are we prewired to believe? from religion to politics, our brains take sides first and find the facts later. this according to the world's most famous skeptic -- michael shermer. and later, a revolution in computer memory may change the environment. samsung semiconductor's jim elliott. our reporters from mashable, ben parr and the bbc's maggie shields, this week on "press: here." good morning, i'm scott mcgrew.

never before in human history have we had so much access to information. which means never before in human history have we had such a need for skeptics. >> the world is going to be destroyed altogether. >> it's easy to be skeptical about some things. most of us did not expect the world to end earlier this month. and you're probably pretty skeptical about new promises the world will end in october. but plenty of parents still believe vaccines can cause autism. despite a complete refutation of a study conducted by a shicyste doctor. >> and we investigate claims that the paranormal and cults of claims of all kinds between. >> michael shermer has made a career as a skeptic. taking on intelligent design, ufos, even wall street.

his latest book, the believing brain, examines not just what we believe, but why. looking at the human brain's preference to find patterns and then trust those patterns. and the brain's ability to filter out evidence that contradicts our beliefs. dr. michael shermer is founder of the skeptics society, a regular contributor to "scientific america" and a author of books like "why people believe in weird things" "search for god." maggie shields of the bbc and ben parr with mashable. let's assume you are michael shermer. i did not ask for proof. what is a skeptic it's easy to say a curmudgeon on a pure scientist. but it's more nuanced than that. >> we're just inquirers, curious about the world, how it works

and so on. skepticism is just science. basically our premise is that your claim is not true until you prove otherwise. it's just exactly the way science works. just like the fda doesn't hand out opportunities for people to sell drugs unless they have proven in past clinical trials. >> let me ask what a proof? >> so proof would be an actual statistical test, a control group, data, ways of determining whether the ways the effects you claim are real due to chance or some real effect. if it's just, there might be ufos, there might be big foot. we need some physical evidence, some kind of data evidence proof that something is real before we agree that it is. because a lot of things happen by chance. >> what i'm interested in is how do you become a skeptic. you didn't sit down as a young boy and say, i want to be the number one debunker? >> i'm a science guy, so i've always been interested in science. and i was interested in the margins of science. back in the '70s, i remember

everyo uryi geller was all the rage. >> i was in britain and everybody believed it. >> and i saw the amazing randy on the "tonight show," with johnny carson, doing all the same things that uri geller was doing and i thought, it wasn't enough to have a scientific explanation, you have to have professional skeptics to know how deception works and how people trick other people. >> why do people latch on to these things, like uri gel ar bending spoons or most recently, the end of the world claims? >> so it begins the basic pattern connections, we're pattern-seeking primates. that's called learning so we do that really well. the problem is that we don't have a good baloney detection module in our brain that says that's a true pattern, that's a false pattern. science does that pretty well. but our brains don't naturally do that. we latch on to anything that sounds reasonable. especially if it's claim, a claim is made by somebody that

we respect, a authority figure. we're very tribal. as soon as you commit to a plibl position or a religious position, your tribal leader then says something like harold campy says the world is going to end on may 21. okay. >> i don't get it. why would you be suckered into believing that. i understand what you say about patterns. i have a 5-year-old who is always looking for patterns. but why do we want to be suckered into these things? do we want someone to make decisions for us? that's the harold campy thing says. >> in part, that's right. it's sort of a cognitive short cut to have somebody else do the thinking for you. even science, i don't really understand quantum physics, i call my buddies at cal tell and say i don't understand it. and they explain it. we do look to our authorities. >> there's an innate reason that you wrote that the wrestling thing in the grass, a tiger,

will survive. as opposed to wind or anything else. so the person that takes the most extreme position is the survivor. >> we tend to assume that all russells in the grass are dangerous. false positives happen much more often than false negatives. so we're more likely to believe that the superstitious pattern we find is true. even though it's usually not dangerous to take you out of the gene pool, right? that's the basis of all superstitious and magical thinking. your set-up piece had a thing about autism and vaccinations, a single causal connection claimed by somebody in medical authorities and parents latch on to this. there's an emotional need to have an explanation. the brain abhors a vacuum. parents want answers. doctors go, we have this theory, that theory, they say, i want the answer, and it's vaccinations, i'll take it. that's the emotional drive, to have an answer. >> we're going to get more

email, he put the autism line in there deliberately. we'll go more email about that than anything else. that sticks around, the "lancet" said, we're sorry, we were wrong. there have been proof after proof after proof, it's not correct it sticks around. is it because, as a parent i can understand that feeling of why did this happen. give me an explanation. >> why does that stick? >> it sticks because the again, the false positive. the initial claim that there's a connection there. even though there isn't. is much, it just once it gets embedded in your brain, you look for evidence to support it. it's called a confirmation bias, once you have a conspiracy theory that n was done by the bush administration or whatever, then you just look for and find evidence to fit it and you ignore all the din confirming evidence. so the "lancet" run as disclaimer ten times, we take it back, but you remember the first hit. because that fills some kind of emotional need. >> because the alternative is -- you know what, it happens.

