Interesting and insightful post as always, but also a lot to disagree with, including:

• the flawed “dual systems theory” of psychology assumed. In reality, talk of “reasoning” obscures a distinction between (1) imagery-based, working memory-based systems of cognition that are not a “kluge” and not unique to humans and (2) psychological processes that underlie the social production and evaluation of reasons that are unique to humans but don’t function to correct intuitive mistakes or form accurate beliefs.

• the suggestion that “System 1” cognition doesn’t admit of “learning” (!)

• the idea that belief in the self-evidence of political or social truths is restricted to populists celebrating “commonsense”. (As I’ve argued elsewhere, drawing on the work of Jeffrey Friedman, “trust the experts” involves a form of naive realism of its own. Almost nobody is explicitly reasoning their way to beliefs in politics; belief acquisition typically boils down to questions of trust.) conspicuouscognition.co…

• the treatment of issues concerning crime, punishment, and immigration as if these are or should be merely technocratic debates rooted in liberal values rather than debates over clashing values that feature many people who hold illiberal values.

• the neglect of how differences in cognitive style and ability map onto an explosive class divide as a consequence of expanding college enrolment and educational polarisation. E.g., People don’t object to constantly evolving, arbitrary progressive speech codes because they’re too dim to use “System 2” reasoning, but because they recognise that the speech codes often function as class signifiers, mastery of which is part of the membership fee for access to elite spaces.

• more broadly, the excessive focus on narrowly cognitive and epistemic issues obscures the extent to which politics involves much deeper forces of alliances, status, power, propaganda, etc.

I don’t want to sound too dismissive. There are some really good insights here. It’s a great article based on a brilliant book. But I’m not much persuaded. If I can find the time, I might write something up…