Explaining the persistence of non3adaptive architectural typologies reveals the opposite of what one is led to believe about progress in contemporary architecture and urbanism. There is in fact a built3in resistance to new ideas outside conformity, even when accepted practices are demonstrated to be failures. We can understand this contradiction as irrational groupthink and the resistance to change within the framework of social learning and evolutionary adaptation. Studies in political science and psychology reveal strongly innate mechanisms for preserving misinformation. Human physiology leads intelligent persons who have acquired demonstrably false beliefs to stubbornly persist in holding them. “Cognitive dissonance” is a state of physical anxiety, and instinctive defensive reactions are meant to counteract its occurrence. Methods of handling contradictory information within settings requiring urgent action, while obviously appropriate at the evolutionary level of early humans, wreak havoc with our present3day rationality. People have inherited both a mechanism for conforming to group beliefs, and a stock of tools to fight against any idea that conflicts with already held beliefs. Rational arguments have no affect whatsoever