The Knowledge Illusion

Kyle interviews Steven Sloman, Professor in the school of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University. Steven is co-author of The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone and Causal Models: How People Think about the World and Its Alternatives. Steven shares his perspective and research into how people process information and what this teaches us about the existence of and belief in fake news.

Thanks to Galvanize for sponsoring this episode.

People define fake news in very different ways, and they also tend to believe that they know so much more than they really do. According our guest, Steven Sloman, there's a sense in which fake news is like pornography, meaning, you know it when you see it. While most of us believe that we have direct access to reality and some things are true, and other things are clearly false, Steven doesn’t.