a few months ago the internet exploded
when a rapper named Bobby Ray Simmons
aka b.o.b started tweeting out reasons
why he thought the world was flat
now the story really took off when Neil
deGrasse Tyson the astrophysicist
started tweeting back at him explaining
the apparent discrepancies but guess
what b.o.b held his ground he didn’t
give in now it turns out that b.o.b is
not the only one believe it or not
there’s actually a Flat Earth Society
with roots going all the way back to the
1800s their motto is amazing we man the
guns against oppression of thought and
the globular ‘us lies of a new age when
I first read this I thought it said
globalist lies but it’s actually
globular wrist ie those nutty folks who
think the earth is a sphere standing
with reason we offer a home to those
wayward thinkers who march bravely on
with reason and truth in recognizing the
true shape of the earth flat this is not
some elaborate hose BLB in the flat
earthers really believe that the earth
is flat despite all evidence to the
contrary so why am i showing you this
because your natural reaction to the
story is wrong your first instinct is to
laugh at the flat earthers and assume
they must be incredibly dense or crazy
but actually they’re not all that
different than you and I as human beings
false belief is our birthright it stems
from fundamental principles that govern
the way our minds work in 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 do
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 age
issues like vaccinations 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 now I
know that might sound crazy to you but
let’s think about a couple really
obvious facts we all believe that the
Earth revolves around the Sun of course
we do it’s the most basic fact in the
world but on what basis can you explain
the astronomical observations that
support that belief I know I can
what about smoking we all know it’s
terrible for us right but what’s
actually in cigarette smoke that’s bad
and what does it do to our bodies and
ourselves what’s cancer really how does
it even form these are not isolated
examples most of what we believe is not
based on what’s in our heads and there’s
a good reason for that there’s not much
in our heads
as human beings we are just not made to
store a lot of detailed information in
the 1980’s a psychologist named Thomas
Landauer set out to estimate the size of
an individual’s knowledge base in bytes
the same scale that’s used to measure
computer memories one approach he took
was to analyze the result of memory
experiments where people are asked to
study some pictures or words or bits of
music and then later tested to see if
they recognize them using the data he
was able to estimate the rate at which
we can acquire knowledge and also the
rate at which we forget what we learned
and then he extrapolated to a 70 year
lifespan so how much do you know
Landauer’s estimate one gigabyte
I think this is an amazing result
mind-blowing really one gigabyte is a
tiny amount by comparison you can buy a
thumb drive on amazon.com for less than
18 bucks that holds 64 gigabytes now at
this point some of you guys might be
freaking out a little bit feeling a
little bit concerned after all we all
think it’s the most important thing in
the world to know a lot and have great
memories but really this is a
misconception we do not have to know a
lot because we’re not made to think on
our own it’s natural to think about
thinking as what happens between your
ears but that’s not where the magic
really happens this video comes from a
psychologist by the name of Michael
Tomasello and his colleagues they study
human children’s cognitive abilities in
comparison to other animals like
chimpanzees the goal is to understand
what really makes us special what
abilities do we excel at that other
animals just cannot master you see how
easily this young child reads the mind
of the experimenter and then figures out
how to coordinate his behavior to
achieve the goal
he even makes eye contact at the end as
if to say I’ve got your back man this is
so natural to us that it seems like
nothing but it’s actually incredibly
difficult to design a cognitive system
that’s capable of collaboration this is
really the secret to our success it’s
what separates us from all other
thinking creatures chimpanzees routinely
fail at tasks that require sharing
knowledge and working together to pursue
goals tasks that young children master
with ease now for me this realization
was a major wake-up call it really
changed my perspective on the nature of
the mind I’m a cognitive scientist I’m
used to studying how individuals make
decisions or solve problems in isolation
but thinking is a social process rather
than happening inside your head it
emerges from your interactions with
those around you people are a little
more like bees than we often realize in
a bee hive you have an incredibly
complex cluster of behaviors that is
achieved despite no individual being
responsible for it all
food is collected and stored the hive is
protected from intruders genetic
diversity is introduced the key is
specialization each individual does its
own little part and the complexity
emerges the same is true of people on
our own none of us knows all that much
we don’t have to we each have our own
little slice of expertise and our minds
are built to collaborate and to share
knowledge which allows us to pursue
incredibly complex goals when none of us
has anything approaching the knowledge
to understand it all this is the Milan
Cathedral it’s one of humanity’s great
works construction began in 1386 and the
facade was completed get this under
Napoleon in the 1800s it turns out that
cathedrals have a punch list like a home
renovation
the punch list was completed when they
consecrated the final date in the 1960s
600 years in that time there were 75
chief engineers responsible for the
project and thousands upon thousands of
people involved none of those people had
anything remotely approaching the
knowledge to understand it all not even
close everything great we do as human
beings depends on this ability to share
knowledge and to collaborate so that’s
the positive side of the knowledge
Harry’s story when we put our minds
together we can do incredible things but
there’s also a dark side because we are
built to so seamlessly draw on knowledge
outside of our heads we often fail to
realize the limits of our own
