Magical Thinking: Matthew Hutson Live Interview

Big Think's live interview with Matthew Hutson, Author, The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane.

Even if you think you're a total skeptic, the new book argues your head is full of superstitions and magical beliefs.

• Category

  Education

[Imhighandhungry]

from a vagina

[aluisious]

No Matt. I've been quite successful in training myself out of magical thinking. You cannot say "we all X." That is magical thinking on your part. You have seen a pattern that does not exist.

[samala51]

Truth

[aluisious]

Meaningless prattle.

[azforthlol]

A more modern version of this could be a professional golfer who names all his clubs to gain a greater sense of intimacy with each. Our natural instinct is to towards knowing and remembering people, and faces, and meanings. Not scientific facts, knowing the precise force with which to hit the ball to get a hole in one won't help you as a human being sadly. I think alot of scientist like to belittle ways of knowing other than scientific analysis but I think you have a richer life if you do both.

[azforthlol]

Rather to embrace the raw phenomenology of the experience and accept any intuitions that might arise instinctively. This way of knowing is very useful though. Imagine that man fishes the same river his whole life. Understanding the river as a living being is more conductive to him developing an intense intuitive ability to to sense when the river may be dangerous or good to fish. Far more useful than a scientist who (as in pre-history) lacks the capacity to gather enough data to predict events.

[azforthlol]

What you'll realise is that these "magical" vs "logical" (neither words are really accurate) ways or modes of thinking are infact just different ways to think about the phenomena we percieve. A tribeman percieves the river as an anthromorphic being with distinct character, when it floods it's angry. The scientist just says rainfall caused a flood, but neither disagree on what they both saw happen. This is because the primordial way of knowing anything was not to analyse objectively.

[WickerAndroid]

Life is magical enough. We do not need magical thinking or ridiculous hypothesis of the norm. Living well is the best way to move forward.

[palebluedot4ev]

Objects are not special because of their histories? That's absurd. There is definitely something special about, say, celebrity memorabilia or historical artifacts, because of all the objects in the universe, one can say," Here is something X touched, felt, viewed, thought about, etc. Here is something which was at the same time and place as X." That's not irrational.

[sleepingundrtree]

I think the greater trend is to separate consciousness from the universe. I feel that the most common way of thinking of consciousness is analogous to our now unpopular view of the soul. For the purpose of objectivity (or as close as possible when it comes to this subject) one should take into account the continuity of matter to mind. Eg. "Mineral-virus-protozoan-mouse­-human" why should we asume consciousness is a sudden apparition and not a property of the whole. Fractals baby.

[TheLonelyImmortal]

I wish he'd talk about intellectual dishonesty, brainwashing, fallacies (low logical intelligence), information control, ignorance, mental manipulation via well-developed non-rational convincing techniques, and the many other things that lead to religious belief.

[dan pasare]

@surmasampo:

It is not possible to abandon "magical thinking". It is built into the system and is a crucial element of how human life is experienced. Without it a statement such as "the world is beautiful" or " the world is a dark, evil place" would not take place in one's mind. There is no rationality of such a statement without "magical thinking".