so a few days ago I was sitting around a
book store looking at books and I saw
one with a lovely title it was called
I’m right and you’re an idiot and if
only I’d seen that little earlier I
could have incorporated that phrase into
the title of my talk because that’s so
much what I am concerned with here right
so much of our rhetoric especially our
political rhetoric now takes the form of
I’m completely right about everything
anybody who disagrees with me is an
idiot
and I don’t think that form of rhetoric
is serving us very well so what
flora and I are hoping on doing is
telling you a little bit not the whole
story but a little bit of the story
about how we may have gotten to this
point that is our objective and I want
to start out by telling you about Hugh
Onoda
a Japanese soldier who in 1944 was
dispatched to the Philippine island of
Liu bang with a very simple mission he
was to stay there and if the Allies were
to try to retake the island his job was
to harass them to commit sabotage and
otherwise make their lives as miserable
as possible here Onoda was a dedicated
man he harassed the Allies right and
later the Philippines until 1974 right
he blew things up he killed people he
lived off the land on green bananas
coconuts and cows that he stole from
farmers killed and butchered himself a
very very successful man very dedicated
and he would be very impressive except
for the simple fact that the war ended
in 1945 right which is of course why I’m
interested in him
did he not know that the war was over
and the answer is it’s hard to say
certainly he had lots of opportunities
to find it out right after a while the
Philippine authorities realized what was
happening and they started doing things
like leaving him leaflets beside cows
that he had slaughtered dropping
leaflets out of airplanes telling him
that the war was over
leaving current newspapers in areas
where he was likely to find them leaving
letters from loved ones pleading with
him to stop fight none of that worked
the only thing that got him to stop
fighting was the Japanese authorities
finally looked up his former commanding
officer who in 1944 had been an Army
Major but who in 1974 was an elderly
bookseller they shipped him off to Liu
bang he talked face-to-face with Onoda
and persuaded him that the war was over
nothing else would do it so this is the
interesting thing
why didn’t ánotá realize the war was
over and the answer is everything he saw
that contradicted the view that the war
was still on he dismissed as enemy
propaganda right he had an idea evidence
that support of that idea he believed
evidence that contradicted that idea he
dismissed the main premise of today’s
talk is that there’s a little bit of hue
Onoda in all of us many years ago a
group of researchers asked a number of
people about their opinions on capital
punishment most of them already had some
sort of opinion either for or against
the researchers then gave these people a
mixture of articles some of which
portrayed capital punishment as a good
idea and others that did the opposite
the funny thing about exposing people to
this mixture of information was that it
didn’t help them understand each other
better
nor did it help them to moderate their
views instead people’s opinions on
capital punishment became more extreme
those who supported capital punishment
before reading the articles supported it
more strongly afterwards and those who
opposed it before now opposed it even
more strongly the problem appears to
have been that these people were
processing the new information
selectively when they read an article
that supported their own point of view
they read it enthusiastically feeling
good about how their point of view was
being vindicated but when they got to an
article that contradicted their point of
view suddenly their critical thinking
skills kicked in and they were very
alert to the methodological flaws and
weaknesses in the arguments so when they
were asked again about their opinions on
capital punishment they remembered
reading very good strong information
supporting their point of view and very
weak lame defective information
contradicting it the result was that
their opinions became stronger not more
balanced for the past year and a half
the two of us have been working on
developing a brand new kind of critical
thinking course and this is one of the
biggest problems that we face nobody has
the time or the energy to think
critically about every piece of
information that they encounter so no
matter how well-trained we are we have
to apply our critical thinking skills
selectively it will always be more
emotionally satisfying to think
critically about ideas that we don’t
like than about ideas that we do like
the result is that even the best train
of us tend to use our critical thinking
skills to reinforce our own biases
instead of to combat them this is a big
part of what we call a confirmation bias
which is a selective processing of
information in ways that supports our
pre-existing belief a large study from
the United States a few years ago
illustrates this point you probably all
know that in the States the best
predictor of whether an individual
believes that human activities are
altering the climate is not their
knowledge of the science but their
political opinion if an American is
politically left-wing they’re likely to
believe that human activities are
changing the climate if an American is
politically right-wing they do not this
is frustrated scientists for many years
and they have been known to complain
that Republicans are simply ignorant of
science
however the
does not appear to be what is happening
if you measure how much people know
about science and also measure where
they fall on a left-right continuum you
will find that the more a right-wing
oriented individual knows about science
the less likely they are to believe that
human activities are changing the
climate in other words they are not
using their knowledge to form an
unbiased understanding of the world
they’re using it to support a belief
that they already hold for
non-scientific reasons please note that
we do not intend to pick on people on
the political right we have evidence to
suggest that people of all political