understanding let me tell you about a
study that my colleague Stephen Sloman
recently ran he told his study
participants about some new scientists
scientific discovers that he completely
made up for instance a kind of glowing
rock he told one group of people that
scientists had not yet explained why the
rocks glow and then he asked them how
well do you understand unsurprisingly
they said they had no clue this makes
perfect sense they knew nothing about
the rocks the more surprising result is
what happened when he told a different
group of people about the same discovery
but this time he told them that
scientists had explained exactly how the
rocks worked now
the participants claimed to understand
the rocks a little bit better themselves
which is kind of weird because just like
the other group they knew nothing about
the rocks it was as if the scientists
knowledge had been directly transmitted
to them even though it was never
described and it turns out that a
similar thing happens when you surf the
internet just having access to all of
that information makes you feel like you
know a lot more than you do the sense of
understanding is contagious
and when contagious understanding is
paired with individual ignorance it can
be a toxic recipe the danger is that I
may express a strong belief because I
feel like I understand but my sense of
understanding is false it comes from
those around me expressing strong
beliefs because they feel like they
understand but their sense of
understanding comes from those around
them and so on individually
none of us knows enough to tell what’s
true and what’s false and yet because we
feel like we’re on firm ground we don’t
do enough to verify and that is how
entire groups of people can come to
believe things that aren’t true we can
build cathedrals but we can also build
houses of cards 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 health care
if you’re a liberal the Affordable Care
Act is the bee’s knees if you’re a
conservative it’s destroying America but
most of the time arguments about the
policy’s merits amount to little more
than 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 any one 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 of
course we have to take positions on
issues without knowing everything about
them
and if we have good sources of expertise
in our communities and a culture that
values truth we’ll get things right more
often than not but when we go through
life feeling like we individually have
it all figured out it can lead to a
warped and simplistic view of the world
my way is perfect
yours is crazy or evil in reality most
issues are complicated and most people
have good intentions okay now the bad
news we can’t eradicate false belief
it’s too basic to the way that we think
what we can do is practice a little more
intellectual humility to open our minds
to the possibility that some of those
things some of those false beliefs
probably reside in our own communities
we have a tremendous opportunity an
opportunity to improve the quality of
our discourse by recognizing the limits
of our understanding and by appreciating
just how much of what we believe depends
on those around us
thank you
[Applause]
when a rapper named Bobby Ray Simmons
aka b.o.b started tweeting out reasons
why he thought the world was flat
now the story really took off when Neil
deGrasse Tyson the astrophysicist
started tweeting back at him explaining
the apparent discrepancies but guess
what b.o.b held his ground he didn’t
give in now it turns out that b.o.b is
not the only one believe it or not
there’s actually a Flat Earth Society
with roots going all the way back to the
1800s their motto is amazing we man the
guns against oppression of thought and
the globular ‘us lies of a new age when
I first read this I thought it said
globalist lies but it’s actually
globular wrist ie those nutty folks who
think the earth is a sphere standing
with reason we offer a home to those
wayward thinkers who march bravely on
with reason and truth in recognizing the
true shape of the earth flat this is not
some elaborate hose BLB in the flat
earthers really believe that the earth
is flat despite all evidence to the
contrary so why am i showing you this
because your natural reaction to the
story is wrong your first instinct is to
laugh at the flat earthers and assume
they must be incredibly dense or crazy
but actually they’re not all that
different than you and I as human beings
false belief is our birthright it stems
from fundamental principles that govern
the way our minds work in 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 do
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 age
issues like vaccinations 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 now I
know that might sound crazy to you but
let’s think about a couple really
obvious facts we all believe that the
Earth revolves around the Sun of course
we do it’s the most basic fact in the
world but on what basis can you explain
the astronomical observations that
support that belief I know I can
what about smoking we all know it’s
terrible for us right but what’s
actually in cigarette smoke that’s bad
and what does it do to our bodies and
ourselves what’s cancer really how does
it even form these are not isolated
examples most of what we believe is not
based on what’s in our heads and there’s
a good reason for that there’s not much
in our heads
as human beings we are just not made to
store a lot of detailed information in
the 1980’s a psychologist named Thomas
Landauer set out to estimate the size of
an individual’s knowledge base in bytes
the same scale that’s used to measure
computer memories one approach he took
was to analyze the result of memory
experiments where people are asked to
study some pictures or words or bits of
music and then later tested to see if
they recognize them using the data he
was able to estimate the rate at which
we can acquire knowledge and also the
rate at which we forget what we learned
and then he extrapolated to a 70 year
lifespan so how much do you know
Landauer’s estimate one gigabyte
I think this is an amazing result
mind-blowing really one gigabyte is a
tiny amount by comparison you can buy a
thumb drive on amazon.com for less than
18 bucks that holds 64 gigabytes now at
this point some of you guys might be
freaking out a little bit feeling a
little bit concerned after all we all
think it’s the most important thing in
