Why We Think the Way We Do with Cognitive Scientist Steven Sloman

Most of us think we know more than we do. But what if our beliefs—especially political ones—are shaped less by facts and more by the people around us? In this mind-expanding episode, Dr. Steven Sloman, professor at Brown University and co-author of The Knowledge Illusion, explores how humans think, why we rely on others for knowledge, and how sacred values—not reasoned analysis—drive political polarization. He explains the tension between intuitive and deliberative thinking, the communal nature of belief, and why asking people why they believe something rarely changes minds—but asking about consequences might. If you're wondering why people dig in on issues like immigration, tariffs, or abortion—and how to bridge deep divides—this episode is for you.

👤 Guest Bio
Dr. Steven Sloman is a professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown University, where he has taught since 1992. He’s the co-author of The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone and author of The Cost of Conviction (MIT Press). His research focuses on reasoning, decision-making, and belief formation, and his work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Scientific American.

🔗 Resource Links
The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone by Steven Sloman: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9780399184369
 
The Cost of Conviction: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9780262049825

Transcript

0:18

Well, hi, this is Josh Bertram and let me. saw something weird, but I don't think... Alright, we're good to go. We're good to go. I'm sounding okay and looking okay. Okay good Hi there, Faithful Politics listeners and viewers. If you're joining us on YouTube, guys, thanks for coming to another great episode of Faithful Politics. I am your faithful host, Josh Bertram. Our political host couldn't be here with us this morning, but that's OK. We will honor him in his absence. And so, you guys, we are excited today to be able to have on our show Dr. Steven Sloman. He is a professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown University. where he's taught since 1992. His research delves into how people think, examining reasoning, decision making, and belief formation, which is something, of course, we have intersection with all the time on our program. He is the co-author of The Knowledge Illusion, Why We Never Think Alone, a book that explores the concept of much of what we consider individual knowledge is actually derived from our communities. And he also has his latest book that we'll be talking through as well, The Cost of Conviction Through MIT. Dr. Sloman has served as editor-in-chief of the journal Cognition and is recognized as a fellow of several esteemed psychological societies. His work has been featured in prominent publications such as the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Scientific American. And it's such a pleasure to have you on the program, Steven. Thank you so much for coming on. thanks so much for having me. It's great pleasure to be here. Absolutely. And so I got to ask what got you in and interested in cognitive science and understanding how people form beliefs and make decisions. you know, it came to me very naturally in my teenage years. It was just, I was reading books and the question of how the mind worked, uh, just drove me. I, it was such a mystery and it was something that I figured there had to be some kind of scientific answer to. And then I discovered when I was a college student or a university student, as they say, where I grew up in Canada, um, that there were scientists who study this stuff. And so I got into it and uh you know, when you're doing cognitive science, one tends to be driven by both your interests and also where the light is, you know, that is the kinds of questions you can answer. And I discovered that there were people doing fascinating work on how humans think and I've been studying that ever since. So let's just take a broad view here as we're going to dive into a lot of this stuff. What, do humans think? I mean, I know that's an extremely broad question. I get that. But just what comes to your mind? Like what's going on when we are making a decision and we're taking in information and we're trying to navigate, you know, navigate this, this life? What, what's, what are some of the major things that are happening? within us that we maybe don't have awareness of. Well, so first of all, 98 % of what's going on, we do not have awareness of, right? I mean, Freud was right in at least one respect, which is that most of the mind is unconscious. That's sort of the heart of cognitive science. But look, I... You know, that's, that's a tough question to answer and every cognitive scientist and every psychologist would give you a different answer. But to me, I think the important thing to appreciate is that we're kind of confused in the way we think in the sense that we have very different systems that are driving us and they're driving us simultaneously. Right. And you can think about the dichotomy in multiple ways. So here's a first pass at it. um We have intuitive processes. That is, we have all sorts of stuff going on under the hood that delivers answers to us, right? If I ask you what Napoleon's last name was, it just comes to mind and you don't know how it comes to mind, but it does, right? Or if I ask you what five plus seven is, The answer just comes to mind and you don't know how. So there are all these very sophisticated intuitive processes and they really are sophisticated, right? They can do a lot of work. Um, so to be honest, uh, if you look at modern AI, um, which, you know, if you have any experience with, um, I, I assume it's blown you away the same way it blows me away. That is there all kinds of issues with modern AI, but the one thing I think we can agree on is it's amazing. Like it's incredible what it can do. And you know, you can think of that as a sophisticated intuitive process. Modern AI has the advantage that it's built on, uh, huge quantities of data, right? Much more than human beings intuitions are built on, but. Nevertheless, qualitatively, the processes I think are very similar, right? They're based on memory, words like pattern completion describe how it works, right? We see a little pattern and we complete it in our minds. um So that's one thing we do. But then the other thing we do is we deliberate. We engage in thoughtful processes that we are aware