Confirmation
bias is a phenomenon that affects many people* - it's the habit of assessing
things in ways that already conform to your views. For example, people who
believe in God will often see patterns in nature that conform to a Divinely
created world. People who don't believe in God will not. Socialists will often
see capitalism predominantly as a nasty uncaring system that fosters
exploitation and unfair inequality, whereas many pro-market capitalists will
fail to see the problems for which capitalism has no solution.
Consequently,
once a person holds a firm view on something - be it religion, politics,
economics, ethics, or myriad other topics – you’ll find it’s hard to get them
to change their mind and see the situation differently, even if what they
believe is absurd, nonsensical or contrary to known facts. Given the foregoing,
those who write publicly for human consumption will have a readership divided
roughly into three groups.
The first group, and by far the
smallest, will be those with no heavy predispositions or strong cognitive
biases. People in this group may consider your thoughts with quite a balanced
and open mind, and may in many cases be persuaded by good reasoning and
empirical substantiation.
The
other two groups, making the huge majority, will be people who are going to be
for you or against you.
The second group will be people that are
generally for you. People in this group will share your general ethos, and they
will mostly concur with the majority of your conclusions. They will probably
begin your article by already being primed to agree, so may often be less
discerning when it comes to spotting faults with your reasoning.
The third group will be people that are
opposed to your general ethos, and they will mostly disagree with your
conclusions. They will probably begin your article by already being primed to
oppose, and may often be less discerning when it comes to identifying strengths
in your reasoning and the good points you make.
We
see this played out all the time with various public figures. For example,
affiliates of Ken Ham will read his blog and look for all the ways that a
creationist worldview is the correct one. Opponents of Melanie Philips will
read her articles and look for all the ways that liberal, socially conservative
views are the incorrect ones.
Given
the foregoing, it must be said that in all likelihood the writer of articles,
columns, essays and blogs quite often doesn’t have much of a positive impact on
his or her readers, particularly when the subject matter is politics or
religion. It’s probably going to be the case that your most avid readers are
people who share your views and like what you have to say, with those who are
generally opposed being the most predisposed to disagreement and rejection.
As
a consequence, then, with regard to the writers that can edify and enlighten,
the people who most need those writers are the ones least likely to regularly
read them, and the ones who need them least will be more likely to be regular
followers.
Of
course, there are many exceptions to that – but it’s a pattern that clearly
occurs quite regularly. Just
as Shannon 's information theory model observed
how a message's flow can break down from source to destination, we too observe
how, in public discourse, the general language and interactions of protagonists
so often breaks down in communication. Take the economic propositions about
welfare or the ecological debates about climate change. In either of those
debates, both sides are probably not too dissimilar in their aims; they just
disagree on how to achieve those aims. What causes much of the
irreconcilability is often the cultural and social backdrop that underpins
people’s beliefs and views. Views and
beliefs are more tribal than people care to admit.
The economic left tend to
see political problems as social problems based on class differentials and as
conflicts between oppressors (those successful in business) and the oppressed
(the less successful and the unemployed). The economic right tend to see those
problems in relation to the extent to which liberty, freedom and open trade are
being hamstrung. Whenever there is a debate, you can be pretty confident that one
party or the other is wrong, and usually easily shown to be so – therefore,
that disagreements are so prevalent is good evidence that they are based on
emotional and intellectual skews rather than genuine rational divergence.
It is often thought that
the less informed a person is the more close-minded they are. I won’t deny that
that is sometimes the case. Take young earth creationism (YEC). Young earth
creationists' knowledge of biology, palaeontology and geology is usually very
meagre – but they assent to YEC through tribal pressure and the need to
proclaim piety and self-righteousness, so the epistemological side is rarely
addressed with honest rigour.
However, despite examples
like YEC, it isn’t always the case that the less informed a person is the more
close-minded they are - sometimes proficient knowledge of a subject is what
makes someone closed-minded. Quite often, people have a lot of knowledge of
both sides of the argument, and that informs them more strongly of which side
they are on and which views they have. For example, the more informed I became
about biology, palaeontology and geology, the more close-minded I became to
YEC. This plays out elsewhere too. The more informed I became about astronomy,
the more close-minded I became to astrology; and the more informed I became
about economics, the more close minded I became to socialism. Thus the upshot is,
you’re going to find a lot of closed-mindedness in the world. Those who know
lots about a subject will be close-minded to the counterfactuals that sit in
opposition, and those who know little but are heavily emotionally and
intellectually biased will be close-minded to views that upset their
predispositions.
All that
being the case, it seems that the blog writers worth reading (which is, itself,
a view that widely diverges people) have a big job on their hands. They have to
keep their supporters entertained and stimulated, while at the same time trying to
keep their opponents interested, and gently persuade them of a better way to
view situations. They have to be charismatic enough to engage with open and
closed minds; and they have to conduct themselves with
the knowledge that, in all likelihood, readers who most need them probably read
and engage with them the least. Perhaps that's one of the big ironies of
blog-writing - those that can benefit most are the same people that are
predisposed to benefit least - presuming, of course, that you have something to
say from which they can benefit.
* Of course, confirmation
bias is just one of many human biases people have. Psychological studies over the past
half century have given us compelling evidence that there are dozens of human
biases that skew our thinking, and that human beings are not as
rational as they like to think.
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