16 Quotes by Will Storr

Intelligence is no protection against strange beliefs.

But once more, here I am – confronted with the counter-intuitive notion that intelligence is no protection against strange beliefs.

Locked inside the black vault of our skulls, stuck forever in the solitude of our own hallucinated universe, story is a portal, a hallucination within the hallucination, the closest we’ll ever really come to escape.

I know that I am not right about everything, and yet I am simultaneously convinced that I am. I believe these two things completely, and yet they are in catastrophic logical opposition to each other.

Haven’t we all done this? Hardened a particular position, not as a response to superior information, but because of anger?

Exposure to a mixed body of evidence made both sides even more convinced of the fundamental soundness of their original beliefs.′ Confirmation bias is profoundly human and it is appalling. When new information leads to an increase in ignorance, it is the opposite of learning, the death of wisdom.

The gift of story is wisdom.