of. So not only are we aware of the response that's delivered, but we're also aware of the process by which the response is computed. So if I say to you, what's, you know, 36 plus 25, you can answer that too, but you have to go through some machinations in your head. And we're aware of those machinations. So that's a different kind of process. And it's one that modern AI is not so good at by the way, right? I mean, it's developing and they're working on it, but it's not nearly as impressive as what humans can do. So um I can go on and on about this. Let me just say one last thing that I think is important. Okay. These deliberative processes, um Really, for the most part, what they do is they operate on cultural systems, on things that we've acquired from our culture, like arithmetic, right? We don't, as individuals, invent arithmetic. We go to school or learn it from our parents or from our older siblings, right? So it's a cultural entity that we've incorporated. Or if we're thinking in language, language is a cultural entity. Or if we're thinking about the 10 commandments, or if we're thinking about logic or, you know, any kind of sophisticated mathematics or frameworks that are used to study history or anything, the rules of football, right? These are all cultural entities. that we can learn and we can use them to reason. So, and that's one thing that you have talked about and your research has delved into is this idea that we don't really know how to explain things. We don't really have the knowledge that we think that we do. Like, for instance, you give the example, like, try to get someone to explain how a zipper works or how a toilet works in detail. And even though we have this intuitive sense of, I get how that works. m When asked to go into more detail about it, we really suffer to do that because the knowledge is essentially stored somewhere else. What's going on there? Talk a little bit about that because I think that's so crucial how we feel so certain about things that we really don't know how they work at all. So I would love for you to work to talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so um a while ago, couple of decades ago, I started studying causal reasoning and I was, um on one hand, you know, it's amazing how people, how sophisticated people are and their ability to reason causally. Like we can, we've invented incredible machines, cars, airplanes, iPhones, right? Like these are amazing things. And they reflect a very sophisticated ability to reason causally about how things work. And, um, and yet when I tested my participants in experiments, I was sort of amazed by how poorly they understood, uh, causal systems. And, and so, um, I discovered that there had been research done by, um, couple of psychologists at Yale, Leon Rosenblatt and Frank Kyle, in which they showed that people think they understand how simple objects work better than they do. So very simple experimental procedure. You basically ask people how well they understand how zippers work or how toilets work or how ballpoint pens work. And they tell you, yeah, I understand it pretty well. They give you a number on a scale. And then you say, okay, explain how does it work? And suddenly people discover they can't answer the question. So when you again ask them how, how well they understand, they give a lower number. So this is what we refer to as the knowledge illusion. And it's the title of a book I wrote with Phil furback. Um, and the idea is that we think we understand things better than we do. Why? Well, it's because. Thinking is actually a communal process. We rely on others to think. uh So cognitive science has been aware for a long time that we use the world when we think. We use our bodies and we use other things in the world. So when kids count, they use their fingers. uh When we think about things, we might use paper or blackboards. When we play musical instruments, actually require that the instrument is in our hands, right? It helps us to play the instrument. So the world, things in the world and our bodies are part and parcel of the way we think. This is called embodiment. But the observation, um That that we made and we're certainly not the first to have made it a number of people have made it for centuries Actually is that the thing we rely on the most when we're thinking is other people Right. So we outsource a lot of our thinking a lot of our judgment a lot of our decision-making so when we think When we talk about thinking, what we argue in the book is we should talk about the community of knowledge. Rather than thinking about knowledge as something that exists inside the skull, we should think about knowledge as something that exists within a community. And that's one reason that when I was talking about deliberative processes, I was really focusing on the fact that we have these cultural systems that we use in order to think. Right. That's one way in which we rely on our communities. We rely on them in many other ways too. Like I rely on my wife, for instance, to know what we need to buy when we go to the supermarket. Right. I'm, if you ask her, she tell you I'm way too dependent on her. then she's absolutely right. Um, I love that. I mean, I think it's so good, because here's, I just want to make sure that I understand. It's almost like, you know, we have these processes that are working underneath the surface all the time. They're very sophisticated. They're making calculations. They're doing things that we're not consciously doing. And that's, guess, that would be that kind of fast thinking. And then the slow, more deliberate thinking is anytime we're bringing something into our conscious awareness and we're trying to, you know, I don't know, like you said, add a number up and we're bringing in these things like get larger numbers. We have to break it into steps and we're bringing this stuff in and we're trying to figure it out. And then you have these cultural uh systems that we all have to use that we essentially store. information. so is the idea like, so when someone is creating this like really sophisticated thing like the iPhone or something, the reason that we're able to do that is because we we have essentially created storage systems that can retrieve and, and, know, basically store that information and retrieve it on command. I mean, what, how is it that we can do all this stuff? I guess. Yeah. none of us really have it in there. I I know that we use experts, use other people, right? But how do we do that? How does that even work