How does your brain decide what’s true? with Sam Harris

Why do we believe what we believe? Why is changing our opinions so difficult, and why does a challenged belief so often feel like a personal attack? What if beliefs didn’t evolve to be true, but to be socially useful? Today we speak with Sam Harris about the topic of our beliefs: how we see the world and what we take to be true about it.

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More Information:

Harris S, Sheth SA, Cohen MS. Functional neuroimaging of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty. Annals of Neurology. 2008 Feb;63(2):141-7.

Kaplan JT, Gimbel SI, Harris S. Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political beliefs in the face of counterevidence. Scientific reports. 2016 Dec 23;6(1):39589.

Harris S, Kaplan JT, Curiel A, Bookheimer SY, Iacoboni M, Cohen MS. The neural correlates of religious and nonreligious belief. PLoS one. 2009 Oct 1;4(10):e7272.

Sam Harris. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.

David Eagleman. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.

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