Читать книгу Uncomfortable Ideas - Bo Bennett PhD - Страница 4

Preface

“The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science.” - Carl Sagan

Imagine for a moment that a Neo-Nazi group is speaking at a local university. They are advertising that they are reaching out to the general public to help them understand that the Nazi party has been unjustly demonized, and they promise to discuss historical facts that will put the party in proper perspective. Do you go? Why or why not? Think about this for a moment. We’ll refer to this question in the next section.

Cognitive Biases

I wrote this book for a general audience, but I don’t shy away from technical terms—especially when they explain so nicely how we deal with, or not deal with, uncomfortable ideas. But I promise you this: when I do mention a technical term, I will do my best to explain it well and provide examples where appropriate.

Let’s start with the term “cognitive bias.” A cognitive bias is like an illusion for the mind. It is a deviation from rationality in judgment. Our brain did not evolve with rationality and reason as a goal; the only goals are reproduction and survival. Rationality is only needed to the extent that it supports one or both of those goals. Here’s the big problem: evolution works over tens of thousands of years, and we have made dramatic changes to our social environment in the last several hundred years. Evolution hasn’t had time to catch up. An example to which most us can relate, unfortunately, is overeating. We have a desire to overeat because food was scarce in our ancestral environment and the cost of starving was far greater then the cost of eating too much. Today, for most of us, there is no shortage of food, and we have a serious problem with obesity. The evolutionary trait that once aided in our survival is now killing us. Like the behavior of overeating, most cognitive biases are also relics of our ancestral environment that once helped us survive, but now, in the age of reason, are problematic. Some just make us look silly, some lead to poor judgments and decision making, some threaten our lives, and some actually are responsible for killing us.

Consider stereotyping, which is a cognitive bias that allows us to quickly and efficiently (but not always accurately) make judgments about people. Tens of thousands of years ago, if our ancestors were approached by individuals who looked different from them, it was a safe bet to assume the strangers were a risk. They didn’t have the luxury of time to get to know all about the strangers. If they hesitated in taking action, they might die. Today, stereotyping has become less effective (although far from useless) since there is less risk associated with taking the time to learn about others, and stereotyping is now more of a liability to us than it is an asset.

Which groups are more likely to avoid uncomfortable ideas? To answer this, we can turn to research in cognitive science that has focused on the question, “who tends to be more biased?” Republicans or Democrats? Christians or atheists? Men or women? The answer is a bit tricky since it depends on the bias being studied,¹ the passion the members have for their group,² and the metacognitive abilities of the members (the ability to think about their thinking process),³ just to name a few of the factors. Perhaps the most important point in understanding biases is that the biases are not correlated with general cognitive ability,⁴ that is, intelligent people are not immune to biases. Social scientist Keith Stanovich has done extensive research in the area of reasoning⁵ and proposed that one’s ability to reason effectively, that is to recognize and avoid biases largely responsible for our avoidance of uncomfortable ideas, is a separate intelligence just like emotional intelligence differs from general intelligence. Rational intelligence is an intelligence that is learnable. This book will help you become more intelligent in the area of rationality primarily by helping you to learn and recognize the biases that work against this intelligence. This improves your metacognition—your ability to think about how you reason.

A Few Words About Me

As a social psychologist, my goal is to see issues as objectively as possible while recognizing my own biases. For full disclosure, I am a white, cisgender, heterosexual, married, well-educated, upper-middle class male. I don’t have strong political beliefs, but I am definitely left of center. I am an atheist with a naturalistic worldview, but I can certainly appreciate religions for the benefits they offer some people and communities. Given my background, I cannot speak to the lived experiences of the members of the transgender and gay communities, non-whites or women, but I can explore related topics scientifically, objectively, and without passion or ideology. If we want to know about climate change, we’re better off getting our information from climatologists than from Eskimos, even though Eskimos experience the effects of climate change. Knowledge and experience are not the same.

I’ve done my best to being fully objective in creating this book. This has allowed me to present some uncomfortable ideas that I don’t necessarily agree with but know that other people do. I am not presenting a balanced assessment of the ideas because virtually all of us have heard the “arguments” against these ideas already. I am presenting arguments for ideas that you likely have not heard before. Just because this book is not balanced, it doesn’t mean it is not fair or that the arguments are not strong and factual. I have cited all claims where data support the claims, and when I come to my own conclusions I have done my best to reasonably justify those conclusions.

The goal of this book is to explore many uncomfortable ideas that are often not expressed, entertained, or accepted for a myriad of reasons. If I did my job right, you will no doubt be offended or at the very least be made uncomfortable by many of these ideas. Based on the ideas I do support, you might call me a bigot, racist, misogynist, snob, elitist, sympathizer, shill, godless heathen, or perhaps just an asshole. With the exception of the “godless heathen” label, I don’t think I am any of those, but I also think my jeans from high school still fit me fine.

Political Correctness

Political correctness is defined as “the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.” Think of social behavior on a continuum. At one end, we have overtly racist, sexist, and mean-spirited forms of expression or action directed towards those who are incapable of defending themselves due to lack of power. On the other end of the continuum, we have any form of expression or action that is interpreted as overtly racist, sexist, and mean-spirited. Political correctness exists between the two extremes. This means a socially unaware person can think she is politically correct by referring to a black person as a “negro” (and avoiding the other N-word) where most others would consider her comment politically incorrect. Conversely, a college student could start a protest over the term “Black Friday” connecting the day after Thanksgiving somehow to slavery, then call it “racist.” There is no universally agreed upon ideal level of political correctness and what is extreme to one person might be perfectly reasonable to another. Be prepared to argue for your opinion and convince others why you are right.

Uncomfortable Idea: You are not the authority or standard on what is or is not politically correct. You don’t have moral superiority; you have the illusion of it.

The Structure of This Book

In part one, we look at the meaning of “uncomfortable idea,” specifically what uncomfortable ideas are, what it means to avoid them, and why it’s so important to entertain them and, at times, embrace them.

Part two deals with the most common unconscious and conscious reasons why we avoid uncomfortable ideas and includes dozens of examples, most of which will fall outside your comfort zone.

Part three looks at why we refuse to accept uncomfortable ideas that we would likely accept if they weren’t uncomfortable.

In part four, you are presented with several uncomfortable ideas that should make you rethink many of your core beliefs.

Finally, in part five, you will find a listing of over a hundred uncomfortable questions that will make excellent discussion questions for college classes, social media, or fun questions to break out at a party—assuming you don’t mind some heated discussions.

Not everyone will find all of these ideas uncomfortable, but the chances are most of you will find most of these ideas uncomfortable. Don’t avoid them; entertain them and either accept them or educate yourself as to why they shouldn’t be accepted, so you will be prepared with reasons as to why the ideas are bad when someone is attempting to convince you otherwise. This is the foundation of critical thinking.

¹ Rudman, L. A., & Goodwin, S. A. (2004). Gender differences in automatic in-group bias: why do women like women more than men like men? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(4), 494–509. http://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.87.4.494

² Iyengar, S., & Hahn, K. S. (2009). Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use. Journal of Communication, 59(1), 19–39. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.01402.x

³ The Importance of Cognitive Errors in Diagnosis and Strategies to Minimize Them : Academic Medicine. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2003/08000/The_Importance_of_Cognitive_Errors_in_Diagnosis.3.aspx

⁴ Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2008). On the relative independence of thinking biases and cognitive ability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(4), 672–695. http://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.94.4.672

⁵ Research on Reasoning. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://keithstanovich.com/Site/Research_on_Reasoning.html