for us? What do we know about that? are, there are lots of answers to that question because it depends exactly what we're talking about. So like the first thing to note is there's not one person that invented the iPhone, right? There are literally thousands of people who together invented the iPhone because you know, Steve jobs is famous for having designed the thing, but of course, Right. oh And, um, and he was only able to design it because there were chips and other components that were small enough to fit in. And he didn't design those, right? Those had been designed by physicists and computer scientists and all sorts of people for decades already. So the whole enterprise was, um, involved a community, required a community. So how do we do it? Well, okay. So em I think a critical distinction uh to start with in order to answer that question is different senses of community. So on one hand, we have collaborative groups. Like you and I right now are collaborating together in order to accomplish something. And you and your wife, collaborate in order to build a family or build your church or whatever it is that you do. so the two of you share intentionality, right? You both have a common goal and you work towards that common goal in a cooperative way. So that involves storage. Yes, it involves other things. It involves processing. It involves retrieval. It involves decision-making. It involves perception, right? There are all of these different component processes that you kind of engage in tandem. And there's a big argument in the literature about whether human beings are the only animals that are capable of that kind of shared intentionality. Um, it's pretty clear things like insects aren't right. There's a question about whether chimpanzees are, there's also a question about what kind of, um, shared intentionality dogs are capable of. Some people argue dogs are, are more sophisticated in that way than chimpanzees. Maybe they're more sophisticated than humans in some ways. don't know. So, okay. So on one hand you have these collaborative groups, but then on the other hand, you have larger cultures, right? Which, which are constantly influencing us. Like. the people who wrote the great books of the past or who made the great scientific discoveries in the past or who are thought leaders today who are drawing the great interpretations. They don't know us, right? And yet we make use of their knowledge and their insights all the time. So if I'm like doing mathematics, The reason mathematics exists is because, you know, people for literally thousands of years have been, have had all sorts of insights, like the notion of zero and the notion of counting and, and, and I'm making use of that stuff all the time. So it's not that we share intentionality. It's not like we're together trying to pursue some goal. It's rather that I'm, I'm taking advantage of. insights that they've had and There are all kinds of languages we use to share those insights. We might use English We might use Japanese. We might use Yiddish So we might use natural languages, but we can also use mathematical languages and logic or Little sketches that we use to draw things on the board or computer languages uh It seems to me that the sort of quintessential human way of sharing information is through narrative. Right. So we tell stories and these stories have structure. so one thing that's interesting about these stories is not only do they encode all sorts of beliefs about how the world works, but they also encode values about how we should behave. So anyway, that's the beginning of a complicated answer. Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, I love it. And I was just listening to, know, thinking what else might be connected to that. And, you know, one question that keeps coming to my mind is that when we're talking to people and we're storing knowledge among you know, we're accessing other people's knowledge, we're getting together in different communities. Like what was, what did we do before we had like some of the technology we have? So I guess like what I've seen, let me throw this out to you and see if you can check if I'm on the right track here. So you have like, at some point before we had writing, we were just essentially storing knowledge, I guess we could, make some cave drawings or we could do some stuff, but the knowledge was essentially stored in other people's minds. Right. So we'd have to go to them and ask and then we would learn and all this stuff. So how do we actually like I guess how important was writing and and how do like is there this connection between technology and I mean there must be like this connection right between essentially having storage and retrieval devices and the ability for us to exponentially grow in our technology. I don't know, what do you think about that? know I think that's exactly right Technological transformation starting with the ability to write and then the ability to write uh on paper rather than stone, right? Or on something that lasted rather than in the sand uh up into the printing press and then, you know, radio and TV and now these incredible computer networks. So each one of those, I, I, does several things. One thing it does is that it allows us to express things in much richer ways, right? And so we get more complexity in our representations. But I completely agree with you that the other thing that that does is it enlarges the community. Yes. That's a way to think of it, yes. right. So, so I mean, it's interesting how that works. Like back in the day, um, we, we, we've had stories forever, right? I think, I think we've had stories since the beginning of civilization and those used to be oral. So at the beginning, you know, people told each other's stories and those stories got shared and the And the problem, and that's great. And it's a, it's a wonderful way to share values and to share information. But in each telling the story got distorted. It's like the game of telephone. And, and as a result, you don't have this common fixed representation that covers a large swath of people. You're relying on memory and memory is fallible. Hmm. and so the story got changed as it went. And, and if you go far enough, the, the, the story that one people had, you know, might have originated from the same place that your story does, but it looks totally different. and, but once you can write things down, then there's going to be less change and there's going to be more commonality. So you can reach out to a larger group of