WEBVTT - Ep133 "Why do people hold misbeliefs?" with Dan Ariely 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:08.760 Why do people sometimes buy into ideas that seem obviously 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:12.600 falls from the outside, as we see with conspiracy theories. 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:17.320 Is this kind of misbelief a failure of intelligence or 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:22.400 something deeper and more universal to human brains? Do conspiracy 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:26.800 theories offer a sense of clarity and belonging when reality 0:00:26.840 --> 0:00:30.720 feels chaotic and threatening? And what would it take for you, 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:35.440 under the right emotional conditions, to begin believing something that 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:39.440 your past self would find unbelievable. Today we'll speak with 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:43.560 behavioral economist Dan Arieli, who has thought a lot about misbelief. 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.960 For him, it's a scientific question, but also an interest 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:53.320 that started very personally. Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me, 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:56.840 David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and author at Stanford and 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:00.000 in these episodes we sail deeply into our three pounds 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:04.360 universe to understand how we see the world even when 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:22.800 it doesn't match the facts. Today we're diving into one 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:26.399 of the most perplexing phenomena about the mind. When we 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:29.760 think about brains or computers, we think about how to 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:33.320 gather facts about the world and put them together into 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:36.000 a model. So one of the most interesting problems in 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:40.119 brain science is that of misbelief. Now, I'm not talking 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:43.640 about misinformation here. If someone hands you the wrong fact 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:46.080 and then you repeat it, that's one thing. I'm talking about, 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:50.800 the deeper psychological journey by which a person becomes convinced 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:56.000 of something that outsiders find totally detached from reality. So 0:01:56.040 --> 0:02:00.960 we've got conspiracy theories, medical skepticism, political fan These are 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:05.040 all meaningful forces in our culture. Now, one thing to 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:07.960 note right away, these aren't new. You can see these 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:11.400 throughout history, dating back at least two and a half millennia, 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:17.000 when people had conspiracy theories about, for example, Socrates's execution 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.440 and who is really behind it? Or the same thing 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:22.400 happened later with the death of Alexander the Great and 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:25.960 then with the assassination of Julius Caesar. Now, if this 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:29.800 reaction to a national tragedy sounds familiar, it's because it 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:33.480 is throughout history. Every time there's a significant event, people 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:37.000 jump in with their hypotheses, and these live in a 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:40.519 spectrum from reasonable to outlandish. I'm not sure if there's 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:43.960 really an upper limit to how wild the hypotheses are 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:46.320 likely to get. Now, this all would be nothing but 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:50.840 an academic interest, except that often crazy ideas are capable 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:57.119 of tilting elections or fracturing political alliances, or influencing things from. 0:02:56.960 --> 0:02:58.639 Public health to wars. 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.400 Okay, so whenever we look at historical features that are 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:06.280 present in every generation like this, it tells us we're 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:10.519 not looking at some local cultural phenomenon or some consequence 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:14.280 of social media. Instead, we're looking at some issue about 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:18.440 how brains naturally work and what their failure modes are. 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:20.639 The general story. 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:23.600 Is that the brain's job is to make good predictions 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:29.080 about the world, to reduce uncertainty, to create coherence from chaos, 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:33.240 and to generate frameworks that make us feel safe and oriented. 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:38.080 But under stress, those systems can shift, emotions can become 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:43.200 louder than evidence, threat detection ramps up, Identity becomes a filter, 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:49.160 and into this vacuum come narratives that promise clarity. You 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:53.480 find communities that promise belonging or stories that give you 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:57.320 a clean explanation for why everything feels wrong. These narratives 0:03:57.360 --> 0:04:00.760 are structured to be sticky. Once you take the first step, 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:04.440 the next one is easier, and before long, someone who 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:08.280 once trusted the people around them or the institutions around 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:13.560 them might find themselves trapped in a self reinforcing ecosystem 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.960 of mistrust. Now, I have my own take on conspiracy theories, 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:20.520 which you can hear in episode sixty six from last year. 