It's amazing how useful illusion is for surviving in a cave, and staggering how destructive it is to our lives. The Buddha saw this 2500 years ago. Modern science sees it more clearly than ever.

In this episode I did not even get into the Fundamental Attribution Error or the vast suite of cognitive biases and logical fallacies to which we are prone.

But we are not doomed to live like this!

SOURCES

Yes, I read these!

Brickman, Coates & Janoff-Bulman (1978), J. Personality & Social Psychology 36.

Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (2006)

Gazzaniga & LeDoux, The Integrated Mind (1978).

Kurzban, Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind (2010)

Wright, Why Buddhism Is True (2017)

Fadiman & Gruber, Your Symphony of Selves (2020)

Hunt, Marx, Lipson & Young (2018), J. Social & Clinical Psychology 37.

Allcott, Braghieri, Eichmeyer & Gentzkow (2020), American Economic Review 110(3).

Scitovsky, The Joyless Economy (1976).

Wrigley & Schofield, The Population History of England 1541–1871 (1981)

Killingsworth & Gilbert (2010), Science 330.

Kasser, The High Price of Materialism (2002).

Einstein–Born correspondence (1926); Bohr–Einstein debate.

McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary (2009); McGilchrist Substack, Apr 2026 (Kastner 2024 paper).

Mercier & Sperber, "Why Do Humans Reason?" (2011), Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Haidt, The Righteous Mind (2012)

Trivers, The Folly of Fools (2011)

Kahan, "Ideology, Motivated Reasoning, and Cognitive Reflection" (2012)

Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (1996); Dunbar, Duncan & Marriott (1997).

Hardin & Higgins (1996); Higgins & Rholes (1978); Echterhoff, Higgins & Levine (2009), Perspectives on Psychological Science

Kopietz et al. (2010), Social Cognition

Festinger, When Prophecy Fails (1956).

Plato, Apology 38a5–6; Republic Book VII (514a–520a)

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