How Cognitive Bias Explains Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, and Internet Malaise

Offline with Jon Favreau

Crooked Media

Society & Culture, News

4.7 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We all have a caveman brain—at least when it comes to navigating the internet. Amanda Montell, author of the new book The Age of Magical Overthinking, joins Offline to explain how the “cognitive biases” that we developed to make snap decisions in prehistoric times aren’t well suited to handle the volume and pace of the information era. She and Jon talk about biases like the halo effect, zero-sum biases, and declinism, and identify how these biases have supercharged celebrity fandom, influenced our news media, and made Democrats nostalgic for the George W. Bush era.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Is our attention the most reliable barometer for determining what is new and what is urgent and what is worthy of panic?
0:07.6	And I think the answer is increasingly no.
0:10.4	Like our fight or flight responses are not enough to determine what is worthy of our attention the way that they once were
0:22.0	Hey everyone. I'm John Favreau. You just heard from today's guest
0:25.3	podcaster and best-selling author Amanda Monteel. Some of you may already know
0:29.2	Amanda from her bestseller, cultish, the language of fanaticism, or her phenomenal podcast sounds like a cult.
0:35.7	And while I could have spent this hour talking to Amanda about all things cults, I invited her
0:40.0	on to talk about something far more offline. Her new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking,
0:46.1	in which Amanda writes about what she calls irrationality in the modern age.
0:51.5	Amanda offers an explanation for the illogical behavior permeating our lives, our
0:55.8	culture, and our politics. She argues that cognitive biases, shortcuts, our brains develop
1:01.6	to make quicker, smarter decisions about the world
1:04.7	are unequipped to handle the volume and pace of the information era.
1:10.3	According to Amanda, not only do our cognitive biases no longer serve us, they're actively
1:15.5	harming us, especially when it comes to interacting with things online.
1:19.3	Sound familiar?
1:20.3	Yeah, same here.
1:21.3	As soon as I saw the book, I I had to have around the show. We talked
1:24.4	about cognitive biases. Why Amanda thinks the internet has supercharged celebrity worship? Why nostalgia now seems
1:30.7	to drive all of our media and our politics and what we can do about it.
1:35.6	We're going to get straight into the interview this week. Max took the week off to go
1:38.9	frolic and wine country.
	...

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