orientations are subject to the same
biases so that brings us to our second
major topic in our title naive realism
so I think confirmation bias is pretty
horrible right means that most of us
most of the time are actively supporting
our own prejudices and seldom calling
them into question but even worse than
the fact that we tend to reinforce our
own prejudices is the fact that we are
often unaware that we are in the process
of reinforcing our own prejudices right
the process of reaffirming our own
prejudices is largely invisible to us
with the results that we think it is
obvious that we are right it is obvious
that the world is the way that we
personally perceive it to be that is
what we call naive realism and the
problem with naive realism of course is
that if it’s obvious that the world is
as we perceive it to be then that means
if anybody else perceives the world as
being some different way that person
must be misinformed evil or stupid so
once we reach that conclusion we say ok
let’s just see if the problem is
misinformation so we then stand up in a
rather loud and condescending voice we
explained the real
to them if they don’t instantly change
their point of view we go okay we’ve
ticked off misinformation that doesn’t
seem to the problem
okay we’re left with this person’s
either evil or stupid and that’s where
we are right if I think I am obviously
right and I also think the people who
disagree with me are evil and/or stupid
then
rational discussion is no longer
possible right it’s me and the people
who agree with me against the bad guys
this of course is a situation we are
seeing in political theaters all over
the world in some countries maybe worse
than others Canada is I think currently
doing better than certain close
neighbors of ours but we do in the long
run tend to copy a lot of trends coming
from the other place so I don’t think we
should get too smug yet so flora and I
have been concerned about this issue for
about a year and a half and our solution
to the problem has been to try to create
a special sort of critical thinking
course one that focused specifically on
cognitive biases such as confirmation
bias and naive realism if you ever take
the course you’ll find out there are
several dozen more but we’ll stick with
those two for now there are many many
different biases they seem to have many
different psychological roots they
create many different specific
consequences the good news is they can
all be combated with roughly the same
set of techniques read a huge part of
combating these sorts of biases is just
getting together with people who have
points of view very different from one’s
own discussing these issues with them
and try to take those people’s points of
view seriously
this is of course a procedure we try to
model in the class so the catch is it
doesn’t always work in the class and
there are a couple of reasons it might
not work in the class right one you can
probably guess when you dispute people’s
most cherished beliefs they sometimes
get pretty defensive right and it only
takes one party in a pair to get really
defensive for all hope of effective
dialogue being short-circuited I thought
that happened relatively seldom in our
class the bigger problem in our class
was a different one which is even though
there’s 20 some-odd people in the room
if you very often found that everybody
was pretty much on the same side of a
lot of controversial issues right this
is a problem called homo fille that is
people tend to hang out with other
people who are similar to themselves
right which I think the reason for that
is fairly obvious right it’s a lot more
comfortable it’s lot more easy to
communicate with people who are similar
to himself than it is to communicate
with people who are very different from
themselves right most of us enjoy
conversing but we mostly enjoy
conversing with people who were at least
somewhat like-minded so for those
situations where for one reason or
another we cannot get diverse points of
view in the room the second best
procedure to try to decon formation by
us oneself is to come up with those
alternative points of view oneself right
if I firmly believe X but I know that
some people believe Y and I can’t
actually find any of those people who
believe Y will actually talk to me in a
non defensive manner okay I’m just gonna
have to imagine I’m having a
conversation with that person what
arguments would they raise if it can
only think of bogus arguments I probably
haven’t tried hard enough let’s go on
the internet and find the best aargh
I possibly can in favor of Proposition y
so that is the second line of defense
right to try to be a genuinely
open-minded person who is not constantly
in the clutches of confirmation bias and
the hope of course is that if we can
encourage enough people to short-circuit
the confirmation biases to look at other
points of view with open minds then we
may be able to achieve some sort of
positive change I know that the theme of
this conference is revolution we have
heard the talk of the Lithuanian
revolution at the beginning of this
series it’s quite lovely we do when we
think of revolution typically think of
revolutions such as the French
Revolution or the Russian Revolution
where there was blood running in the
streets and we’re the most dogmatic and
most prone to confirmation bias
individuals typically ran the show once
the revolution was over so I think we’re
not big advocates for revolution though
we are big advocates of positive
progressive change we just think that
that progressive change should take
place gradually and that as much as
possible we should try to have another
discussion of the progressive changes we
want to implement so that everybody’s on
board it seems to us that the best way
to achieve us at least the best way that
individuals can try to work towards that
goal is to be open open-minded
open to other people to be humble right
to recognize that no matter how much you
know you never know everything there is
always a possibility of new information
coming in and to be willing to look at
new ideas wherever they come from if
enough people can cultivate that
openness then I believe that
evolutionary change is a serious option for us thank you
