Eh no. Our brains and how human mind works are actually very poorly understood. To claim we have a good idea how our cognitive systems work under the hood is an incorrect statement.
Let's be honest, we know very little about our brains. I'm sure part of it is just that, but I've made way too many "rational" stupid decisions to think that's about it.
Most of us, exact sciences pilgrims (speaking as if my degree makes me worthy of being included in such a group of individuals), should try to go outside more. No offense, but our biases are too great.
We don't know enough about how the brain work to be able to say that our "intent" is any more than a combination of memory and an after the fact rationalisation of a stochastic process.
Right, I guess it more has to do with the fact that some people don't realize that the brain itself (in my limited understanding) can be changed by our thoughts/actions.
I'm not a fan of the "duh, your monkey brain gets everything wrong all the time" vibes that articles like this one tend to give off. The very first sentence already labels this cognitive pattern as a "mistake". It's not a mistake, it's a heuristic. Psychologists would do well to learn the difference between the two. You haven't found a flaw in the brain, you've found a mechanism the brain uses to navigate the world in the absence of unlimited knowledge and cognitive resources.
There is a huge class of cognitive mistakes our brains make that we are aware of, but we can't really train them out of ourselves effectively. Since we can't rewire our own brain, the hope is to wire up something that would not exhibit those known mistakes and biases.
While I have often repeated George Carlin's observation[0] that:
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
And felt superior, the truth (as it is with most things) is much more nuanced and complex.
Firstly, what we term our (singular) "mind" is really the synthesis of multiple, sometimes competing[1] neural systems.
In part, our "view" of the world around us isn't the real-time "I sense it and it's so" process we experience. Rather, our brains' multiple systems take in and interpret stimuli (including memories and physical responses sparked by those stimuli) and arrive at a "story" our brain tells us, that we see as "reality."
In most cases, the story is close enough to the actual events/stimuli around us, that we do just fine.
In many surroundings/situations we often make decisions/judgements which don't engage the higher-level reasoning portions of our brains, but instead rely on systems driven by emotion and responses selected for over millions of years of evolution.
An interesting and accessible discussion of this can be found in the recent PBS series Hacking Your Mind[2].
The upshot is that while we aren't necessarily dumb, our neural systems are susceptible to being misled when specific responses (fear is an excellent example) are induced by stimuli (in this case, social media posts) that push us to rely on the emotional/quick response systems in our brains more so than the slower, more reasoned/balanced systems.
And that isn't a dumb vs. smart thing. It's taking advantage of responses/processes that have evolved in us and our ancestors over millions of years. Those processes were (and sometimes still are) critical in quickly assessing whether or not a specific situation or individual poses a threat, an opportunity or can safely be ignored.
So, no. We aren't stupid, we're just wired to respond in certain ways that marketers and propagandists use to their own advantage.
Obviously, this is over simplified (hey, it's a comment on HN, not an academic paper), but I believe it elucidates the nuance/complexity of human interpretation and experience of "reality."
I'd welcome those who have actual expertise in this area to chime in with better/more specific information.
Same goes for many criminals. The brain is a complex bunch of grey goo. So many ways the wiring can go wrong. We have a long way to go before we can fully understand psychiatric/psychological conditions, much less treat them.
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