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:24.240 But recently, my friend and colleague Dan Arieli wrote a 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:28.800 book called Misbelief Now. Dan is a behavioral economist at 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:32.800 Duke University who has spent his career studying how humans 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:36.760 make decisions, why we often get things wrong and predictable ways, 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:40.520 and the ways in which our circumstances shape our judgment. 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:44.320 You may know him from his book Predictably Irrational or 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:46.960 his other excellent books, and you might also know him 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:50.479 from his enormous body of research over the years. Nan 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:53.880 is an expert in rationality and trust and incentives, and 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:57.400 this gives him a rare vantage point into why people 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:03.039 fall into conspiracy thinking. His book Misbelief goes further. It's 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:07.279 a scientific deep dive, but it's also a personal story 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:09.240 as well. Here in a minute. It starts with his 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:14.359 experience of getting targeted with crazy COVID era conspiracy theories, 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:18.320 where some people accused him online of collaborating with pharmaceutical 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:22.120 companies to destroy humanity with COVID. Now, it goes without 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:26.200 saying that Dan's research hopes to save humanity, not destroy it. 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:30.279 But here's the thing, because he's a super thoughtful person, 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:33.360 one of the results of being on the barrel end 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:37.400 of this was a fascination with the process by which 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:41.120 people take on beliefs, beliefs about other people or the 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:44.440 news media or whatever. He became entranced with the ways 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:48.000 that people go down a funnel of beliefs to arrive 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:51.640 in a place that's unrecognizable. So here's my interview with 0:05:51.760 --> 0:06:00.800 Dan Rilly. So, Dan, you've spent in your career studying rationality, 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:06.360 but misbelief is more personal. So what you started down 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:11.080 this road of trying to understand why people have conspiracy theories? 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:14.520 So first of all, you're absolutely right. 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.600 And usually when I write books, I finished the research 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:20.960 and then I write about it. 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:22.600 This was a very, very different story. 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:28.039 So COVID started and I dropped everything and I was 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:29.719 just doing COVID related things. 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:32.360 And COVID of courses is. 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:35.120 A problem with biology, but it's also a problem of 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:39.760 social science. Domestic violence increased by about nine hundred percent. 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:42.680 What do you do with remote work, What do you 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:46.320 do with kids studying remotely? What do you do with 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.800 furlough with firing people, What do you do with government subsidies? 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:52.119 Lots and lots of big questions. Do you give people 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:55.000 finds for not putting masks? 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:55.480 And so on? 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:00.600 And I dropped everything and I just did COVID and 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:04.760 I was just trying to do research, trying to understand, 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:11.120 trying to give advice whatever I could. And about five 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:13.920 months into it, I get an email from a woman 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.760 I once helped with the presentation she was doing for 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:18.480 her company, and. 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.840 She said, Dan, what's wrong? Would you what happened? How 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:23.040 did you become that person? 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:25.280 You know? I don't think very much about this email. 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:27.880 We get lots of emails, let's send back what do 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:31.440 you mean? And I get back an email with lists 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:34.000 of links that tell me that I'm an awful person. 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:38.880 For example, there was one link that showed a video 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:41.480 of me in the burn department saying that I was 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.560 burned when I was eighteen, through seventy percent of my 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:47.840 body through almost three years in hospital. True, but then 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.880 the video went to say that because of that, I 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:54.720 started hating healthy people and that's why I joined the 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:57.440 cabal to try and kill as many people possible. First 0:07:57.480 --> 0:07:59.160 with COVID and then with the vaccine there was no 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:03.880 vaccine yet there were videos of me in Nazi uniform 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:05.040 concentration care. 0:08:05.440 --> 0:08:05.520 Like. 