“What I believe” is a process rather than a finality. - Emma Goldman
As explored in the previous book, "The Science of Storytelling," we are wired to detect change yet strongly resistant to changing ourselves.
Some psychologists point out that we’re mental misers: we often prefer the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of grappling with new ones. Change is hard. We favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. Doubt is the unknown, the unexplored path where danger awaits.
<aside> 💡 Yet, We are not born with our opinions, unlike height or skin colour, we acquire our opinions and because of this - we can change.
</aside>
“To punish me for my contempt of authority, fate has made me an authority myself.”
How often have you entered a discussion with the aim to prove yourself right? And not an intention to truthfully hear the other person?
As we think and talk, we often slip into the mindsets of three different professions: preachers, prosecutors, and politicians.
The preacher is triggered when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals.
We enter prosecutor mode when we recognise flaws in other people’s reasoning: we dish out arguments to prove them wrong and prove ourselves right.
We shift to politician mode when we are seeking to win over an audience: we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents.
Recent experiments suggest that the smarter you are, the more you might struggle to update your beliefs. Study reveals that the higher you score on an IQ test, the more likely you are to fall for stereotypes, because you’re faster at recognising patterns.
The better you are at crunching numbers, the more spectacularly you fail at analysing patterns that contradict your views. In a study, math geniuses did worse at evaluating evidence that gun bans failed, if they were liberal. If they were conservative, they did worse at assessing evidence that gun bans worked.
In psychology there are at least two biases that drive this pattern. One is confirmation bias: seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias: seeing what we want to see.
<aside> 💡 The purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs.
</aside>