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10,000 Just so stories can't all be wrong

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2010

Gary F. Marcus
Gary F. Marcus
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10012. gary.marcus@nyu.eduhttp://www.psych.nyu.edu/gary/
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Abstract

The mere fact that a particular aspect of mind could offer an adaptive advantage is not enough to show that that property was in fact shaped by that adaptive advantage. Although it is possible that the tendency towards positive illusion is an evolved misbelief, it it also possible that positive illusions could be a by-product of a broader, flawed cognitive mechanism that itself was shaped by accidents of evolutionary inertia.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 32 , Issue 6 , December 2009 , pp. 529
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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