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Not Born Yesterday

The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe

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Not Born Yesterday

De : Hugo Mercier
Lu par : Jonathan Todd Ross
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Why people are not as gullible as we think

Not Born Yesterday explains how we decide who we can trust and what we should believe - and argues that we're pretty good at making these decisions. In this lively and provocative book, Hugo Mercier demonstrates how virtually all attempts at mass persuasion - whether by religious leaders, politicians, or advertisers - fail miserably. Drawing on recent findings from political science and other fields ranging from history to anthropology, Mercier shows that the narrative of widespread gullibility, in which a credulous public is easily misled by demagogues and charlatans, is simply wrong.

Why is mass persuasion so difficult? Mercier uses the latest findings from experimental psychology to show how each of us is endowed with sophisticated cognitive mechanisms of open vigilance. Computing a variety of cues, these mechanisms enable us to be on guard against harmful beliefs, while being open enough to change our minds when presented with the right evidence. Even failures - when we accept false confessions, spread wild rumors, or fall for quack medicine - are better explained as bugs in otherwise well-functioning cognitive mechanisms than as symptoms of general gullibility.

Not Born Yesterday shows how we filter the flow of information that surrounds us, argues that we do it well, and explains how we can do it better still.

©2020 Hugo Mercier (P)2020 Recorded Books Philosophie Seelische & Geistige Gesundheit Wissenschaft

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As the title suggests, Mercier's upbeat message is that people, aka we, are less gullible than we are often let to believe or we hear people expound and complain about in papers and on media. He has a concept, which he calls "open vigilance" that I think , I will try to retain and remember. Basically, it is a concept that says that when we are told something, we first check the plausibility of the content, given our priors. I suppose this idea is valid and recognizable. I don't believe everything I hear, and if they go against my priors, I don't give it much hearing. Likewise, I know that people with strong priors different from my own about say the importance of nature or nurture, it is a lost or hopeless battle even to engage in a discussion. Another useful concept, he mentions, is an idea about 'burning bridges'. The idea is that people may express blatantly erroneous or provocative opinions or beliefs in order to burn their bridges to other groups and make them more credible in the eyes of the group to which one wants to belong. When someone has burned his or hers bridges, then she can to a higher degree be trusted, then where can she go? It echoes the old proverb about someone, often the neophyte, being more popish than the pope. So when you trash talk other groups or their cherished ideas, you make your self more believable and trustworthy to the new group that you want to adhere to as you get still more persona non grata to the other. He also speaks about concepts like intuitive beliefs and reflective beliefs. Most false beliefs that people have are 'just' reflective beliefs. He has one example fromm Pizza-gate, about the belief that from the basement of a pizzashow the Clintons were running or were part of some pedophilic conspiracy. Now, the guy, who actually stormed the place to save the children he had an intutive belief: he genuinely believed it, and acted on his belief, but everyone else who just commented on it and wrote about it on social media only held as a reflective belief.
I think the book is a good reminder that we were not born yesterday. In fact, if we were all gullible, communication would not be beneficial and should be selected for. Either communication would completely disappear through natural selection or a system of, well, open vigilance. The book has many interesting examples, and is clearly written and told. What might be a surprise to many is how little succes and effect propaganda, advertisement and political campaigns have in persuading people of anything. I think, he is right about that. But, at the same time, he also tells us, that on many topics, we don't have strong or clear priors, so often we just go with the priors, which are professed by the group to which we belong. In some way, it's true that we were not born yesterday, but nor are we born to know everything, care about always knowing the truth and doing what is just or stand alone outside any groups because this was where our open vigilance lead us. I think that what I was missing in his thought was an explanation as to why some beliefs become intuitive. At one point, he spoke about about how people have used reflective beliefs in order to make atrocities, which they wanted to commit. The false beliefs about tutsies in Rwanda, or Jews in Germany was thus just a pretext to commit the atrocities. But, I just ask myself, from where did this wich to do these atrocities arise?

Open vigilance and burning bridges

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Some interesting arguments and good calls, in particular on the difference between intuitive (=practically relevant) and reflective (=no behavioral consequences) views. The idea that some arguments don't actually induce behavior, but are, on the contrary, mere justification for a foregone behavior, is worthwhile. However, the author also employs quite a few flimsy arguments and engages in moving the goalpost more than once.

Mixed bag

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