Scientific American Special Collector's Edition - Fall 2022

Scientific American Special Collector's Edition - Fall 2022



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English | 120 pages | True PDF | 35.19 MB

Truths should be stubborn things, right? Not in today’s society. A set of polls conducted this summer revealed about 70 percent of Republican voters still believe that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 presidential election, despite extensive bipartisan investigations into voter fraud that validated the trustworthiness of the election. Online, the YouTube suggestion algorithm has been shown to steer viewers toward more extreme or far-fetched videos, spreading conspiracy theories and fringe beliefs. And users on other platforms such as Tik-Tok and Twitter deliberately disseminate misinformation about lifesaving vaccines.

Lies, extremism and the manipulation of reality seem to be common themes in today’s current events. Because all untruths are antithetical to science, we hope this issue will serve in some measure as an antidote to the poison of manipulated facts and other forms of mendacity. Never has it been more important to understand the science of how we humans determine what is true.

For starters, our perception is inherently subjective ( page 4 ). We may believe that we are openminded creatures, but most people latch on to ideas that seem to validate their own preconceived beliefs ( page 32 )—even if this behavior prevents them from seeing new solutions ( page 10 ). Such ingrained implicit bias has served us well in the course of evolution, but in the modern era, it more often leads us astray ( page 16 ).