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:10.280 The amount of things were incredible, and my first reaction 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:14.240 was to set them straight, like this must be some misunderstanding. 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:15.000 How can that be? 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:18.679 I wake up every day trying to do the best 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:23.040 I can for the world with this very very difficult pandemic, 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:26.240 and these people think I'm evil, Like, how can that be? 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.240 But I thought better of it, and I said, let 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:34.080 me call two PR experts and asked what would they do. 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:37.560 People are experts in this, and they said, don't touch it. 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:40.760 And I was very proud that I called them, but 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:46.160 they couldn't follow their advice. You know, imagine, imagine somebody 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:49.000 came to you and said, David, I know that you're 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:51.280 just an awful person, and here's all the things you've done. 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:57.240 It like feels Anyway, I spend a month trying to 0:08:57.240 --> 0:08:57.959 convince people. 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:01.559 It was awful. It was awful because I showed people 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:05.760 my calendar. People thought I had the contract with Pfizer. 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:07.480 I said, look, I'll show you a way tax with hers. 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:11.959 It was incredible. These people are so convinced. 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:16.560 Anyway, I spent a month trying to convince them, and 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:21.160 I failed terribly felt but in the meantime, the anger 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:26.240 against me increased further and I started getting death threats. 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:31.600 And then I said, okay, I'm not convincing anybody. 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:36.040 Let me stop that. But I truly think that there's 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:39.000 a big topic here that I need to understand. You know, 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:39.920 I'm a social. 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:43.280 Scientist for a reason, and you know there's something people say, Okay, 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:45.640 I believe the earth is flat. Okay, but when somebody 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:47.760 comes to you and say I know something about you, 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:50.240 and he said, no, no, no, I don't have a contract 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:53.400 with Pfiser. How can you say that I have one? 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:58.280 I had to study this. So the next two years 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:02.080 I spent. I started by talking to the same people 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:05.640 who are my accusers, and I called them up and 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:09.560 I said, look, forget about me. I want to understand 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:13.240 your journey. Tell me what happened, like like, you started 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.800 with something, At what point did you become somebody with 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:18.000 very very different beliefs? 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:19.560 What was the trigger? What happened? 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:23.720 And I try to understand the journey that people move 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:27.000 from being, you know, believing the normal things that people 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:31.760 believe in society to become I call the misbelievers, people 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:34.120 who view the world not just believe in something that 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:37.840 is not correct, but view the world from that lens. 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:43.720 Because the people who who believed that did not just 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:47.320 believe that there was a cabalance so on, they looked at. 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:49.520 Everything through that through that lens. 0:10:50.240 --> 0:11:01.520 And psychologically I divided into four parts emotion, stress, cognition, personality, 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:06.880 and social And the stress part is the first thing 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:10.160 where you ask yourself, why would somebody wake up in 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:14.560 the morning and they have a choice. They can believe 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:17.480 in the benevolent God that is taking care of us 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:18.959 and helps us, and you. 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:21.320 Don't need to worry and everything has a purpose. 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:25.520 Versus believing that there's a cabau there's a hugely powerful 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:28.760 group of people who are trying to hurt them, poison them, 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:31.280 getting their kids not to have kids so they don't 0:11:31.280 --> 0:11:34.120 have grandchildren, trying to all kinds of control. Why would 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:37.720 somebody want to believe that? It is a very very 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:43.240 strange set of belief. And what I found is that 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:48.199 stress is the answer. So that when people are saying, 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:52.520 I don't understand the world. I thought things were supposed 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:55.480 to go this way. Why am I hurting? Why am 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:58.040 I hurting more than other people? Why am I not 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:00.200 getting my share of. 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:00.600 Things like that? 