Big Picture Science - Skeptic Check: Rational Lampoon
(Repeat) Two heads may be
better than one. But what about three or more? A new study shows that
chimpanzees excel at complex tasks when they work in groups, and their
accumulated knowledge can even be passed from one generation to the next.
But group-think also
can be maladaptive. When humans rely on knowledge that they assume other
people possess, they can become less than rational.
Find out why one
cognitive scientist says that individual thinking is a myth. Most of your
decisions are made in groups, and most derive from emotion, not rationality.
Also, why we know far
less than we think we do. For example, most people will say they
understand how an everyday object like a zipper works, but draw a blank when
asked to explain it.
Plus, why we have a
biological drive to categorize people as “us” or “them,” and how we can
override it.
Guests:
- Laurance Doyle - Scientist at the SETI Institute
- Steven Sloman - Professor of cognitive linguistics and psychological sciences at Brown University and editor-in-chief of the journal, Cognition
- Robert Sapolsky - Professor of neuroscience at Stanford University and author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
This repeat podcast originally aired on July 3, 2017
Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/skeptic-check-rational-lampoon
You can listen to this and other episodes at http://bigpicturescience.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.
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