people. And, um, and nowadays, not only can you reach out to a larger group of people by sharing the same thing, but you can do it at unbelievable speeds. It's honestly, if you just take a step back and just think about the kind of world that we live in compared to a thousand years ago, compared to a hundred years ago, it's mind blowing. It's absolutely mind blowing. And it's like this technology is accelerating at such a pace. It's hard to even, it's hard to keep up with it. And And I don't know, it can create a lot of concern. It can create a lot of issues. You know, one thing that I see right now is that people, they don't know who to trust, right? They don't know what information to trust. They don't know what to look at. They don't know how to make sense of it. What do you think, like, what are the implications of our limited access to knowledge. Like maybe access isn't the right word because we have a ton of access, but our limited inherent knowledge. What are the implications for us today in terms of our political engagement, in terms of where we are culturally and being able to talk with people that disagree to a deep level, profound level with how we view the world, right? So you and I are able to talk, we're able to connect. You're an atheist, I'm a Christian. So at some very deep level, we have some pretty profound disagreements about reality. And yet we're able to connect, we're able to, you know, talk back and forth, understand each other. And but my guess is that the reason that we can do that is that there's a level of There's a level of live and let live in our minds. There's a level of, you know, just like, hey, um you know how we grew up things like that. But it's amazing that we're able to really connect about this and work through this. Right? Like I have to ignore maybe certain things about, you know, how you might view the world and how that might be different than I might view the world. I have to find... um I say I have to, I mean, it's kind of intuitive now, just trying to find common ground, things where we can talk and understand. I completely trust you, like in the sense of like, I don't think anything you've said to me is wrong in any way in terms of like, certainly not intentionally, I trust your expertise. And in some sense, I'm giving over my thinking to you about these subjects. I need you to tell me about what's going on there. What are the implications of the way that we think for how we should be kind of considering um other people in our society? Yeah. So I think that the key issue, well, in the way I frame the problem is that the extremists control the discourse, right? That's the big problem in my mind. But let me back up a bit and try to get there if that's okay. um So first of all, I do want to point out that um The research I did with some colleagues was to take the knowledge illusion and show it in the political domain Right and and that's actually a big focus of the book the knowledge illusion so we took political issues and and we had people express their sense of understanding and then we had people express try to explain how certain policies would lead to effects and lo and behold they couldn't think they just Of course they couldn't. what they were talking about, and they admitted it themselves. And so not only did this attempt to explain, reduce people's sense of understanding, in our studies, it also reduced their confidence in their attitudes towards policies. They became depolarized, right? Because they realized that they couldn't explain. Yeah. um This next book that I've written, The Cost of Conviction, one of the central ideas in the book is that we have two ways of making decisions. We have two ways of being persuaded of things. One is the way we think we make decisions, the way we think we're doing things. And that is by virtue of consequences or outcomes. Right? So. We think that our attitude about ice cream is based on how good the ice cream is going to taste. And we're probably right about that. m But we also think that our attitude towards, say, tariffs or immigration, right, or any of these hot button political issues is based on our analysis of what the consequences of various policies are going to be. And I just don't think that that's true for the most part. I think our attitude towards many of these policies is based on what many psychologists call sacred values. So these are values that are not about outcomes, but rather they're about actions. And they're about which actions are right and wrong. And they tend to be absolutist, right? Like thou shalt not murder. Like thou shalt not ever murder. And not, no matter how much money I give you, thou shalt not murder, right? It's an absolute value. And the claim of the second book is that that's the nature. a lot of political discourse. We talk in terms of sacred values and as a result we take absolutist positions. And not only that, but if my group, we identify with those sacred values and they come to represent our community. And what's worse is that if I'm in a different community then I feel it's my responsibility to contrast my sacred values with yours. So there's this dynamic by which groups get farther and farther apart because they sort of define key issues in opposition to the other group. And, and we're absolutist about those positions, right? So the claim is that if we just reframed issues and thought about them, instead of thinking about them in terms of absolute sacred values about actions, if instead we thought about them in terms of consequences, like what would actually be the result of this, then I think there would be a lot more common ground. And there would be, it would be much easier to have a conversation because we wouldn't be taking these absolutist positions. So I also think part of the answer to your question, like one reason you and I are getting so long along so well is because I don't think either of us have said anything which questions the other guy's sacred values. Right, right, right. And, and, and, you know, most of the things we have to talk about don't question our sacred values. It's only when we get into those domains, right? Like, I mean, I, I tell it to be perfectly honest, if you started talking about immigration or tariffs or in a way that I was opposed to, I would get my backup, right? I'm a human being and that's the way it is. