"Amidst claims of " fake news," "alternative facts," misinformation and disinformation, cognitive psychologist Keith Stanovich has identified a "myside bias" in "every stage of information processing," including the search for, evaluation and circulation of evidence, and our memory of outcomes. In Truth, Michael Shermer (the publisher of Skeptic magazine, podcaster, and author of more than a dozen books, including Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational) makes a compelling case"
"Borrowing from evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, Schermer distinguishes between a "reality mindset," and a "mythology mindset," set in the "remote past, unknowable future, faraway places, remote corridors of power, the microscopic, the cosmic, the counterfactual, the metaphysical." In the latter realm, facts are often contested and/or impossible to establish. And beliefs serve as tickets of admission to a group, bound together by a moral and/or a political purpose."
The scientific method is presented as the most reliable, though imperfect, means to cultivate critical thinking necessary for a more just democracy. Testable hypotheses and recognition of reasoning fallacies are emphasized across topics such as wartime atrocities, historical controversies, UFOs, resurrection claims, divine existence, and free will. A distinction is drawn between a reality mindset and a mythology mindset that treats inaccessible domains as group-bound belief systems. Cognitive biases, including a pervasive myside bias at every stage of information processing, undermine evidence search, evaluation, circulation, and memory. Echo chambers and social media amplify these distortions, threatening open dialogue.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]