Why So Irrational?

Why are we so prone to bad logic? We’re going to hear two everyday fugues in this episode: the search for a lost spatula and a spilled beer. The real story here is how easy it is to be irrational. Who is “we” in this episode? It’s me and my inner voice obviously. Inner Voice and I will do some post-fugue analysis to find out what mental phenomena are at play while I make really bad assumptions about events in my surroundings.

By the end of the episode maybe you’ll appreciate why we’re actually doing a lot better than we think we are as a society given how mistake-prone our brains are.

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Credits:

Written and produced by Gabriel Berezin
Original music and sound design - Grant Zubritsky
Opening and closing music: Monuments (featuring Grant Zubritsky (bass), Robby Sinclair (drums) and Bryan Murray (saxophone), Gabriel Berezin (guitar))
Editorial insight - Melissa "Monty" Montan
Logo design - Justin Montan

Follow Fugues: Substack | X | Instagram | Threads | TikTok

References:

• Apophenia in the Queen’s Gambit
• Apophenia in Stranger Things
• Wacky Conspiracy Theory showing Back to the Future predicted 9/11
• How Netflix uses big data to inform its content
• The Brain’s Autopilot (Scientific American)
• Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 vs 2 Thinking (article)
• Thinking Fast and Slow (book)
• Anil Seth’s TED talk
• How Much of What You See is Hallucination (TED Ex)
• Abracadabra! A Classic Magic Trick Fools Expectations, Not Eyes
• My Special Egg Spatula

Episode Song Playlist:

• Delirious - Prince
• Memories Can’t Wait - Talking Heads
• Not My Own - Monuments
• Where is My Mind - The Pixies
• Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
• There There - Radiohead