The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality

Montell loves and is awed by dinosaurs; she argues that humans are destroying the planet and, unlike dinosaurs, deserve to go extinct. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Montell went to a dinosaur exhibit with her friend Kristen. Kristen, raised in a fundamentalist home, explained that she was told that dinosaurs and humans lived together and that dinosaurs went extinct because Noah didn’t let them on the arc. When dinosaurs were first discovered, religions needed to come up with an explanation that worked with their doctrine. This, Montell argues, is an example of confirmation bias, or the tendency to search for, interpret, and favor information that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or opinions.

Everyone is susceptible to confirmation bias, and it can result in highly irrational behavior—“from Mafia bosses committing murder to conspiratorial zealots detecting ‘proof’ of their convictions everywhere they look” (173). Montell learned about confirmation bias while researching for her book Cultish, and it helped her better understand how people get entrenched in cults. It also humbled her, helping her recognize her own irrationality.

Montell and Kristen went to a Chili’s restaurant for dinner and drinks after the exhibit, and they continued to compare their childhoods, discussing the constant threat of the coming apocalypse that Kristen experienced in her youth.