Our 32nd prompt comes from Mo. They ask:
Why are people so steeped in ignorance even in the face of fact and information?
*
Mo,
Great question. Before the spirit of teaching people left me in 2016, I constantly asked myself this question. Someone would say something that was flat out wrong/stupid and I’d have this perplexed look on my face, after which I’d ask to see their phone. 9 out of 10 times they had a smartphone, so I’d ask them what they had against search engines. As you can imagine this rarely ended well, because people do not like discovering or accepting that they are wrong. Nowadays I’ve learned to be zen about the whole thing. I breathe, smile, and walk away, either figuratively (online, for example), or literally.
I believe that at the heart of this problem is identity. That is, the kind of person you believe you are, and the kind of person you hope to be. Not all misinformation or ignorance is created equal. Say you identify as a conservative, either because you were raised as one or when you were forming your identity, this school of thought most appealed to you. This means that you probably believe in free markets, the military, limited governments, Christianity (or whatever the prevailing religion in your country is), tradition, and so on. However, you probably also assimilate the other values, beliefs and ideas that your system of belief holds true, many times without question.
Many times, these values, beliefs and ideas are proven to be wrong. Which is where two cognitive biases come to play. The first is confirmation bias. That is, our bias toward accepting information that supports our values and beliefs, and rejecting that which contradicts them. That way, when one Googles something they value or believe in, they wholly accept without question any information that justifies their values and beliefs, while blindly rejecting that which doesn’t. We see this play out all the time on WhatsApp forwards, for example. We share all the rubbish that we believe is true, but are not as quick to share factual information that we have for some reason refused to accept.
The second is the Dunning-Kruger effect. That is, the tendency of people to fail to fairly assess their competence. Incompetent people think they are more competent than they actually are, and the opposite applies to competent people. In the same way, ignorant people believe they know way more than they actually do. This is made worse by the fact that we tend to surround ourselves with people who agree with us/affirm us, so it doesn’t matter that after a discussion all of us are terribly wrong and our conclusions are baseless, we are way more emboldened and smug about ourselves and our values, beliefs and ideas.
If this sounds terrible, it’s because it is, and it leads to untold damage. How can we counter it? Well, with information and discourse. By basing our values, beliefs and ideas in fact as opposed to fiction. And by being open to change our minds. Of course, this is easier said than done.
*
This post is part of a daily writing experiment that I’m running for a year. I’d love it if you took part! ?