Dr. Steven Novella

You don't know what a black hole is.

You have a metaphor that somebody told you, and you think you're going to outthink the people who came up with the metaphor because you can't understand what's really going on?

That's like super arrogance when you think you're going to overturn science because you're just such a freaking genius.

Well, that's another good question.

There's good neuroscience behind that as well.

We're basically evolved to surrender our critical thinking to charismatic leaders within our own tribe, right?

And there's an fMRI study of now probably five to 10 years ago, whatever, where functional MRI scan looks at the brain functioning in real time, right?

And they did fMRI people's brains while they were listening to a public speaker from within their belief system and from outside their belief system.

And they were different.

When it was from within their belief system, the frontal lobe circuitry that engages in reality testing was not functioning.

But it was when they were listening to somebody outside of their beliefs.

And so literally we surrender our critical thinking.

We are literally mesmerized by a charismatic speaker.

But that's just part of the overall phenomenon where, you know, again, we tend to believe things within our own tribe and we don't always engage our critical thinking, you know, and there's a lot of emotional reasons why we wouldn't give that up.

I agree with you.

It's not even clear.

But, you know, so initially... Because he was a Dem.

Now he's part of a... Well, that's superficial.

I think ultimately that's superficial for him.

So, you know, 30 years ago, the answer was he's an environmentalist, right?