Extraordinary beliefs don’t arise in a vacuum. They take root in minds confronted by unusual and traumatic experiences Given the social function of beliefs, it’s little surprise that delusions usually contain social themes. Might delusion then be a problem of social affiliation, rather than a purely cognitive issue? Bell’s team make just this claim, proposing […]
What pro wrestling can teach us about the quest for truth
Fans love it when backstage reality seeps into the show. But if there’s too much about backstage machinations, they switch off Plato’s Allegory of the Cave paints a vivid picture of the relationship between humans and the reality we inhabit. We are prisoners in a cave, forced to look at shadows on the wall that appear […]
Invisible Manipulators of Your Mind
The behavioral techniques that are being employed by governments and private corporations do not appeal to our reason. The term “propaganda” has been replaced by “a behavioral approach to persuasive communication with quantifiable results.” One We are living in an age in which the behavioral sciences have become inescapable. The findings of social psychology and behavioral […]
Nostalgia reimagined
Neuroscience is finding what propaganda has long known: nostalgia doesn’t need real memories – an imagined past works too He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past. But when he […]
There should never be heroes in science
Some scientists make their careers by criticising other’s research. But who watches the watchmen? …those self-critical, self-correcting principles of science simply don’t allow for hero-worship. Even the strongest critics of science need themselves to be criticised; those who raise the biggest questions about the way we do research need themselves to be questioned. Healthy science […]