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Crony Beliefs | Melting Asphalt

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[Note: if you prefer audio, you can listen to this essay narrated by Grognor on his excellent podcast Second Enumerations. —Ed.] Credits up front: This essay draws heavily from Overcoming Bias, Less Wrong, Slate Star Codex, Robert Kurzban, Robert Trivers, Thomas Schelling, and Jonathan Haidt (among others I'm certainly forgetting). These are some of my all-time favorite sources, so I hope I'm doing them justice here. — For as long as I can remember, I've struggled to make sense of the terrifying gulf that separates the inside and outside views of beliefs. From the inside, via introspection, each of us feels that our beliefs are pretty damn sensible. Sure we might harbor a bit of doubt here and there. But for the most part, we imagine we have a firm grip on reality; we don't lie awake at night fearing that we're massively deluded. But when we consider the beliefs of other people? It's an epistemic shit show out there. Astrology, conspiracies, the healing power of crystals. Aliens who ab

Crony Beliefs | Melting Asphalt Melting Asphalt About Archive Goodies Subscribe Crony Beliefs by Kevin Simler [Note: if you prefer audio, you can listen to this essay narrated by Grognor on his excellent podcast Second Enumerations . —Ed. ] Credits up front: This essay draws heavily from Overcoming Bias , Less Wrong , Slate Star Codex , Robert Kurzban , Robert Trivers , Thomas Schelling , and Jonathan Haidt (among others I'm certainly forgetting). These are some of my all-time favorite sources, so I hope I'm doing them justice here. — For as long as I can remember, I've struggled to make

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