On Feb. 22, 2020, “Mad” Mike Hughes towed a homemade rocket to the Mojave Desert and launched himself into the sky. His goal? To view the flatness of the Earth from space. This was his third attempt, and tragically it was fatal. Hughes crashed shortly after takeoff and died.

Hughes’ nickname – Mad Mike – might strike you as apt. Is it not crazy to risk your life fighting for a theory that was disproven in ancient Greece?

But Hughes’ conviction, though striking, is not unique. Across all recorded cultures, people have held strong beliefs that seemed to lack evidence in their favor – one might refer to them as “extraordinary beliefs.”

For evolutionary anthropologists like me, the ubiquity of these kinds of beliefs is a puzzle. Human brains evolved to form accurate models of the world. Most of the time, we do a pretty good job. So why do people also often adopt and develop beliefs that lack strong supporting evidence?

In a new review in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, I propose a simple answer. People come to believe in flat Earth, spirits and microchipped vaccines for the same reasons they come to believe in anything else. Their experiences lead them to think those beliefs are true.

Most social scientists have taken a different view on this subject. Supernatural beliefs, conspiracy theories and

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