Comment on Connecting Your Beliefs (a call for help)

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:02:24 GMT

I wouldn't be so sure. Tooby and Cosmides keep finding evidence that our brains are organized to some degree in terms of adaptive modules, like "cheater detection" and "status seeking" which work spectacularly well in the domain for which they evolved, and then fail miserably when expanded to other domains. If we had a "modus tollens" module or a "Bayesian update" module, we'd be a lot smarter than we are; but apparently we don't, because most people are atrociously bad at modus tollens and Bayesian updating, but remarkably good at cheater detection and status seeking.

(If you haven't seen it already, look up the Wason task experiments. They clearly show that human beings fail miserably at modus tollens---unless it's formulated in terms of cheater detection, in which case we are almost perfect.)

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