67: "We need to develop Mental Immunity against epidemics of nonsense" - Andy Norman - Sentientist Conversation

Sentientism

Andy Norman (https://andynorman.org/ & https://twitter.com/DrAndyNo), PhD is the author of "Mental Immunity". His work has appeared in Scientific American, Psychology Today, Skeptic, Free Inquiry & The Humanist. He has appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, public radio, The BBC & The Young Turks. He champions the emerging science of mental immunity as the antidote to bad ideas, disinformation, propaganda, hate & division. Andy directs the Humanism Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University & is the founder of CIRCE, the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”

Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on the Sentientism YouTube.

We discuss:

0:00 Welcome

- Has philosophy neglected the most important questions?

2:02 Andy's Intro - "Mental Immunity"

- Philosophy & critical thinking

- Boosting the mind's immune system. Helping minds filter out bad ideas

- Cognitive Immunology - the science of mental immune health

- Combatting epidemics of nonsense

3:30 What's Real?

- Raised w/out religious affiliation. Quaker meetings

- "Most Quakers are pretty chill with a naturalistic view of the world"

- "Supernatural believing is unaccountable believing" - "Nature can hold us accountable"

- If our beliefs aren't held accountable they drift away from reality & from the beliefs of each other

- Non-reality belief is spreading & causing social dislocation

- Do rights exist or are they just a useful construct?

- Being shy/sad at school & being told "just smile" as "spiritual" advice. "People just started smiling back"

- The ancient roots of naturalism in philosophy

- Supernaturalism, the dark ages & Enlightenment

- "The germ theory of disease probably would have been discovered centuries earlier were it not for religious orthodoxy"

- Hobbes, Locke & Mill

- "Human welfare improved dramatically in the wake of the Enlightenment"

- Pre-enlightenment roots of naturalism & sentiocentrism. Al Ma'arri.

- Arab cultures preserved naturalism during the dark ages

- Naturalism before humans & in other animals?

- Naturalism is adaptive to the degree that it enables survival/reproduction

- How correlated are the accuracy & usefulness of a belief?

- The power of social norms, tribalism & belonging re: bad beliefs

- Performative preference falsification & prevalence of latent/suppressed atheism even w/in religious communities

- Dennett: Many believe it's good to believe in god rather than actually believing in god

- "Reality-based worldviews are destined to win out in the long run... because they better serve humanity... caring about other tribes as well"

... and much more. See Sentientism.info and YouTube for full show notes.

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Thanks for the post-production, Graham.

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