227. Richard Nisbett on Thinking & Reason

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2021

⏱️ 135 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this wide-ranging conversation Shermer and Nisbett discuss Nisbett’s research showing how people reason, how people should reason, why errors in reasoning occur, how much you can improve reasoning, what kinds of problems are best solved by the conscious mind and what kinds by the unconscious mind, and how we should think about intelligence, along with the controversies over group differences and genetic influences on I.Q. scores and why Charles Murray (The Bell Curve) is wrong in inferring genetic causes for group differences in I.Q.. Nisbett also shows that self-knowledge can be dramatically off-kilter and points to ways to improve it, and demonstrates how different cultures have radically different ways of reasoning and feeling, and how this led to his most famous research showing the difference between Northerners and Southerners in rates of violence, the culture of honor, and a hair-trigger for slights and insults. The two also discuss the #metoo, BLM, antiracism, and woke movements today in context of his psychological research.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Michael Sherman Shower Show.
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0:35.3	none other than Professor Bart Ermin,
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0:50.0	So I just touch on this and here's a list of the different lectures. There are 24 30 minute
0:56.4	lectures, for example, the Christian conquest of Rome, pagan religions in the Roman world, Judaism in the Roman world, Christianity in the Roman
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1:10.3	missions, the conversion of Paul, and so on and so on all the way to the beginning of a Christian
1:16.1	Roman Empire and the Triumph of Christianity. I read Bart's book on this and that's what he was on the show for.
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