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:04.440 We want an answer, and the answer better has a 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:08.680 villain and a story, and I'll give you kind of 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:13.600 a kind of My two favorite studies of this. One 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:17.280 is a very old study in anthropology where they looked 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:21.200 at tribes and they look at tribes that fish in 0:12:21.240 --> 0:12:25.240 the ocean versus tribe that fish in lakes. And of 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:27.200 course the tribe that fish in the lake have much 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:31.200 more predictable life. The lake is basically the same every day. 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:37.079 The ocean has huge fluctuations. Which tribes have more superstitions 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:38.960 or the ocean? 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:40.120 Why? 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:43.920 Because it gives you a feeling of control, feeling of control. 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:48.040 Or I'll give you another example. And you know these 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:52.200 studies about white noise, not not hearing, but sight. So 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:56.880 you have a picture with black and white thoughts randomly organized. 0:12:56.600 --> 0:12:57.880 Like an all television screening. 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:00.920 Yeah, and you show them, You say do you see 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:03.920 an image? And people say yes, no, yes, and no. 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:08.000 It turns out that as you increase stress, for example, 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.880 you go skydiving, the more stress you have, the more 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:16.800 patterns you see. Now, why does this happen? Imagine you're 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:19.840 an animal in the jungle and you think there's a predator. 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:24.200 What is your mind doing? It goes into hyper drives, saying, well, 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:27.800 these two leaves are moving, maybe there's a tiger there. 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:32.400 You overinterpret patterns because you want to make sense of 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:37.000 the work. So the first thing to understand is that 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:41.360 when people feel stressed, like kind of learned helplessness, kind 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:43.400 of stressed, I don't understand the world. Things are not 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:49.199 going my way, there's a temptation to solve that problem 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:52.600 by creating a belief that says, I now understand what's 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:57.280 going on. It's the bad entities creating this bad outcome. 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:00.400 You can't say, oh, something bad happen and to be 0:14:00.600 --> 0:14:03.760 I believe this is a benevolent God because you're trying 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:07.520 to explain the bad thing. And then from there are 0:14:07.520 --> 0:14:09.440 things a theory we can talk about this, but that 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:10.640 that's the starting point. 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:13.480 We say, why would people start believing that? 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:16.720 And so walk us through the funnel that people go 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:19.200 through as they go from having some idea all the 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:20.440 way to full blown belief. 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:24.320 Yeah, so you start with this beginning, I'm stressed, things 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:28.040 are not going well. What is going on? You start, 0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:31.680 you go YouTube, you try to understand, you find some 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:35.680 beginning of a journey, and that gives you comfort. Shorten, 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:37.960 it gives you comfort because you say, oh, now I 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:40.480 understand it's not my fault, it's these people and so on, 0:14:40.720 --> 0:14:45.520 and then things can't keepe. So they continue through cognitive processes, 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:48.880 and there's a few of them, but let's talk about one. 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:52.240 And so you know, first of all, we all know 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:54.400 that we don't view all the information. 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:57.040 We view the information that agrees. 0:14:56.680 --> 0:15:00.840 With us, right We what we like from the media 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:02.920 is to tell us, oh, you're really smart, you know 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.720 all this, you know everything, but here's something extra new, 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:08.640 but you're very genuinely correct. We don't want to be 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:11.080 confronted with things that would say you're an idiot, you 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:13.000 have no idea what you're talking about the world is 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:16.440 very different than what you think. So we look for 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:19.240 things that as our confirmation pots. So that's the beginning. 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:24.000 But one of the interesting version of the cognitive part 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:29.680 is what is called the illusion of explanatory depth. And 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:32.280 the way I kind of tested it in one experiment 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:37.280 was with flash toilets. So I show people a flash toilet. 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.280 Do you understand how a flash toilet works? Absolutely? On 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:44.520 the scale from one to seven, almost seven. That's wonderful. 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:48.280 Here all the pieces for a perfectly brand new flash toilet, 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:53.040 please assemble it. What do you think is the percentage 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:56.760 of people who manage to assemble it? Zero? And then 0:15:56.800 --> 0:15:59.920 I asked them, and how well do you understand flash toilet? 