Title: Your Deceptive MindAuthor: Steven Novella

Lecture 1: The necessity of thinking about thinking

Aliens exist?

MetacognitionThinking about thinking

Unexamined life not worth living

Need to evaluate claims e.g. exercise machine only by 4 minsHow to evaluate these claims?How we run our civilization?

This course premis: We are our brainSelf aware organ, feel, believe, extrapolate, our greatest strength, but also defective

Human natureWe are not logical but highly emotional, we follow the pathway of least resistance

We are not born the master critical thinker just like not a violinist or a soccer player

We make a lot of error while thinking, thinking plagued, think we know to be true but are false, memories unreliabile, heuristic, need sense of how relieable conclusions are

SceienceLead us to conclysion that are actually trueNot going after a particular conclusion but the processNatural effects have natural causesAll conclusion are provisional i.e. all beleifs have error bars, open to revisions when new data comes in

Conspiracies, False claims, panic with earthquake

One we invest in a conclusion we twist,

We are living in the age of misinformation rumors, urban myths, friend of a friend story, malicious stories, capitalistic society, marketing manipulation, deception, fraud, sort through deceptive claims

We tend to be compelled by stories e.g. powerband - no effect whatsoever when blinded to the studyCritical thinkingExamine all premise, facts, assumptionsExamine the logic, is it biasedExamine motivations people are good are rationalizing their beliefs think if this belief is true then what else has to be trueCheck with others - you may not know what you dont knowBe humble know your own limits, nobody can everythingLevel of uncertainity

e.g. flawed evidence => big foot walking in America, all we have is hoax e.g. imprints of feet, how reliable are eyewitness accounts, excusing the evidence e.g. it can disappear at well, thus, look out for hoaxes

UFOWhy do people believe we are visited by aliens?

Critical thinkingCan be learntEmperical test our beleifs by comparing it to the worldLiberates us from mutually exclusive beleifsIt is a defence mechanism from the fraudulent world we live in

Lecture 2: The neuroscience of belief

Sherlock homesUnderstood critical thinking but believed in spiritual thinking BrainBelieving machineWhat drives this motivation to believe?Default mode use emotions to arrive at beleifs then use reasoning to justify themEmotions make quick decisions fear, love, disgust, happiness rather than calculating the risk

Abraham Maslow psychological needs emotional needsFeel safe, loved, self esteem self actualizationReward/Punish section of our brainOur brain wants desire for controlSuperstition e.g. athlete wearing a special shirt, not having control gives us the illusion of seeing patterns in random eventsSimplify and oversimplifying e.g. simplest diagnosis for complex symptoms (noise)Also want universe to have meaning - comfortTo make sense all complex things in life, reality stuff just happens, we want to believe big events must happen big cause (conspiracy)Need for self esteemBecause we are social animals, need to develop social skills causes us to interpret the world in a way that is favorable to us aka Fundamental Attribution Error good at rationalizing away inconsistencies to protect our selfesteemWant to make our own behavior seem consistent with otherse.g. mother and blind daughter (stem cells) convincing herself that her decision was not a mistake marketers explot this human need to stay consistent e.g. final objection, would you say this product is useful

Congnitive dissonance theory: When we have 2 believes, we dont like this feeling, we tend to rationalize away the way the belief that we dont want (make up stories)

Resoprocity (jmorality or ustice)One track there is one person other track 5 person most people switch the track but not throwing the person on the trackWearing a cardigan worn by a serial killer sense of disgust or essence, it is spiritually contaminated, it doesnt feel right to usWe process living things different from non-living thingsSupernatualNeed for meaningStrenghtened by confirmation bias

Children are not good at hiding their emotion because their frontal lobe is not developed

Adults only good at rationalizing the decisions

Lecture 3: Errors of Perception

Believing is seeing not seeing is believing

How our brain activity is constructive and destructive? E.g. red panda sighting

You cannot trust anything you see

Our brain constructs reality based on all sensory activity that comes in

BrainHas to make assumptions to what is being seene.g. optical illusions 3d images from 2d inputsshades and sizes, constructing images in more than way, moon horizon illusions, no one is immune to these illusions, cube illusion, lighting from above illusion, old/young woman illusion

Our brain good at connecting the dotsDifferent senses can affect each other e.g. white wine with red dye was perceived as red wineOur brain adjusts the mouth movements depending on what you hear

Sound and seeing constructed illutiosn because brain knows that they are meant to be synchronizedAs long as the sound and sight are with in 80 ms of each other (27m), your brain will perceive them to be synchronousAfter 27 m it will become asynchronousOur brain also sees into the future i.e. catching the ball accounts for 80 ms delaySeneshesia one sensory information from one area to the other e.g. hearing smell, or smelling light

We filter out most of the sensory information; intentional blindness (only middle of thumb), changed blindess changing one person to another,

MultitaskingResearch shows people cant do thisPeople shift attention from one task to otherDividing cognitive resources

Thus, eyewitness testimony is erroneousPeople think added perceived pieces are realityBrain fills in the gapsWe have imperfect view of reality