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

Summary

The script discusses the prevalence of false beliefs, exemplified by the flat Earth theory and its proponents, including rapper B.o.B. It challenges the audience's instinct to dismiss such beliefs as irrational, arguing that all humans are susceptible to holding misconceptions due to the limited knowledge stored in our minds. The speaker, a cognitive scientist, emphasizes the importance of intellectual humility and recognizing the role of social knowledge-sharing in forming our beliefs, advocating for a more nuanced understanding of complex issues.

Takeaways

• 🌐 The internet was abuzz when rapper B.o.B questioned the Earth's spherical shape, sparking a debate with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
• 🌿 There exists a Flat Earth Society with a long history, promoting the idea that the Earth is flat and opposing what they call 'Globularist lies'.
• 🤔 The script challenges the audience's initial reaction to mock flat-Earthers, suggesting that false beliefs are common and stem from how our minds work.
• 📊 The prevalence of false beliefs is highlighted by the current issues of fake news, science denial, and public misconceptions on critical topics like vaccination and climate change.
• 🧠 It is pointed out that as individuals, we possess limited personal knowledge and most of our beliefs are not based on our own understanding.
• 🔍 Thomas Landauer's research is mentioned, estimating the human knowledge base to be as small as 1 gigabyte, emphasizing our reliance on external knowledge.
• 🤝 The importance of social cognition is underscored, with the comparison to bees showing that human success comes from our ability to collaborate and share knowledge.
• 🏰 The Milan Cathedral example illustrates how human achievements are the result of collective effort and specialized knowledge over centuries.
• 💡 The 'dark side' of knowledge sharing is discussed, where the illusion of understanding can lead to the acceptance of false beliefs without verification.
• 🗣️ The script addresses the danger of expressing strong beliefs based on a false sense of understanding, which can propagate misinformation.
• 🌈 It concludes by advocating for intellectual humility and recognizing the limits of our own understanding, suggesting that this can improve discourse and beliefs.

Q & A

Who is Bobby Ray Simmons, and why did he become a topic of discussion on the Internet?

Bobby Ray Simmons, also known as B.o.B, is a rapper who became a topic of discussion because he tweeted reasons why he believed the Earth is flat, sparking a public debate.

How did Neil deGrasse Tyson respond to B.o.B's tweets about the Earth being flat?

Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, responded to B.o.B's tweets by explaining the scientific discrepancies in B.o.B's flat Earth claims, but B.o.B held his ground.

What is the Flat Earth Society, and what is their motto?

The Flat Earth Society is a group that believes the Earth is flat, with roots going back to the 1800s. Their motto is 'We man the guns against oppression of thought, and the Globularist lies of a new age.'

Why does the speaker argue that it is wrong to simply laugh at flat-earthers?

The speaker argues that laughing at flat-earthers is wrong because false belief is common among humans due to the way our minds work and store knowledge, not because they are inherently dense or crazy.

What does the speaker mean by saying 'false belief is our birthright'?

The speaker means that humans are naturally prone to believing things that aren't true due to the fundamental principles of how our minds function and how we store knowledge.

How does the speaker explain the phenomenon of people believing in scientifically unsupported claims like flat Earth theory or vaccine denial?

The speaker explains that people believe in unsupported claims because they often draw on knowledge outside their own heads, rely on their communities, and fail to recognize the limits of their own understanding.

What did Thomas Landauer's research conclude about the human knowledge base?

Thomas Landauer's research concluded that the average human's knowledge base is about 1 gigabyte, which is a tiny amount compared to modern digital storage.

What does the speaker suggest is the real source of our ability to understand complex issues?

The speaker suggests that our ability to understand complex issues comes from our capacity to share knowledge and collaborate with others, rather than from individual understanding.

What example does the speaker use to illustrate the complexity humans can achieve through collaboration?

The speaker uses the construction of the Milan Cathedral, which took over 600 years and involved thousands of people, as an example of the complexity humans can achieve through collaboration.

How does the speaker describe the 'dark side' of our reliance on shared knowledge?

The speaker describes the 'dark side' as our tendency to overestimate our own understanding because we seamlessly draw on external knowledge, leading to a false sense of certainty and the spread of misinformation.

What experiment does the speaker describe to show how easily people can feel they understand something they don't?

The speaker describes an experiment where participants were told about a fictitious glowing rock. Those who were told scientists had explained the rock's glow felt they understood it better, even though they had no actual information.