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:03.080 And say, you know what, not so much. Now, think 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:06.720 about it. In a regular conversation, we go at people, 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:11.280 we argue, they argue, We argue, they argue at the 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:15.120 end of those so they we think about you, all 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:19.400 your debate in the last three years, how many of 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:22.880 them ended when the other person is saying, you know what. 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:27.040 I've never heard such good arguments. I'm changing my opinion completely. 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:29.400 You're absolutely correct. 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:32.000 Right, zero small number? 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:35.960 And how many ended the other way when you said 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:37.720 to somebody, you know what. 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:41.040 I'm being good. It's a really interesting thing because when 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:45.520 we discuss things with people, the mechanism is that we 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:49.200 counter argue when we say things. We say things, and 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:52.480 when they see things we already counter argue. I think 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:53.040 that's kind of. 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:55.040 I don't know if it was always the case like this, 0:16:55.200 --> 0:17:00.880 but we're not working toward joint new understand ending. We're 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:05.320 really kind of protecting our position. And what the illusion 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:10.040 of explanatory depth says is, don't worry about the facts initially, 0:17:11.040 --> 0:17:15.760 worry about overconfidence. So with the flash dollar, don't worry 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:20.760 about the facts, worry about crush people's overconfidence first, and 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:24.320 then we can talk later. So the strategy is to 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:30.240 say people are resisting facts because of their overconfidence, and 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:33.840 what we need to do for persuasion is to first 0:17:33.880 --> 0:17:37.160 think about them the overconfryt. 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:38.760 So a lot of listeners are probably familiar with the 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:41.680 Dunning Kruger effect, which is the less you know about 0:17:41.680 --> 0:17:45.400 a topic, the more confident you are that you know It's. 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:47.920 It's not the less, it's it's. 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:50.640 A function where it's like when you know something, you're 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:52.840 the most dangerous. It's when you know nothing, you know 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:56.159 you know nothing, When you know a lot, you know 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:56.840 you know a lot. 0:17:57.119 --> 0:18:00.359 The danger then in Kruger effect is when you know 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:00.760 a little. 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:06.680 Like the metaphor is like first year undergrad, you finished 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:11.240 right the introductory to biology textbook, Okay, I know biologic 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:12.400 yes exactly. 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:14.680 And by the way, with the illusion of explanatory depth, 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:17.639 and one I always uses the electoral college, I asked people, hey, 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:17.920 do you. 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:19.280 Know how that works. They say, yeah, now that works. 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:20.720 I said, great, can you explain it to me? 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:23.560 Nobody is nobody so far has been able to really 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:24.440 tell me all the way down. 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:28.199 And by the way we used it with the Trump elections, 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:31.720 some people thought that he that you won. And we 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:34.000 came to people and we said, you think the Trump 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:37.280 on the election, Yes, you think the elections were stolen. Yes, 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:40.240 explain to us how, but walk us through the details. 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:44.280 People go into the booth what happens. And people did 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:46.000 not say, oh, you know, he really lost the election, 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:47.199 but they said, you know what, I don't know how 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:50.720 it really happened. So the illusional it's a very important 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:54.080 issue to go into the mechanism and get people to 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:55.960 be more modest about their beliefs. 0:18:56.280 --> 0:18:56.720 That's right. 0:18:56.920 --> 0:18:59.439 Does that actually change anybody's mind? Now, let's say you 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:02.960 felt the election was stolen and you don't know how 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:06.120 because you feel like, look, it's a big world, hundreds 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:08.679 of millions of people doing things in the United States. 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:11.520 I can't know all the details, and yet I have 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:16.639 reasona believe that's true. Would increase intellectual humility do anything 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:18.960 in that situation, or would a person still say, look, 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:21.840 there's no way for me to know the answer to that, 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:25.679 But I have other reasons to believe this, So. 