Why Consistency Checking Matters

The now-essential thing evolution hasn’t equipped us to do

Image credit: The Sun

Thanks to the Internet it’s now possible to be convinced that the Apollo moon landings were faked, the Earth is flat, lizard people are secretly controlling the world from underground lairs, Enneagrams are meaningful, and who knows what other sorts of nonsense fetid minds can conjure up.

Millions of people believe this spurious junk, just as billions believe equally implausible stories about invisible magical gods and goblins and reality-defying miracles. Moreover plenty of Westerners mouth vapid statements such as “it was meant to be” and “everything happens for a reason” and “the universe will provide.”

So why do so many of us become such easy prey for such empty ideas? How is it that the vast majority of us are so gullible? And why do we reliably fall for the frothing bluster of demagogues whenever they emerge, as they so reliably do throughout recorded history?

Simply put, it’s because our brains aren’t evolved to do thinking.

Our brains evolved under very different conditions from those pertaining today. We evolved to cope with the African savannah and the primordial forests of Eurasia. We evolved to do as little thinking as possible, because thinking burns precious calories that would be needed to power muscles instead…