Rational Irrationality: Stuart Vyse on the Uses of Delusion
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Rational Irrationality: Stuart Vyse on the Uses of Delusion:
Skeptical Inquirer Presents, May 12
In almost all situations, we want to be making decisions based on reason and rationality—and these days it feels like they’re in short supply. Does that mean there’s no room for being illogical?
On Thursday, May 12, at 7 p.m. on the next Skeptical Inquirer Presents live online event, behavioral scientist Stuart Vyse returns to discuss the ideas behind his book The Uses of Delusion: Why It’s Not Always Rational to Be Rational.
Vyse says that there are a number of very important situations in which we benefit by not seeing the world as it is and by not behaving like logic-driven machines. Sometimes we know we aren’t making sense, and yet we are compelled to act against reason; in other cases, our delusions are so much a part of normal human experience that we are unaware of them. As intelligent as we are, much of what has helped humans succeed as a species is not our prodigious brain power but something much more basic.
In his second appearance on Skeptical Inquirer Presents, Vyse will look at those aspects of human nature that are not altogether rational but, nonetheless, help us achieve our social and personal goals.
Free registration is required to take part in this live Zoom event, so sign up right now.
| Stuart Vyse, PhD, is a behavioral scientist, teacher, and writer. He taught at Providence College, the University of Rhode Island, and Connecticut College. Vyse’s book Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition won the 1999 William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association. He is a contributing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, where he writes the “Behavior & Belief” column, and a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. |
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Rational Irrationality: Stuart Vyse on the Uses of Delusion