Mental Immunity with Andy Norman

Rising Laterally

In this episode, we feature Andy Norman, a public philosopher, director of the Humanism Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University, founder of the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative, and award-winning author of “Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think.”
It’s no secret that social media is amplifying toxic ideas from all sides of the political spectrum. We’ve seen harmful orthodoxy take hold before in human history, but never quite at the scale and speed the digital age has made possible. We’re once again at a critical inflection point where the values of objective, rational thinking are under attack by tribalism, illogic, and dogma.
Andy champions the emerging science of mental immunity as the antidote to disinformation, propaganda, hate, and division. Tune in to learn how you can sharpen your thinking, disagree with others more productively, and help safeguard our future from societal dysfunction.
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0:00 Intro
3:07 How Andy became interested in philosophy
5:39 Is it too late to open people’s minds?
8:42 How do we distinguish between good and bad ideas?
11:16 It’s not all relative
12:24 Looking at the cons as well as the pros of an argument
14:24 What is Mental Immunity?
16:53 The mind’s antibodies are questions
19:37 How to effectively challenge a claim
22:56 Why you shouldn’t want to win an argument
26:06 Andy’s groundbreaking work on the purpose of reasons
29:14 Are we living through the Dark Ages 2.0?
33:25 We should all feel safe questioning our beliefs
35:19 What are the pitfalls of critical thinking?
36:32 Can philosophy be taught in elementary school?
39:21 It’s easier to criticize a hypothesis than create your own
40:33 Learning isn’t just additive, it’s subtractive
44:26 What is identity protective cognition?
48:35 How can we redesign social media?
53:47 Should the digital age change the way we think about free speech?
57:58 Is woke culture unhealthy for our minds?
1:01:14 How do we avoid creating a thought police?
1:04:19 Wrap-up
1:05:25 “One Final Question”
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Buy the book! Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think
Andy Norman
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