Why do we all believe our own truths so strongly?

And is there any possibility that we can at least see other points of view?

What is steel manning?

And why is it so important?

What does any of this have to do with F. Scott Fitzgerald or John Keats or the future of our society?

Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me, David Eagleman.

I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford.

And in these episodes, we come from the perspective of the brain to understand why and how

our lives look the way they do.

Today's episode is about something that I've talked about on here before, which is the extreme and seemingly growing polarization that characterizes much of our society at this moment.

And I'm interested in it from the point of view of neuroscience.

I'm not banging on about any particular political position here. What I'm interested in

is how we come to form our truths and why we each believe in them so strongly. For all of us,

with whatever political issue, our intuition usually is to say, well, I know that I'm correct

about this.

But the important part to point out is that, depending on the issue, roughly half of the

society has a different point of view than you do.

And on almost any hot-button political issue, you'll find that the people on the other

side of the issue have exactly the same dedication and passion that you do,

the same absolute belief that they are right and that you are misinformed.

Generally, it's hard to see this with politics, and I don't want to ruffle any feathers here,

but I just want to point out that it's often easier to see this with something like religion.

...