For this first uploaded interview, I was exceedingly pleased to be joined by David Robert Grimes, author of The Irrational Ape. Not only is the book brilliantly written, deftly argued, and infused with a wry wit, it is punctuated throughout with a welter of memorable anecdotes and narratives to embroider and vividly illustrate the many logical fallacies and irrationalities Grimes so cogently explicates. The Irrational Ape explores, among other subjects, the basics of how to make a sound argument, the many distortions and illogical leaps inherent to conspiracy thinking, the use and misuse of statistics, and the role of the media, both institutional and social, in exacerbating many of our worst irrational attributes.

In this conversation, the first of a two-part series, we began by discussing Dr. Grimes' background before I asked him about the ingredients of a sound argument, involving as it does not only a logically valid structure, but also true premises. I then inquired about the formal fallacies dubbed denying the antecedent, also known as the inverse error, and affirming the consequent, also referred to as the converse error, in particular how the latter is related to conspiracy thinking. We spent some time delving into the nature of conspiratorial ideation and I asked him about his paper, ‘On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs,’ in which he set out to mathematically determine the likelihood that a grand conspiracy involving hundreds of thousands of people could possibly remain secret for decades. I asked Dr. Grimes why, in a book titled The Irrational Ape, he did not devote a chapter expressly to religion. Such a question, and the discussion that ensued, will no doubt upset and offend many people, but please note this podcast is not a safe space, particularly not for unsound notions with such a destructive and irrational pedigree. We then moved on to discuss some informal fallacies, including the argument from authority and the ad hominem, both of which are not always as straightforward as they appear at first blush, as both of us agreed. In closing, I asked my guest to make a pitch for skepticism as it relates to the scientific method. He provided an inspiringly eloquent articulation of the life affirming grandeur revealed by the scientific worldview as it peers into nature’s deepest reality. As Dr. Grimes reminds us, this reality entails the astounding fact that we are all of us star dust. There is, in short, both majesty and poetry in science, which remains unrivalled in its capacity to uncover the universe’s inner workings and reveal our truest selves.

Official website: https://www.davidrobertgrimes.com/

Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Robert_Grimes

Twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/drg1985

Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/david_robert_grimes/

Academic paper, ‘On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs’: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905

Buy The Irrational Ape: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Irrational-Ape-Flawed-Critical-Thinking/dp/1471178250

https://www.waterstones.com/books/search/term/the+irrational+ape+david+robert+grimes