Name: The Negative Effects of Wishful Thinking
Uploaded: 2021-05-18T17:25:37.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Negative Effects of Wishful Thinking' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Negative Effects of Wishful Thinking' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-18. Transcript available.

So when you base your core beliefs on things that are not reality-based, on
things that are based on wishful thinking.
So a lot of people get into astrology because they want to believe that there
are fates out there that are going to look after them or whatever.
And if you indulge in wishful thinking that way, the evidence now shows you
actually compromise your mind's immune system.
So when you believe things because you want to, you want them to be true, your
mind's immune system gets weaker.
And there's actually now empirical research that indicates this.
So if you, for example, accept that clinging to your articles of faith, no
matter what, is a virtue, you're less likely to change your mind when evidence
comes along.
Right.
And when that happens, you become more susceptible to conspiracy thinking, more
susceptible to divisive political ideologies, more susceptible to science
denial.
Your mind's resistance to bad ideas starts to decay.
You can actually damage your mind's immune system by indulging in wishful
thinking.
That makes sense.
Do you highlight specific strategies in your book for looking at things
accurately and looking at things objectively?
Yeah.
I mean, so science is clearly a shining example of what's possible in the way
of idea testing and the way of validating things with evidence.
So, you know, scientists are especially good at testing things in laboratories
or with experiments.
Now, philosophers have always gone in for a kind of a related but slightly
different kind of idea testing.
Philosophers don't have laboratories except the ones between their ears.
And basically, we test ideas against each other and we test ideas against our
intuitions about right and wrong and try to figure out what makes sense.
That's a complementary kind of idea testing that scientists go in for.
And it's one that has done a huge amount to educate and enlighten us over the
centuries.
And so what I try to do in the book is take things from this cutting-edge
science I call cognitive immunology.
It's the science of mental immunity.
You combine that with ancient wisdom about how to pursue wisdom, how to find
wisdom, and you actually get some really powerful ways to strengthen mental
immune systems.
And, like, what ways?
What do you use personally?
Do you need it or you've been sort of indoctrinated into the world of objective
thinking to the point where you don't need any systems that you follow?
Well, I try not to think that I have all the answers and that I've, you know,
got it all figured out.
Look at humility.
We know this.
Humility is really important for a well-functioning mental immune system.
For everything, right?
Well, yeah, yeah, sure.
Let's go with that.
My research specializes in, you know, trying to understand how the mind
develops resistance to bad ideas.
And once you think you have all the answers, you stop learning and your
thinking starts to go haywire.
So you've got to maintain that humility or, you know, you're just compromising
your own mind.
Humility, specifically.
Humility is important.
Fair-mindedness.
So a lot of people do this.
They ridicule or deride other people's ideas for failing to meet basic
standards, but then they don't apply those same standards to their own views.
Right.
Do you have an example of this?
Well, I think a whole lot of political rhetoric has this character, right?
Slam the other side, ridicule it as sloppy thinking or as ideologically driven,
but never examine to see whether your own views.
That's a perfect example of it, right?
And politics is probably the very best example of how people do this.
They get super tribal.
They only look at the other side as being bad and their side.
They find justifications for every questionable behavior, every weird scandal,
everything that doesn't fit the narrative.
Yeah, and I'd say that politics is probably the best example, but religion and
ethics and sometimes economics or others.
So wherever values come into play, people get very attached to their ideas.
We all want to think that we're right and true and virtuous.
So whatever ideas we've already internalized as beliefs, they have to be the
virtuous beliefs.
And any new incoming information that challenges them from the other side of
the political aisle or from another religion or from those damn atheists over
there, that's the enemy.
And then your mind's immune system attacks that information and you never
become and you never gain the fair mindedness needed to learn.
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