What analogy does the speaker use to explain how humans collectively achieve complex goals?

The speaker uses the analogy of a beehive, where complex behaviors are achieved through individual specialization and collaboration, to explain how humans collectively achieve complex goals.

What does the speaker recommend to combat the spread of false beliefs?

The speaker recommends practicing intellectual humility, recognizing the limits of our own understanding, and appreciating how much of what we believe depends on others.

Outlines

00:00

🌐 Flat Earth Debate and Human Belief Systems

The video script begins with a discussion on the flat Earth theory, sparked by rapper B.o.B's tweets and the ensuing debate with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. It highlights the existence of a flat Earth society with a long history and a motto that challenges the 'Globularist' view of Earth as a sphere. The speaker uses this example to point out that false beliefs are common and deeply rooted in human nature, not just a result of ignorance or stupidity. The script also touches on the prevalence of misinformation and science denial in contemporary society, emphasizing the importance of understanding why people hold onto beliefs that contradict scientific consensus.

05:02

🧠 The Illusion of Individual Knowledge

This paragraph delves into the limitations of human memory and knowledge. It references a study by psychologist Thomas Landauer, who estimated the size of an individual's knowledge base to be around 1 gigabyte, a modest amount compared to modern digital storage capabilities. The script challenges the notion that having extensive knowledge and memory is crucial, arguing that humans are not designed to think independently but rather to collaborate and share knowledge. It introduces the idea that our cognitive abilities are more about social interaction and collective intelligence than individual memory capacity.

10:04

🤝 The Power and Pitfalls of Collective Knowledge

The script discusses the collaborative nature of human cognition, drawing parallels between human society and a beehive, where specialization and division of labor create complex systems. It uses the example of the Milan Cathedral, a project that took centuries and involved numerous individuals, to illustrate how collective knowledge and effort can achieve monumental tasks. However, it also warns of the 'dark side' of knowledge sharing, where a false sense of understanding can lead to the acceptance of misinformation, as people may feel they comprehend complex topics due to the collective's expertise, even when they do not.

15:11

🌟 Embracing Intellectual Humility in a Complex World

In the final paragraph, the speaker calls for intellectual humility, acknowledging the inherent limitations of individual understanding and the reliance on collective knowledge. They argue that while false beliefs are an unavoidable part of human cognition, recognizing our ignorance can lead to a more open-minded and accurate perspective on issues. The script concludes by advocating for a culture that values truth and expertise, suggesting that this approach can help us navigate the complexities of the world more effectively and avoid the pitfalls of misinformation and overconfidence in our own beliefs.

Keywords

💡Flat Earth Society

The Flat Earth Society is a group of people who believe that the Earth is flat, contrary to the scientific consensus that it is an oblate spheroid. In the video, the society is mentioned to highlight the existence of a community that holds a belief system that goes against mainstream scientific understanding. The society's motto, 'We man the guns against oppression of thought, and the Globularist lies of a new age,' is used in the script to illustrate their stance against what they perceive as false scientific claims.

💡False Belief

False belief refers to the acceptance of a concept or idea that is not supported by evidence or is proven to be incorrect. The video discusses how false beliefs are common among humans and are not necessarily a sign of stupidity or ignorance. The script uses the example of the flat Earth belief to explore why people might hold onto such ideas despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

💡Scientific Consensus

Scientific consensus is the collective agreement among the majority of scientists in a field regarding a particular issue or theory. The video mentions the scientific consensus on the shape of the Earth and other critical issues like vaccination, global warming, and genetically modified foods. It highlights the contrast between these consensuses and the beliefs held by certain groups or individuals, such as the flat Earthers.

💡Cognitive Science

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field that studies the mind and its processes, including how humans learn, think, remember, and solve problems. The speaker in the video is a cognitive scientist, and the script delves into the cognitive processes that lead to the formation and maintenance of beliefs, even when they are not based on personal knowledge or understanding.

💡Knowledge Base

A knowledge base refers to the total amount of information that an individual can store and recall. The video cites Thomas Landauer's research estimating the size of an individual's knowledge base to be around 1 gigabyte, emphasizing the limited capacity of human memory and the reliance on external sources for knowledge.

💡Collaboration

Collaboration is the process of working together with others to achieve a common goal. The video script highlights the importance of collaboration in human cognition, using the example of young children and chimpanzees to illustrate the unique human ability to share knowledge and work together effectively.