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. know, I... So there's so many questions that I have and so many thoughts that are going on in my head when it comes to this stuff, because you said a few things that were just crucial to me. One, you said, yeah, like when we interview people in these experiments and we ask them, right, explain how this policy is going to move from what this person has said. to the result that you're thinking and or have you even thought about the result? That's what I wonder. I mean, is there even a thinking this is what's going to happen or it's just like this immediate. This is good. This is bad uh based on what you're saying. These absolute values, which seems to me to be far more of what drives our decision making than consequences because number one, how can we even know what the consequences will be truly? Right. I mean, especially If we're thinking, like maybe tomorrow I can predict some consequences in a year, we can see patterns, right? Once you, I mean, the further out you get, obviously, right, the much more difficult it is to predict any kind of, with any kind of real accuracy, what's going to happen. And so we want to think we're consequentialist because we want to feel like we're logical, I guess, right? That we're going to be thinking of cause and effect. uh And yet this... this fact that we can't even explain what a tariff is. Like so for instance like I'll post some things on on Facebook just to you know or on social media just to get some people like reacting at comments and things like that. And I posted some stuff just asking questions about the tariffs and many times I'll get one one word answers or two word answers you know or very short. Sometimes it'll be very very long and in depth things and yet There's no real explanation for what the tariffs are, how we know what they're going to do, why they're good or bad, except for just like really blanket statements. But again, going deeper into those things, I mean, I don't think people have thought about it very much. And it makes me wonder what's going on with these sacred values. So how are we getting these sacred values? Just taught, absorbed, do we choose them? Is it a mix there? What's going on with the sacred values? Because they drive so much of our decisions. um How do we form those? Where do they come from? Yeah. So you've said a number of things and I appreciate the opportunity to react to a few of them. If I don't get to the last one, remind me and I will. But I just want to point out that um I don't blame people for not understanding how tariffs work, right? Tariffs are incredibly complicated. I don't understand. I've done my reading. Right? I uh hang out with economists in fact, sometimes, and discuss the issue with them. And I tried really hard to understand how tariffs work and the implications and the... And I don't feel like I have a deep sense of understanding at all. And people who don't have time or interest, Not everybody needs to understand how tariffs work. Right. But I will say that our leaders need to understand how tariffs work. People who are imposing tariffs need to understand how tariffs work. They are responsible for understanding how tariffs work and making their decisions based on an analysis of the consequences of those tariffs. And this is the first, you know, controversial thing I'll say, but I don't think that's happening at all. um So, so we really do have to think about everything in terms of a community, right? Because the world is just so complicated. We can't all be masters of everything. In fact, we're lucky if we can be masters of one thing and that's enough. And then that can be our contribution, right? I understand, I try to understand something about how the mind works. Tariffs are not my bag and I'm willing to admit. and I'm willing to let other people make those decisions. So as individuals, we have to simplify if we're gonna make decisions because we just can't handle everything. And that's why sacred values are so important because sacred values are in essence a way of simplifying really, really tough decisions. um And and as a result like they really are important as I liked I wouldn't have a friend who didn't have a sacred value, right? um So in terms of where they come from, know, sacred values really are the kind of ultimate social glue, right? Like if I want to know if someone is a member of my community goes to my sort of virtual church, right? Then really the question is, do you share my sacred values? Right. And so, so I wouldn't just think about them as something that I hold as an individual, but rather something that my community holds. And which I think is most of the answer to your question of where they come from. Right. They come from my community. I mean, a decent parent spends a lot of time teaching their child sacred values and a decent community, you know, makes an effort to instill. certain sacred values within it. You know, my university community does that for sure. It tries to instill some sacred values that I agree with, like academic freedom and freedom of speech. You know, that other people complain it tries to instill other sacred values that maybe they don't agree with. And I actually think that, you know, there are some reasonable complaints about that. But it's clearly something that comes from other people. Can I just say one last thing? So my answer to your previous question was the problem with the world is that the extremes control the discourse, right? And I never actually came back to that, I realize. so... because we have this need for simplicity, because the world is so complex, because we have to simplify, it's so much easier to appeal to the kind of simplistic arguments you find on the extremes than it is to actually analyze a situation that I think many of us find ourselves appealing to the extremes. And that's the sense in which they control the discourse. So I may not have an extreme view about immigration or abortion. I may have a balanced view, but if you question me, you know, I don't know enough to really articulate a sophisticated position. And so I'm just going to find slogans that I've heard. And the slogans that come to mind are the ones that were generated by the extremes because they're so simplistic. And that's what that's the. deep sense in which they really control not just how we talk, but how we think about things at the moment. And of course, they're trying to appeal to sacred values to get people motivated. Maybe they wouldn't put it that way. Right. But if someone wants, the leader of Republican or Democrat, Democratic Party, they want your vote, they're going to try to figure out what's going to motivate you. And the