Chapter 1: Page 18
... the mind also can easily misconstrue random events as nonrandom, perceiving a pattern where, in fact, none exists.
Page 21
Anthropologist Stephen Jay Gould said of patterning:
"Humans are pattern-seeking animals. We must find cause and meaning in all events... everything must fit, must have a purpose and, in the strongest version, must be for the best."Page 23
... we tend to give high value to new information that is consistent with our biases, thus reinforcing them, while giving low value to, and even rejecting, new information that is inconsistent with our biases thus preserving them.
... most of the time we seek information that supports our viewpoints and then screen out everything else.Page 27
- From a blog
The reason biases can so easily lead us astray is that the mind doesn't rigorously test the logic of every new piece of information it receives. If it did, our mental processes would grind to a halt, and the mind - and we - would be dysfunctional. Instead, the mind takes a shortcut by patterning: treating the new information as it did the old, drawing the same conclusions, experiencing the same feelings, taking the same actions. Thus, the mind operates analogically, not logically.
Highly intelligent people, asked to solve a simple problem calling for the use of elementary logic, are likely to behave like dunderheads...
Pages 33, 34
There is only one way to change undesirable biases and mind-sets, and that is by exposing ourselves (our minds) to new information and letting the mind do the rest. Fortunately, the mind is, to a large degree, a self-changing system... Give the mind new information, and it will change the bias.
Most biases and mind-sets, however, are highly resistant to alteration and are changed only gradually, eroded away by repeated exposure to new information.
Some biases and mind-sets are so deeply rooted that they can be corrected only by truth shock treatment.
Pages 34, 35, 36, 37, 38
We are an explaining species. Explanations, by making sense of an uncertain world, apparently render the circumstances of life more predictable and thus diminish our anxieties about what the future may hold. Although these explanations have not always been valid, they have enabled us through the millennia to cope with a dangerous world and to survive as a species.
The compulsion to explain everything drives our curiosity and thirst for knowledge of the world... Knowing - finding an explanation for an event - is one of the most satisfying of human experiences. There is great comfort in recognizing and making sense out of the world. Doing so creates order and coherence, and, where there is order, there is safety and contentment. We are instantly aware of the loss of this inner feeling of safety and contentment the moment we don't recognize a pattern in a situation that confronts us.
We are an explaining species; we could justifiably have been labeled "Homo explainicus."
Humans have to know things. Knowing is satisfying and comforting; not knowing is unsettling. Wanting to know, needing to know, is a fundamental human trait.
Unfortunately, our compulsion to explain things can... get us in trouble. When presented with an event that has no particular meaning, we find one anyway, and we subconsciously don't care whether the explanation is valid.
Its validity is simply not a factor.
Our indifference to the validity of our explanations is stunningly profound!... the explanations we give for things don't have to be true to satisfy our compulsion to explain things.
Page 42
We.. tend to accept at face value information that is consistent with our beliefs and to critically scrutinize and discount information that contradicts them.
We are looking for a night job. We hear of one with really good pay, but it's located in a high-crime area. We need the money, so we downplay the risk. We do the opposite when the case is reversed. Let's say we don't want a night job but are being urged to find one. We're told of a really well-paying job in a high-crime area. Now we cite the high crime as the reason not to apply for the job.
We tend to see in a body of evidence what, according to our mind-set, we expect and want to see and tend not to see... what we don't expect or don't want to see.
Page 46
We view the world through a dense veil of burdensome, thought-warping emotions, biases and mind-sets. Through this veil we sometimes perceive cause-and-effect and other "patterns" where there are none. We are prone to grace these nonexistent patterns with self-satisfying explanations with whose validity we are instinctively unconcerned. Finally, we convert these explanations into rock-hard beliefs that we defend in the face of incontrovertible contradictory evidence. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ... Homo sapiens!
Part One: Why We Go Astray
Chapter 2: Page 49
Both divergence and convergence are necessary for effective problem solving. Divergence opens the mind to creative alternatives; convergence winnows out the weak alternatives and focuses on, and chooses among, the strong.
Unfortunately… Most of us are not inherently good divergers; divergence is not one of our instinctive processes. Indeed, most of us habitually resist divergence…
