Mental Immune Collapse: Mind-Parasites and the Roots of Mass Irrationality

Why are ideologies poisoning public discourse? Why is extremism on the rise? How did we get here, and what can we do about it?

It turns out some influential assumptions are suppressing our culture’s “immune response” to dangerous ideas. These assumptions prevent us from normalizing critical thinking, and leave us vulnerable to mind-parasites.

Fortunately, there’s a cure. In this talk, philosopher Andy Norman will isolate an idea with a long history of inoculating people against the worst forms of ideological contagion, and show how to fashion it into a mind vaccine.

Andy Norman is the award-winning author of Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think. His work has appeared in Scientific American, Psychology Today, Skeptic, Free Inquiry, and The Humanist. He has appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, NPR, and The BBC’s Naked Scientist. His research illuminates the evolutionary origins of human reasoning, the norms that make dialogue fruitful, and the workings of the mind’s immune system. He champions the emerging science of mental immunity as the antidote to disinformation, propaganda, hate, and division. He is the founder of the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative (CIRCE), a global think-tank leading the effort to inoculate humanity against cognitive contagion.

As always, we will open the Zoom at 6:30pm to give time for everyone to join as well as enjoy some social time. The formal meeting will begin at 7:00pm with a few announcements followed by our speaker.

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