book store looking at books and I saw
one with a lovely title it was called
I’m right and you’re an idiot and if
only I’d seen that little earlier I
could have incorporated that phrase into
the title of my talk because that’s so
much what I am concerned with here right
so much of our rhetoric especially our
political rhetoric now takes the form of
I’m completely right about everything
anybody who disagrees with me is an
idiot
and I don’t think that form of rhetoric
is serving us very well so what
flora and I are hoping on doing is
telling you a little bit not the whole
story but a little bit of the story
about how we may have gotten to this
point that is our objective and I want
to start out by telling you about Hugh
Onoda
a Japanese soldier who in 1944 was
dispatched to the Philippine island of
Liu bang with a very simple mission he
was to stay there and if the Allies were
to try to retake the island his job was
to harass them to commit sabotage and
otherwise make their lives as miserable
as possible here Onoda was a dedicated
man he harassed the Allies right and
later the Philippines until 1974 right
he blew things up he killed people he
lived off the land on green bananas
coconuts and cows that he stole from
farmers killed and butchered himself a
very very successful man very dedicated
and he would be very impressive except
for the simple fact that the war ended
in 1945 right which is of course why I’m
interested in him
did he not know that the war was over
and the answer is it’s hard to say
certainly he had lots of opportunities
to find it out right after a while the
Philippine authorities realized what was
happening and they started doing things
like leaving him leaflets beside cows
that he had slaughtered dropping
leaflets out of airplanes telling him
that the war was over
leaving current newspapers in areas
where he was likely to find them leaving
letters from loved ones pleading with
him to stop fight none of that worked
the only thing that got him to stop
fighting was the Japanese authorities
finally looked up his former commanding
officer who in 1944 had been an Army
Major but who in 1974 was an elderly
bookseller they shipped him off to Liu
bang he talked face-to-face with Onoda
and persuaded him that the war was over
nothing else would do it so this is the
interesting thing
why didn’t ánotá realize the war was
over and the answer is everything he saw
that contradicted the view that the war
was still on he dismissed as enemy
propaganda right he had an idea evidence
that support of that idea he believed
evidence that contradicted that idea he
dismissed the main premise of today’s
talk is that there’s a little bit of hue
Onoda in all of us many years ago a
group of researchers asked a number of
people about their opinions on capital
punishment most of them already had some
sort of opinion either for or against
the researchers then gave these people a
mixture of articles some of which
portrayed capital punishment as a good
idea and others that did the opposite
the funny thing about exposing people to
this mixture of information was that it
didn’t help them understand each other
better
nor did it help them to moderate their
views instead people’s opinions on
capital punishment became more extreme
those who supported capital punishment
before reading the articles supported it
more strongly afterwards and those who
opposed it before now opposed it even
more strongly the problem appears to
have been that these people were
processing the new information
selectively when they read an article
that supported their own point of view
they read it enthusiastically feeling
good about how their point of view was
being vindicated but when they got to an
article that contradicted their point of
view suddenly their critical thinking
skills kicked in and they were very
alert to the methodological flaws and
weaknesses in the arguments so when they
were asked again about their opinions on
capital punishment they remembered
reading very good strong information
supporting their point of view and very
weak lame defective information
contradicting it the result was that
their opinions became stronger not more
balanced for the past year and a half
the two of us have been working on
developing a brand new kind of critical
thinking course and this is one of the
biggest problems that we face nobody has
the time or the energy to think
critically about every piece of
information that they encounter so no
matter how well-trained we are we have
to apply our critical thinking skills
selectively it will always be more
emotionally satisfying to think
critically about ideas that we don’t
like than about ideas that we do like
the result is that even the best train
of us tend to use our critical thinking
skills to reinforce our own biases
instead of to combat them this is a big
part of what we call a confirmation bias
which is a selective processing of
information in ways that supports our
pre-existing belief a large study from
the United States a few years ago
illustrates this point you probably all
know that in the States the best
predictor of whether an individual
believes that human activities are
altering the climate is not their
knowledge of the science but their
political opinion if an American is
politically left-wing they’re likely to
believe that human activities are
changing the climate if an American is
politically right-wing they do not this
is frustrated scientists for many years
and they have been known to complain
that Republicans are simply ignorant of
science
however the
does not appear to be what is happening
if you measure how much people know
about science and also measure where
they fall on a left-right continuum you
will find that the more a right-wing
oriented individual knows about science
the less likely they are to believe that
human activities are changing the
climate in other words they are not
using their knowledge to form an
unbiased understanding of the world
they’re using it to support a belief
that they already hold for
non-scientific reasons please note that
we do not intend to pick on people on
the political right we have evidence to
suggest that people of all political
orientations are subject to the same
