KEVIN DORST
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Explainer Video

Is Political Polarization Evidence for Irrationality?  AEP explainer videos. March 19, 2025
Interviews
MIT News, "Why Rationality Can Push People in Different Directions", March 5, 2025

The Gradient, "Against Irrationalist Narratives", July 2024

MIT News, "How Do Reasonable People Disagree?", November 20, 2023.

Robinson's Podcast, "Bayesian Reasoning, Irrationality, and Political Polarization", June 27, 2023.

The Dissenter, "Epistemology, Justified Beliefs, and Epistemic Modesty", May 18, 2023

Die Zeit: "We must not consider every political opponent to be irrational", March 27, 2022

Onkegend: "Why confirmation bias and polarization can be rational", March 9, 2022

Parlia: "Why Bias is Rational." September 30, 2020.
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Embrace the Void: "The Tragedy of the Epistemic Commons." September 4, 2020.
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Public Writing

Stranger Apologies blog, including the series Reasonably Polarized: Why politics is more rational than you think.

The blog explores the extent to which empirical findings from psychology and behavioral economics support an irrationalist picture of human nature. The Reasonably Polarized series focuses on political polarization, arguing that such polarization is due in large part to rational causes.

How America Polarized. Arc Digital . Feb 3, 2021.

A short explainer on the trajectory of political polarization in the US over the last half-century.

The Other Side is More Rational Than You Think. Arc Digital . September 25, 2020.

I argue that that since (1) we can't think our own political beliefs are irrational, and (2) the psychological evidence shows that partisans on both sides form their beliefs through the same mechanisms, we should conclude that both sides are rational in holding their beliefs.

The Rational Question. The Oxonian Review . March 14, 2020.

I argue that a quite general problem with claimed demonstrations of irrationality is their reliance on standard economic models of rational belief and action.

Why Rational People Polarize. Phenomenal World. January 24, 2019.

I argue that several of the psychological tendencies that drive polarization can arise from purely rational mechanisms, due to the fact that some types of evidence are more ambiguous than others.
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And so on...
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