Why do we pretend to know far more than we do? People form their opinions based largely on the information provided by individuals closest to them, and try to generally avoid the arduous task of having to use critical thinking skills to verify facts, cognitive science professor Steven Sloman tells Vox’s Sean Illing. It’s physically impossible to be knowledgeable about or gain personal experience related to everything out there in the world, which means we need to rely on the knowledge and experiences of the people around us. Our brains are programmed, to a certain extent, to believe that we have a much deeper understanding of how things work than we actually do — a phenomenon cognitive scientists refer to as “the illusion of explanatory depth.” This is compounded, Sloman says, by our innate need to be proven right, which we tend to satisfy by gathering information and opinions that confirm our previously held beliefs, rather than by allowing for new information to shape and change our opinions.

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