Kevin Dorst is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. He works at the intersection between philosophy and social science, focusing on rationality. In this episode Kevin and Robinson discuss just this: They begin with classical theories of rationality and where they fall short before discussing instances where the empirical literature shows that humans do not reason rationally at all, touching on the gambler’s fallacy, sunk-cost reasoning, and the hindsight bias. They then move on to discuss the phenomenon of political polarization, which draws both on our capacity for rationality and irrationality. Make sure to check out Kevin’s Substack, Stranger Apologies.
Stranger Apologies: https://kevindorst.substack.com
Kevin’s Website: https://www.kevindorst.com
Kevin’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevin_dorst
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00:00 In This Episode…
01:02 Introduction
04:14 Rationality and Philosophy
15:14 Bayesian Reasoning
45:10 The Hindsight Bias
56:53 What is Bias?
01:04:03 The Gambler’s Fallacy
01:15:00 Sunk-Cost Reasoning
01:19:07 Political Polarization
01:40:12 Talking Through Disagreement
Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com
Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.