it's random and we don't know and that's not acceptable. >> you can sit subjects down in front of a screen and throw dot patterns and random. they always find pat ernsz, that's just what our brains do. >> what are the kinds of crazy things that people like to believe in most? is it kind of religious things? is it kind of medical things? or what? i mean your latest magazine is actually looking at the relationship between the koran and what's going on in the middle east. and some of the myths in there. >> a lot of myths about islam, yeah. >> do people believe religion more? do they think it's buried in years and years of history. >> we're tribal and religious and political tribes are very deeply embedded in us. we really commit to them. if you're conservative, you listen to conservative talk radio. you read "the wall street journal." you don't listen to counterarguments, you filter that through. you don't pay attention to those guys over there, right? that's just naturally what we do because we're so tribal.

this is what gets us into trouble. the way science works is says, look, if you don't look for disconfirming evidence for your favorite theory, somebody else will and they'll publish it with great glee in a public forum somewhere. science is very competitive. and the reason for that is we know how biased we are. so that's why the fda for example requires you to have blinded conditions. the subjects can't know which condition they're in. whether they're getting the drug or not. even the experimenters can't know. because the experimenter bias. so you have, that's why you have double-blind conditions. because we know how biassed the human brain is we will always find evidence to support our favorite theories. >> let me ask you a question about religion. that's been part of your book, a major part of your book. i am a church-going guy. but i am willing to entertain the possibility that i'm wrong. either about my individual faith or entirely. does that just make me a lousy church-goer? or am i somehow more

open-minded? >> did makes you a good skeptic. you can be an honorary member of the skeptics society. >> maybe i'm just wrong. maybe -- division. >> because you were brought up that way and it kind of gets passed down, doesn't it in. >> the number one predictor of anybody's religious beliefs about their parents and upbringing, there are people drift away from that. they go to college or whatever. if they have conflict with their parents, they'll do something different. that's the number one predictor, political attitudes, your peer group and parents, teachers and mentors that shape us in a certain direction. and there's even genetic research that shows how much of our political and religious faith preferences are at least 50% inherented. we just genetically programmed to prefer -- >> even if your parents didn't tell you? >> you just prefer a certain kind of world view that's well represented by this political party, conservative versus liberal. or this faith versus that faith. it has to do with personality

and temperment, that's programmed genetically. >> we'll be back in just a minute. ♪ that's why right here, in australia, chevron is building one of the biggest natural gas projects in the world. enough power for a city the size of singapore for 50 years. what's it going to do to the planet? natural gas is the cleanest conventional fuel there is. we've got to be smart about this. it's a smart way to go. ♪

i honestly think we have more fun during the commercials than any other time. ben, you had an excellent question. >> i'm curious about if like a lot of people, some people spend all of their life savings, that's not the kind of thing you want people to do. how do we create a more skeptical society? a society that doesn't take everything at face value? >> you mean like my skeptics society? you can join, for starters. in general, we think education is a good thing, right? and that teaching people to think critically, rationally, scientifically, that's my goal in life. and that's what my books and magazine are about. but politically, as long as these people don't get power, this is why we worry about islam, right? who cares if somebody believes

this and you have this faith and i have that faith and we have a different faith and the world is a big enough place for all of us. except if you believe that the world will not be okay until every knee is bowed to my particular religion and i have political power or weapons of mass destruction that becomes a problem. so politically, we, that's why the spread of liberal democracy is a good thing. it divides up power. >> hold on, how do we know liberal democracy is a good thing? >> we know because there's data to show that, that the more freedom people have, democracy is never fight each other, for example. and that people that have more freedom have more wealth and prosperity. >> we can prove liberal democracies are generally good for economies and attitudes and everything else. >> that's right. >> i believe that, myself. but from a skeptical point of view. >> and also the best thing for religion, even though i'm not religious, but the best thing for religion is separation of church and state. as soon as government gets its hand in religion, it's never good for religion. even though the dominant

