#261 — Belief & Identity

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Jonas Kaplan about the neuroscience of belief change. They discuss the illusory truth effect, the backfire effect, failures of replication, “The Fireplace Delusion,” the connection between reason and emotion, wishful thinking, persuasion and the sense of self, conspiracy theories, the power of incentives, in-group loyalty, religion, mindfulness, cognitive flexibility, and other topics.

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Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
0:09.1	This is Sam Harris.
0:11.3	Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber
0:14.8	feed and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation.
0:18.6	In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe
0:22.5	at samharis.org.
0:24.5	There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with
0:28.3	other subscriber-only content.
0:30.7	We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support
0:34.6	of our subscribers.
0:36.0	So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.
0:41.3	Okay, well today I'm presenting a conversation on belief and identity, and in particular
0:56.1	it's focused on the problem of belief change and resistance to belief change.
1:02.9	The significance of which both personally and collectively is really hard to exaggerate.
1:10.2	We really are in the belief formation, maintenance, and occasionally belief change business.
1:18.0	When you look at what it takes to get millions of us and billions of us to cooperate with
1:25.4	one another, it really is just a matter of persuading one another to change our representations
1:32.8	of the world and converge on common projects.
1:38.1	And failing that we resort to forcing one another to converge, and that eventually becomes
1:43.7	a bloody mess.
1:46.2	So belief change and its impediments is incredibly important to understand.
1:53.0	And this is just a first volley in that effort.
	...

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