Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread without apparent consequence for the people who hold them? It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it (apparently) irrelevant to many people whether they believe true things or not? As part of the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public‘s ongoing Invited Speaker Series, Cailin O’Connor will discuss the social factors that are essential to understanding the persistence of false belief, and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively.
Join us for this virtual event discussion on Tuesday, January 12 from 10-11 a.m. PST via Zoom. (Registration is now closed.)
About Cailin O’Connor: Cailin O’Connor is a philosopher of science and applied mathematician specializing in models of social interaction. She is Associate Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and a member of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science at the University of California, Irvine. She is currently co-administering the NSF Grant Consensus, Democracy, and the Public Understanding of Science. Her book The Misinformation Age, co-authored with James Owen Weatherall, was published in 2019 with Yale Press, and her book The Origins of Unfairness was also published in 2019 with Oxford University Press. Her work has been praised widely, including in The New York Times and Scientific American.
