Lying, Insanity, etc.

I just happened to find a bunch of writings by scientist and Huffington Post blogger Dan Agin that relate to the doodoo head problems. Agin wonders at the persistence of falsehoods and appears to share my suspicions about lying, insanity, and psychological/physiological difference. I hope Agin's examples will clarify what I'm trying to talk about (even though I suspect a few of you will have problems with him). Here, he is writing about persistent falsehoods that continue to feed massive violence. My comments are in italics:

Why do tribal hoax myths continue to be revived after burial? One explanation is that such myths are merely justifications for the exploitation of ethnic groups at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy. (Lying) Another explanation is that researchers interested in promoting racist myths can often find private funds to support them. (Lying, self-deception) Or maybe it's a psychiatric problem characteristic of some researchers and their media puffers, a particular line of personality development with succinct causes in childhood or even earlier (Insanity, self-deception, psychological/physiological difference). Whatever the origins, the myths keep returning.

Now that's what I'm talking about!

I'll admit that beyond turning the questions over and over in my mind, I haven't looked into why people disagree, misunderstand each other, or hold false beliefs in any systematic way (at least not since college). In fact, I may put more effort into not thinking about these questions than I have applied to trying to answer them. There are great gobs of writings on these questions that I don't know. Yet, here's this Agin asking the same questions as if the answers still need to be found and can be found. Believe it or not, opinionated as I am, I try to avoid intractable disagreements and tend to roll my eyes at any efforts to school people who put forth wacky notions, as MJP will tell you.