the world to know a lot and have great
memories but really this is a
misconception we do not have to know a
lot because we’re not made to think on
our own it’s natural to think about
thinking as what happens between your
ears but that’s not where the magic
really happens this video comes from a
psychologist by the name of Michael
Tomasello and his colleagues they study
human children’s cognitive abilities in
comparison to other animals like
chimpanzees the goal is to understand
what really makes us special what
abilities do we excel at that other
animals just cannot master you see how
easily this young child reads the mind
of the experimenter and then figures out
how to coordinate his behavior to
achieve the goal
he even makes eye contact at the end as
if to say I’ve got your back man this is
so natural to us that it seems like
nothing but it’s actually incredibly
difficult to design a cognitive system
that’s capable of collaboration this is
really the secret to our success it’s
what separates us from all other
thinking creatures chimpanzees routinely
fail at tasks that require sharing
knowledge and working together to pursue
goals tasks that young children master
with ease now for me this realization
was a major wake-up call it really
changed my perspective on the nature of
the mind I’m a cognitive scientist I’m
used to studying how individuals make
decisions or solve problems in isolation
but thinking is a social process rather
than happening inside your head it
emerges from your interactions with
those around you people are a little
more like bees than we often realize in
a bee hive you have an incredibly
complex cluster of behaviors that is
achieved despite no individual being
responsible for it all
food is collected and stored the hive is
protected from intruders genetic
diversity is introduced the key is
specialization each individual does its
own little part and the complexity
emerges the same is true of people on
our own none of us knows all that much
we don’t have to we each have our own
little slice of expertise and our minds
are built to collaborate and to share
knowledge which allows us to pursue
incredibly complex goals when none of us
has anything approaching the knowledge
to understand it all this is the Milan
Cathedral it’s one of humanity’s great
works construction began in 1386 and the
facade was completed get this under
Napoleon in the 1800s it turns out that
cathedrals have a punch list like a home
renovation
the punch list was completed when they
consecrated the final date in the 1960s
600 years in that time there were 75
chief engineers responsible for the
project and thousands upon thousands of
people involved none of those people had
anything remotely approaching the
knowledge to understand it all not even
close everything great we do as human
beings depends on this ability to share
knowledge and to collaborate so that’s
the positive side of the knowledge
Harry’s story when we put our minds
together we can do incredible things but
there’s also a dark side because we are
built to so seamlessly draw on knowledge
outside of our heads we often fail to
realize the limits of our own
understanding let me tell you about a
study that my colleague Stephen Sloman
recently ran he told his study
participants about some new scientists
scientific discovers that he completely
made up for instance a kind of glowing
rock he told one group of people that
scientists had not yet explained why the
rocks glow and then he asked them how
well do you understand unsurprisingly
they said they had no clue this makes
perfect sense they knew nothing about
the rocks the more surprising result is
what happened when he told a different
group of people about the same discovery
but this time he told them that
scientists had explained exactly how the
rocks worked now
the participants claimed to understand
the rocks a little bit better themselves
which is kind of weird because just like
the other group they knew nothing about
the rocks it was as if the scientists
knowledge had been directly transmitted
to them even though it was never
described and it turns out that a
similar thing happens when you surf the
internet just having access to all of
that information makes you feel like you
know a lot more than you do the sense of
understanding is contagious
and when contagious understanding is
paired with individual ignorance it can
be a toxic recipe the danger is that I
may express a strong belief because I
feel like I understand but my sense of
understanding is false it comes from
those around me expressing strong
beliefs because they feel like they
understand but their sense of
understanding comes from those around
them and so on individually
none of us knows enough to tell what’s
true and what’s false and yet because we
feel like we’re on firm ground we don’t
do enough to verify and that is how
entire groups of people can come to
believe things that aren’t true we can
build cathedrals but we can also build
houses of cards 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 health care
if you’re a liberal the Affordable Care
Act is the bee’s knees if you’re a
conservative it’s destroying America but
most of the time arguments about the
policy’s merits amount to little more
than 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 any one 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 of
course we have to take positions on
issues without knowing everything about
them
and if we have good sources of expertise
in our communities and a culture that
values truth we’ll get things right more
often than not but when we go through
life feeling like we individually have
it all figured out it can lead to a
warped and simplistic view of the world
my way is perfect
yours is crazy or evil in reality most
issues are complicated and most people
have good intentions okay now the bad
news we can’t eradicate false belief
it’s too basic to the way that we think
what we can do is practice a little more
intellectual humility to open our minds
to the possibility that some of those
things some of those false beliefs
probably reside in our own communities
we have a tremendous opportunity an
opportunity to improve the quality of
our discourse by recognizing the limits
of our understanding and by appreciating
just how much of what we believe depends
on those around us
thank you
[Applause]
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