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:30.960 Let me say that you're right. So intellectual humility is 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.840 the is the key. And of course we teach our 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:37.000 students to say not knowing is great and not knowing 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:38.000 is a very good thing. 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.200 So I would say that I believe it very strongly. 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:46.600 I believe that if you think about misbelief and you say, 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:50.720 there's the belief in something that is not true, and 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:55.280 there's adopting it as a perspective on life. So I 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:57.600 think the earth is flat, and I'm looking at everything 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:01.280 from the perspective that the earth is flat. I think 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:05.000 that the illusion of explanatory depth of intellectual humility would 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:08.640 reduce the second part first, So I would not look 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:13.159 at the world from that lens initially because I'm not 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:15.320 the moment, you know, one hundred percent sure it's not 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:20.159 a lens from which you view things. But this is 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:22.760 kind of a general argument. I'll tell you what I 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:27.280 have data about. So I have now a site where 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:32.520 I invite Antisemites to talk to me Solemn Israeli and 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:40.360 Jewish I. October seventh was terrible in all kinds of ways. 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:45.240 But when October seven happened, I decided to come to 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:47.920 Israel as quickly as possible, and the flight I could 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:52.040 take came through London, and I was in London during 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:57.520 the first prop Palestinian demonstration, and this was before Israel 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:01.879 went to Gaza, and there were already a lot of 0:21:02.680 --> 0:21:05.920 anger told Israel. Even though Israel just suffered a huge 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:09.840 attack and didn't do anything. My daughter, who was in 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:15.400 high school, almost got canceled. Her mother, my ex wife, 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:18.640 is Indian, so my daughter is, you know, half Jewish Israeli, 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:24.320 half Indian and Hindu, both my kids. But she was 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:28.480 at the risk of being canceled just just by having 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:32.119 this affiliation. And she didn't vote for she doesn't have 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:35.320 a citizenship in Israel. She didn't vote for the Antennao government, 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:40.520 and nobody in her family did. But she felt unbelievably attacked, 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:42.880 and the antisemitism part. 0:21:42.840 --> 0:21:43.920 Was very, very surprising. 0:21:44.040 --> 0:21:46.639 So anyway, so I opened this website that I'm trying 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:51.680 to understand antisemitism, and I invite people to nominate antisemites 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:54.200 that I should talk to, and then once or twice 0:21:54.240 --> 0:21:58.280 a week I have discussions with anti Semites, and I 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:00.400 don't talk to anti Zionists. I don't talk to people 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:04.040 who just have complains about the Nathaniel government, which I. 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:04.639 Do as well. 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:08.879 I talk to people who define themselves as antisemite, and 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:12.119 I do with them this exercise we just talked about. 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:14.239 I say, I'm not trying to convince you. 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:16.359 Just tell me, like, when was the first time you 0:22:16.480 --> 0:22:21.919 heard negative things about Jewish people? In most cases it 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:25.320 comes from early childhood and how did it develop and 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:27.320 what else did you learn and who did you meet? 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:32.040 And I we basically talk about the evolution of the idea. 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:36.479 And I would say that almost everybody at the end 0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:42.119 of the conversation says, I still am antisemite, but I 0:22:42.200 --> 0:22:44.639 know that not all Jewish people are like this, So 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:48.200 there is And by the way, one of the triggers 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:51.440 that I think is very interesting is when people recognize 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:54.840 that they got this idea very early on at home. 0:22:55.440 --> 0:22:57.560 When somebody says I heard it when I was, you know, 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:02.640 before Elmntory school for my father, who said a few things, 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:06.199 and I said, okay, so did I really come to 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:09.359 that conclusion or was I given it? So for me, 0:23:11.280 --> 0:23:14.520 kind of this exercise of where did you get this idea? 0:23:14.840 --> 0:23:18.440 When did you test it? When did you test reality? 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:19.040 And so on? 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:21.600 Seems to be very good for. 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:23.800 People not to change your opinion, but say, you know what, 0:23:24.119 --> 0:23:27.080 I know it's more nuanced than that. And that's really 0:23:27.119 --> 0:23:30.080 all I can hope for in a discussion, to say 0:23:30.119 --> 0:23:31.000 I'm more nuanced in that. 0:23:45.800 --> 0:23:51.160 Okay, so many people imagine that conspiracy theorists are uneducated, 0:23:51.200 --> 0:23:53.480 but in fact your research shows they can be perfectly 0:23:53.520 --> 0:23:54.280 smart people. 0:23:54.640 --> 0:23:55.679 So what's your take on that. 0:23:55.880 --> 0:23:58.920