The chapter explores the concept of magical thinking and magical overthinking, discussing how humans create fictional stories to navigate the complexities of the world. It delves into how modern culture and societal changes have heightened irrationality, leading to persistent negative feelings. The conversation also touches on online interactions, cognitive biases, idol dynamics, and the dangers of manifestation beliefs in promoting harmful conspiratorial thinking.
Raise your hand if you've ever belittled a stranger online, made a decision based on astrology, or, heaven forbid, fallen for a conspiracy theory. No? Well, then, consider yourself lucky. And if your hand is raised, don't feel bad, because it turns out in our Information Age the cognitive biases that kept us alive a few millennia ago now make us susceptible to bouts of extreme irrationality. How this happened, and what we can do about it, is the subject of a brand new book by linguist Amanda Montell called "The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality."