Bad beliefs: why they happen to highly intelligent, vigilant, devious, self-deceiving, coalitional apes

Neil Levy argues that the importance of acquiring cultural knowledge in our evolutionary past selected for conformist and deferential social learning, contemporary bad beliefs – roughly, popular at odds with expert consensus result primarily from rational deployment such conformity deference epistemically polluted modern environments. I raise several objections to this perspective. First, against theory which draws, argue humans evolved be highly sophisticated vigilant learners. Given this, ubiquity world is puzzling: if are so smart suspicious, why do these characteristics seem rare domains as politics? answer rests on incentives underlie beliefs, favorably contrast explanation Levy’s appeal epistemic pollution.