Jul

11

You at dailyspec say you are "animated by a desire to apply systematic, tested reasoning to improve our understanding, not by appeals to authority or the transition of charts."

To understand why you do not achieve your goal see:

"Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory" by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber

There is also discussion about it here and other places.

The claim is that human reasoning developed to win arguments and not to discover the truth. There is evidence for it at every meeting of the NYC Junto. The theory does a pretty good job of explaining phenomena like "confirmation bias" (i.e. your speakers basically confirm your beliefs) and that people first "emotionally" come to a conclusion and then find facts to support what they "feel" (as evidenced by audience comments and questions).


Comments

Name

Email

Website

Speak your mind

Archives

Resources & Links

Search