Matthew Hutson
Author, the 7 Laws of Magical Thinking
Matthew Hutson is a science journalist and the author of The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane. Hutson is a former editor at Psychology Today, has a B.S. in cognitive neuroscience from Brown University and an M.S. in science writing from MIT. He has written for Wired, Discover, Popular Mechanics and The New York Times Magazine.
Sometimes we read meaning into patterns even when there is not inherent meaning. Yet it’s possible to use rationality and to use things that you know about the world to question your intuitions and to second guess them.
It’s more important to have a useful perception of reality than an accurate perception of reality.
We have a general bias to read intentionality into things, to see things as happening for a reason, to believe that objects around us have been designed for some purpose.
You can become a crazy cat lady if you abandon actual people in your environment and just focus on your pets or your stuffed animals or your live doll or whatever you have.
We need to search for disconfirming evidence to correct mistakes.
Picturing success will increase your optimism and increase your confidence, which will then help you out.
Humans have this almost paralyzing fear of death. One thing that keeps it from being paralyzing is this belief in what’s called symbolic immortality. It’s this sense that our symbolic […]
Matt Hutson argues that magical thinking is based on very basic intuitions and emotions that we all have. Skepticism is just the tendency to question these intuitions, to use critical […]
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How Magical Thinking Controls Our Lives (For Better and Worse) – Matthew Hutson LIVE on Big Think TV
In this live interview, Matthew Hutson discusses the ideas in his new book The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking.
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14 min
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