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Why Rational People Believe Irrational Things: Dan Ariely on PYP 575

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Here's this week's guest introducing himself, and sharing a bit of what happened to him over the past couple of years.

My name is Dan Ariely. I'm a social scientist… I work on behavioral change. And when COVID started, I became very popular.

I got lots of questions from lots of governments…

  • Should we do fines?
  • What about distant education?
  • Working remotely?
  • How should we compensate people?
  • How do we reduce domestic violence?
  • What do we do with prisoners?

There were a lot of them, and they were amazing. And I kind of felt I was at the top of my career.

I had two phones. I was trying to answer as many things as possible, and this was going on every day… I stopped everything else. I was doing nothing by answering questions from around the world about how do we create these behavioral changes that we wanted to create, and how do we not create bad ones like domestic violence?

This is happening for a few months, and then all of a sudden I get an email from somebody I once knew. And she said, “Dan, what happened to you?”

And very quickly I said, “What do you mean what happened to me?”

And she sent me a long list of links, and I'll just describe one of them. That link, it showed pictures of me in hospital when I was young.

I was badly burned. Most of my body is covered with scars, including this side of my face. That's why I don't have hair on this side.

Anyway, it shows pictures of me in hospital. True.

It says I was in hospital for three years. True.

70% of my body burned. True.

But then it said that because of that, I started hating healthy people. Not true.

And I joined Bill Gates and the Illuminati, trying to kill as many healthy people as possible. And that's what COVID is about, and that'swhat the vaccine will be about anyway.

There were many links, with not all the same story, but all portraying me as a villain.

And my first reaction was to correct them.

But then I thought better of it, and I decided to consult some friends who are experts in PR… Everybody said the same thing: “Don't talk to them. Don't touch it. Let it go.”

But even though I'm very proud that I went to get advice, I couldn't take that advice. There was something in me that cried for the injustice. Like, here I was,waking up every day trying to do good, and these people were thinking I was doing evil.

And it was impossible for me to accept that they will not be convinced if I only prove things to them…

I called some of them. One of them came to my house. I met with a few other people. I joined online groups. I joined discussion groups, Telegram.

And I failed miserably.


To find out what happened, and why it turned into a book on the personal and social psychology of conspiratorial thinking – ie believing Bullshit – well, that's what we talk about next.

Trigger Warning: The interview was conducted on October 19, 2023, less than two weeks after Hamas massacred and tortured thousands of Israelis, and captured many more. At that point, student protests at many US colleges and universities were expressing support for Hamas's actions – another example of misbelief, given that the Hamas ideology is diametrically opposed to just about every value expressed by the progressive Left. Dan shares some of the gruesome details of that attack. Use your own judgment about whether you are OK with hearing this.

Links

Misbelief, by Dan Ariely

Misbelief website

DanAriely.com

Dr Howie Jacobson

This podcast is a labor of love and a way to give back to the world that has given me so much. That's why there aren't any sponsors (except me :).

My day job is helping leaders and their teams master their mindsets to remove all obstacles to heart-centered high performance.

Here are three gigs that I do:

1. Executive and Senior Leadership Mentoring and Facilitation

I work with high performing executive teams in organizations — and executive teams that need to become high  performing. My focus is mindset mastery, because it’s our mindsets that either support high performance or get in the way.

At this level, everyone’s got the skills and experience to excel and contribute at the highest level. What holds people back is mindset stuff: specifically the triggers that get them out of creative engagement and into fight-or-flight defensiveness.

My practice is all about teaching people to respond differently to those triggers by updating old maps — essentially removing the glitches that the triggers grab onto.

2. Executive Coaching: Quick Wins for High Performance

I work with individual executives and leaders, one on one. The program is called Quick Wins for High Performance, and what we do is, we work strategically on one or two areas that are holding you back and keeping you from performing at your best.

We reverse engineer the presenting problems — too much work and not enough time, underperforming employees and teams, maddening organizational inefficiencies, etc — and identify and rewire the suboptimal mindsets that are behind those problems.

The work is all about updating your mental maps so your actions and responses are always appropriate, proportionate, and strategic.

3. High Stakes Conversations for Fast Growing Small Business Teams

I help small business teams have high stakes conversations with skill, humor, and grace. When people feel safe, they can do their best, most creative, most collaborative work.

So that's what I do. If you'd like any of those results, drop me a line and tell me about yourself.

You CAN Change Other People!

Well, that's what Peter Bregman and I claim in our provocative book of that title.

What we really mean is, you can bring out the best in the people around you. If you think you're powerless to help people change, it's because you've been going about it the wrong way.

Discover our straightforward, replicable process here: You Can Change Other People.

 

Music

The Plant Yourself Podcast theme music, “Dance of Peace (Sabali Don),” is generously provided by Will Ridenour, a kora player from North Carolina who has trained with top Senegalese musicians.

It can be found on his first CD, titled Will Ridenour.

You can learn about Will, listen to more tracks, and buy music on his website, WillRidenour.com.