political power would like to have power, of course, because everybody wants power. but in general it's bad for all religions. so the separation of church and state is the best thing that ever happened. this is why americans are so much more religious than europeans. >> we're very skeptical of religion. and if you look at the numbers in the uk for example of the people who go to church, it's a constantly declining problem. and that's because i think we kind of bred in that way to always question the church trying to tell us what to do. >> right. and also, i think, i actually think religious instruction in school, as long as the students are exposed to all the different religions is actually a good thing. it's good for skepticism and critical thinking. this guy is claiming he has the truth, but these other guys they said that last week, too. which is the right one? >> science has a means of answering that question, which is the right theory. in principle we can run an experiment and say this one looks better than this one because it has more data. it's like global warming stuff. i was a skeptic for years, but

the data kept piling up on the one side. i think we're getting pretty close to an answer, i'm going to shift over here. you can't do that in religion. there's more test we're going to run, there's no more data we're going to collect. >> can i ask you about the rule of the internet in all of this. how important or how dangerous is the internet in spreading all of these bad ideas or helping people find more proof for their point of view? >> it definitely spreads, exactly like the printing press, you have to accept the good with the bad. the same printing press that prints kgs mein kampf" also printed shakespeare. >> loose change and zeitgeist, they are viewed by millions, tens of millions of people watch these things. hollywood producers would kill for these kinds of numbers. they're free, they don't make any money. but that's what spreads the

means of the conspiracies. >> you can go on the internet and find somebody or an official-looking website that's going to promote your point of view. >> people get in their head this is true and they filter it to the point where that's what i'm going to look for. >> there's no fact-checkers on the internet. unfortunately. you guys are journalist. you have fact checkers, where did you get that fact? let's look that up. not the case on the internet. >> are there people who do this -- i had a nasa scientist come up to me, scott, how do i prove to these people that global warming is real. and my reaction to her, and it was just off the cuff was, you can't. go ahead and try to convince the rest of the world. the people that believe you, the people who are going either way. the people who are going to fight you will never believe you. is that fairly accurate statement? >> you've said it just right. >> there's no reason to try to convince people otherwise? >> the thesis of the believing brain is we start off with our believes and we find reasons to support them afterwards. what we're all after is the undecided voters. the hard-core believers, they're not going to be shifted over with more evidence.

you have solve some other emotional appeal or some other way to shift them. there are methods of this, marketing people know about this they know how to shift people's preferences, but it's hard to do. it's the people who are not committed to it. at skeptics, we have a lot of outreach to students, college students particularly. because they're in that vulnerable age where you're shifting between your family background and then creating your own social network. and -- that's where the change happens. so education is a good thing. >> i want to ask this one particular event that i have had more people ask me than any other, the december 2012, the mayan calendar. >> the next end of the world. >> the second-to-next end of the world. >> what is up with that? why does everyone believe it's the end of the world and what's the truth? >> we don't know. the truth is the world will come to an end in about four and a half billion years when the sun expands into a red giant and engulfs all the planets,

including the earth. so, repent because the end is near, you have four and a half billion years to figure this out. december 21, 2012es is the next one. the my line is that the mayans ran out of stone in their calendar. that's it, ran out, his hand got a cramp. >> do you realize that michael shermer just predicted the end of the world on this tv show. >> that's why we're printing it. >> december 21, 4.6 billion years. >> michael shermer's book is "the believing brain." in book stores now. thank you ever so much for being here. up next on "press: here," thanks for the memory, the huge change in the way we store information. when "press: here" continues.

welcome back to "press: here," the world's first hard drive was designed not far from

here. so, too, probably will be the last. >> research found a way to store quantity of data on an open surface. this was a new concept in machine accounting. >> ibm created the first commercial hard drive in its facility in the mid 1950s. 60 years later, they are everywhere. in computers of course, but also in tivos and airplane black boxes. the hard drive's days may be numbered. the most modern of gadgets don't have mechanical hard drives at all. instead, they use solid-state dwrifs. ssds, chip memory with no moving parts. it's a sea change in the industry. the world's biggest memory maker, samsung, is pursuing that solid-state market. putting solid-state drives in computers. they're quieter and more dependable. and in giant server farms.

