The human brain has evolved perfectly for wrongness. When presented with a new situation or new data, we make assumptions based on similar things we’ve encountered in the past. Once we make those assumptions, we find it difficult to change our minds. We are herd-like creatures: If the people around us believe something, we’re more likely to believe it too. If someone or something does manage to convince us a belief is wrong, in retrospect, we usually won’t remember it that way. We’ll recall being more correct originally than was actually the case.
These are some of the tools we’ve picked up over the millennia to make sense of reality, to cope with a chaotic universe in which everything from asteroids to poisonous berries is trying to kill us. For the purposes of being smart enough to advance the species another generation, they’re great tools. There’s a reason we’re overwhelming the planet. But when it comes to solving some of humanity’s more complex problems, well, it’s safe to there are sharper ones buried elsewhere in the shed. Continue reading “The Unbearable Wrongness Of Beings”