You Are Not So Smart11 Maalis 2018

123 - Active Information Avoidance (rebroadcast)

Little did the champions of the Enlightenment know that once we had access to all the facts…well, reason and rationality wouldn’t just immediately wash across the land in a giant wave of enlightenment thinking. While that may be happening in some ways, the new media ecosystem has also unshackled some of our deepest psychological tendencies, things that enlightenment thinkers didn’t know about, weren’t worried about, or couldn’t have predicted. Many of which we’ve discussed in previous episodes like confirmation bias, selective skepticism, filter bubbles and so on. These things have always been with us, but modern technology has provided them with the perfect environment to flourish.

In this episode, we explore another such invasive psychological species called active information avoidance, the act of keeping our senses away from information that might be useful, that we know is out there, that would cost us nothing to obtain, but that we’d still rather not learn. From choosing not to open open bills, visit the doctor, check your bank account, or read the nutrition information on the back of that box of Girl Scout Cookies, we each choose to remain ignorant when we’d rather not feel the anguish of illumination, but that same tendency can also cause great harm both to individuals and whole cultures when it spreads through politics, science, markets, and medicine. In this show, you’ll learn how.

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122 - Tribal Psychology

The evidence is clear that humans value being good members of their tribes much more than they value being correct. We will choose to be wrong if it keeps us in good standing with our peers.In this ep...

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121 - Progress (rebroadcast)

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120 - The Backfire Effect - Part Four

Last year on this show, we did three episodes about the backfire effect, and by far, those episodes were the most popular we’ve ever done.In fact, the famous web comic The Oatmeal turned them into a s...

29 Tammi 20181h 10min

119 - The Unpersuadables

Our guest for this episode, Will Storr, wrote a book called The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science. In that book, Storr spends time with Holocaust deniers, young Earth creationists...

15 Tammi 201839min

118 - Connections (rebroadcast)

In this episode of the YANSS Podcast, we sit down with legendary science historian James Burke.For much of his career, Burke has been creating documentaries and writing books aimed at helping us to ma...

1 Tammi 201857min

117 - Idiot Brain (rebroadcast)

In this episode we interview Dean Burnett, author of "Idiot Brain: What Your Brain is Really Up To." Burnett's book is a guide to the neuroscience behind the things that our amazing brains do poorly.I...

18 Joulu 201747min

116 - Reality (rebroadcast)

Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? For our guest in this episode, cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman, that's his day job.Hoffman has developed a new theory of consciousness that, ...

4 Joulu 20171h