By reasoning of this article, we all ‘think’ we know what the answer is and it usually comes in the form of a one paragraph response that grossly simplifies how complex human beings and the world is. You use ‘I think’ to start your paragraph but, what’s more likely - according to what this article is saying - is that ‘you feel’ that what you say is correct and it is to a significant degree influenced by your emotions. Now you may come back and say, you don’t know me and I am a rational persona and use sound reasoning and carful research to come to my conclusion. However, the economist article states precisely that all people action on emotion rationalize this by pointing to how they use reason and sound judgement.
I am not trying to attack anyone here, I am guilty of this as much as anyone. But when you really evaluate your beliefs, including the one states above, can you confidently state that it is pure reason unaltered by emotion?
And I think this is the core, we must recognize that all of us are hard wired to behave like this. And maybe the best that we can do is try to recognize it often enough and then consciously counteract it.
I don’t have the answer here and it is beyond my expertise but I think anything complicated such as ‘why and how are humans hardwired to act on emotion instead of reason’ and ‘how is this knowledge being abused’, has more than one underlying cause that you alluded to.
You may be right and we may prefer lies exactly for the reasons you stated, but what evidence is there for that and how did you come to that conclusion? Or is it based on your ‘gut feeling’ or ‘intuition’ based on your world outlook.
Everything we learn has some inherent flaws due to the fact that it passes through the brain’s limited capacity to deal with biases and separate reason from emotion.
So, while I think my response is terribly insightful and impressive. In my limited capacity, I know that I will no doubt be humbled by responses of others which will point out my own errors in my reasoning.