Hugo Mercier is a research director at the CNRS (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris), where he work with the Evolution and Social Cognition team. Check out his two books: The Enigma of Reason and Not Born Yesterday .

• Mercier's thoughts on the cognitive bias literature
• Open vigilance mechanisms
• Criticism of the System 1 vs System 2 dichotomy
• Why Kahneman misinterpreted the bat and the ball thought experiment
• Do flat earthers really believe the earth is flat?
• The Asch conformity experiment
• Preference falsification vs internalization of professed beliefs
• How important is social signaling?
• Trump, MAGA, gullibility, and Tariffs
• How effective are advertisements?
• How effective is propaganda?
• Is social science reforming?

• The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber
• Not Born Yesterday
  
• Our previous episodes on Not Born Yesterday and The Enigma of Reason

• Follow us on Twitter at @hugoreasoning, @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
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How much system 2 thinking does it take to misunderstand system 1 vs system 2? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Special Guest: Hugo Mercier.

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• If humans are less gullible than is commonly believed
• Evolution of Communication Theory
• Gazelles jumping in the air
• Are humans too stubborn? Is one of your hosts who shall go unnamed too stubborn?
• When do humans actually change their minds?
• Does Mercier's work conflict with Popper?
• How much of our reasoning is motivated reasoning? How much is social conformity?

• Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
• Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
• Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.
• Click dem like buttons on youtube

Did you know that "gullible" isn't in the dictionary? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

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*We discuss *

• Reason as a social phenomenon
• The two roles of reason: To justify our actions, and to evaluate the reasons of others
• Reason as module of inference, and how that contrasts with dual-process theories
• The "intellectualist" vs the "interactionist" approach to reason
• Nassim Taleb's notion of "skin in the game"
• The consequences of reason having evolved in a particular (social) niche
• The marshmallow test and other debunked psychological findings

Quotes:

The interactionist approach, on the other hand, makes two contrasting predictions. In the production of arguments, we should be biased and lazy; in the evaluation of arguments, we should be demanding and objective— demanding so as not to be deceived by poor or fallacious arguments into accepting false ideas, objective so as to be ready to revise our ideas when presented with good reasons why we should.
EoR (pg. 332)

In our interactionist approach, the normal conditions for the use of reasoning are social, and more specifically dialogic. Outside of this environment, there is no guarantee that reasoning acts for the benefits of the reasoner. It might lead to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This does not mean reasoning is broken, simply that it has been taken out of its normal conditions.
EoR (pg. 247)

References

• Dan Sperber's talk at the Santa Fe Institute
• Image credit: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2009/oct/20/classics-barack-obama

Social media everywhere

• Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
• Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ
• Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link

Send a reason, any reason, any reason at all, to incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Support Increments