339. How the Brain Handles Balance and Misinformation feat. Paul Thagard

Oct 4, 2023

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Can you imagine the brain's intricate dance that helps us maintain balance? How does this process connect with vertigo, cognitive decline, and even our emotions and decision-making?

Paul Thagard is a professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo and the author of several books. His latest release is titled Balance: How It Works and What It Means, and next year his new book, Falsehoods Fly: Why Misinformation Spreads and How to Stop It, will be published.

Paul and Greg discuss Paul’s research into the brain and the way it handles certain tasks. Paul sheds light on how balance and nausea are linked and also how misinformation commonly weaves its way into our knowledge base. Learn about the surprising links between vertigo and nausea as he explains how our brains influence our lives in nuanced ways.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Cognition and emotion are constantly integrated

19:09: So, the idea that cognition and emotion are separate in the brain is all wrong. They're constantly integrated, and it's a really good thing because it means that the perceptions that we're doing, the predictions that we're making, the explanations we're coming up, are all tied with the explanations of current ways in which our situation is relevant to our goals. So emotion, instead of just being something that somehow gets in the way of cognition or is extraneous to it, is actually tightly integrated with it, and that's one of the great powers of the human brain.

Is balance conscious?

10:32: Balance is mostly unconscious because almost all the things you do, when you're walking down the street or even just sitting in front of a TV, doesn't involve thinking about it. But when consciousness becomes important, balance breaks.

Misinformation is a major issue in everyday life

58:19: In decision-making and ethics in general, empathy is really important—that is, you've got to be able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes and figure out why they're feeling the way they are. But the solution for this isn't just courses in critical thinking—I never thought of my book on misinformation as being a critical thinking textbook. It's not a textbook at all. But it's a book that I hope will make it clear to people that all these problems of information and misinformation are major issues in everyday life.

Is there something wrong with the way that economists talk about goals?

48:45: The economist's way of talking about goals is just ridiculous. But they think of values as preferences. Well, where do preferences come from? Preferences come from goals and emotions. And so the fundamental idea here is that goals and emotions and preferences are derivative.

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Faculty Profile at University of Waterloo
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