I'm greatly enjoying the read, and it's a question that appeals to me greatly. Most of us frequently make a statement akin to "everybody else is stupid", although we usually except those around us at that time. After all, only other people make that class of mistake. We'd never do that. It's just pruning the gene pool!
The reality is a little more uncomfortable to accept, and a lot of it lies in the fact that we don't always know how to think, leading to us not knowing what to think.
Side note: I'm disappointed in the lack of copyediting in most of those essays.
Vilayanur Ramachandran should probably have proof-read his, after listing four examples he forgets one. He was probably trying to decide which was the better example, cold fusion or telepathy.
The reality is a little more uncomfortable to accept, and a lot of it lies in the fact that we don't always know how to think, leading to us not knowing what to think.
Side note: I'm disappointed in the lack of copyediting in most of those essays.