A Little Rant about Objectivity and How We Treat Others

I'm going to ask for your indulgence today because I intend to rant a little bit (or more than a little bit).  I don't like how uncivil political discussions have become.  People seem to labor under the belief that those who disagree with them are at best uninformed and at worst stupid and ill-intentioned.  There seems to be a real lack of understanding that two reasonably intelligent people can be presented with the exact same information and draw different conclusions about that information, both with good intentions.

There has been a great deal of research done about the confirmation bias.  From a Princeton website (although there is a warning not to cite it, hmm):

Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.  As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs.

I recently listened to an auditory illusion (I highly recommend scrolling down to the sound bite and listening to it, it's really fascinating, and short) which demonstrates how our brains use information.  Essentially we use information we've already heard to make sense of something new we're hearing.  We also know that we don't just objectively see what's in front of us.  A signal is sent from our eyes to our brains where the information is interpreted, which is one of the reasons why there is now some debate about the reliability of eyewitness testimony, particularly in emotionally charged situations.  The reason I'm bringing all of this up is because I think that most people believe they approach situations more objectively than they are in reality.  So I think it's somewhat harmful to think that anyone has all the right information and answers and that others are wrong, or even worse, bad, just because they don't agree with us.

Most of us have heard the saying that past performance is the best predictor of future performance.  This is why I think it's so important to study history.  However, based on the research I was pointing out in the preceding paragraphs, I think it's very important to make sure we're studying history correctly.  I love history, and probably about every 3rd or 4th book that I read is a history book.  I've found that there are generally two different approaches to gathering historical information:  Searching for evidence that supports a pre-determined notion (confirmation bias); or trying to look at all sides of a situation and evaluating several source documents before drawing a conclusion.  I imagine you can guess which method I think is superior.  I try to read several books about any situation or time period that I'm interested in, and I try to make sure in the footnotes that they aren't all citing the same interpretive sources.

I LOVE math.  When I'm working on a complicated formula at work, the time flies and I feel good about what I've accomplished at the end of the day.  I think statistics is a very powerful tool that can help us to understand a situation and make decisions about how to proceed based on predictions.  It's also one of the most misused mathematical tools.  Bayesian statistics is in my opinion the superior approach to statistics because you continually update your prediction model based on new information as it comes in.  It's an approach that can help to offset the problem caused by preconceived notions and tends to lead to more accurate predictions over time.  For a very good description of the method you can read Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise where he has an entire chapter dedicated to Bayesian methods, unless you're not as geeky as I am, in which case you can just click the link above or do a quick Google search.

The point of all of this is that it's difficult for humans to be objective and always make the right choices.  So deciding that someone else is bad or ignorant because their beliefs are different shows a serious lack of understanding of our own challenges with objectivity.  If more people understood this, we could probably have less contentious discussions and more conversations where we seek to understand another's point of view.

I actually enjoy political discussions with  my father-in-law who has very different beliefs and opinions than I do.  Because he and I both believe that the other person is good and intelligent (although I think he's WAY smarter than I am), we are able to have a respectful discussion and listen to why we've each drawn the conclusions we have.  But I really hate political discussions with both my brother and my brother-in-law's wife, because although my brother says he thinks I'm really smart, I get the distinct impression that they both believe I'm uninformed and that's why I don't believe the same way they do.  Unfortunately they both enjoy debate and so in order to maintain relationships, I end up staying silent and walking away.  (And religious discussions:  Not touching that with a ten-foot pole!)  Sometimes it's wearing to feel like I'm being respectful of their beliefs but not getting the same respect in return.

Anyway, rant over.  My brother-in-law and his family are in town right now and the first few nights were really fun, but my sister-in-law can't seem to stay away from political topics for very long, and gets pretty confrontational with anyone who disagrees with her.  So this has been in my face recently and I needed to vent.  Maybe it will help to remember why I'm choosing to react in this passive manner.  I'm choosing to maintain positive relationships with my family members instead of engaging in contentious and unproductive discussions that won't change anyone's mind and can damage those relationships.  It really is all about choices.

In a totally unrelated topic, I was walking around the yard this morning and snapped a couple of photos that I wanted to share below.

We're going to have blackberries soon

Maple leaves in the early morning sun