Hard Knox with Amanda Knox Why You Believe Weird Things (Michael Shermer)
16 snips
Mar 24, 2026 
Michael Shermer, founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine and long‑time science writer, joins to tackle truth and belief. He defends objective truth, contrasts political versus empirical claims, and explains Bayesian fallibilism. They debate whether reasoning evolved to win arguments, redesigning juries for truth-seeking, the hard problem of consciousness, meditation’s limits, and the clash between compatibilism and determinism.
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Change Your Mind When Evidence Changes
- Do change your mind when evidence changes; treat belief as a confidence level you can update.
- Shermer recommends moving away from tribal identity tied to fixed beliefs to make changing your mind a virtue.
Tinder Swindler Shows Social Cues Can Fool Rational People
- Shermer recounts the Tinder Swindler con: love-bombing, plane trips, and staged emergencies led four women to send large sums.
- He stresses we only see the victims, not countless people who rejected the con, so general gullibility is overstated.
Brains Evolved To Argue Not Just To Know
- Reason evolved partly to win arguments for one's tribe, not solely to track objective reality, making cognition biased toward persuasion.
- Shermer frames our brains as more lawyer-like than scientist-like, explaining persistent motivated reasoning and bias blind spots.
