Psychology commentary and book proposal unrelated to specific power actors

sciences: people are easy to influence, they are too trusting, and they tend to place their trust in the wrong people. This is the answer of most social psychologists. "They take the famous Asch conformity experiments, in which participants believe a group over the evidence of their own eyes; and Milgram obedience experiments, in which participants agree to electrocute one another at the experimenter’s request to show that people are sheep. "Psychologist Daniel Gilbert, a strong proponent of the view that humans are gullible, has even claimed that people couldn’t help but believe (at first at least) everything they read! Tim Levine, a leading researcher working on lie detection, thinks that people rely on others to be trustworthy most of the time, and that as a result they can afford to be so bad at detecting deception. Paul Ekman, the famous emotion researcher, claims that when we see someone express an emotion, we can’t help but mimic it. No surprise then that crowds and their emotional members drive each other mad! Robert Boyd, Peter Richerson, and Joseph Henrich, proponents of the dominant mode of cultural evolution, postulate that people are easily influenced by prestigious individuals —wherever their prestige comes from—and consensual opinions — whatever their value. "This is also the answer of dominant figures in anthropology and sociology, explaining the persistence of culture by our tendency to suck in whatever ideas surround us without a second thought; in political science since the ancient Greeks, explaining the success of demagogues by how easily people follow charismatic leaders, even toxic ones; and in much social commentary, consider Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky as an example. "In Vigilance, I argue that they are wrong." HUGO MERCIER is a cognitive scientist working for the French National Center for Scientific Research in Lyon. Previously, he did a postdoc in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics program at the University of Pennsylvania, and another one at the University of Neuchatel. He has published numerous scholarly articles on the topic of the book, and has taught some of its contents in Europe and America. He has also made his work more widely accessible through newspaper articles, blog posts, interviews, and public lectures. The Enigma of Reason, a co-authored book with Dan Sperber concerning their research on "The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning," 1s scheduled for publication in late May (US: Harvard University Press; UK: Allen Lane), with several planned translations. -o GENETIC RESCUE Saving Wildlife the Way Evolution Does By Ryan Phelan, Introduction & Epilogue by Stewart Brand [Proposal; Delivery: 12-18 months from signed contract; 70,000 — 80,000 words] Genetic Rescue is "the first book to present a critically important and new scientific field emerging through the synthesis of molecular biology and conservation biology. At the heart of this intersection is the development of a new tool kit for 21st Century conservation. Advances in comparative genomics, cloning, germ cell transmission, ancient genome assembly, de-extinction, synthetic DNA, and genome engineering with CRISPR and gene drives are now being applied to help solve seemingly intractable conservation problems." Genetic Rescue makes the compelling case for human intervention in situations where the natural evolutionary process is compromised. It is replete with specific examples of wildlife on the brink (from the black-footed ferret to the northern white rhino) and the impact of wildlife diseases (amphibians with Chytrid disease and bats with white-nose syndrome)." "Genetic Rescue also presents a provocative new vision for conservation—the development of a 21st Century Brockman, Inc. Frankfurt 2016 Hotlist -9. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_025155