📖 Short Summary (1 takeaway)
- A mix of personal and professional explanation of how someone can be sucked into believing in conspiracy theory and be so rooted in it such that they can alienate their closest allies.
🧐 Why I am reading this book
- Part of [[8. ☕️ Finer Things Book Club]]
🙊 Great quotes
There is a phrase in Hebrew that loosely translates to “How can you prove that your sister is not a prostitute when you don’t even have a sister?”
Hate is not a conversation.
There were many statements in their social media feeds about “doing their own research” and calling on others to do the same. But it was clear that no one was really doing any
The oft-quoted (and variously attributed) phrase “There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking” came to mind as one that is exceptionally true in social media.
As a social scientist who is supposed to understand human nature, I am a bit embarrassed to admit that the benefits of my half beard took me by surprise.
I looked at more and more research on scarcity mindset—the notion that poverty impedes cognitive capacity by taking up part of the brain’s limited bandwidth—and
What fascinates me—and where I see leverage for positive change—is understanding why people are so susceptible. Why do we not only believe but actively seek and spread misinformation?
In this book, I will use the term misbelief to describe the phenomenon we’re exploring. Misbelief is a distorted lens through which people begin to view the world, reason about the world, and then describe the world to others.
misbelief can be thought of as a funnel. When first entering this funnel, a person might just have a few niggling questions about accepted truths and established sources of information in science, health, politics, the media, and so forth. At the other extreme of the funnel, all “mainstream” sources are dismissed, and people embrace full-blown alternative truths or conspiracy theories without a moment’s hesitation.
Research shows that although self-interest has some motivating force, social utility is sometimes even more powerful.
It’s a faulty learning cycle that occurs when we learn about low-probability events from our ongoing experience.
According to Seligman and Maier, the difference between the two dogs can be explained by a phenomenon known as learned helplessness. [] In other words, when we experience repeated stress that we cannot control, it makes us feel less inclined to take action and less able to figure out solutions.
✅ Actionable item
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