their views because they have ready-made groups to endorse it. Identity is not an individual action but rather is about group membership.

Brief Thoughts

Rating: 7.5/10

Carl Sagan weaves a deft argument against anti-science ideals, starting with alien abductions but tracing a line back to witch hunts of the Middle Ages. The argument is compelling to those who already view the importance of the scientific method as paramount, although a book on viral fringe ideas feels somewhat incomplete without reckoning with the Internet, a place where any fringe idea has an identity-affirming community ready-made, to be slipped on like a jacket. Inertia and laziness are no longer a firebreak against the virality of any idea. But this book can hardly be faulted for its publication date, 1995. If nothing else, it makes you wish Sagan were still around to build ironclad arguments about the world we currently live in.