What We Get Wrong About Human Rationality - Hugo Mercier

Hugo Mercier is a cognitive scientist and evolutionary psychologist. Cognitive science has revealed that human cognition is rife with biases and what are often perceived as "flaws." But why would evolution lead to the development of such traits? This podcast explores how these so-called flaws may not actually be flaws at all, but rather adaptations that serve specific purposes, whose true evolutionary functions we have failed to see. In this podcast, discover what we often misunderstand about cognitive biases, what cognition actually evolved for, how the faculty of reason and higher-order intelligence developed, the power of intuitive reasoning, why we use all of our brain rather than just 10%, and more... TIMESTAMPS 00:00 What We Get Wrong About Reason 03:18 Why Did Reason Evolved if Its Flawed? 07:4 Reason Evolved To Convice Others and Communicate 15:50 Reason as Distributed Cognition For Civilization 20:38 When Reasoning Goes Wrong 25:10 "Intuitive" vs "Rational" dichotomy 31:17 Its Hard to Correct Our Intuition Brain 35:48 Intuitions About Who To Trust 42:35 How Has Science Evolved?