i like dawkins point a lot there, and i'd want to be pretty acumenical in its application. It doesn't seem to me we should be drilling cansianism into kids until they're 18 any more than we should be drill our religious preferences into them. So many people treat their beliefs is like heirloom furniture to be hung on to generation after generation. And fellow human beings who might challenge those beliefs are like the house guests that about have worn out their welcome by questioning them. Iht i recommend flipping that on its head. Treat your beliefs as the house guests that might wear out their welcome at any time if you're not willing to let go of beliefs when
Astonishingly irrational ideas are spreading. COVID-19 denial, anti-vaxxers compromising public health, conspiracy thinking hijacking minds and inciting mob violence, toxic partisanship cleaving our nations, the return of Flat Earth theory… What the heck is going on? Why is all this happening, and why now? More important, what can we do about it? Does our “right to our opinion” trump our responsibilities? Does the resulting ethos effectively compromise mental immune systems, allowing “mind parasites” to overrun them? Are conspiracy theories, evidence-defying ideologies, and garden-variety bad ideas all species of mind parasites, each of which employs clever strategies to circumvent mental immune systems? In this conversation, based on the book Mental Immunity, Andy Norman shows that minds and cultures have immune systems, and that they really can break down. Fortunately, he assures us that they can also be built up: strengthened against ideological corruption. Can his ideas revolutionize our capacity for critical thinking?