Sam Harris, in his recent article called The Fireplace Delusion, tries to make you feel what it's like to react to a cached belief being irreparably destroyed. Just incase you forgot what your apostasy (if you had one, of course) was like in its early stages.
What are some of the Fireplace Delusions you've come across in your days?
EDIT: WOODSMOKE HEALTH EFFECTS
Wait, what? This doesn't follow unless you place about the same utility on cozying up to your fireplace as you do on cozying up to a diesel engine. (Assuming that the two are equally damaging to your health.) Even the weaker claim that if you care about your family's health, you should stop burning wood in your fireplace doesn't follow from the facts as he's laid them out. In order to get that claim, you have to think the health effects of your fireplace have greater negative utility than the positive utility derived from your fireplace. Why think that everyone shares utilities that make Harris' argument work or that they ought to do so?
I also don't buy Harris' legal solution. (I am not a libertarian, but libertarians especially shouldn't buy his legal solution.) Why not find an alternative way to internalize the negative externalities involved in burning stuff in your fireplace? Here are some alternatives: Require scrubbers on chimneys or some sort of capture system. Require an expensive permit in order to burn anything in a fireplace. Or require an annual permit just to own a fireplace, whether you burn anything or not. Put heavy sales taxes on wood, especially in urban areas, where it is not so easy to collect and burn your own. Add a fireplace tax to regular property taxes. And so forth.
Sam's isn't the most reliable analyst on libertarian theory. After reporting that he considers himself in large part a libertarian, in the very next paragraph he shares his view of government:
"Why do we have laws in the first place? To prevent adults from behaving like dangerous children. All laws are coercive and take the following form: do this, and don’t do that, or else. Or else what? Or else men with guns will arrive at your door and take you away to prison. Yes, it would be wonderful if we did not need to be corralled and threatened in this way.... (read more)