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
WTF? Is Sam deliberately trying to pull the wool over our eyes?
What he probably meant to say was that particles from 70% of chimneys have been found to show up inside nearby buildings - though that is surely not the same thing at all.
That pinged my BS detector as well. I see later on in this thread they show a reference. I still think it's BS. Consider the volume of air versus the volume of buildings. Consider that hot smoke goes up. Consider how well smoke must diffuse for you to smell it from a chimney down the block. I doubt that you could purposefully design buildings to be such wonder air filters.
But like others here, and unlike Sam's general presumption, I find the premise that smoke is bad for you quite believable. I have some reservations about whether the actual risk I'd recei... (read more)