Concept
Mercier’s refinement of Sperber’s epistemic-vigilance term. The system is paired: humans are simultaneously open to useful information and vigilant against unreliable sources, with the two faces evolving hand-in-hand as communication became broader and more powerful. The earlier ‘epistemic vigilance’ label flattens this into a one-sided defense construct, which is what the catalog had until the Mercier extraction surfaced the paired reading. Two named sub-mechanisms: plausibility checking (does the message fit pre-existing beliefs?) and reasoning (do supporting arguments resonate?). Calibration is asymmetric: more errors of omission (not trusting when we should) than of commission (trusting when we shouldn’t) — vigilance is conservative-leaning, not credulous-leaning.
Connections
- Defined in: Emotional Memetics As The Floor
- Discussed in: Ch 7 — Emotional Memetics As The Floor, Ch 5b — Selection As The Other Engine
- Evidenced by: Not Born Yesterday
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