things that are going to motivate you are going to be the things that cause fear, cause concern, cause some kind of very visceral reaction and touch into one of these. sacred values. And, you know, it's funny because people will hold on to sacred values, right? Even if the consequences are harmful. And of course they would probably come and say, well, how do I know that they're harmful? How do I know like, what is this person's interpretation and how they're saying it's harmful? So method becomes very important and even diagnosing and describing what harm is. But why do you think we hold on to this? so deeply, like what are the cognitive and emotional mechanisms that make this thinking so hard to dislodge and get rid of or not get rid of this and we want to do, but kind of take a step back and critically examine. Well, I think there are two interrelated things. One is that we're desperate to understand our worlds, right? We want to have explanations of things, but the world's just too hard for us to understand. And so we latch on to these simple rules that give us a sense of understanding. So that's part of it, but that's actually the small part of it. The bigger part of it is that Our sacred values unite us with the people around us. They are the glue that holds our communities together. And so, you know, the reason I can't let go of certain values is because in order to let go of them, I would have to disconnect from my community. And you know, and that's hard. mean, not only is it hard, it's bad for us, right? Like back in the day, it was bad for us that it um opened us to danger, literally, because we were alone. But, you know, being alone and lonely is like the worst thing you can do to a human being, right? um And so... you know, we do what's necessary to maintain our communities. And beyond that, we do what's necessary to defend our communities. So when people attack those basic values, we feel the need to defend ourselves, not just because we're defending our ideas, but we're defending our community's ideas. It's like we're defending our family, right? And that's a very emotional thing. So it's this network of interrelations that really holds these things in place and creates these divisions. And so thinking of it like a glue is so important. And it just makes me lead like what disintegrates that glue? Like when someone is moving from maybe from one community to another, like what's going on in our beliefs and how we form beliefs? how do we change beliefs essentially? So like I'm a conservative and I thought about this like, what would it take for me to become like a full fledged liberal? Or what would it take for me to become an atheist? Or what would it take for me to become, you know, Jewish or to convert to Judaism or Islam or Hinduism? And I think about that because it feels like these things are so deeply entrenched. It's hard to even imagine from a first-person perspective. And yet we know that people would make these changes all the time, either deconverting, reconverting, converting for the first time or like... What would it take for you to become a Christian or you to become a Muslim or something like that? Like what processes happen that actually chip at these core values and allow us to change? So again, I think to think about that, like it's a great question. It's actually the question that's driving me for years. And I don't have a good answer to it. I don't think anybody has a good answer to it. But I do think that um if you're gonna pose the question, you've got to pose it slightly differently. Because it's not just about What causes us as individuals to change our minds like i'll tell you how you change someone's mind, right? The way you change someone's mind is you pick them up and you put them in a different community That'll do it, right? So yeah, obviously not so simple and and you know will that that'll do it most of the time but not all the time and it sort of depends on um how close their connections are, uh, to their old community. And, but my point is that our cognitions, right? The things that hold our values and beliefs in place are strongly tied to our social connections. I'm actually surprised to hear you say that you find you come across people all the time. who changed their minds because I rarely come across people who change their minds. In fact, my number one observation is that people are intransigent. I mean, I've never seen anybody in a faculty meeting change their minds. Like it just hasn't happened in my entire existence as a faculty member. So, you know. I guess maybe let me rethink that. I've heard stories about it, is what I should say. Or I've met people who can't, in my context, people, like for the pastor, it's about changing minds. I mean, that's like what you're supposed to do. Or help people either change minds, if they're not in the right place. Hmm. theologically or help them stay in the right place, you know, and again, I my personality is one where I want people to wrestle through stuff. So I'm not authoritarian and personality. I'm not trying to shove something down someone's throat. And yet at the same time, I definitely have a deep conviction like, hey, think I have a I think I have certain things right about reality. Of course. And this is where the question comes from because I'm going to ask the same thing. Like, how can I think I have something right? I'm sure you think you have your right, or at least to the extent that you feel comfortable being in that. And then again, how much do even choose what you believe? Because what you just said to me is you take them and you put them in a different community. And when you put someone in different community, it sounds like there are sub these subconscious ways of processing things. and they're kind of what's changing minds essentially. Is that accurate? So here, here's the tension and, and I, I don't have a good answer to this. So partly that's accurate. is partly our minds. What we believe is a function of ideas and explanations that we've generated. Right. So like I vote for one person instead of another. And I generally have a reason for it. And that reason is clearly not irrelevant to the vote that I cast. But often, like what we as human beings do because we're members of a community of knowledge and because uh we don't have complete models of everything inside our heads. Is that we really deeply rely on other people, right? Like, so much so that often our opinions are just channels of what others have told us and we haven't thought things