Our cerebral struggles are often intertwined with other anxieties. What we identify as intellectual barriers are sometimes manifestations of emotional blocks. We pride ourselves on being rational but then miss the biases and blind spots that constitute our rationality (a feature of the human condition confirmed by recent developments in behavioral economics). We decide that something “doesn’t make any sense” when we no longer want to be associated with the people who believe it, or a “light goes on” and we “see” something after we’ve spent time hanging around people who believe it. Rationality
...more
