Where Do Our Beliefs Come From? - David McRaney

It's when, uh, you have a group of people, and most of the people in the group believe that most of the people in the group believe something that, in fact, very few of the people in the group believe. But since most of the people in the group believe that everybody else in the group believes this, everyone acts as if everybody believes it, and you end up following a norm that nobody likes. (wind blows)

David McRaney, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I am very honored to be here in company that shares a lot of my obsessions. I feel there's a Venn diagram with a lot of overlap here right now and that- that's always cool.

When you say that someone holds a belief, like the belief that our interests heavily overlap in a Venn diagram, what does that mean? What- what- what is a belief?

(laughs) This is the best opening question I've received so far, I want you to know. Uh, why would a c- I'll- I'll say the same thing back to you that was said to me when I first asked a researcher this, someone who had 45 years of research into just beliefs. Uh, which, and they said, "Hoo, that is a tough one." Um, that was Jim Alcock who I asked. Uh, I thought he'd be the f- greatest person to go to at first with these questions. It's one of the reasons why the book takes such a long arc getting to a authoritative voice is that I thought it would be a book where I just went and asked experts- experts those questions. They tell me the answers, I'd find the relevant literature, I'd translate it in a fun, uh, approachable voice, and boom, you have a book. Uh, that is not how it turned out, because it turned out I was asking questions that have either ins- incredibly complex answers or no answers yet. When it comes to that, in particular, this thing I told you where I feel that I- we have a strong overlap, uh, I could say that there's a belief there. There certainly are some fact-based information encoded things in my brain that have emotional qualities of certainty attached to them involved in that proposition, but also, I'm also expressing an attitude. I'm also expressing how I feel strongly in one direction or another, that I have these positive and negative, uh, evaluations of what I'm presenting to you. I'm also expressing a little bit of things in there about values. I'm expressing some- some notions of what is and isn't so in- in every direction. So, when it comes to just the raw fact-based thing, it's a huge assumption I'm making based off of information I've received so far in this conversation, and also from knowing a little bit about you and sharing some of our shared interests beforehand, and also, we've developed a little bit of trust and a little bit of rapport, so that I have all these cues that are translating into a sub-emotional f- state of certainty about all these bullet points that pile up into something we would call in common parlance the belief that we have an overlapping (laughs) Venn diagram of b- of obsessions. That's the complicated answer.