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Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
Article

Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds

New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.

Elizabeth Kolbert
The New Yorker, 2017
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When most people think about the human capacity for reason, they imagine that facts enter the brain and valid conclusions come out. Science reveals this isn’t the case. People’s ability to reason is subject to a staggering number of biases. But what if the human capacity for reason didn’t evolve to help us solve problems; what if its purpose is to help people survive being near each other? getAbstract recommends Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Kolbert’s thought-provoking article to readers who want to know why people stand their ground, even when they’re standing in quicksand.

Take-Aways

  • Human thinking is deeply flawed and prone to predictable biases.
  • Cognitive biases may have evolved to help humans argue as they thrived and cooperated in close-knit groups.
  • People often mistake the boundaries between their knowledge and the knowledge of others in their social group.

About the Author

Elizabeth Kolbert is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. She has written for The New Yorker since 1999.

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