I’ve written in the past on how we as humans are hard-wired to "believe", that is accept things without question. There have been volumes written on the inherent tendency we have to "trick" ourselves. I’m sure there are evolutionary advantages to this in some ways but that’s not the focus of this post.
This post is about the tangible dangers of unquestioning belief + group dynamics. Two recent articles highlight what I’m talking about:

a)’Penis Thefts’ Cause Panic In The Congo [LINK]

"Congolese police have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused …

The key to success…in life…is… problems.
First there is just you.
Someone will hand you a problem, and ask for a solution. You’ll give them the answer when it’s fait accomplis. How long it took is how long it’d take.
Time passes, you grow smarter. Estimation develops. When someone hands you a problem, you know ahead of time how long it’ll take.
Soon you’re fixing problems predictably.
Then the problems get bigger. The problems themselves contain problems. When you encounter an unexpected problem, you can fix that too.
Before long …

I’m a bit late with this one….Shamelessly copied from Axel’s blog [LINK]
-==============================-
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 7, 2008
MEDIA ALERT
Showcasing How Users Can Control their Identity Online, Industry’s Largest Identity Interoperability Demonstration Scheduled for RSA 2008
Fifty-seven member open source identity group to test and demonstrate interoperability between user-centric identity protocols and providers
SAN FRANCISCO (RSA Conference 2008) – April 7, 2008 – Open Source Identity Systems (OSIS) will conduct the largest user-centric identity interoperability test and demonstration at the 2008 RSA Conference, April 7-11 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The 33 member …

There’s a great quote by Pierre Boutroux who said
"Logic is invincible because in order to combat logic it is necessary to use logic."

Makes sense right? Unfortunately there are a few corollaries to this.

Logic can battled by Stupidity
You cannot combat Stupidity with Logic.
Only Stupidity can battle Stupidity.

Which brings me to another quote, this time I don’t know the author:
"Never argue with a fool, they will lower you to their level and then beat you with experience."

"When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason."  -Thucydides

Being a skeptic is hard. We are a breed of believers. Our brains are hard-wired to prohibit skepticism.
 
The world is over-populated with information. Our brains have to make sense of it ALL and over time have adapted to take "shortcuts" that prevent information overload. This makes it hard to exhibit good judgment.
 
Everything’s an approximation. We don’t truly …

First the roll of the eyes: According the this CNET blogger, the RSA registration is vulnerable to SQL Injection! [LINK]
The Smile: This next is a bit self-serving but this latest review of my book [LINK] made me smile:
"The book covers more than the Amazon APIs so I recommend it if you are interested in mashups in general. I’m very keen on JSON right now and was pleased to find that covered as well. I think the author is a very good programmer who has many clever ideas like using …

Exciting times indeed in the world of Digital Identity. Huh? What the heck?
What’s going on? The internet has a crappy way of managing your personal information. We’re trying to fix that.
Why should I care? Right now you’re at quite a high risk of having your identity stolen, losing control of your personal information, of being phished or losing track of what personal information is stored where. See my previous post on Identity Fragmentation [LINK].
So what are you talking about now? RSA is happening NEXT WEEK! (7-11th April) …