Making Sense with Sam Harris #261 — Belief & Identity
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Sep 30, 2021 
Sam Harris welcomes Jonas Kaplan, a cognitive neuroscientist at USC, who specializes in consciousness and identity. They dive into the neuroscience behind belief change, discussing phenomena like the illusory truth effect and the backfire effect. Kaplan explains how emotional motivations can entrench false beliefs, particularly in a polarized environment. The conversation also touches on the significance of cognitive flexibility, the interplay of beliefs and identity, and the enduring impact of storytelling in human culture.
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McMartin Preschool Case
- Sam Harris and Jonas Kaplan discuss the McMartin Preschool case, an example of belief persistence despite debunking.
- Harris admits to previously believing the allegations despite the case being fully disproven.
Truth Bias
- We have a truth bias, a default setting of accepting propositions as true, even without evidence.
- Rejecting something as false requires a further cognitive step, evidenced by faster response times to true statements.
Repetition and Belief
- Repetition increases the likelihood of accepting information as true, making misinformation corrections difficult as they restate the false belief.
- When we accept something as true, we build mental models upon it, making it harder to remove later, like intertwined code.