💡Specialization

Specialization is the process of focusing on a specific area of expertise. In the context of the video, it is discussed as a key component of human success, where individuals contribute their unique expertise to a collective effort, such as the construction of the Milan Cathedral, which took centuries to complete with the contributions of many specialists.

💡Intellectual Humility

Intellectual humility is the recognition of one's own limitations in knowledge and understanding. The video encourages adopting intellectual humility to acknowledge the possibility that one's own beliefs may be influenced by misinformation or lack of full understanding, and to be open to the perspectives of others.

💡Misinformation

Misinformation refers to false or inaccurate information that is spread, regardless of whether there is an intent to deceive. The video script discusses the role of misinformation in shaping beliefs, particularly in the context of the current 'epidemic' of fake news and its impact on public understanding of critical issues.

💡Evidence Evaluation

Evidence evaluation is the process of critically assessing the validity and reliability of evidence to form a belief or make a decision. The video points out that most people, when forming beliefs, do not engage in a rational process of evidence evaluation but rather rely on the beliefs and assertions of others in their community.

💡Complexity

Complexity refers to the state of being intricate or complicated, with many interconnected parts. The video script uses the concept of complexity to describe the world and the issues within it, emphasizing that the intricacies of many topics are beyond the understanding of any single individual, thus necessitating the sharing and collaboration of knowledge.

Highlights

The Internet was set abuzz by rapper B.o.B's tweets questioning the Earth's round shape.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson engaged in a Twitter debate with B.o.B, explaining scientific discrepancies.

B.o.B maintained his stance on the flat Earth theory despite opposition.

The existence of a Flat Earth Society with a history dating back to the 1800s was revealed.

The Flat Earth Society's motto emphasizes resistance against thought oppression and 'Globularist' lies.

False beliefs are common among humans, stemming from fundamental cognitive principles.

The prevalence of fake news and science denial in society was highlighted as a concerning trend.

The impact of public attitudes on critical issues like vaccination and climate change was underscored.

The importance of understanding cognitive processes behind belief in falsehoods was emphasized.

Individual knowledge is limited, and most beliefs are not based on personal understanding.

Thomas Landauer's research estimated the size of an individual's knowledge base to be approximately 1 gigabyte.

Human cognitive abilities are distinguished by our capacity for collaboration and knowledge sharing.

The Milan Cathedral exemplifies the collective achievement of humanity through shared knowledge over centuries.

People often overestimate their understanding due to the illusion of knowledge from others or the internet.

Intellectual humility is advocated to acknowledge the limits of our understanding and the role of others in our beliefs.

The potential for collective intelligence to arise from individual ignorance was noted as a positive aspect of human cognition.

Transcripts

Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner

A few months ago,

the Internet exploded when a rapper named Bobby Ray Simmons,

aka B.o.B,

started twitting out reasons why he thought the world was flat.

(Laughter)

Now, the story really took off

when Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist,

started twitting back at him, explaining the apparent discrepancies.

But guess what?

B.o.B held his ground.

(Laughter)

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 Globularist lies of a new age."

(Laughter)

When I first read this, I thought it said "Globalist lies,"

but it's actually "Globularist,"

i.e. those nutty folks who think the Earth is a sphere.

(Laughter)

"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!

(Laughter)

This is not some elaborate hoax.

B.o.B and 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 this 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 stands 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.

Now, I know that might sound crazy to you,

but let's think about a couple of 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't.

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 our cells?

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!

(Laughter)

As human beings,

we are just not made to store a lot of detailed information.

In the 1980s, 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 learn.

And then, he extrapolated to a 70-year lifespan.

So, how much do you know?

Landauer's estimate:

1 gigabyte.

(Laughter)

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.

(Laughter)

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.

(Laughter)

He even makes eye contact at the end as if to say, "I've got your back, man!"

(Laughter)

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 beehive, 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 gate in the 1960s.

Six hundred 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-sharing 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 Steven Sloman recently ran.

He told his study participants about some new scientific discoveries

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 glowed.

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.

This sense of understanding is contagious.

(Laughter)

And when contagious understanding is paired with individual ignorance,

it can be a toxic recipe.

(Laughter)

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 out 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!"

(Laughter)

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!

(Laughter)

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 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.

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 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)