Mercier and Sperber (2011) argue that the individual human being’s capacity to reason, to express and evaluate logical arguments, arises out of the social practice of persuasion, and it shows fossil traces, in effect, of this origin. The notorious confirmation bias is our tendency to highlight the positive evidence for our current beliefs and theories while ignoring the negative evidence. This and other well-studied patterns of errors in human reasoning suggest that our skills were honed for taking sides, persuading others in debate, not necessarily getting things right.
