The problem with humans is that we are biologically prone to chasing narratives, even when no narrative exists. We are programmed to seek a beginning, middle, and end.
I've realised that I bring in so much confirmation and narrative bias to my opinions that I no longer 100% trust my own opinions, nor the opinions of others. It's come to the point that I have the following heuristic:
"The likelihood of something being truthful is inversely proportional to how much logical sense it makes."
In other words, a clear logical story that makes sense is probably a false story. The real world is very messy, and truth can be chaotic and very counter-intuitive. A good example of this is the Monty-Hall problem, where intuitively the probability of finding the prize is 50% when it is actually 66%.
The thing is, the Monty-Hall problem is just one of the known situations where our narratives and biases fail us. How many of our narratives and biases are floating about lying to us that we don't know about? How many weird cognitive delusions are still awaiting discovery? People in the future could very well laugh at how people argued about politics the same way we laugh now at people that used to drown witches. In hindsight, it may all look very stupid.
The 'science' of economics is particularly prone to this - economists present these seductive narratives that are compelling not because they are truthful but because the human mind is biologically driven to crave a narrative rather than the truth.
I suppose one way to protect oneself is to always ask, "Who benefits?" For example, in the climate change discussions, all the thought leaders benefit. The academics who shout loudly that the end is nigh, well, they get name recognition and more funding for their research (in academia, funding is pretty much the be-all and end-all at this point, teaching is not important anymore). The oil companies benefit by keeping their product acceptable in the popular mind. The politicians benefit through votes or through 'legislation-for-pals' schemes. Everything takes one away from the essential point, which should not be 'Is there climate change?' but rather 'Should there be limits on pollution, knowing that it can affect human health and the environment, even if there is no climate change?' Except no one is benefiting from steering the discussion towards the last point - there is no money to be made in being sane.
Anyway, on a somewhat related note, I once wrote an article about consumerism which touches on this process of mind-control:
http://www.returnofkings.com/25063/you-d...-this-cult
I've realised that I bring in so much confirmation and narrative bias to my opinions that I no longer 100% trust my own opinions, nor the opinions of others. It's come to the point that I have the following heuristic:
"The likelihood of something being truthful is inversely proportional to how much logical sense it makes."
In other words, a clear logical story that makes sense is probably a false story. The real world is very messy, and truth can be chaotic and very counter-intuitive. A good example of this is the Monty-Hall problem, where intuitively the probability of finding the prize is 50% when it is actually 66%.
The thing is, the Monty-Hall problem is just one of the known situations where our narratives and biases fail us. How many of our narratives and biases are floating about lying to us that we don't know about? How many weird cognitive delusions are still awaiting discovery? People in the future could very well laugh at how people argued about politics the same way we laugh now at people that used to drown witches. In hindsight, it may all look very stupid.
The 'science' of economics is particularly prone to this - economists present these seductive narratives that are compelling not because they are truthful but because the human mind is biologically driven to crave a narrative rather than the truth.
I suppose one way to protect oneself is to always ask, "Who benefits?" For example, in the climate change discussions, all the thought leaders benefit. The academics who shout loudly that the end is nigh, well, they get name recognition and more funding for their research (in academia, funding is pretty much the be-all and end-all at this point, teaching is not important anymore). The oil companies benefit by keeping their product acceptable in the popular mind. The politicians benefit through votes or through 'legislation-for-pals' schemes. Everything takes one away from the essential point, which should not be 'Is there climate change?' but rather 'Should there be limits on pollution, knowing that it can affect human health and the environment, even if there is no climate change?' Except no one is benefiting from steering the discussion towards the last point - there is no money to be made in being sane.
Anyway, on a somewhat related note, I once wrote an article about consumerism which touches on this process of mind-control:
http://www.returnofkings.com/25063/you-d...-this-cult