Daniel

“ALL PROPERTY IS THEFT. SO ALL THEFT IS PROPERTY.
THEREFORE THESE PEARLS ARE MINE.

This is clearly rubbish because there is nothing to link the truth of the conclusion to the truth of the supporting claims. What we need is to ensure that the truth of the supporting claims is preserved by the argument. Logic is quite simply the study of truth-preserving arguments.”
― Dan Cryan, Introducing Logic: A Graphic Guide

“These days, it seems as though we’ve all gotten used to having people like that in our lives—friends, family members, or colleagues with whom we carefully restrict our conversations. Perhaps they’re just casual acquaintances on social media, but they may also be people we know intimately. I’d be willing to bet that almost everyone reading this knows someone who has undergone a dramatic shift in their deep beliefs about health, the media, the government, the pharmaceutical industry, and more over the last few years. They may not suddenly believe that the earth is flat (though a surprising number of people do). But they may well deny the existence of Covid-19 or think it’s a bioweapon. They may refuse to admit the legitimacy of the 2020 US presidential election or think that Antifa staged the storming of the Capitol. They may insist on telling the real story behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy, climate change, the events of 9/11, or the death of Princess Diana. Some may confidently declare that all vaccines are evil. Others think that antivaxxers are actually lizard people who came up with an ingenious plot to destroy humanity. (Okay, the last one was made up by the folks behind the ScienceSaves campaign to promote vaccines. But you get my point.)

It sometimes seems that the growing tide of misinformation and false beliefs has left no community or family unscathed. And jokes about lizard people aside, it’s no longer something we laugh about. When you hear the words conspiracy theory, what comes to mind probably isn’t tinfoil hats or little green men; it’s much more serious and more personal. Anytime I mention this topic, I see pained expressions. People shake their heads and tell me about their friend, their cousin, their parents, their in-laws, their kids. The ones they’re afraid to invite to parties or family events. The ones they can’t talk to at all. They just can’t wrap their minds around how that person ended up believing those things.”
― Dan Ariely, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things

“Putting it all together, we define populism as a political style that sets ‘sacred’ people against two enemies: ‘elites’ and ‘others’. In this special issue, our contributors do not necessarily take up this definition and, in some cases, they may critically depart from it. Even so, our contributors do, in different ways, reflect on the roles of religion in the stylistic inflections of populism. It is worth underlining that the definition of populism that we present here is intentionally broader than cases that involve religion. Furthermore, it points to the quasi-religious connotations of populism. It, therefore, can be used in the analysis of any kind of populism, potentially foregrounding how even the most secular styles of populist politics will inevitably instantiate distinctions between the ‘profane’ and the ‘sacred’.”
― Daniel Nilsson Dehanas, Religion and the Rise of Populism

“The personality elements of the funnel of misbelief

Personality—broadly understood as individual differences—plays a role in explaining why some of us are more susceptible to misbelief than others.

It is extremely difficult to do personality research on misbelievers, since they instinctively mistrust the motives of the researchers. However, some common traits have been observed.

Being more prone to misremembering, falling into the trap of false recall and false recognition, feeds misbelief.

Seeing patterns where none exist is linked to misbelief.

Overtrusting our intuitions is linked to misbelief.

Decision-making biases such as the conjunction fallacy, illusory correlations, and the hindsight bias are more pronounced in misbelievers.

Narcissism plays a role in misbelief.

Personality cannot be easily changed, but knowing which traits correlate with misbelief can help us to identify risky points.”
― Dan Ariely, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things