Why Do We Believe Things That Aren’t True? Philip Fernbach (2017)

Why do we believe things that aren’t true? | Philip Fernbach

• 00:00:53 Flat Earth Society 
• 00:02:10 As human beings, false belief is our birthright 
• 00:03:31 We do not know enough to justify almost anything we believe 
• 00:04:16 Most of what we believe is not in our heads 
• 00:11:58 The real tragedy 
• 00:13:57 Ignorance is a feature of the human mind 
• 00:14:47 We can't eradicate false belief 
• 00:04:15 Most of what we believe is not in our heads 

Transcript One

Transcript As human beings, false belief is our birthright  starting at 2:10 to 3:38. (I’ve highlighted some of the text to draw attention to the more pertinent points.)

As human beings, false belief is our birthright.

It stems from fundamental principles that govern the way our minds work and the way we store knowledge.

Consider how common it is for groups of people to believe things that just aren’t true.

Right now, in this moment, it feels like we’re in the midst of an epidemic.

The explosion of fake news shows how easy it is to dupe people on the left and the right, and science denial has gone mainstream.

Significant proportions of the population maintain beliefs counter to the scientific consensus on critical issues like vaccination, global warming, and the safety of genetically modified foods.

Public attitudes about these issues literally determine whether we can feed ourselves, whether we can raise healthy children and whether we can forestall a climate disaster.

The stakes could not be higher, which is why it’s just not good enough to chalk all this up to lunacy or stupidity.

Simplistic explanations like that aren’t getting us anywhere.

If we really want to improve the way we grapple with these challenges, we have to go deeper, we have to understand what it is about the way we think that makes us so susceptible to believing things that aren’t true.

And that explanation actually begins with a kind of shocking observation.

As individuals, we do not know enough to justify almost anything we believe.

Transcript Two

Transcript The real tragedy in how we relate to people who have different beliefs than us  starting at 11:58. (I’ve highlighted some of the text to draw attention to the more pertinent points.)

Now, the real tragedy occurs in how we relate to people who have different beliefs than us.

We live in the illusion that we have arrived at our own positions via a serious analysis and that we can support and justify what we believe based on what we know.

Therefore, when someone doesn’t believe what we believe, it’s obvious what the problem is: “They’re too stupid to see the truth!”

And there’s actually a sense in which you’re right when you think that.

It’s true!

They did not arrive at their position via a rational process of evidence evaluation and they don’t understand the issue in depth.

But neither do you!

Think about how we talk about a complex issue like healthcare. If you’re a liberal, the Affordable Care Act is the bee’s knees. If your a conservative, “It’s destroying America.”

But most of the time, arguments about the policy’s merits amount to little more than the repetition of sound bites that we heard from someone else.

As non-experts, we can’t possibly do justice to the complexity of an issue like that. When we express our beliefs, we are all just channeling our communities of knowledge. That’s what we do.

Knowledge is not in my head and it’s not in your head. Knowledge is shared, and therefore, the things that you really care about, those things are shared too.

Now, the point is decidedly not that people are stupid. It’s true, we are all ignorant, but that’s not something we should hide from. The world is far too complex for anyone of us to understand much of it.

What makes us special is the ability to thrive amidst that complexity
by sharing knowledge. From our individual ignorance can arise collective genius.

Ignorance is a feature of the human mind, not a bug, but we don’t have to be so darn sure about things we don’t understand.