biases so that brings us to our second
major topic in our title naive realism
so I think confirmation bias is pretty
horrible right means that most of us
most of the time are actively supporting
our own prejudices and seldom calling
them into question but even worse than
the fact that we tend to reinforce our
own prejudices is the fact that we are
often unaware that we are in the process
of reinforcing our own prejudices right
the process of reaffirming our own
prejudices is largely invisible to us
with the results that we think it is
obvious that we are right it is obvious
that the world is the way that we
personally perceive it to be that is
what we call naive realism and the
problem with naive realism of course is
that if it’s obvious that the world is
as we perceive it to be then that means
if anybody else perceives the world as
being some different way that person
must be misinformed evil or stupid so
once we reach that conclusion we say ok
let’s just see if the problem is
misinformation so we then stand up in a
rather loud and condescending voice we
explained the real
to them if they don’t instantly change
their point of view we go okay we’ve
ticked off misinformation that doesn’t
seem to the problem
okay we’re left with this person’s
either evil or stupid and that’s where
we are right if I think I am obviously
right and I also think the people who
disagree with me are evil and/or stupid
then
rational discussion is no longer
possible right it’s me and the people
who agree with me against the bad guys
this of course is a situation we are
seeing in political theaters all over
the world in some countries maybe worse
than others Canada is I think currently
doing better than certain close
neighbors of ours but we do in the long
run tend to copy a lot of trends coming
from the other place so I don’t think we
should get too smug yet so flora and I
have been concerned about this issue for
about a year and a half and our solution
to the problem has been to try to create
a special sort of critical thinking
course one that focused specifically on
cognitive biases such as confirmation
bias and naive realism if you ever take
the course you’ll find out there are
several dozen more but we’ll stick with
those two for now there are many many
different biases they seem to have many
different psychological roots they
create many different specific
consequences the good news is they can
all be combated with roughly the same
set of techniques read a huge part of
combating these sorts of biases is just
getting together with people who have
points of view very different from one’s
own discussing these issues with them
and try to take those people’s points of
view seriously
this is of course a procedure we try to
model in the class so the catch is it
doesn’t always work in the class and
there are a couple of reasons it might
not work in the class right one you can
probably guess when you dispute people’s
most cherished beliefs they sometimes
get pretty defensive right and it only
takes one party in a pair to get really
defensive for all hope of effective
dialogue being short-circuited I thought
that happened relatively seldom in our
class the bigger problem in our class
was a different one which is even though
there’s 20 some-odd people in the room
if you very often found that everybody
was pretty much on the same side of a
lot of controversial issues right this
is a problem called homo fille that is
people tend to hang out with other
people who are similar to themselves
right which I think the reason for that
is fairly obvious right it’s a lot more
comfortable it’s lot more easy to
communicate with people who are similar
to himself than it is to communicate
with people who are very different from
themselves right most of us enjoy
conversing but we mostly enjoy
conversing with people who were at least
somewhat like-minded so for those
situations where for one reason or
another we cannot get diverse points of
view in the room the second best
procedure to try to decon formation by
us oneself is to come up with those
alternative points of view oneself right
if I firmly believe X but I know that
some people believe Y and I can’t
actually find any of those people who
believe Y will actually talk to me in a
non defensive manner okay I’m just gonna
have to imagine I’m having a
conversation with that person what
arguments would they raise if it can
only think of bogus arguments I probably
haven’t tried hard enough let’s go on
the internet and find the best aargh
I possibly can in favor of Proposition y
so that is the second line of defense
right to try to be a genuinely
open-minded person who is not constantly
in the clutches of confirmation bias and
the hope of course is that if we can
encourage enough people to short-circuit
the confirmation biases to look at other
points of view with open minds then we
may be able to achieve some sort of
positive change I know that the theme of
this conference is revolution we have
heard the talk of the Lithuanian
revolution at the beginning of this
series it’s quite lovely we do when we
think of revolution typically think of
revolutions such as the French
Revolution or the Russian Revolution
where there was blood running in the
streets and we’re the most dogmatic and
most prone to confirmation bias
individuals typically ran the show once
the revolution was over so I think we’re
not big advocates for revolution though
we are big advocates of positive
progressive change we just think that
that progressive change should take
place gradually and that as much as
possible we should try to have another
discussion of the progressive changes we
want to implement so that everybody’s on
board it seems to us that the best way
to achieve us at least the best way that
individuals can try to work towards that
goal is to be open open-minded
open to other people to be humble right
to recognize that no matter how much you
know you never know everything there is
always a possibility of new information
coming in and to be willing to look at
new ideas wherever they come from if
enough people can cultivate that
openness then I believe that
evolutionary change is a serious option for us thank you
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