Gratitudes

Thanks to Plant Yourself podcast patrons – Kim Harrison – Lynn McLellan – Brittany Porter – Dominic Marro – Barbara Whitney – Tammy Black – Amy Good – Amanda Hatherly – Mary Jane Wheeler – Ellen Kennelly – Melissa Cobb – Rachel Behrens – Tina Scharf – Tina Ahern – Jen Vilkinofsky – David Byczek – Michele X – Elspeth Feldman – Leah Stolar – Allan Kristensen – Colleen Peck – Michele Landry – Jozina – Sara Durkacs – Kelly Cameron – Janet Selby – Claire Adams – Tom Fronczak – Jeannette Benham – Gila Lacerte – David Donohue – Blair Seibert – Doron Avizov – Gio and Carolyn Argentati – Jodi Friesner – Mischa Rosen – Michael Worobiec – AvIvA Lael – Alicia Lemus – Val Linnemann – Nick Harper – Bandana Chawla – Molly Levine – The Inscrutable Harry R – Susan Laverty the Panda Vegan – Craig Covic – Adam Scharf – Karen Bury – Heather Morgan – Nigel Davies – Marian Blum – Teresa Kopel – Julian Watkins – Brid O'Connell – Shannon Herschman – Linda Ayotte – Holm Hedegaard – Isa Tousignant – Connie Haneline – Erin Greer – Alicia Davis – Heather O'Connor – Carollynne Jensen – Sheri Orlekoski of Plant Powered for Health – Karen Smith – Scott Mirani – Karen and Joe Crabtree – Kirby Burton – Theresa Carrell – Kevin Macaulay – Elizabeth Rothschild – Ann Jesse – Sheryl Dwyer – Jenny Hazelton – Peter W Evans – Dennis Bird – Darby Kelly – Lori Fanney – Linnea Lundquist – Emily Iaconelli – Levi Wallach – Rosamonde McAtee – Dan Pokorney – Stephen Leinin – Patty DeMartino – Mike and Donna Kartz – Deanne Bishop – Bilberry Elf – Marjorie Lewis – Tricia Adams – Nancy Sheldon – Lindsey Bashore – Gunn Marit Hagen – Tracey Gulledge – Lara Hedin – Meg from Mamasezz – Stacey Stokes – Ben Savage – Michael K – David Hughes -Coni Rodgers – Claire England – Sally Robertson – Parham Ganchi – Amy Dailey – Brian Tourville – Mark Jeffrey Johnson – Josie Dempsey – Caryn Schmitt – Pamela Hayden – Emily Perryman – Allison Corbett – Richard Stone – Lauren Vaught of Edible Musings – Erin Hastey – Sean Owens – Sagar Naik – Erika Piedra – Danielle Roberts – Michael Leuchten – Sarah Johnson – Katharine Floyd – Meryl Fury – for your generous support of the podcast.

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2 comments on “Why Rational People Believe Irrational Things: Dan Ariely on PYP 575

  1. Robyn Chuter says:

    This was the most disturbingly fascinating incarnation of ‘pot, meet kettle’ that I’ve ever encountered. A social scientist who gratuitously dispensed advice on how governments should implement COVID policies that were not only completely non-evidence-based, but ran 180 degrees counter to all previous pandemic preparedness documents, gets bent out of shape because people make up stupid stuff about him. Then he credulously regurgitates atrocity propaganda about beheaded babies and foetuses ripped from pregnant women’s wombs, without even bothering to verify the sources of this propaganda (newsflash: these incidents never happened – see for example https://theintercept.com/2023/12/14/israel-biden-beheaded-babies-false/; https://misbar.com/en/factcheck/2023/10/26/israeli-accounts-share-deceptive-video-accusing-hamas-of-killing-a-pregnant-woman). Then he claims that “From the River to the Sea” is definitionally a genocidal slogan devised by Hamas, with the genocidal intent aimed at Jewish Israelis, while failing to mention that “From the River to the Sea” is a policy platform of the Likud party, obviously with the genocidal/ethnic cleansing intention aimed at Palestinians (e.g. see https://www.thenation.com/article/world/its-time-to-confront-israels-version-of-from-the-river-to-the-sea/). Then, to cap it all off, he blathers on about how terrible it is that Jewish people can’t even be safe ‘in their own country’, without pausing for a beat to acknowledge that ‘their own country’ was stolen, with genocidal intent freely and liberally expressed by its founders (including David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir), from the Palestinian people, who have not felt safe in THEIR own country since 1948.
    What a perfect example of how utterly corrupted the social sciences are, and why the people that attacked Ariely (in my opinion, foolishly) don’t trust ‘experts’. It’s unfortunate that many such people lack the critical thinking skills to help them distinguish between rational and irrational alternative explanations for phenomena, but people like Dan Ariely are self-evidently the last people on earth who could teach them such skills, being themselves severely lacking in that department.
    Definitely not one of your best interviews, Howard. And by the way, don’t demean yourself by accusing me of antisemitism. There’s a world of difference between harbouring irrational hatred of Jewish people, and expressing legitimate criticism of Zionism and its political embodiment in the Israeli government.

    1. Robyn Chuter says:

      … and colour me shocked, Ariely has been accused of data fraud: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/09/they-studied-dishonesty-was-their-work-a-lie. I wonder how many of the incidents he recounts in Misbelief actually took place?

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