Episode 1: A Taste

In Think101, we’re thinking about thinking – that is, we’re thinking about reasoning, about judgment, about the choices we make, decision-making.
How do we make choices? How do we think about things like expertise? How do we turn somebody who knows nothing into somebody who knows a lot? What I think we’re trying to do is bring that kind of scientific thinking, that rigor, that way of approaching problems, of finding things out, out of the lab and into our everyday lives.
You can plant entirely false memories, whole memories, into the minds of people for things that didn’t happen.
I think part of being skeptical is keeping an open mind but demanding evidence.
We wanted people to confront things that they think about and do every day and realize that there’s science around them in every place.
The world doesn’t really look the way you think it looks.
One of the things we’re trying to do in this course is give a realistic idea about how the mind is actually working.

Right now there are 75,000 people who have just signed up for this course, right across the planet.
I’ve been dreaming about this course for, honestly, we’ve been working on this for the last year, straight.
What we’re trying to do in this course is to give you the best on campus experience that we possibly can.
So you’re going to be taking this live course, the edX course along with 75,000 other people, but you’re also going to be doing this on campus course.
If they are exactly the same, then we’ve failed.
Because I think that’s what’s important; the discussion face-to-face with people.
I can’t stand people who close their mind off to a possibility.
I really don’t, I don’t think it’s real, I don’t think that could possibly happen, because it doesn’t make any sense.
You just need to feel like you’re actually engaging with the content, with the people, in a way that you can’t just engage with it sitting in your bedroom.
What we’ve done, is that we’ve traveled the world and we’ve talked to all of these people face-to-face.
When you log in to these websites you’ll see just everyone that we’ve talked to.

Yes, it sounds like that, sort of, but it’s like visual illusions.
You’re also aware at the same time that it isn’t really like that.
This sort of expectancy effect is really common throughout cognition, and psychology, more generally.
Imagine that you’re sitting in front of an auditorium and you’re asked to perform for a roomful of people by tapping out a tune for everyone to hear.