The Negative Effects of Wishful Thinking

So when you base your core beliefs on things that are not reality based, on things that are based on wishful thinking. So a lot of people get into astrology because they want to believe that there are fates out there that are going to look after them or whatever. And if you indulge in wishful thinking that way, the evidence now shows you actually compromise your mind's immune system. So when you believe things because you want to, you want them to be true, your mind's immune system gets weaker. And there's actually now empirical research that indicates this. So if you, for example, accept that clinging to your articles of faith, no matter what, is a virtue, you're less likely to change your mind when evidence comes along. Right. So when that happens, you become more susceptible to conspiracy thinking, more susceptible to divisive political ideologies, more susceptible to science denial. Your mind's resistance to bad ideas starts to decay. You can actually damage your mind's immune system by indulging in wishful thinking. That makes sense. Do you highlight specific strategies in your book for looking at things accurately and looking at things objectively? Yeah. I mean, so science is clearly a shining example of what's possible in the way of idea testing and the way of validating things with evidence. So scientists are especially good at testing things in laboratories or with experiments. Now, philosophers have always gone in for a kind of a related but slightly different kind of idea testing. Philosophers don't have laboratories except the ones between their ears. And basically, we test ideas against each other and we test ideas with questions. And we test ideas against our intuitions about right and wrong and try to figure out what makes sense. That's a complementary kind of idea testing that scientists go in for. And it's one that has done a huge amount to educate and enlighten us over the centuries. And so what I try to do in the book is take things from this cutting-edge science I call cognitive immunology. It's the science of mental immunity. You combine that with ancient wisdom about how to pursue wisdom, how to find wisdom, and you actually get some really powerful ways to strengthen mental immune systems. And like what ways? What do you use personally? Do you need it or you've been sort of indoctrinated into the world of objective thinking to the point where you don't need any systems that you follow? Well I try not to think that I have all the answers and that I've got it all figured out. Look at humility. We know this. Humility is really important for a well-functioning mental immune system. For everything, right? Yeah, yeah, sure. Let's go with that. My research specializes in trying to understand how the mind develops resistance to bad ideas. And once you think you have all the answers, you stop learning and your thinking starts to go haywire. So you've got to maintain that humility or you're compromising your own mind. Humility specifically. Humility is important. Fair-mindedness. So a lot of people do this. They ridicule or deride other people's ideas for failing to meet basic standards, but then they don't apply those same standards to their own views. Right. Do you have an example of this? Sure. Well, I think a whole lot of political rhetoric has this character, right? Slam the other side, ridicule it as sloppy thinking or as ideologically driven, but never examine to see whether your own views. That's a perfect example of it, right? And politics is probably the very best example of how people do this. They get super tribal. They only look at the other side as being bad and their side, they find justifications for every questionable behavior, every weird scandal, everything that doesn't fit the narrative. Yeah, and I'd say that politics is probably the best example, but religion and ethics and sometimes economics or others. So wherever values come into play, people get very attached to their ideas. We all want to think that we're right and true and virtuous. So whatever ideas we've already internalized as beliefs, they have to be the virtuous beliefs. And any new incoming information that challenges them from the other side of the political aisle or from another religion or from those damn atheists over there, that's the enemy. And then your mind's immune system attacks that information and you never gain the fair-mindedness needed to learn. Catch new episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips, easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.