Possible Epiphany

Have you ever talked to someone who, while you disagree with much of what they believed, seemed to have some rather conventional opinions but during the course of conversation you discovered that their method of thinking makes no sense to you at all? That is, when you have a discussion on why you believe what you believe and they believe what they believe you simply cannot follow their reasoning, it simply doesn't make sense to you.

In the last week or so I have had such an experience while discussing religion with someone on a forum. The clearest example of what I am talking about is C.S. Lewis trilemma which I reject as a trilemma simply because there are more than the three possibilities mentioned, and so it essentially means nothing other than a list of three things that might be true about Jesus. Here is the last word the individual had on the subject, "I didn't suggest that our discussion of the "Trilemma" was about the existence of God... But that you were misrepresenting why the "Trilemma" was false... That it wasn't because it was wrong... it is a "False" Dilemma... because more than three options or choices actually exist."

This thinking is completely beyond my capabilities. I cannot think that someone who says one of three options must be true, when there are other options, isn't wrong. The idea is that Lewis says that there are only three options, that this is false, and yet Lewis isn't wrong about these three being the only choices.

When faced with such a situation I find myself at a loss on how to discuss anything. This individual thinks they have a wider and more complete understanding because they can understand their position and I cannot. They think there is a greater subtlety to their position because it goes beyond formal logic. Using formal logic of course the argument is false, they admit that, but somehow that doesn't mean that Lewis is wrong. I find this frustrating.

This is where I come to my possible epiphany. While riding the bicycle I wondered what could be the method that produced the reasoning applied above. What I determined is that the real way that people determine what is correct or not is how they feel about it. When I really come down to it the way I use logic is to use systems of thinking that feel right. When someone says that although a trilemma is a false trilemma it is not necessarily wrong in the end all I can do is say that it is. So what this other person is doing is simply appling a different system for determing truth, based on a different set of feelings.

There are all sorts of things that people do without reason. People have confirmation bias, a bias towards an entity acting, the ability to be willfully ignorant, people are unreasonably optimistic, and they tend to thinking there is a point to it all. Most of our beliefs are based upon what our in-group thinks and how our brain is organized rather than on pure reasoning, and it is highly resistant to change. The individual above thinks that what feels right to them is a higher level of understanding than pure reasoning, and the important thing is that most people do too, it's just that this guy is more upfront about it. While the person can quite reasonably tell that saying one of three things must be true when there are more possibilities, the three possibilities seem to be truly what feels right as the only possibilities, and what feels right trumps reason.

So, my epiphany was that I should stop caring about what people think. I can think myself, come to conclusions I think are right, challenge those assumptions and explain my positions. But what I should stop doing is caring about whether anyone else is convinced because of this process. This isn't like sport, everyone is playing their own game under their own rules. Futhermore, it simply isn't possible to change the primary sources for why people think the way they do.

However, I think I should care about how people feel. Not only is this the basic nature of goodness, but it is also actually the most effective way to persuade anyone. Being nice to someone and stating your opinion will convince more people than providing a reasoned and indisputable argument. It's probably about time for me to realize that.

The Internet, Extremism, Confirmation Bias

I have a theory, and I'm going to tell you about it.

When the internet first arrived it was rightly lauded for being the biggest source of information the world had ever known. One of thine things that was going to be great about the internet was that the amount of different voices telling people what was going on was going to dramatically increase. Instead of a few news outlets from your own country you could access the ideas of people from the street to the most scholarly article within minutes. This has indeed happened and if you want to find out about something there are more opportunities to do so then you may be able to read.

There was a wide-spread opinion that this vastly greater diversity of information was going to lead to a greater acceptance of different people through the breakdown of stereotypes. It's a little tricky to think that all Iranians are fanatical Muslim terrorists when you are debating whether Gears of War or Fable III is a better X-Box 360 game with a student from Tehran. I think when people first get onto the internet this is true. The power of Google and Wikipedia to diffuse silly stereotypes about things is enormous.

On the other hand there is the rather unpleasant trait of people known as confirmation bias. This means that people generally prefer and seek out information and opinions that confirm their own beliefs. The danger with this and the internet is that no matter how crazy you are there's an excellent chance you can find someone on the internet who agrees with your beliefs. There may be only two hundred people in the world who think Joe Biden is Satan and needs to be stopped, but on the internet those people can see that they are not alone, therefore they are right, and then they can get together and try to stop Joe Biden.

Over time people tend to simply go back to the same web sites over and over again. Once you have decided something is a good site, you tend to simply use that site for that purpose. So, there may be ten thousand different sources for news, but we tend to go back again and again to the same two or three sources to get all our information. What constitutes a good site for people is generally one that confirms their own feelings on subjects. When we go to sites with competing viewpoints I feel that we look for ways in which their opinions are false, thus confirming our original beliefs.

Over time what happens with the internet is that groups of like-minded people get together and then become almost entirely the only source of trusted information for each other. No longer are people moderated by the approval or disapproval of their local community. As with all things if those people are right and smart and have the greater good at heart they can create new wonders like never before. If those people are paranoid, violent crazy people they confirm each others positions, intensify them and possibly unleash the consequences upon us all.

Are you aware of your own confirmation bias? Try this for an interesting experiment. Go to a web site with which you disagree generally. Find a subject where you are pretty sure you will disagree with everything said. Then go through it sentence by sentence and consciously decide whether you can agree with that sentence or not. By the end of the article count up how many sentences with which you have agreed. It may surprise you to find out that you agree with half or more of an article which previously you would have dismissed as totally wrong.