through at all. In part because it's dangerous for us to think things through, right? In part, it's a lot of energy. It might take more knowledge and skill than we have. But it also takes courage. It absolutely does, dude. a lot of courage, right? So. a pastor, imagine me coming up and then, guys, you know, I've been thinking lately, I'm not sure about this whole God thing. Like, what does that do to my livelihood, right? That means I have to, once I've started considering that, not considering, I because getting into other people's mindsets, but once I'm like, at that point, I mean, then maybe I, you know, maybe I shouldn't be in ministry, right? And a lot of people would say, it's not even maybe, you definitely shouldn't be in ministry, right? And yet, I have heard of several pastors that their livelihood was tied up in this truth. It's not just pastors, right? There's all sorts of people. Their livelihood gets tied up in the truth. The cost of changing your mind. Talk about the cost of conviction. The cost of changing your mind is so much that's not even worth it. Or you're not going to talk about it, right? Yeah. So I, it would be great if we had some way of reading people's unconscious and, and knowing whether, you know, the reason they're spouting the views they spout is because they really believe them or because they want to hold onto their job or hold onto their community or, you know, because there's some, you know, person of the opposite sex who they're trying to attract. mean, there are a million things that motivate us. uh But absolutely, our social ties determine our beliefs to a large degree. So what would you say about to to someone who they think that abandoning sacred values and maybe even addressing, can that even be done? But if they, if someone is just thinking about it simplistically, uh abandoning sacred values for consequentialism means compromising our integrity. What, what, what are you, what's your answer to someone who might be feeling that like, yeah, like You're just about the outcome instead of just about having conviction. What would you say? Yeah, that's a great question. um I think what I would say is if you really believe that this sacred value is going to lead to terrible harmful consequences, or even if you think it's possible, then I would ask them whether they thought that it really em did require more integrity. to hold onto that sacred value. Right? So like once, once you see what the consequences are and let's say the consequences are devastating, then in light of that, if you, it's not clear to me that very many people would retain the belief that it requires integrity to hold onto the sacred value. Yeah, that makes sense, especially when it can be made clear to them that these are the consequences for people that they care about or even them, right? Like when we can put the consequences on other people, well, they deserve that. Or you think of... just sorry, sorry to interrupt, but what one point that I think is really important here is that people don't make fine distinctions between sacred values and consequences. In fact, most of the vast majority of people aren't even aware of the distinction. And so when we have beliefs and we're spouting those beliefs and trying to persuade others, often we don't distinguish, right? Like there's this great Bernie Sanders quote where he's talking about healthcare and he just completely miss mishmashes sacred values and consequences. Like we tend to think, you know, if we have a sacred value, the tariffs should be imposed. Then we think the effect of tariffs is going to be good. And if we have a sacred value that says they shouldn't be imposed, then we tend to think that the consequences of them is going to be bad. So we tend to put them together, right? And that, your question is a good one, but in that sense, it's kind of hypothetical. Cause most people will argue that, the consequences of my sacred values are necessarily good. And it's simply pointing out the distinction and causing them to understand that it's even possible that the consequences will be bad. um Could be a revelation for a lot of people. Yes, I really like that. And what do you think the, how important is method in all of this in the sense of trying to understand and even ask people, number one, understand your own, how did you get to this view? Ask that question. And then helping other people articulate, how is it that they've actually come to believe this? whatever it may be about tariffs, about abortion, about immigration, the best uh company or whatever it is. uh How do we, when we're working through this kind of stuff in our own lives, how do we... um how do we question them and learn how to help other people question the way that we got to it? And how important is that method for understanding how, like even gaining common ground with people, do you think? So what our studies show is that when you ask people to explain why they believe what they believe, ah you have very little effect on them. And I think the reason for that is that that's something we think about all the time, right? Like you're not actually addressing much that's new. Cause people spend a lot of time justifying themselves. If, if they've spoken about a subject, then it's likely what they've spoken about is why they believe what they believe. What, what our studies suggest is that the way to get people to open their minds is not by asking them why they believe what they believe. It's rather to ask them what the consequences. of the policy that they're endorsing would be. That is, think about the issue on its own terms. Take yourself out of it and rather think about, you know, what effect this thing is going to have on the world, regardless of what, why you believe what you, you know, when, when you ask people why they believe what they do, they'll say, well, because someone else who I really respect believes it. or because, or they'll appeal to a sacred value or they'll say something that isn't really about the issue at hand in the sense of describing what outcomes it's going to cause. So you've got to sort of get people outside themselves in order to open minds and I think have an open conversation. That's super interesting because that's very surprising to me that because you feel like when you would ask someone for whatever reason my intuition was that when you ask someone, hey, can you you can you help me understand like why you believe this that like oftentimes they can't do that right or like maybe it's oh, you know, I don't