How enmeshed are we in our own views? Are we really capable of changing our minds – at least about anything important?
Today it seems that impartial analysis of data has been replaced by uninformed opinion. Expertise has been devalued, making any opinion as good as any other opinion.
Recent studies indicate that instead of hearing facts – and then making decisions based on facts, people are much more likely to seek out information sources that reinforce conclusions that they already have reached. We tend to live in our own information bubbles – bubbles that exclude contrary information. Our information isolation is so profound that it takes an extraordinary event to get us to change our minds.
I began thinking about this, more than I usually do, after an exchange on one of the list-serv’s that I belong to (one o my self-reinforcing sources of information?). Someone posted a thread about an article by Michael Shermer, a nationally known freethinker, author of several books, and publisher of Skeptic Magazine.
Shermer, a committed Libertarian, wrote about how he changed his mind on Gun Control and Climate Change when he finally was able to look objectively at evidence. It is a good article and I recommend it. You can read the article here.
In this article Shermer wrote about presenting his new conclusions in panel debates at a recent Libertarian conference. His opinions were met with outrage and hostility. Shermer laments the closed mindedness of many at the convention, while acknowledging that he recently shared those views.
Previously he was lost in a bubble of self-selected information that only served to reinforce his Libertarian predilections.
Another member of the list-serv challenged some views that Shermer had presented in the past concerning the Libertarian position that free market unrestrained Capitalism is the best method of reducing poverty. He suggested that an objective, scientific analysis of Capitalism would also undermine Shermer’s position and reveal a direct relationship between unregulated Capitalism and inequality and health problems. This is what the science, the facts demonstrate.
I do not know if this thread has reached Michael Shermer and caused him to re-evaluate another of his beliefs.
Perhaps we open up our minds one idea at a time.
As a human being I also exhibit this problem of filtering out information that disagrees with my conclusions and choices. For me, this was illustrated again this very afternoon at the weekly meeting of the Ethical Humanist Society of the Triangle.
Today’s meeting was a joint potluck with the Triangle Vegetarian Society. In addition to the potluck, the meeting included a panel presentation, with three members from each group, addressing the two or three most important issues facing the world today. The panel members gave a very well informed and thoughtful presentations.
Unsurprisingly, the environmental, economic, and health benefits of a vegetarian or vegan diet were brought up. Shifting to a plant based diet would address world food and environmental problems. The massive meat production industry is inhumane and cruel to animals. These facts are true and supported by a scientific evaluation of the evidence.
This is not my first exposure to these ideas. This is something like the 12th annual EHST/TVA potluck.
So, I know all of these things and have know them for some time now. But I do not act. I rationalize, and try not to think too deeply about it:
– I get all of my meat from the local farmer’s market.
– I need to finish up with my Paleo diet before I can consider changing.
– It's so hard for just me to change in my household.
Are these are good excuses or just more avoidance?
Like Michael Shermer, I will try to open my mind to new evidence, but it is not always an easy or successful endeavor.
James Coley says
Thanks for the interesting post, Randy. You raise fundamental issues about rationality and open-mindedness. Someone who uses reason instead of blind emotion in deciding on ethical issues will have an open mind and the ability to change moral judgments depending on logic and evidence. I think that in ethics feelings also play a foundational role and, while one should not follow emotion blindly, reason can give sight — as it were — to our humanistic impulse to care about other persons and ourselves.
But it is easy to confuse being open-minded with being gullible, and just because someone does not change their mind, that does not mean they are being closed-minded. One can’t, as a practical matter, take the time to read or listen to every argument that is made on every important issue. One simply has to judge what is worthwhile, and that in turn depends on the current state of one’s whole system of beliefs. I’m not closed-minded if I refuse to take the time to read a book someone recommends to me about how alien spaceships are sending mind-control waves to the White House.
More importantly, just because one is presented with an argument or evidence, that does not in itself mean that one should change one’s mind. We all must have the critical thinking skills necessary to tell the difference between good arguments and bad ones, and credible evidence and evidence that is less than credible.
All this having been said, it is important for Randy and other Ethical Leaders to raise these issues. In Ethical Culture and Humanism we say we believe in being open-minded, and one thing we all have in common is that we have applied critical thinking to religious beliefs in a way most people don’t. But when it comes to our political and ethical beliefs, we should be reminded that open-mindedness is not automatic. How often do we really question our beliefs about feminism, charges of racism, economics and other such things?
The recent presentation about the work of Jonathan Haidt is also a good reminder that, however much we understand politics better than most people, we all have our blind spots.
Jack van Dijk says
This is all well and good to talk about killing animals, but when you live in a nation that does not wish to follow something so basic as the principles of democracy and when you realize that the nation is watching cruel games every Sunday in which dumb people bash their heads against others with the result that many of those end their lives with Alzheimer’s disease or other ailments AND NOT ONE EVER SUGGEST TO STOP THIS CRUELTY.
It is then that this writer wonders how fair it is that he cannot escape this insane environment.