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Why do people believe true things?

Ignorance and misperceptions are not puzzling. The challenge is to explain why some people see reality accurately.

“One of the clearest points of demarcation between specialist discourses and everyday commentary and debate is that the former are often structured by what might be thought of as “explanatory inversions.” These arise as a consequence of discoveries or theoretical insights that have the effect of changing, not our specific explanations of events, but rather our fundamental sense of what needs to be explained.” Instead, the truly puzzling fact is that humanity has—sometimes, in some places—achieved spectacular systems of large-scale cooperation that pressure, cajole, persuade, encourage, incentivise, and tempt a species of competitive apes to work together, dampening down immediate self-interest and overcoming collective action problems. Think of the economy, society-wide crime trends, vaccines, history, climate change, or any other possible focus of “public opinion.” Not only is the truth about such topics typically complex, ambiguous, and , but almost everything you believe about them is based on information you acquired from others—from the claims, gossip, reports, books, remarks, opinion pieces, teaching, images, video clips, and so on that other people communicated to you.

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