really know why I believe that I just do or this person has. you know, you know, like you said, there's someone I respect and then you're like, well, how do you know that they believe it? Right. Or how did they get like kind of keep asking those questions and might open like their mind. I guess I guess it's more like. Yeah, like when when you're when you. I just thought when people would, when you'd ask them to try to explain it and they'd go in and not be able, it's like somewhat of a zipper thing or similar to, you know, the toilet thing. like, well, I don't really know how to explain it, but I guess that might be different than why someone believes it versus explaining it. our studies show. But of course, you know, we're not pastors and we don't have the same relationship with these people that you do. And so it may be that it is an effective question for you. It's just not an effective question for us as scientists investigate, you know, belief in this particular issue. And the difference would be that I know them, that there's a trust there. What would be the difference, do you think? Well, the difference may be that they, they feel a stronger need to not only be honest with you, but to be revealing. Right. So when we ask them why they believe what they believe, like they're just basically writing down answers. And so, you know, they're kind of coming up with reasons on the spot, but those reasons don't have any weight. We're not going to be testing them later. We're not going to be coming back to them later. They're not building a human relationship. Exactly. That makes so much sense. So, okay. So here's kind of the last big question. Unfortunately, our time is running out. Maybe we can have you on again. This is so fascinating to me. I love this stuff. um Yes. So, so if you're thinking about the implications of your findings, your research in your book and you're tasked with giving like a lecture or like really just giving like, hey, I want the most important thing from my findings. And this is what you're supposed to present to like this group of leaders. They're going to go out and they're going to be world changers. What is it that you want them to know? This is like so important. Like this is key. If you miss this, you miss basically all of it in some level. What would you say to them? what would you say is the most important finding or implication from your research in this latest book? Um, I think the most important, implication is for them to understand that it's very natural for us to think in terms of these sort of absolute sacred values and that we often think that we're thinking in consequentialist terms. We often think that we're setting policy or making decisions. in order to maximize everybody's benefit and to minimize costs. But it turns out that a lot of our thought is about which actions our community deems appropriate and inappropriate. And so simply being aware of that, not, not ignoring our sacred values, not negating them, not thinking that we shouldn't think about appropriateness. Of course we should. But we should be aware of the degree to which that's governing our decision making and the degree to which we're actually neglecting the consequences of things. And just as a real quick bonus, like so if we're thinking about like how do we identify absolute views versus a consequentialist? And you said like most people, we don't even think about that because we assume if we believe it, it works, right? Why would we believe something that doesn't work? Whatever working means, right? But we essentially think it's going to be best for the, you know, people. it's going to have the best consequences. So how do we distinguish between something that, this is an absolute thing, and this is something that I've really understood the consequences. Yeah, that's a, another good question. Um, so the, language of, of consequentialism is often about the future, right? This is what's going to happen in the future. This is my prediction. This will be the effect. Also the language of causation, right? This is the cause. This is the effect. Whereas the language of sacred values is much more sort of universalist. and about fundamental invariant truths that don't change over time. That's what it means to have an absolute sacred value about action. So I think you can look at the language in order to get some sense of how people are construing themselves at the moment. But look, these things are a matter of framing, right? So I don't believe like if you take, can take any issue you want and we can talk about the sacred values associated with it, right? We can frame it that way, or we can talk about the consequences associated with it. We can frame it that way. And they're really different ways of talking. That's really good. I really, really like that. Man, how can people follow your work, Steven? And how can they, is there a preferred vendor you'd like them to get the book from, the new book? And yeah, how can they keep up with what you're doing? Yeah, I should have a better answer to that question than I do the The book is coming out in a couple of weeks. They can get it at MIT Press It'll certainly be available on you know, your your favorite vendor whether it's Amazon or something else What I should have done is brought some kind of discount code and I'm going to talk to the marketing person at MIT Press and see if I can edit this. put it in the notes. That's not a problem at all. Oh, okay, great. Well, I will do that. I will write to them right now and see if we can arrange that. That will be great. Well, Stephen, thank you so much for being on the program. It's been a real pleasure to talk with you. Fast and I'd love to do it again. Just really appreciate your insight. Well, thanks so much. It's been great for me too. And I'd love to be on, uh, if you, if you'd have me again, absolutely. And to our viewers, guys, make sure that you check out Dr. Stephen Sloman's work, The Knowledge Illusion. He's got the latest book, The Cost of Conviction, coming out through MIT Press. Make sure you check those out. We'll put links to everything in the show notes. And make sure you guys like and subscribe. Hack the algorithm so we can get this great content out to more people like you and those that will need it. And we always try to get you guys good content so that you can grow. and share with those who might need to grow as well, or you think would enjoy it. And until next time, guys, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. Thanks, God bless.