#80 – Dan Williams on How Persuasion Works

About this episode

Dan Williams discusses the complexities of persuasion, reasoning, and the impact of misinformation in the age of AI.

Dan Williams is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sussex and an Associate Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) at the University of Cambridge. You can find links and a transcript at www.hearthisidea.com/episodes/williams . We discuss: If reasoning is so useful, why are we so bad at it? Do some bad ideas really work like ‘mind viruses’? Is the ‘luxury beliefs’ concept useful? What's up with the idea of a ‘marketplace for ideas’? Are people shopping for new beliefs, or to rationalise their existing attitudes? How dangerous is misinformation, really? Can we ‘vaccinate’ or ‘inoculate’ against it? Will AI help us form more accurate beliefs, or will it persuade more people of unhinged ideas? Does fact-checking work? Under transformative AI, should we worry more about the suppression or the proliferation of counter-establishment ideas? You can get in touch through our website or on Twitter . Consider leaving us an honest review wherever you're listening to this — it's the best way to support the show. Thanks for listening!

People in this episode

Guest: Dan Williams

Topics covered

• persuasion
• reasoning
• misinformation
• AI
• beliefs
• philosophy

Keywords

• mind viruses
• luxury beliefs
• marketplace for ideas
• fact-checking
• transformative AI

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