where their low power draw can save millions of dollars. jim elliott is vice president of samsung semiconductor. the largest electronics company in the world. so, if this is so revolutionary, if i am a hard drive company or a hard drive investor, should i be worried that this is the end of the line? >> no, i think there's plenty of room for both solid-state or flash-based storage could co-existent with hard drive storage. things, fast, rapid access. hard drives will continue to play a role for bulk storage that maybe not be as accessed quite as quickly. >> you are smaller than hard drives now. i mean, the big hard drives always going to be bigger and less expensive than the biggest of flash drives. will that ever change? >> you know, i think what's interesting about that is flash, the actual size from a form factor position -- >> i plenty from a storage point

of view. if i had to store a huge amount of data, i would go with a hard drive. but will that change? >> things are going to the cloud, you see a lot more devices going to the cloud storage for example. this year, laptops are going to be outshipped by tablets and smartphones fir the first time, ever. that's a key paradigm shift in the industry. what you'll see is the thin-and-light form factor will continue to proliferate. so the amount of storage you need at the client level may be less and less, you can store a lot more in the cloud remotely. >> and that represents a great opportunity for a company like yourselves, as we do go to the smaller form factors, as mobile phones and smart phones proliferate. >> it's all about the pover portability, smort foens and tablets have redefined the category of portability. it plays into the value proposition. >> and once you've used a tablet and it goes on instantly and you fire up your lap ton and you say, oh, come on.

>> the days of turning the laptop on and going to get a cup of coffee are over, using an ssd you're going to get the instant-on capability. you're going to get a two to three x increase in your performance. your boot time, if you're a gamer, copying lots of files, it will be much, much quicker. >> if you're a laptop user is there a reason to not use flash. is there some inherent advantage to hard drives. >> it's going to boil down to innovation that's going to take place in the notebook space in the thin and light category. >> room for a hard drive. you don't have to make room for flash. >> you can take up all the extra space you're going to save, going from a hard drive to a flash-based ssd. you can have a bigger battery. smaller form factor. can you extend your battery life. which would be the difference between having the laptop last on flight from sfo to boston. but really it boils down to the user experience, once you've

experienced a laptop using an ssd. you don't want to go back. it's like flying first class and going back to coach. >> that's one of the reasons why samsung is one of the first countries to come out with a chrome book in the next couple of months, it's got ssd. almost instant on. not taking terribly long to fire up and get going. and using the cloud. >> that's right. so again, i think the cloud is a business model is a key paradigm shift we're seeing in this industry. as is this, this instant-on type flash storage that is enabling smartphones, tablets and all these other disruptive consumer electronics devices. the notebook manufacturers are going to step up their game and follow suit to have the tablet-like experience. >> you think it could be a game-changer in the laptop market because of this? >> it's the cloud in general will continue to play a role in sort of changing or being a game-changer in terms of how people utilize pc technology, laptop technology. tablet technology and how and

where they store and access that data. >> there's a point that the server market, too, could come into a need for flash. there is so much less power used. and it's a huge issue for the huge server farms is the tremendous amount of power used. >> the value proposition for ssd in the server/data center space is more rebust. the performance in the data center server is more than 100 times faster than a hard drive. at the same time it's using less than half the power. so you put those two together and now you've got more than a 200 x performance per watt use. >> if i was a server, the cost inflection has already happened. if i'm a consumer, i might not pay for flash, if it's significantly more money. if i'm a huge server farm, the cost savings may cover my switch to flash? >> we like to say it's an instantaneous break-even. foo you're a data center administer, the key point so you

do i expand my data center without expanding my data center. how do i service more users without having to grow my power budget or physical footprint. that's why ssds are becoming so disruptive in the data center infrastructure. data center energy consumption in the u.s. is expected to be between 2% and 3% of total u.s. energy consumption this year. this is becoming a very big concern on multiple levels and i think ssd and flash technology is going to play a very green role in sort of greening out these data centers. >> so for the viewers that don't know the nuances, what makes the ssd so much more efficient in terms of power usage? what makes it more efficient than the standard hard drive. >> there's no moving parts in an ssd or a flash as scott mentioned. acd, in the data center could be spinning at 15 krpm. so hot that you can't even touch the surface. >> times hundreds and hundreds of servers.

>> lining all of these up. versus no moving parts, virtually no heat, so no cooling. it's a much, much morrow bust value proposition for that reason. >> jim elliott is the vice president of samsung semiconductor. thanks for briefing us this morning. "press: here" will be right morning. "press: here" will be right back. that's why right here, in australia, chevron is building one of the biggest natural gas projects in the world. enough power for a city the size of singapore for 50 years. what's it going to do to the planet? natural gas is the cleanest conventional fuel there is. we've got to be smart about this. it's a smart way to go. ♪

that's our show for this week. my thanks to dr. michael shermer. his new book "the believing brain" is on store shelves now. and my thanks to jim elliott as well. we'll be preempted next week to make way for the french open. but we have dozens of past episodes in full on our website, "press: here" tv.com for you to watch while you wait. just in case you don't like tennis. i'm scott mcgrew, thanks for making us part of your sunday morning.